All about history book of the tudors 29

Battle of Towton Skeletons of troops found in 1996 are seen in a mass grave close to a battlefield site in Towton leave the ground carpeted with corpses No quarter is given; nobleman or commoner, all are fair game The many Lancastrians bolting northwards become victims of their own commanders’ strategic design; the bridge across the Cock at the battlefield’s northern rim was destroyed the day before, leaving the escaping soldiers nowhere to ford the river With the victorious, adrenalinefuelled Yorkists bearing down on them, many take to the waters, though their armour, whether tempered steel or heavily padded jacks, drags them under Hundreds die, falling victim to either the freezing waters or the Yorkist archers shooting at the floundering men as if they were fish in a barrel It’s not long before the waters are thick with dead, and both pursuers and pursued can now cross the river on a bridge of bodies England paid the price The slaughter unleashed at Towton stands unparalleled in English history The day claimed the lives of the Earl of Northumberland along with Lords Dacre, Mauley, Welles and Willoughby along with Sir Anthony Trollope, who all died courtesy of wounds received on the battlefield, while Edward himself is said to have executed 42 Lancastrian “Moving up the battlefield’s eastern edge they attack with fresh vigour, some mounted and some on foot, cascading down upon the Lancastrian left” A monument to the fallen at Towton knights after the battle’s denouement Recent archaeological explorations have unearthed some truly gruesome finds, including a grave pit where evidence suggests that a good many unarmed men were viciously hacked down as they sought clemency from their attackers Many contemporary chronicles number the Towton dead at more than 30,000 and while modern scholars view this as an exaggeration, most agree that somewhere in the region of 15,000 men perished on that snowbound field near York Just a few days after the battle, Lord Chancellor George Neville wrote to the papal legate, Francesco Coppini, claiming that so many had fallen that ‘dead bodies were seen to cover an area six miles long by three broad’ Though England paid a heavy price that day, Edward VI had claimed his kingdom Though not as decisive or famous as the Battle of Bosworth, Towton remains a horrific and sombre name worthy of remembrance in English history © Corbis; Alamy; Ed Crooks; Osprey Publishing The site of the battle as it appears today 29