‘Battlefields have a profound fascination for us’
Robert Hardy (actor and medievalist)
Today is the 560th anniversary of the Battle of Towton fought on Palm Sunday 29 March 1461. Edward IV (The Rose of Rouen) and the army of Henry VI under the command of the Duke of Somerset clashed in a battle that commentators said was the biggest, longest and bloodiest of the age.
And who are we to argue the mathematics?
Nominally led by Henry’s French queen Margaret of Anjou, these northern ‘Lancastrians’ had recently invaded the south of England with skill and vigour but had been shut out of London due to the fear that they might pillage the city. It was pure propaganda and luck that Edward (then Earl of March) would become their saviour, and I thought it would be fitting to share a political poem to commemorate Towton and the 28,000 souls that perished.
The ballad, which can be found in Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, is an excellent example of the kind of propaganda that the Yorkists circulated, by word and mouth, to cement their rightful claim to the throne. It was written by a Yorkist spin doctor soon after the Lancastrians were crushed by Edward at Towton. But the rhetoric did nothing to heal the north-south divide in the Wars of the Roses, in fact, it did everything to inflame the blood feuding and continuing civil war in England.
The Rose of Rouen provides some unique detailed information about the Towton campaign such as the Yorkist lords present, the town militias and the shire levies that fought there in 1461. Lines 18 and 21-24 are interesting because you can almost feel the fear of the Londoners who faced the Lancastrian army driving south to the capital. It’s almost as if a barbarian hoard was being let loose in England, and Edward IV was its only saviour. But more than anything, the poem capitalises on Edward’s victory at Towton, rubs salt into the wounds of those that suffered defeat, and assured that there could be no forgiving or forgetting the battle for years to come.
So, here is the poem in the vernacular, for you to judge for yourself who was the villain and the martyr. And when you read it, remember what power can do to ordinary people, in any age, when they live in fear of war, politics or the unknown.1
Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, 1959, Rossell Hope Robbins, pp215-18.