Primarily due to the comprehensive work carried out on the bow and arrow in recent years it is clear that some battles of the Wars of the Roses need revision. This need is addressed here with regard to the length of the battle of Towton and the casualties inflicted. Also presented below is a possible explanation of why contemporaries confused dates and timings during the campaign (not changed since I first wrote in 1994) leading to the common misunderstanding, based on sources, that the battle lasted ten hours, was fought at night, or took one and a half days to resolve.
In the march north to fight the Lancastrians, it is clear that Lord Fauconberg’s Yorkist ‘vaward’ was comprised wholly of archers and was the first to engage them at Towton. The ruse Fauconberg used, if we can believe Edward Hall, is clearly explained, but the devastation the longbow caused is more difficult to visualize and come to terms with without an understanding of the mechanics of the weapon. In my view, the casualties incurred by Yorkist arrows were well above the average expected in medieval battles due to the size of the contingents of archers employed, the effect of the weather conditions, and the Lancastrian inability to counter-attack. The Yorkist arrow storm proved catastrophic for Lord Fauconberg’s Lancastrian counterpart, Thomas Hammes, ‘captain of all the footmen’ whose own archers suffered from the unforeseen element of a snowstorm driving into their faces. The situation led to profound Lancastrian casualties early in the battle and ultimately an uncoordinated advance led by unwieldy bodies of men-at-arms suffering from shock and fractured morale.
It has been estimated by Simon Stanley and Robert Hardy, by practical means and historical comparisons with Mary Rose replica bows, that the medieval archer was equipped with a 150 pound (draw weight) bow, and war arrows that weighed approximately three to four ounces. Mary Rose approximation bows can be shot rapidly by Stanley, a world-record-holding archer, at a rate of about ten arrows per minute at a range of 240 yards without arrows losing a critical amount of their initial velocity. Test shots across Towton battlefield in 1996 measured 270 yards without a following wind, therefore the medieval archer’s paradox is no longer a theory but an undisputed fact. The physical and tactical aspects of the bow are a prominent feature of the historical work done by Strickland and Hardy in The Great Warbow. However, what is amazing is the lethal striking power of the arrow even at optimum range. The mathematics can be read in detail in the above work (now standard philosophy) but the reality of ten thousand arrows falling en-mass at Towton must have been appalling.
The penetrative force and range of the medieval ‘warbow’ has been compared to a musket ball of the eighteenth century. At a range of 240 yards and falling at a rate of up to 146 joules from a bow with a draw weight of 150 pounds, a 3.8-ounce war arrow can penetrate plate armour. Against lesser armoured men, such arrows can kill outright. At best an arrow would have maimed an individual probably for life. A ricocheting arrow bouncing off fluted armour would also have incapacitated individuals - even if it was headless. Thousands of arrows falling at once would have caused massive disorder in the ranks and the science of terminal ballistics shows that the penetrative force of an arrow had no equal, other than the crossbow, which was extremely slow to operate.
A great many war wounds from arrows were deemed lethal due to the fact that infection was prone to enter the bloodstream. As stated earlier some wounds never healed, therefore survival in battle depended on not being hit or wearing enough armour to withstand the arrow storm. However, most men on the receiving end of this ‘right sharp shower’ were not so affluent, and despite the serviceable English jack and sallet helmet, it is possible that the humble bow and arrow negated such defensive equipment even at long range. Literally, tons of arrows were unleashed during one volley at the battle of Towton, but supplies were limited, hence the arrow strike had to be effective and of short duration. Soldiers stood and faced the inevitable. Swathes of casualties and disorder caused heaps of dead and wounded in the ranks, and in only a few minutes the effect on morale and movement was considerable.
