Wars of the Roses

gigatos | February 4, 2022

Post Views: 22

Summary

The War of the Roses was a series of dynastic-themed clashes that lasted for more than three decades in medieval England, with two great aristocratic factions, the Lancastrians and the Yorkists, vying for control of government. The leaders of both major camps were descendants of the Plantagenêt dynasty, and thus had more or less claim to the crown. The war, which marked the last century of feudal England, was named after the white and red roses that were the emblems of the participants.

The hostilities can be broken down into several major phases, each lasting one or two years, and consisting of only a few battles, apart from political and diplomatic actions. There were only a few major battles – Towton, Barnet, Bosworth – and a few minor ones – Hexham – but other skirmishes – destruction of estates, storming of castles – were frequent. The clashes were short-lived, taking place between the autumn of 1459 and the spring of 1461, the summer of 1469 and the spring of 1471, and in the autumn of 1483, the summer of 1485 and the summer of 1487.The clashes for the crown did not become a real civil war, as they involved only a few nobles, usually their vassals, soldiers and a small number of their serfs, who were obliged to serve in the army. The legal system governing everyday life remained intact, the institutions were run by government officials and local lords; life was orderly between battles.

The battle did not disrupt the country”s economy, did not cause a long crisis, did not cause the massive destruction and the number of casualties in the battles was not significant compared to the picture painted by William Shakespeare”s tragedies. The combatants explicitly spared the common people. The nobles did not go to war against the popular Shakespearean image because they were bloodthirsty madmen – as Warwick cries out in Henry VI: ”Drunk then with our blood the land” – but because they could find no other way to change the political situation.

There were several reasons for the outbreak of the military conflict. By the middle of the 15th century, England had lost a significant part of its conquests in France due to poor governance. Central power was weak, as the nobles grew stronger at the expense of the monarch, and the tenants of the lords were more loyal to them than to the king. In addition, the throne was occupied for a long time by a minor king who, by 1453, was clearly weak-minded. The king”s ambitious French-born wife, Queen Margaret of England of Anjou, was also a major influence on the conduct of affairs.

Contributing to this was the renewed and more violent rivalry between the two most powerful families in the north of England, the Percys and the Nevilles, who were at enmity with each other. As both sides sought strong supporters, their dispute rose to a national level.

In the war, the Yorkists managed to temporarily seize the throne and gave two kings – Edward IV and Richard III. The struggle ended with the death of Richard III, who was succeeded on the throne by Henry Tudor of the House of Lancaster, establishing the House of Tudor, which then ruled England and Wales for 116 years.

Between 1455 and 1471, 26 princes were killed and 13 executed. Six of the male descendants of King Edward III of England died violently. Between 1459 and 1487, 42 nobles were killed in battle or subsequently executed, including a king, a prince of Wales, three dukes of Somerset, two or three earls of Northumberland and Devon. The war so reduced the English noble families that twenty-six out of sixty-four died out completely.

England was ravaged by a series of plagues in the 14th century, causing socio-economic problems that lasted into the 15th century. The population was almost halved to between 2 and 2.5 million, leading to a shortage of labour. As there were not enough people to cultivate the land, not enough food was produced. The price of agricultural products and labour rose and there were years when the population went hungry. However, the plague gave many smallholders the opportunity to rise up by taking over the land of those who had died in the plague.

England was a peaceful country in the first half of the 15th century, with no major wars since the Percy rebellion and no religious divisions. The general peacefulness of the English towns is illustrated by the fact that, unlike the mainland, they were hardly defended by walls. In fact, only those that were threatened by a possible French invasion, such as Sandwich or Southampton, bothered with defensive works. England, unlike France or Burgundy, had no major standing army. The king”s retinue consisted of 200 archers, and the garrison at Calais consisted of 1,000 men. In the areas near the Scottish border there were armies ready for immediate deployment, under the command of governors – Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, before the War of the Roses. They were not militarily significant, and in peacetime could consist of 50 armoured men and 100 archers. In the years 1420-1430, despite the fact that the monarch was a minor, no particular armed conflict broke out between the rival lords, their disputes being settled before the royal council, unlike in the 1450s.

England has been at war abroad since 1337. In the Hundred Years” War in France, it won again in the first decades of the century: On 25 October 1415, Henry V inflicted a disastrous defeat on the French at the Battle of Azincourt and captured a large part of Normandy. However, he died in September 1422, aged just 35, and was soon succeeded by the mad King Charles VI of France on 22 October 1422. Under the terms of an earlier treaty between the two of them, the 11-month-old child who took the English throne, Henry VI, also became King of France. The English advance lasted until 1435, when the Anglo-Burgundian alliance was dissolved. In 1444, the Treaty of Tours was concluded, allowing England to keep Normandy, Guyenne, Anjou and Maine.

In the 1440s, as the feeble-minded king came of age, the hitherto prudent English appointment policy changed: an unusually large number of men were given the title of lord, resulting in the squandering of a significant part of the royal estates. The arrival in England in 1445 of Henry VI”s new wife, Margaret of Anjou of France, soon made her an inescapable factor in English domestic politics, and the king took control of affairs in France as well as at home. As a result, England was losing the territories on the other side of the Channel at a rapid rate.

Henry VI secretly sent a letter to the King of France renouncing Anjou and Maine. The decision took the English lords by surprise, but they could do nothing about the king”s decision and in 1448 they handed over the promised territories to the French. A year later, war broke out again between the two countries and the French retook Normandy by the summer of 1450. The disaster in France angered the people, whose indignation soon spread to the commoners. Because someone had to take responsibility for the king”s blunders, the closest councillors – the Duke of Suffolk, William Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury, and Adam Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester – died violent deaths within six months. In Kent, the Jack Cade Rebellion, seeking a remedy for both the old grievances of the people (the tax and labour laws that had brought them to their knees) and the present political failings (the venality and greed of the King”s ministers), broke out, and the government proved utterly powerless to deal with it.

