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The 'Battle of Towton' in the Wars of the Roses was the largest and bloodiest ever fought on British soil, with casualties believed to have been in excess of 20,000 (perhaps as many as 30,000) men. Roughly one in every hundred Englishmen of that time died at Towton. The battle took place on a snowy 29 March 1461 (Palm Sunday) on a plateau between the villages of Towton and Saxton in Yorkshire (about 12 miles southwest of York and about 2 miles south of Tadcaster).
It is thought that 50,000, or perhaps even 100,000 men fought, including 28 Lords (almost half the peerage), mainly on the Lancastrian side. The numbers often given are 42,000 for the Lancastrians and 36,000 for the Yorkists.
Part of the reason that so many died is because, in the parley before the battle, both sides agreed that no quarter would be given nor asked.

Contents

Background

The prelude to the battle

The Battle

The Rout

References

External links

Background

The Wars of the Roses first broke out in 1455, between the supporters of King Henry VI (the Lancastrians), and those of the rival claimant for the throne, Richard, Duke of York (the Yorkists). Henry was a pious and peace-loving man, and unable to control his feuding nobles. He was also afflicted by bouts of insanity and his Queen, Margaret of Anjou became the most determined opponent of York and anyone else who threatened the birthright of her son, the infant Edward of Westminster.
In the year 1460, the war intensified, and there were several rapid reversals of fortune. At the Battle of Northampton, Henry had been captured. In the aftermath, Richard had attempted to seize the throne, but his supporters were not prepared to take this step, and instead they enforced the Act of Accord, by which Henry's son was disinherited, and Richard would become King on Henry's death. In response, Margaret began gathering an army of York's opponents in the north of England. York took an army to the north to deal with this threat, but fatally misjudged the strength of his enemies. At the Battle of Wakefield he was killed and his army was destroyed.
Margaret's large army began marching south, looting as it went. At the Second Battle of St Albans, they defeated the Yorkist army of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, "the Kingmaker". Warwick had brought the captive King Henry to the battlefield, and in the aftermath of the battle, Henry was recaptured by the Lancastrian army.
Margaret now had a chance of entering London, the capital, but the mayor and citizens feared being plundered by her undisciplined army, and refused her entry. While negotiations continued, Margaret learned that York's eldest son Edward, Earl of March, had destroyed another Lancastrian army at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross on the borders of Wales, and had linked up with Warwick's surviving forces. With this threat to the rear of her army, Margaret began to retreat northwards.
Warwick now proclaimed Edward as King Edward IV. On March 4, Edward was crowned in a hasty ceremony in London. The next day, Edward himself decided to take the military initiative and march north in the hope of inflicting a final defeat on Henry's supporters.

The prelude to the battle

In late March, Edward's vanguard under Warwick occupied Ferrybridge, where a bridge spanned the River Aire. On March 28, a Lancastrian force under John Neville and Lord Clifford attacked and defeated the outpost. When Edward arrived with the main body of the army, they were unable to recapture the crossing, but a detachment under Warwick's uncle Lord Fauconberg went upstream and crossed the Aire by a ford at Castleford. Learning that his rear was threatened, Clifford retreated, but was ambushed by Fauconberg's force in a stream valley named Dintingdale. Clifford himself was killed by an arrow (although his body was never identified, being hacked to pieces by vengeful Yorkists).
The defeat at Ferrybridge had temporarily unnerved the Yorkist army. To restore morale, Warwick ostentatiously killed his own horse, signifying that he did not intend to seek safety if the battle went against York. Edward also announced that anyone who wished to leave the army could do so immediately, but anyone who subsequently deserted would be declared a traitor.

The Battle

With its morale restored, on March 29, the Yorkist army began pressing forward from Dintingdale and across the repaired bridge at Ferrybridge. The weather was very bad, with cold winds and snow showers.
Edward led the Yorkist centre, Warwick the right and Fauconberg the left. A further Yorkist contingent from the Eastern counties under the Duke of Norfolk had been delayed and was still approaching the battlefield.
The Lancastrian army occupied a plateau of high ground, with its right flank covered by a stream, the Cock Beck. The army was led by the Duke of Somerset, who commanded the centre himself, with the Earl of Northumberland commanding the right and the Duke of Exeter the left.
Although the Lancastrians occupied a strong position, with good fields of fire for their archers and with the Yorkists forced to advance uphill to attack them, they had not bargained for the foul weather. The Yorkist archers had the wind behind them, and therefore outranged their Lancastrian opposite numbers, who were also blinded by the snow. Several companies of archers loosed volleys into the Lancastrian ranks, and then fell back out of range when the Lancastrian archers tried to reply. They then advanced again and gathered up the enemy arrows which had fallen short before repeating the manoevre. In several places the Lancastrian men-at-arms advanced to seek hand-to-hand combat rather than endure the showers of arrows, losing the advantage of the high ground.
Once close-quarters fighting began, it was intense. Several times, the combatants had to pause and pull the dead bodies out of the way before they could get at their opponents. Fighting swayed back and forth for several hours, with neither side gaining any decisive advantage, until the early afternoon, when Norfolk's contingent arrived, and extended the Yorkist right flank. The Lancastrian left was outnumbered and outflanked, and the rout began in this section of the battlefield. Some Lancastrians tried to flee north to Tadcaster, but most of the Lancastrians were now pushed to their right into the Cock Beck.

The Rout

It is supposed that far more men died in the rout than in the battle. Several bridges over neighbouring rivers broke under the weight of the armed men, plunging many into the freezing water. Those stranded on the other side either drowned in the crossing or were cornered by their pursuers and killed. Some of the worst slaughter was seen at Bloody Meadow, where it is said men crossed the River Cock over the bodies of the fallen. All the way from Towton to Tadcaster the fields were full of bodies. The fleeing Lancastrians made easy targets for Yorkist horsemen and footsoldiers, who killed many men who had dropped their weapons and thrown off their helmets to breathe more freely as they ran. At Tadcaster some men made an unsuccessful stand and were killed.
The rout lasted all night and into the morning, when remnants of the Lancastrian army stumbled into York in total panic. Margaret, Henry and Somerset fled north to Scotland, while those Lancastrian lords who were not killed or dispossessed were forced to make peace with Edward IV.
The senior Lancastrian commanders escaped the battlefield, although one prominent commander from the borders, Ralph, Lord Dacre, was killed during the battle.

References

★ ''Towton 1461 England's bloodiest battle'' Christopher Gravett

★ ''The Military Campaigns of the Wars of the Roses'' Philip A. Haigh (Chap. 8)

★ ''The Battle of Towton'' Andrew W. Boardman

★ ''British Battlefields - the North'', Philip Warner, Osprey Publishing, 1972, ISBN 0-00-633823-2

External links

★ The Towton Mass Grave Project

★ The Towton Battlefield Archaeological Survey

★ The Battle of Towton and Wars of The Roses

★ Our most brutal battle has been erased from memory Martin Kettle Speculates on the reasons why such a significant battle has been largely forgotton.