(taken from 3 sources, i planned to use this .doc in a scenario, but found myself almost taking tannenburg and changing the names of people and adding snow
)The Battle of Towton:
Date:29 March (Palm Sunday)1461
Victor:York
York Leadership:Edward IV; Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick; Lord Fauconberg
Lancastrian Leadership:Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset
Notable Deaths:Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset; Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland; Sir Andrew Trollope; Lord Dacre; John, 9th Lord Clifford
The Second Battle of St Albans had lost the Yorkists the custody of the king. They could no longer command the obedience of his subjects. When Edward, Earl of March, now calling himself Duke of York, entered London, he was cheered and welcomed by the Londoners as a hero. It now became clear to the Yorksts that they no longer needed Henry under their control, they would crown their own king. On 4 March 1461, in the Great Hall of the Palace of Westminster, Edward was formally proclaimed King of England.
Though he was no king, Edward was by no means in control of the entire country. The pro Lancastrian north posed a threat and the Lancastrian army encamped outside York numbered about 30,000 men, and was growing in strength. Edward also lacked support from a large section of the nobility. The earls of Northumberland, Wiltshire, Devon and Shrewsbury, the dukes of Exeter and Somerset, and Lords Clifford, Roos, Dacre and Scales all sided with Lancaster. Edward needed a significant victory to secure his throne.
The battle of Towton would be this victory, but it was won at a very high price. It was the longest and largest of any battle of the Wars, and carries the grim epithet of being the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil. The field in which the battle was fought would later be known as "Bloody Meadow".
Edward left London on 13 March. The retreating Lancastrian army had wreaked havoc in the countryside heading north and this certainly helped Edward's cause. By the time he caught up to the Lancastrians outside York, he had as many as 25,000 men. To these troops would be added the men recuited by Warwick and the Duke of Norfolk.
On the morning of the battle, Edward marched his forces north to meet the Lancastrians, and at about 11 o'clock his army encamped on the hill south of the village of Saxton, about ten miles south of York. The Lanastrians took up their position half a mile to the north of the Yorkists on higher ground. A fierce snow storm was raging around both armies. Behind the Yorkist army was the road to London and the River Aire. The Yorkists could be defeated by being push backed and trapped by the river. The Lancastrian position appeared superior, but if defeated, their escape routes were limited. On their right was the Cock Beck River, which was flooding due to the snow, on their left was the road to Tadcaster, which was also flooding.
From the first the Lancastrians were at a disadvantage as the wind was blowing the snow in their direction and they were unable to see the enemy or to judge distances. Their arrows continually missed their targets, and were being picked up by the Yorkists and fired back at them. The Lancastrians soon realised what was happening and the order was given to charge into battle across the meadow. For two hours the two armies were engaged in a savage confontation. There were so many bodies on the snow that it became red, and reserve troops constantly replaced those who fell. As the day wore on, the battle showed no signs of abating, it did not become clear who was winning until late in afternoon. The Lancastrians had been pushed back, and at this point the troops sent by Norfolk arrived, and the Lancastrians, realising they had lost, turned and fled. So many men tried to escape across the Cock Beck that the bridge collapsed. With the Yorkists in pursuit the Lancastrians had no choice but the plunge into the icy waters in an attempt to escape. So many men drowned in the water it was said to run red many miles from the battlefield. The battle had lasted about ten hours, but the rout lasted for much longer, many Lancastrians being chased for miles.
Edward estimated that about 20,000 men had died in the battle, contemporary chroniclers put it as high as 28,000. However, this number includes only the dead on the battlefield. Many more were killed during the rout. The Lancastrians lost some of their best battle captains: the earls of Northumberland, Devon and Wiltshire, Sir Richard Percy and Sir Andrew Trollope, Lords Dacre and Welles were among the dead. With their armies anihilated the Lancastrians would be unable to put an effective force in the field for several years. Two huge pits were dug, one at Saxton and another near the Cock Beck, and hundreds of bodies were buried in together.
TOWTON, in the parish of Saxton, wapentake of Barkston-Ash, liberty of Pontefract; (Towton Hall, the seat of the Hon. Martin Bladen Hawke,) 2 miles S. of Tadcaster, 10 from Ferrybridge, 12 from Pontefract. Pop. 94.
This place must ever remain famous in our history for the greatest engagement of nobility and gentry, and the strongest army that was ever seen in England, under daring and furious leaders, and which Camden calls the English Pharsalia. This battle was fought on Palm Sunday, 1461, between the York party and the Lancastrians. The right wing of Edward's army, was commanded by the Earl of Warwick, the left by Lord Fauconberg, the main body by Edward himself; the Lancastrians by the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland and the Lord Clifford, but the latter was shot in the throat before the action commenced, a fate too good for such a monster, who in cold blood, some time before, murdered an innocent child 12 years old, the Earl of Rutland, Edward's youngest brother, whose moving intercession for mercy might have softened the most obdurate heart.