Taking advantage of the king”s mental state, a power struggle between Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, began, with varying degrees of success. By 1455, however, the duel seemed to have been finally decided. To protect his person, his wealth, his family and his influence, York saw no alternative but to engage in armed conflict.

Over the centuries, there have been many historians” theories about what exactly triggered the War of the Roses. Public perception has been heavily influenced by Tudor interpretations of events, which clearly described the battle between the Yorkists and Lancastrians as a dynastic struggle. Later, other views emerged which explained the events from a different socio-political perspective, highlighting the weakness of central power, oppressed by the feudal system, or the struggle for control of government. The outbreak of war was probably caused by the combination of the problems listed below.

The end of the Hundred Years War

The War of the Roses began shortly after the end of the Hundred Years” War between France and England. The absence of fighting abroad against foreign enemies disrupted unity in England, increased disunity, and the return of discharged soldiers destabilised the social order and allowed fighting nobles to have easy access to mercenaries at any time. The inglorious end to five generations of warfare and conquest led to popular discontent.

Also read, biographies – Francisco Goya

The weakness of central power

By the middle of the 15th century, the weakening of central power, in addition to the magnates” overwhelming power, was also significantly contributed to by the king”s mental state, as Henry VI was unable to exercise adequate control over affairs. This was particularly true during the period of about a year and a half in 1453 when the king was unable to speak and unable to move his limbs. Until the outbreak of the War of the Roses, the focus of political life was in fact on how Margaret of Anjou and her chosen nobles, such as Somerset or York, could manipulate the deranged monarch.

Also read, civilizations – Neman culture

Landlord and tenant system

Some historians explain the outbreak of the War of the Roses by the fact that the feudal system had become endlessly corrupt and unjust, “degenerated” by the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries. A few extremely powerful nobles were able to build up a serious armed force of vassals that they could use for their own ends, or even defy the crown. The nobles thus sought to resolve their affairs not necessarily within the legal system, through the judiciary, but by force. Such battles were fought between the Nevilles and the Percys, or the Blounts and the Longfords. As far as they were able, the parties used both the king and the government to their own ends, and the sovereignty of the central power was seriously compromised. As the royal lands were squandered, the Crown was too poor to finance its affairs. In the 1390s Richard II had an annual income of £120,000, but Henry VI had to make do with a third of that in the 1450s. The monarch had to borrow from the nobility: by the 1450s, York, one of the instigators of the War of the Roses, had become the state”s biggest creditor.

Also read, battles – Henry II of England

Dynastic debate

It was during the Tudor era that the War of the Roses was thought to have been sparked by York”s claim to the throne. Richard of Plantagenet was a descendant of Edward III, like Henry VI on the throne. York never disputed Henry”s claim to the crown until the autumn of 1460. York”s son, the future Edward IV, only made his claim to the throne in 1461 after Margaret of Anjou had launched a relentless campaign of revenge against the Yorkists. The nobles themselves did not behave as if they were part of a dynastic war: they changed sides when their ambitions demanded it, as did Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the so-called kingmaker, in 1469-71. The dynastic dispute had in fact been settled by the accession of Edward IV in 1461, and would probably not have arisen had Warwick”s personal ambition not led him to switch sides, or Richard III to let his nephew rule.

Also read, biographies – John Chamberlain (sculptor)

Influencing the government

An important goal of all participants in the War of the Roses was to control the government. The ruler had control over large amounts of land, important titles and offices, and wealth-creating marriages and successions. To have a share in this wealth and to ensure repayment of loans to the court, one had to have influence over the government. One of the reasons York resented his exclusion from the king”s immediate entourage was that he was unlikely to see the money he and his family had lent the monarch to finance the war in France. Gaining control of the government was also in the overriding interest of the lords because they could not allow their opponents to gain influence there.

As there were no large standing armies in medieval England, soldiers had to be recruited before each campaign. A contract between the tenants and their lords, or between the lords and the king, governed the size of the troops that the subjects had to raise if necessary. Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, for example, paid ninety soldiers to fight alongside the king at the first battle of St Albans. At the Battle of Heworth Moor, one of the main triggers of the escalation of the Neville-Percy feud, over seven hundred men took part on the Percy side, 330 of them tenants of the family. In addition, men between 16 and 60 years of age were conscripted for forty days by those close to the authorities to protect the cause of the monarch. The soldiers were dressed with their lord”s badge to show their political commitment and to recognise each other on the battlefield. Henry VII favoured the use of the dead man”s breastplate and the Welsh red dragon. Henry VI”s personal emblem was the antelope, his wife”s was the swan, Elizabeth of York”s men wore the white rose, Edward IV”s soldiers wore the radiant sun on their jackets.

Despite sometimes fantastic estimates by contemporary chroniclers, sometimes in the hundreds of thousands, there is little evidence of the size of the troops that met on the battlefield. Today”s estimates suggest that the War of the Roses generally involved armies of no more than 15,000, and only in major engagements such as the Battle of Barnet or the Battle of Tewkesbury. The only exception to this was the Battle of Towton, in which many more fought. Medieval troops were accompanied by a host of auxiliaries – chaplains, bakers, carpenters, servants.

The battle was usually initiated by the archer”s arrow and the firing of a modest number of artillery pieces. Their main aim was to force the enemy to abandon his fortified position. An important element in the British armies was the archery team equipped with 180 centimetre long bows. The archers could fire 10-12 arrows per minute at a range of 150 metres. In the War of the Roses, the archers decided the Battle of Edgecote Moor and the Battle of Stoke Field. In the clash in Towton, the wind was so strong that the Lancaster archers could not shoot as far as the York lines, while from there they were bombarded by an uncountable number of arrows. The archers were vulnerable because of their light equipment, so they were sent behind the lines when possible before the melee began. The English armies had few firearms, one reason being that guns and muskets were slow to fire and difficult to handle. The guns were fired at the beginning of the battle and then repeatedly not reloaded. Another reason was that large calibre guns were mainly useful against stationary enemies, such as when besieging castles, but the battles of the War of the Roses were fought in large fields where the parties could change their positions.