Anyone who questions the high casualty rate at Towton must therefore take this phase of the battle into account and acknowledge that the cost in life among the Lancastrian host was unusually high. Caught in the most dreadful ‘shower’ ever unleashed on Englishmen there is no comparison in history. I am inclined to believe that even after a few volleys of arrows, at least 10,000 men were incapacitated during this phase of the battle. The mathematics of men to arrows delivered is self-evident, even allowing for arrows falling harmlessly, therefore, if we calculate that each archer had a minimum of twenty-four arrows at his disposal the above figure is still strikingly low.
Apart from the archery duel at Towton, which lasted (in my opinion) only a few minutes, it is certain that the ten hours of hand-to-hand fighting mentioned by the chroniclers needs investigating. Hearne’s Fragment even mentions that the battle lasted a day and a half, and was fought at night, which is highly unlikely. Evidently, some synthesis and a chronology must be established in order to determine logically the times associated with certain events in the Towton campaign. A breakdown of how chroniclers got some aspects of the campaign wrong due to interpretation, the unfamiliarity of the topography, and garbled ‘news from the field’ is given below.
It is clear from analyzing the contemporary evidence that most writers thought that there was one continuous fight beginning with the battle of Ferrybridge on 28 march (Palm Sunday Eve) which developed into ‘a great conflict’ that ended with a rout the next day. Given that the battle of Ferrybridge began at about midday on 28 March and the battle of Towton (including the rout) lasted for most of the following day, the mistaken calculations in Hearne’s Fragment can be partly reconciled. George Neville’s Palm Sunday battle, lasting ten hours, also fits the general chronology mentioned by Hearne, given that Neville received news second hand and that the dead were spread over six miles of countryside from the initial battle of Ferrybridge.
Even the location of the battle was misinterpreted in chronicles and letters chiefly due to the fact that contemporary writers were ignorant of local topography. George Neville, who was the first to receive word of Edward’s victory from a reliable source, neither mentions Towton or Saxton in a letter to Francesco Coppini. In fact, the only prominent places revealed by him are ‘Pomfret’ (Pontefract) and ‘Feurbirga’ (Ferrybridge) the latter being the location where, in his opinion, the Lancastrians were routed. The Croyland Chronicle goes on to say that the Yorkists, ‘made immense havoc among the Lancastrians for a distance of ten miles, as far as the city of York’. The villages of Towton and Saxton are not mentioned and from this, we might construe that the fight at Ferrybridge was the only battle of the campaign. Neville’s dubious claims could easy be discarded out of hand as a summary of what he heard. However, his unique information regarding the battle of Ferrybridge is confirmed by The Croyland Chronicle who describes that this skirmish was fought on ‘a level spot of ground, situated near the castle of Pomfret and the bridge at Ferrybridge, and washed by a stream of considerable size’. Add to this the fact that Neville says that a bridge was broken behind enemy lines and that men drown as a result, and the case against a larger battle the next day becomes even more damning.
As mentioned earlier, some chroniclers thought that the battle of Towton was fought at ‘Shurborne’ (Sherburn) while others considered that York was the only place worth noting (presumably due to the fact that it had a substantial castle and that Edward arrived there after the battle). The truth is that official records, namely Edward’s attainder document, local tradition and archaeology concur that the accepted site of the battle of Towton is correct. The fact that bridges were broken, that men drowned in rivers and that there was a running battle ending in ‘a great conflict’ is proof of what really occurred over one and a half days. Other contemporary chronicles and letters provide more details of the campaign, but it is certain that messengers from the north, and even those involved in the conflict, were unsure of events at first. However, we may synthesize a possible scenario from the available evidence and conclude that due to Lord Clifford’s harassing tactics at Ferrybridge and the subsequent skirmish at Dintingdale (near Towton) the chronology was extended in the eyes of writers. Indeed, as George Neville suggests, Lord Clifford’s withdrawal from Ferrybridge may have been a bloody rout rather than an orderly retreat. So, the skirmish at Dintingdale resulting from this mopping up operation by Fauconberg is partly confirmed by him, although not by name, as the place where six miles of dead bodies were seen after the battle of Towton.