The number of the Yorkists was 40,660 men, the other full 60,000. Before the action commenced, Edward issued a proclamation that no quarter should be given. The conflict lasted ten hours, and victory fluctuated from side to side, till at length it settled in the house of York. The Lancastrians gave way and fled to York, but seeking to gain the bridge at Tadcaster, so many fell into the small river Cock, which runs into the Wharf, as quite filled it up, and the Yorkists went over their backs to pursue their brethren. The number of the slain was estimated at 36,776, among them the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, and a great many others of the nobility; and the wounds they died of being made by battle axes, arrows and swords, caused an immense effusion of blood, which lay caked with the snow, which at that time covered the ground, and afterwards dissolving with it, ran down, in the most horrible manner, the furrows and ditches of the fields for two or three miles.
The Dukes of Somerset and Exeter fled the field, and carried the fatal news to Henry and His Queen and the Prince of Wales, at York, who soon fled into Scotland. After the battle, the Duke of Exeter and the Earl of Devonshire were beheaded; and the heads of the Duke of York, and the Earl of Salisbury, which had been set upon the Gates at York, were taken down, and theirs set up in their place. Most of the bodies of the slain were thrown into five large pits, one of which Drake says he saw opened in 1734. The quarrel between the two Roses, extinguished most of the ancient families in the kingdom: more than 100,000 men lost their lives, either by the sword or the executioner.
The Battle of Towton
March 29, 1461
Towton, Yorkshire
Yorkist army under Edward IV vs. Lancastrian forces led by the Duke of Somerset on behalf of Henry VI and Queen Margaret
The bloody Wars of the Roses dragged on as the Houses of York and Lancaster vied for power. Although Edward of York had initially been reluctant to proclaim himself king, his heavy defeat at the second Battle of St. Albans convinced him that he needed to take that final, irrevocable step of rebellion. No sooner had the dust settled on that defeat than Edward was acclaimed king in London.
Meanwhile, instead of following up his triumph at St. Albans with a decisive march on the capital, Henry VI opted for caution and withdrew his men north. The actual decision to pull back was probably Henry's, though he was easily led, particularly by his strong-willed queen, Margaret of Anjou.
So the Lancastrians withdrew to their power base in the north, probably destroying as they did so their only real hope of a quick end to the conflict. Edward IV threw caution aside, quickly raised a fresh army, and pushed north on his enemy's heels. He caught up with them near the river Aire, where both armies spent the night on the cold, snowy ground.
The Battle
Edward sent a detachment under Lord Fitzwalter to seize the bridge at Ferrybridge. They found the bridge broken down, but unguarded, and spent the day repairing it. Fitzwalter's men were caught completely unaware by a dawn attack led by Lord Clifford and the Yorkists were forced back across the river.
Edward immediately sent another force upstream to cross the river at Castleford and cut off Clifford's retreat. This fresh force caught Clifford's men and killed most of them within sight of their lines. Somerset, for reasons known only to himself, sent no troops to help the unfortunate Clifford, but instead waited for the advance of the main Yorkist army.
Now the snow whipped up, driving full into the face of the Lancastrians. This made their attempts to return arrow fire laughable, and Edward's archers inflicted great damage. Perhaps because of this, Somerset ordered his men to advance first.
In a terrible hand to hand fight that lasted all day the Lancastrians pushed their foe back, yard by bloody yard. The bodies piled high in the freezing cold, and fresh troops had to climb over corpses to reach the front lines. Edward's cause looked almost lost, when reinforcements arrived in the shape of men under the command of the Duke of Norfolk.
Norfolk's men changed the course of the battle, and now it was the Lancastrians who were pushed back, across the field we now know as Bloody Meadow. Finally they could take no more, and Somerset's men broke and ran. At least as many perished in the panic that followed, and the death toll may have reached 28,000 men or more. Towton was by far the bloodiest battle of the Wars of the Roses.
The Results
The Lancastrian cause suffered an immense blow at Towton; many of their leaders were killed or captured, and King Henry and Queen Margaret were forced to flee north towards Scotland. Yet despite the slaughter (more men died at Towton than in any other battle on British soil), nothing was settled.
Over the next decade a further seven major battles were fought until the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471 brought about a lull in the struggle. But for the moment, Edward IV was free to prepare for his coronation and enjoy his rule.
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