After the arrows had been fired and the cannons fired, the battle became a melee of armoured infantrymen using swords, axes, maces, chained maces, spears and halberds. Because armour was heavy, soldiers quickly became exhausted and engagements rarely lasted more than a few hours. Because of the danger posed by enemy archers, the cavalrymen also fought on foot. The battle was often decided by the morale of the combatants. Generally speaking, troops led by lords and minor nobles were more skilled and enduring than troops that had been suddenly formed. In this era, commanders were expected to fight in the front line, which put the Lancastrians at a considerable disadvantage: while Henry VI never went into battle, Edward IV was a skilled and practised warrior.

Also read, biographies – Sheridan Le Fanu

The first Regency of York and the first battle

Defeats in France led to the outbreak of the Jack Cade Rebellion in England in 1450. One of the main targets of the enraged nobles and commoners was Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, who commanded the English armies in France. Nevertheless, Somerset”s position remained stable, and he continued to enjoy the confidence of the monarch and to control the government. Richard, Duke of York, who was upset by Somerset”s appointment and performance in France, feared that his rival might have his eye on the throne. York therefore accused Somerset of betraying England and of preventing the necessary reforms from being introduced. Henry VI resisted York and did not remove his confidant, but in 1453 he fell ill and Parliament put York in charge of the country”s affairs. During his first regency, York imprisoned Somerset in the Tower of London, from which he was released only after the monarch”s recovery in 1455. The Duke regained all his offices and the process of ousting Richard and his allied Nevilles from government began. The Yorkists feared that Somerset would retaliate, so they returned to their northern possessions and began to gather their armies. Somerset and his circle summoned the Yorkists to a meeting of the Great Council in Leicester on 21 May 1455, but they decided to defend themselves with arms.

The Royal Court, as soon as it was informed of the York troop movements, set off for Saint Albans, 35 kilometres north of London, planning to await reinforcements there. By 22 May, York”s troops were already very close to the monarch, who refused to engage the smaller army in open country and retreated to Saint Albans. York demanded that the king take Somerset prisoner, but the monarch refused. The battle continued at the street barricades until Sir Robert Ogle, with six hundred men, broke into the market square from the back gardens. The Lancastrian soldiers were caught completely unawares, many of them not even wearing helmets. The Yorkists stormed the royal retinue crowded into the town square and slaughtered the nobles. Somerset, Clifford and Northumberland died. After the battle, York apologised to the king for the attack, which the monarch accepted. The next day, 23 May, they set off together for London, but Henry VI was only apparently free.

Also read, biographies – Georges Braque

The Second Regency of York

York”s second regency officially began in November 1455, when he was given the task by Parliament, but in reality it had been going on since the victory at Saint Albans in May. Unlike in 1454, when Parliament had asked York to take over from the mentally ill king, the legislature now merely sanctioned Richard”s brute-force intentions. Henry VI was retained on the throne, but power was exercised by York and his chief supporters, the two Richard Nevilles.

York and his circle, having got rid of their main opponents at Saint Albans, passed a resolution proving the royal patriotism of the Yorkists and the crimes of the now dead Somerset, and cut the court”s budget to win taxpayers” support and limit the king”s circle”s financial resources. He appointed Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, commander of Calais and paid the garrison”s arrears. This put the Yorkists in control of the largest permanent English armed force.

Margaret of Anjou did not take this well and left London with the young heir to the throne. She visited the Lancaster estates and began to build an alliance against York. In the autumn the King joined him. In December, York ended the Courtenay-Bonville feud by imprisoning Thomas Courtenay in the Tower. In doing so, he established peace in the west of the country, but committed the Courtenays to the Lancasters. On 25 February 1456, when the King, who appeared in Parliament in good health, formally ended York”s second regency. To show unity, the king appointed York as his chief minister, and for the time being retained the post of Neville in the council. Margaret of Anjou then worked to undermine York”s power, and gradually took control of the government through various appointments. On the surface, everyone seemed intent on ending the hostilities: on 24 March 1458, the so-called Love Day, members of the various parties went to St Paul”s Cathedral with arms folded.

Calais, thorn under the nail

Since regaining power, the queen has sent Warwick less and less money to Calais, forcing the earl to supplement his income from piracy. In October 1458, he was ordered home for plundering the ships of the Hanseatic League. After arriving in London, he was attacked by the royal guard and forced to flee back to Calais. In the first half of 1459 the court began to prepare for a showdown with the House of York. In June, the royalist lords met in Coventry and brought charges against their rivals. York and the two Richard Nevielles, Salisbury and Warwick, were accused of treason and expelled from the council. The Yorkists gathered at Warwick”s Ludlow Castle and began arming their men to strike again at their enemies. Warwick also arrived with a detachment from the garrison at Calais.

On 23 September 1459, near Mucklestone in northwest Staffordshire, Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, on his way to the assembly point, ran into a Lancastrian regiment led by Lord Audley. The clash between the two armies is recorded in the history books as the Battle of Blore Heath. Audley led two unsuccessful cavalry charges against the Yorkists, in the second of which he was killed. The Lord of Dudley then took command of the Lancastrian army. After three or four hours of skirmishing, the royalist troops finally gave up the fight. The king”s main force reached Eccleshall, only ten miles from the battlefield, that evening, but the Yorkists retreated towards Worcester during the night and built up their defensive positions at Ludford Bridge.

From Ludford, the rebels sent a letter to the king, listing the reasons why they had taken up arms. Henry VI promised them a pardon if they surrendered, except for those responsible for Lord Audley”s death. This stipulation applied to the Earl of Salisbury, so they could not accept the monarch”s terms. On 12 October the king”s army reached Ludford. When it became clear that Andrew Trollope, the commander of the Calas contingent, refused to fight the monarch and defected to the already outnumbered Lancastrians, York fled to Ireland and Warwick to Calais.