As a result of the division in the Yorkist army, it is clear that the vaward would have had no option but to advance against the Lancastrians the next day. While their main body under Edward was still arriving and positioning itself on the battlefield Fauconberg’s archers may even have engaged the enemy alone. It is clear from Jehan de Waurin’s account that Edward, some four miles distant from the battlefield, received intelligence at first light that the Lancastrians were manoeuvring ‘in the fields’ and that he immediately marched against them. Sent via Castleford to threaten Clifford’s flank, the chances are that Fauconberg’s vaward, like most medieval armies, was much enlarged and that it partly covered Edward’s advance to Saxton. However, with regard to the Duke of Norfolk with the rearward, he was even further behind the Yorkists at this time, and therefore it was pure luck that the dangerous partition in the Yorkist army was not exploited to the full by the Lancastrian command. Why? Because they had carefully prepared a position above North Acres on the Towton battlefield plateau.
A glance at the chronology above shows the possible duration of each of these events, which supports the ten hours of fighting recorded by George Neville and the one and a half days battle described by Hearne’s Fragment. After the initial dawn attack, the battle of Ferrybridge probably lasted no more than a few hours, but the subsequent retreat from the River Aire crossing was pursued to Dintingdale therefore military speaking Ferrybridge lasted most of the afternoon. The next day the battle of Towton was fought for three or four hours at the most with the rout being followed up well into the evening. Therefore, it was not the actual fighting that lasted ten hours, rather it was the military manoeuvres and the protracted routs from Ferrybridge, Dintingdale and Towton that caused writers to mistake three battles for one.
As for how big the armies were at Towton it may seem logical to calculate how many men fought as a percentage of how many were killed. However, as previously mentioned this theory is hampered by the unique aspects of the campaign. Similarly, it is a fruitless enterprise to try and calculate the death toll from the apparent absence of graves, or from the musings of monkish chroniclers who threw their hands up in abhorrence at English bloodletting. From the documented evidence detailing how many men the City of York mustered to fight at Towton (roughly ten per cent of the city population according to the York Civic Records) we may judge that the Lancastrian army was deficient of volunteers. But again we would be wrong in assuming that their army when fully mustered was any smaller than the force which fought at the second battle of St Albans a month earlier where some 3000 men perished. Clearly, some Scottish contingents would have gone home after pillaging the English countryside, but most northern lords would have re-commissioned their tenants into the king’s ranks and others were retained for life by their lords and called upon to fight for Henry VI upon pain of death. As explained earlier, some chronicler’s recorded great multitudes of men in both armies therefore it is apparent that we need to look elsewhere for a guide to how large the armies were at Towton.
In Towton: The Bloodiest Battle I compare know unbiased musters and recruitment methods to the average out the numbers of men that could be employed in noble retinues and militias. From this, I approximated armies in the region of 20-25,000 at Towton and I stand by these figures for a number of reasons. To establish these further, William Worcester, gentleman bureaucrat and antiquary, was in London when Edward of March entered the city after the battle of Mortimer’s Cross. He calculated that there were 8000 men in Edward’s army and later at Clerkenwell, he estimated that this figure had been reduced by half. It is unreasonable to suggest that any less than 8,000 men marched from London to fight the Lancastrians at Towton. Indeed, we would expect that Edward’s original army of the Marches was augmented, essentially by additional troops from London and the southern shires, namely Kent, who it is said flocked to him in ‘countless multitudes’. If we add to this the combined strength of the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Norfolk’s retinues, who were well connected in their own right, along with the king’s commission to recruit every man between the ages of sixteen to sixty, then an army of 20,000 men is clearly not an impossibility. The strength of the Yorkist army gains further credibility if we take into account that 20,000 Yorkists (the whole of Edward’s army minus its casualties) were sent out from the city of York after the battle of Towton to pursue the Lancastrian refugees into the north.