In November, Parliament met in Coventry and convicted 27 Yorkist nobles of treason and confiscated their estates. Meanwhile, Richard had become lord of Ireland, where he claimed to be the king”s viceroy. On 4 December, the Earl of Wiltshire was appointed to the position in London, but there is no evidence that he actually attempted to take office. The court then tried first to drive the rebels out of Calais, but failed, as Warwick twice struck Sandwich, where the ships of the Lancaster fleet were being built, and destroyed the sailing vessels. In March, he sailed for Ireland to negotiate with Richard. Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, hunted him down in the Channel with his ships, but he did not dare to undertake a naval battle, and Warwick successfully returned to Calais in May. In the same month, he broke out of his stronghold in France and captured the town of Sandwich, thus gaining the English beachhead needed for the landing. Thanks to the propaganda of the Yorkists, many people were looking forward to Prince Richard”s return from Ireland, for the proclamations spread that his only desire was to remedy the country”s problems. With their popularity steadily growing, Warwick launched a massive army against London on 26 June 1460, which surrendered without resistance. Warwick then headed for central England, where Henry VI was staying.

Also read, biographies – Ginger Rogers

York”s claim to the throne and his death

Before the Battle of Northampton on 10 July 1460, Warwick repeatedly asked to meet the king, but Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, refused on behalf of the monarch. Outnumbered by about a third of the Yorkists, the King”s troops took up a defensive position outside the ramparts of Northampton, with their backs to the River Nene. In front of their lines was a moat, reinforced with pointed stakes. In the afternoon, Warwick gave the order to charge. In the pouring rain, the Lancastrian troops were unable to use their guns. Warwick and the Earl of March concentrated their attack on the right flank, commanded by Edmund Grey, Earl of Kent. Grey was a traitor, and at his orders his men laid down their arms, and the Yorkists rushed unopposed into the royal lines.

The defeat at Northampton had disastrous consequences for the Lancastrians: the deaths of Buckingham, Shrewsbury and Thomas Percy, Baron of Egremont, and the reigning monarch was again taken prisoner. The transfer of the king and government to Warwick completely changed York”s policy. Richard decided to take the crown for himself, and made his supporters aware of this in the first week of September. He returned to England from Ireland and set off for London in the comfort of royal guise. On his way he was accompanied by trumpeters and trombonists, and his sword was carried before him. He arrived in the capital on 10 October 1460. He visited Westminster, where Parliament was sitting, and made it clear that he wanted the throne. But the lords did not support him. As York insisted on his intention, the matter was taken to the Supreme Court of Parliament, which, after much reluctance, pronounced it in the Act of Reconciliation: Henry VI could keep the throne, but if he died, York and his heirs would succeed him.

This decree gave Margaret of Anjou the basis to restart the civil war for her son. During the autumn, more and more people joined the Lancastrians. They ignored the decrees of the York government and even ransacked the York and Neville estates in the north. Against the assembled Lancastrians, the Yorkists marched from London on 9 December: Edward of Plantagenet, Earl of March, later Edward IV, was sent to Wales, Warwick remained in London to guard Henry VI, and York marched with Salisbury, son of Edmund, and Thomas Neville towards Wakefield with about six thousand troops. They hoped to be joined by John Neville, Baron of Neville, and to bring the king”s army into battle. But the Baron switched to the enemy”s side.

On 30 December 1460, the opposing sides clashed at Wakefield. The reasons why York left the safety of the castle where he was staying are not known today. In the open field, the royalists surrounded and defeated the rebels, and in the battle, Richard, Duke of York, and his son Edmund were killed. The next day, Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, was executed and the heads of the dead lords were put on public display.

After the Battle of Wakefield, the way was clear for Queen Margaret of England and the army of the House of Lancaster to make their way to London. The Yorkists were left with two major forces: one led by Warwick, the other by Edward Plantagenet, 18, Earl of March, stationed near the Welsh border. He decided to join Warwick, but when he learned that the Earl of Wiltshire”s troops of French, Bretons and Irish had landed in south-west Wales and had joined Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke”s army there, he moved towards them to prevent them from joining the main force at Lancaster. The two armies met at Mortimer′s Cross.

On 2 February, after a few hours of manoeuvring, the two armies clashed. Wiltshire, with his hard-fought mercenaries, overran the right flank of the Yorkist army and drove it from the battlefield. Owen Tudor attempted to outflank the left flank, led by William Herbert, but failed and found himself in a tight position. The York centre was controlled by the young Edward, and he defeated Pembroke”s troops lined up opposite him. It is thought that Wiltshire”s mercenaries did not fight on after Pembroke”s lines were broken up. Pembroke and Wilthsire fled, and Owen Tudor, later head of the Tudor dynasty, was executed at Hereford Fairground. After the battle, Edward said that he had seen three sunrises on 2 February, which he interpreted as a favourable omen for the coming battle. Later, the sun”s rays also appeared in his coat of arms.

After the victory, Edward stayed in the west of the country, leaving the Earl of Warwick without him in the south-east to face Margaret of Anjou”s troops from the north to the south. The earl left the capital on 12 February 1461, but only made it as far as the town of Saint Albans, where the War of the Roses had broken out six years earlier. Warwick decided to wait for the royalist army there. There are no precise figures on the number of participants, but it seems likely that at least 20,000 soldiers in all were in the line of battle. Warwick was primarily on the defensive, and his troops were deployed in a wide front line of about six kilometres. The earl divided his army into three major sections. They mounted several attacks, but because of poor communications between the corps, they were unable to get reinforcements to the pinched positions in time to launch a counterattack. After the royalists had embraced the Yorkists, many of them joined them.

In the dark of night, Warwick”s army was dispersed and the Earl was forced to flee. The king escaped and joined his wife. After the battle Lord Bonville and Sir Thomas Cyril were beheaded. Warwick”s brother John Neville, Marquis of Montagu, was taken prisoner. The Lancastrian forces led by Margaret of Anjou were unable to capitalise on their victory, for the two Yorkist armies did unite on 22 February and marched on London. The son of Richard, Duke of York of Plantagenet, was crowned Edward IV and established a firm foothold in the capital.

While the Yorkists settled in London, the Lancastrians retreated north. On 6 March 1461, Edward IV issued a proclamation promising clemency to the lower-income Lancastrian supporters, to drive a wedge between the lords and their helpers, and set off after Margaret of Anjou”s army. The opposing forces met at Ferrybridge, an important river crossing.

The Battle of Ferrybridge began on 27 March, when the Yorkists crossed the Castleford ford and captured the key bridge, but were ambushed by Lancaster troops at dawn the next day and retook the crossing. Edward and Warwick attacked the bridge with the main force from York. In the bloody fight, many drowned in the icy river, many were hit by arrows, including Warwick, who was wounded in the leg. Meanwhile, Lord Fauconberg crossed the Castleford ford with a thousand horsemen, and the royalists were forced to abandon the bridge. John Clifford, Baron Clifford, who had killed Edmund, York”s 17-year-old son, at Wakefield, was killed in retreat.

Also read, important-events – Cold War

The Toronto Slaughterhouse

Two days later, on 29 March, the bloodiest battle ever fought took place on English soil at Towton. The advantage was on the Lancastrians” side: they had chosen the battlefield in their own territory, they had a qualitative superiority in numbers and troops, they had more lords joining them than Edward, and they had easier access to food and forage than their opponents. It is thought that about 80,000 – 42,000 Lancastrians and 36,000 Yorkists – took part in the battle, including 28 nobles, most of them on Henry VI”s side. If this is true, ten per cent of England”s population of fighting age were on the battlefield. Henry VI”s army was led by the Duke of Somerset, while Edward IV led the Yorkists.

The wind helped the Yorks, forcing the Lancaster teams to storm their opponents in a steady stream of arrows. The frontal assault lasted for hours. The Yorks were constantly retreating from the outnumbered enemy. Contemporary chronicles point out that Edward IV fought in the front lines, always appearing where the defences faltered, while his opponent Henry VI was now nowhere to be seen on the battlefield. Warwick, who had been wounded in the open earlier, fought at the head of his men. When a hitherto hidden Lancastrian force joined the battle, the Yorkists almost collapsed, but the young king”s presence gave his men strength. In the afternoon, Norfolk arrived and attacked Henry”s left flank, which suddenly collapsed and thousands of soldiers fled. This decided the battle for the Yorkists. It is estimated that 28,000 men died on the battlefield.

Scottish invasion and two battles

For about three years after the Battle of Towton, there was relative calm in England. In 1462 Edward IV captured important fortifications in the north, in the Lancastrian hinterland. His chief commander, the Earl of Warwick, remained on the frontier for a time, but after he retreated south in early 1463, the Lancastrians were again reinforced. In March, the Scots and the French sent to their aid retook Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh. Edward IV, as a result of these events, appointed John Neville, Marquis of Montagu, governor of the eastern frontier on 26 May.

On 3 June, Warwick set off north. When he arrived, he learned that Margaret of Anjou, wife of Edward VI, had persuaded the Scottish Regency to invade England again. Warwick asked the king to raise an army and march north. In early July, the Scots attacked Norham Castle, but Warwick drove them back. The Lancastrians” position was made considerably more difficult by the fact that their main supporter, King Louis XI of France, had begun negotiations with Burgundy, an ally of the Yorkists. A desperate Margaret of Anjou tried to reconcile with her old adversary, Prince Charles of Burgundy, but failed, and on 8 October 1463 the parties signed a tripartite – Anglo-French-Burgundian – agreement. The Scots, left to their own devices, began negotiations with Edward IV and agreed a truce on 9 December.

Diplomatic successes were not reassuring, because the government was unpopular with the taxpayers and the Lancastrians managed to foment rebellions. Edward IV, in an attempt to end the warfare, announced on 27 March 1464 that he would lead a campaign against the supporters of Henry VI. In mid-April, Montagu gathered troops at Newcastle and pushed north. On 25 April 1464 he clashed with the Lancastrian army at Hedgeley Moor. After the usual barrage of arrows, Montagu managed to break through the slack, and his attack caused the Lancastrian left flank to suddenly collapse and run, probably due to low morale. Montagu then turned on the remaining Lancastrians and used his superior strength to defeat them. Somerset, who led Margaret of Anjou”s troops, and other nobles fled during the battle, leaving Ralph Percy and his soldiers on the battlefield, who eventually fell in the unequal struggle.

The victory at Hedgeley Moor allowed Scottish envoys to arrive in York and begin peace negotiations with King Edward IV of England. This created a desperate situation for Henry VI”s supporters, which could only be changed by a quick victory, and they headed south to engage Montagu”s smaller force. The Lancastrian army camped at Hexham was unexpectedly attacked by Montagu on 15 December. There was no room for manoeuvre, so Somerset deployed his troops with their backs to the swirling river, the Devil”s Water. Montagu”s troops attacked from high ground and broke into the Lancaster lines. The Yorkists pushed Somerset”s centre towards the river and many drowned. Henry VI”s troops saw this and fled, just as they had done at Hedgeley Moor. After the Battle of Hexham, Montagu brutally slaughtered the Lancastrian leaders. In England, there followed roughly three years of calm.

In 1467, eight years after the great victory at Toronto, Edward IV of York was on the throne, while his rival Henry VI of Lancaster was imprisoned in the Tower. Edward IV was helped to consolidate his power by one of his staunchest supporters, the Earl of Warwick. In return, he and his family were given important positions and great earldoms. Their peaceful coexistence ended with the King”s secret marriage. The Count had wanted the Emperor to marry the daughter of a French noblewoman to make France an ally, but Edward IV chose the commoner Elizabeth Woodville and opted for the Burgundian alliance. In addition, the King had damaged Warwick”s self-esteem in a number of other ways, most notably by not consenting to the marriage of his brother, Prince George of Clarence, and the Earl”s eldest daughter Isabel, on which Warwick”s family inheritance depended.

Their relationship was made worse by the King”s giving his wife”s relatives high positions, vast estates and marrying them into various wealthy families, including Warwick. The earl felt that he had been pushed out of the king”s inner circle and had lost his power over the running of the country”s affairs. Eventually, despite his previous services, the monarch revoked Warwick”s appointment as chancellor. In 1467, the aggrieved earl enlisted George”s support for what was effectively a coup d”état.