It is clear that the strength of the Lancastrian army presents greater problems due to lack of evidence, and with regard to casualties, there is a tendency to inflate figures out of all proportion. However, stress must be placed on the fact that Towton was a notably bloody battle (according to the heralds) and that a good percentage of the men who fought there were killed in the rout, executed or drowned in rivers that hampered their escape. There was literally no place to run for those caught up in the battle’s aftermath and the rivers that the Lancastrians had to cross, play a big part in understanding the Towton death toll. Like the heralds and other officials, we have no way of knowing the final figure of those who drowned, and the option to subtract the bloodiest from the biggest anachronisms is our only way forward. Clearly the 28,000 dead is the place to start and this is a staggering figure not least with regard to those who compare the casualties at Towton to those of the Somme where 60,000 men lost their lives, of which 21,000 were killed in the first hour of the attack (perhaps in the first few minutes). Another factor to bear in mind with regard to Towton is the one-sided archery duel on closely compacted troop formations that had no cover or means of responding to the Yorkist barrage. The work done by Strickland and Hardy proves that the bow and arrow were specifically built to maim and deal out death on a massive scale. The practical verification and proof of this, expounded by Simon Stanley in trials, shows that no one was safe from such a huge concentration of archers. So how many were killed in this phase of the battle?
Given that half the Yorkist army was comprised of archers (10,000) and that each man had a full complement of arrows in his bag (24) we can calculate that even if half of the arrows shot missed flesh and blood, then 120,000 did not. The death rate was therefore a question of surviving such wounds in adverse conditions, and in an environment when personal safety and battlefield surgery was limited it is no wonder that the situation instigated an immediate advance by the Lancastrians on their enemies. Like their ascendants at the battle of the Somme the Lancastrians had probably lost a quarter of their strength in only a few minutes. If 5000 men were actually killed (and this is a conservative estimate even if we suggest that smaller armies took the field at Towton) then many more died and were maimed in the brutal hand to hand combat that followed.
Although we may be sure that the damage done on both sides was severe and that it presented a great problem to those whose job it was to record the casualty figure, the overall butcher’s bill must remain a mystery. However, the computation given by the heralds is still an impeccable source of truth. Moreover, it is a unique survival of the Wars of the Roses by a group of men who actually saw the battle unfold and translated it into official documents. Therefore how did the heralds calculate their figure given the casualties spread over such a wide area? Did both sides settle on an approximation of the dead? What did the heralds base their calculations on and why did they come up with a figure of 28,000 and not inflate or round it off it as partisan chroniclers tended to do after the event? Alternatively, did the heralds exaggerate and lie at the behest of Edward IV and the Yorkist propaganda machine? Perhaps we should simply say that Towton was the bloodiest medieval battle and suggest that other conflicts such as Boudica’s Revolt in AD60/61 and Marston Moor in 1644 are comparable in their own eras. As a matter of interest, the more level-headed contemporary chroniclers computed that 10,000 to 20,000 were slain at Towton – a massive fellowship of death by any standards of warfare. Polydor Vergil, who had no real cause to be partisan, recorded that, ‘there was wanting of both parties about twenty thousand men [of which] the number of prisoners and wounded persons, whereof some were cured and some died, were fully ten thousand’.
Does Vergil’s comment approach the truth and confirm that the Lancastrians lost fifty per cent casualties at Towton? Or does the herald’s death toll mask something far more sinister and disturbing that occurred after the battle was over? Commemoration betrays genuine feelings of loss, releases guilt and opens up political opportunities after the event. With a change of dynasty, pressures ease in any era and the resulting outpouring of purpose becomes manifest in memorials to those who made the ultimate sacrifice. This emotive action was apparent after Towton and in the reign of Richard III, when he exhumed, collected and buried the dead in consecrated ground, but in the Tudor period, Lancastrian grief was left wanting.
More in my updated book about the battle of Towton available later this year!