Warwick”s victory at Edgecote Moor

In the autumn of 1468 and spring of 1469, rebellions broke out in the north. The rebellion erupted in Yorkshire and was allegedly led by Robin of Redesdale, but the name was probably that of Sir John Conyers of the Nevilles. The king set out with a not very strong force to crush the rebel forces. On 11 July 1469, the king”s brother married Isabel Neville, daughter of Warwick. The next day, a proclamation was issued attacking the King”s corrupt government and declaring the rebellion of Robin of Redesdale to be justified and supported. Warwick sailed from Calais to England and marched into London, which opened its doors to him without opposition. The earl then marched to Northampton to attack the royalists in the rear.

The King, on his way north, had no idea that Warwick and his own brother were behind the rebellion. In mid-July he stopped at Nottingham to await reinforcements from Wales. William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, who was in command of Edward IV”s troops, and Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Devon, had a falling out on the evening of 25 July. Devon retreated with the archers towards Banbury, leaving only the Welsh infantry in Pembroke”s unit. The rebels attacked the royalist positions the next morning. Pembroke”s soldiers fought hard, but were forced to retreat with heavy casualties for lack of archers. When the vanguard of Warwick”s army appeared on the battlefield, another rebel attack broke through Pembroke”s lines before Devon arrived on the scene.

Conyers fell, Pembroke and his brother were captured and executed in the presence of Warwick at Northampton the next day. Devon was killed a few weeks later at Somerset. Richard Woodville, Earl of Rivers, and his son, whom Edward IV had kept away from the battle for their own safety, were executed at Coventry on Warwick”s orders. The king was captured by Warwick”s brother, Archbishop George Neville, and the power of government passed to Warwick and Clarence.

Also read, biographies – Nikos Kazantzakis

The King”s brief captivity and return

After the Battle of Edgecote Moor, Edward IV was treated with the deference ostensibly due to a king, but was kept under close surveillance in Middleham Castle. After a few weeks, Warwick found himself in an awkward position: with the lawlessness of many places in the country, riots broke out and some lords took the opportunity to settle old disputes with their opponents. In the north, a Lancastrian nobleman, Sir Humphrey Neville, had started an uprising. Warwick decided to personally put down the rebels, but it turned out that very few people would go along with him. He was forced to release Edward IV, who quickly consolidated his power with the help of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later monarch. Surprisingly, the monarch chose not to take revenge on Warwick and his brother George, but to seek reconciliation.

Warwick was dissatisfied, however, as he was in the same position as a year earlier. He was also aware that the king, despite his friendly attitude, would not forget his rebellion and cruelty. His plan was clear: to overthrow Edward IV and put George, her eldest daughter”s husband, on the throne. So he turned to the House of Lancaster, hostile to the Yorkists, for help. In the autumn of 1469 and winter of 1470, Robert Welles, the son of Richard Welles, Baron of Welles, a former Lancastrian supporter, fell out with his neighbour, Sir Thomas Burgh of Gainsborough, the King”s Master of the Horse, and ravaged his estate with his men. Edward IV gathered troops to put down the rebellion. In the spring, with the help of Warwick and Clarence, Robert Welles appointed himself captain of the commoners of Lincolnshire. On 8 March, Edward IV, who was on the march against the rebels, received a letter from his brother and Warwick promising to join him with an army. The King, aware of this, gave Warwick permission to conscript soldiers.

The enemy forces fought the Battle of Losecote Field on 12 March 1470. Before the battle, the King executed the rebel Robert Welles” father in the empty field between the two armies. The rebels” cry – “Warwick, Clarance” – finally convinced him of treason. After a barrage of artillery fire, the well-trained royal army overwhelmed its opponent. The fugitives threw off their jackets emblazoned with the badges of Warwick and Clarance, hence the battlefield”s name: the Field of the Lost Sleeves. Sir Robert Welles was taken prisoner and found to have Warwick and Clarance”s letters. Edward ordered them to disarm their troops and appear before him, but they sailed for France.

Henry VI on the throne

On July 22, 1470, Warwick was received in Angers by Queen Margaret of England and forgiven for all he had done to his family. It was agreed that Warwick would take part in the invasion of England and that Henry VI”s son Edward of Lancaster, Prince of Wales, would marry Warwick”s daughter Anne Neville. The ancient rivals were brought together by King Louis XI of France to reclaim the throne from Henry VI and to form a Franco-English alliance against Burgundy. The plan was that the invasion would be preceded by rebellions in the north to lure the king away from London. Edward IV, meanwhile, sent his naval fleet, augmented by the Burgundian fleet, to the Channel to attack the invasion force by water.

In late July, uprisings began in the north of England. Both uprisings involved local gentry with close links to the Nevilles. As expected, Edward IV took up arms and set out to put down the rebellion in person. At news of his approach, the rebels dispersed. The king, instead of returning to London, stayed in Yorkshire. On 9 September, taking advantage of a storm that had broken up the Anglo-Burgundian blockade, Warwick sailed out and landed near Exeter. Thanks to successful agitation, he soon amassed an army of 30,000. The king was nevertheless calm and waited at Doncaster for John Neville, Marquis of Montagu, and his troops. Montagu, however, had switched to his brother Warwick”s side, leaving the monarch with no choice but to retreat and flee to the Low Countries. On 6 October 1470, Warwick and his retinue arrived in London. They went to the King in the Tower, freed him, swore allegiance to him, and Henry VI was able to take his throne again.

On 2 March 1471, Edward IV sailed from Vlissingen in the German Alps with 36 sailing ships and 1200 soldiers on board to reclaim his crown. Twelve days later he landed at Ravenspur. As the locals were hostile to the Yorkists, he was able to recruit very few soldiers. Edward IV lied that he did not want the crown back, only the title of duke, which was his father”s right. He marched to central England, where he had his strongest supporters. The Nevilles did not bother him, and the Earl of Northumberland, a Lancastrian lord of the area, remained neutral. On 25 March the king crossed the Trent, and Lord Hastings arrived with three thousand of his troops.

Warwick set up his headquarters in Coventry and gathered troops. On 29 March Edward IV called for battle, but did not respond as he was waiting for troops from Montagu, Clarance and Henry Vernon. The Duke of Somerset and other Lancastrian lords were assembling on the south coast, awaiting the arrival of Margaret of Anjou and her son, the Prince of Wales. On 3 April, George unexpectedly defected to his brother, taking with him four thousand soldiers. Two days later, Edward IV”s army set off for London. Warwick called on the city to obey, but London”s magistrates decided to surrender to Edward IV, who marched into the city on 11 April. Henry VI was again taken to the Tower. Edward IV met his wife at Westminster Abbey and saw his son, the future King Edward V of England, for the first time in absentia. The next day, as the Yorkists swarmed into the city, Edward learned that Warwick and Montagu had joined forces and were marching on London. On 13 April his army, about ten thousand men and over thirty nobles, left the city and marched towards St Albans.

Under cover of night, Edward approached Warwick”s army, which was camped near Barnet. The Lancastrian commander had ordered his artillery to harass the Yorkists all night, even though he did not know exactly where they were. Edward did not reply, so as not to reveal his positions. The battle began at four o”clock on Easter Sunday morning, in a huge fog. As the lines shifted, both right wings embraced the opposing units. John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, quickly routed the Yorkist left wing, but his men began to pillage and scatter. On the other side, the Duke of Gloucester”s troops rushed through Warwick”s men. The position of the front line changed as a result, which the Oxford troops returning in the mist could not do, so when they returned to the battlefield they found themselves behind the forces of Montagu, also a Lancastrian. They mistook Oxford”s badge, the ray star, for the King”s sunburst badge, and were greeted by a volley of arrows from the archers. Word of the supposed treachery spread like lightning and the Lancastrian lines collapsed. The Neville brothers, Warwick and Montagu, were also killed in the battle.

Final blow to Lancasters

On 14 April 1471, the day of the Battle of Barnet, Queen Margaret of England and her son Edward, Prince of Wales of Lancaster, and their Lancastrian supporters returned to England from exile in France. Landing at Weymouth, the queen joined the troops led by the Duke of Somerset and set off for Wales, where they could count on the help of Jasper Tudor. Edward IV followed them down the Thames Valley. After a long pursuit, he caught up with the Queen”s army at Tewkesbury.

The Lancaster army was larger than the York army, numbering about five or six thousand, while their opponents were estimated to number about four or five thousand. Somerset attacked Edward IV”s centre, which had broken away from the rest of his army, but received no support and was forced to retreat. The collapse of the western flank gave the Duke of Gloucester and the King the opportunity to advance. The demoralised Lancastrian troops were pushed back towards the city and the river, many drowning as they fled.

Henry VI”s son, the heir to the throne, was either killed in the battle or assassinated immediately afterwards. Many of the Lancastrian leaders sought refuge in the nearby abbey, but on 6 May 1471 they were dragged out by soldiers and sentenced to death by their opponents in a swift trial. Among those beheaded in Tewkesbury Market Place was the Duke of Somerset. Margaret of Anjou was captured and imprisoned first in Wallingford Castle and then in the Tower of London.

Henry VI died in the Tower on the night of 21 May 1471. According to the Yorkist authors, he died of grief at the death of his son at Tewkesbury. The Chronicle of Warkworth wrote that the Duke of Gloucester was in the Tower at the time in question and that he was responsible for the monarch”s death. It is almost certain that the king was murdered by Edward IV, for with Henry”s death the Lancastrian branch died out, leaving him to rule undisturbed, and apart from the unsuccessful attempt of John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, in 1473, there was no war in England for twelve years. In August 1473 the king”s second son, Richard, was born. Henry Tudor, the Lancastrian candidate for the throne, was a prisoner of the Duke of Brittany.

In 1483, Edward IV died unexpectedly, and as the heir to the throne was still a child, a power struggle for the crown began immediately. The first step was to ”acquire” the new monarch himself, the 12-year-old Edward. Edward IV appointed his brother Richard as regent, whose main aim was to wrest his nephew from the influence of his mother and her family, the powerful Woodvilles in London, and prevent him from being crowned. At the time of his father”s death, the heir to the throne was in Ludlow, and Richard was determined not to allow the Prince of Wales to reach the capital. On 29 April he captured him, and Edward IV”s widow fled, taking her youngest son with her. The pro-Richards who marched into London claimed that Edward had not been taken prisoner, but on the contrary had been freed from the hands of his evil advisers. Richard then took violent steps to consolidate his power: he executed several members of the royal council and used armed force to obtain Edward”s younger brother, Prince Richard of York.

Also read, biographies – Virginia Woolf

The reign of Richard III and the return of Henry

On 22 June 1483, at a mass in St Paul”s Cathedral, Ralph Shaw, preaching the sermon, called on Richard to take the throne because the marriage between Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville was invalid, and their heirs could not rule England. Richard accepted on 26 June and was crowned on 6 July at Westminster Abbey. Two of Edward IV”s sons died in the Tower, possibly murdered by Richard III, but there is no evidence of this. In September 1483, his former ally Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, rebelled against him along with other nobles. Their intention was to put Henry VI”s nephew, Henry Tudor, in exile in Brittany, on the throne. The revolt failed, most of their leaders fled, but their property was confiscated. The only session of parliament convened by Richard III passed a hundred disenfranchisement decrees. The confidants of the king received the confiscated property, and more and more nobles, impoverished and worried about their estates, became Richard III”s opponents.

In the spring and summer of 1485, the French government decided to financially support Henry Tudor”s claim to the English throne, preventing Richard III from sending troops against Brittany. Henry raised a fleet, to which Richard III responded by sending his ships to guard the Channel. The king issued a proclamation denouncing Henry”s illegitimate origins and began to equip a larger army. On 1 August, Henry Tudor, accompanied by 600 English and 2,000 French and Scottish mercenaries, sailed and landed at Milford Haven in Wales on 7 August. Henry chose Wales for his campaign because he trusted the influence of his uncle, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke. As he advanced, more and more men joined his army. However, he waited in vain for Lord Stanley to join him, but he only encouraged him and sent no troops, as his son Lord Strange was a hostage of the monarch.

Also read, biographies – Joseph Cornell

Meeting at Bosworth

It was obvious to Richard III that Henry Tudor was planning to land, but he didn”t know where, so he temporarily moved his headquarters to Nottingham, from where he could quickly set off in any direction. The king set out to meet Henry around 20 August.

The troops of Richard III and Henry Tudor clashed on 22 August. Richard had a large vanguard of horsemen and footmen, with the archers in front. Henry chose a similar formation, but his vanguard, led by Oxford, was much smaller than his opposite number. Stanley”s troops were stationed at equal distances from the two armies, for the lord waited until the last moment to intervene on the side of the victor. Henry had about five thousand troops, Gilbert Talbot on the right and John Savage on the left, with the pretender behind. Between the two armies was a swamp, which Henry crossed, and so began the last great battle of the War of the Roses, the Battle of Bosworth. Richard showered them with arrows and then came the hand-to-hand combat.

The king wanted to decide the battle with a single decisive attack, so when he saw Henry”s smaller force, he led his own troops against him, bypassing the fighting lines. Richard III then became isolated from his own army, and Sir William Stanley, who had been in a holding position, decided to intervene on Henry”s behalf. The charge swept away the king”s soldiers and Richard III fell. After his death, his men threw down their weapons, for they had nothing left to fight for. Richard”s corpse was disinterred and carried on horseback around Leicester.

Henry Tudor, Henry VII, was crowned king on the battlefield. His first act was to arrest Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of the late George, Duke of Clarence and Isabella Neville, who was a potential rival for the throne. Once the heir to the House of York was in his hands, along with the family estates, his position was consolidated. Henry VII was dynastically Lancaster, but politically York. So he had no real rivals among the great lords, only the opposition of Richard III”s northern followers. The rebellion that broke out was led by Lord Lovell and Humphrey Stafford, two disenfranchised nobles. The king marched against them at a leisurely pace, and they fled at the news of the rebels” approach.

On 18 January 1486, Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, thus figuratively combining the red rose of the House of Lancaster and the white rose of the Yorkists in the Tudor rose, which encompassed both colours. Henry and Elizabeth were third cousins, both descendants of Prince John of Ghent of Lancaster. Their bloodline united the warring families and gave strong legitimacy to their descendants” claim to the throne.

Also read, biographies – Félix González-Torres

The last battle

On 4 June 1487, John de la Pole, the Earl of Lincoln”s army of mercenaries, mainly German, Swiss and Irish, landed in England. Lincoln was accompanied by Lambert Simnel, who was said to be the nephew of Edward IV, and therefore the true heir to the throne. Simnel was crowned King in Dublin on 24 May 1487 as Edward VI. The rebel troops increased in numbers to about nine thousand as they marched through Yorkshire, despite the City of York”s refusal to admit and support them.

On 16 June 1487, the rebel army clashed with the King”s troops at Stoke Field. The rebels positioned their soldiers on a hill. The king and his lords, unaware of the enemy”s proximity, arrived unprepared and marched in column to the battlefield. The first to meet the Yorkist army was John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the leader of the vanguard, who, in order to wait for the king”s main force, first halted his men and then decided to attack the larger army. His archers rained down a barrage of arrows on the Yorkists, which decimated mainly the lightly equipped Irish, who rushed down the slope, taking the rest of the army with them. The Oxfords were hard pressed, and only the timely arrival of reinforcements saved them. Fresh troops broke the York front and killed many rebels. Lincoln himself was killed, and so the War of the Roses ended.

The War of the Roses is the modern-day term for a series of clashes with multi-year breaks. Walter Scott is generally credited with coining the word, which appeared in his 1829 novel Anne of Geierstein. However, the term had already appeared in Sir John Oglander”s 1646 pamphlet The Quarrel of the Warring Roses, and the philosopher David Hume used the phrase “the war of the two roses” in his 1762 book on the history of England. Although the phrase was not used in the 15th century, the very idea of civil war being symbolised by the rivalry of the roses was an invention of the time.

During the Civil War, the white rose was one of the main emblems of King Edward IV of England and the House of York, but there is no record of the use of the red rose in Lancaster or of a rivalry between the two roses before 1485. Afterwards, however, the extension of the red rose of the House of Tudor to representatives of the House of Lancaster became widespread, and the symbol appeared in literature, fine art and architecture. It was then that the symbol combining the two roses, expressing the union of the House of York and the House of Lancaster through the House of Tudor, became widespread.

The union of the roses became so commonplace in Tudor propaganda that at the coronation of Henry VIII in 1509, the poet John Skelton wrote in his poem A Laud and Praise Made for Our Sovereign Lord the King, flattering that the two roses, becoming one, would “both White and Red”.

General knowledge about the War of the Roses has been provided by the plays of William Shakespeare for centuries. The poet dedicated four plays to the period, three parts of Henry VI and Richard III. The action takes place between the funeral of Henry V in 1422 and the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. The genesis of the works was strongly influenced by the spirit of the times, with Elizabeth I, the granddaughter of Henry VII, King of Tudor, who had ended the War of the Roses, on the throne. This is one reason why Shakespeare portrays the founder of the dynasty as having brought an end to a long, dark age of political chaos and social disintegration.

During Shakespeare”s time, several popular books dealt with the age, including Raphael Holinshed”s The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587) and Robert Fabyan”s The union of the two noble and illustrios families of Lancaster and York (1587). These works were accurate chronologically, but favoured the ruling family, and thus the House of Lancaster. However, Shakespeare was far from insisting on an accurate retelling of events, and he painted the thirty years of the War of the Roses as an era of bloody battles, in contrast to the reality of relative stability and peace in much of the country except during the years of the campaigns, and he painted Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York and King Richard III of England in particularly dark colours.

Sources