Duration of Military Campaigns – WARS OF THE ROSES

Although warfare between Englishmen for control of the government or possession of the Crown occurred from the 1450s to the 1490s, fighting was not continuous throughout the period. The military campaigns of the WARS OF THE ROSES were few, intermittent, and brief.

From the first Battle of ST. ALBANS in May 1455 to the Battle of STOKE in June 1487, adherents of the houses of LANCASTER and YORK engaged in thirteen major battles, such as those at TOWTON, BARNET, and BOSWORTH FIELD; several smaller encounters, such as the Battles of TWT HILL and HEXHAM; and numerous raids, rebellions, and assaults on castles. However, most of this fighting across a span of more than thirty years was compressed into a few active phases of two to three years, within which large armed forces were actually in the field for only a matter of weeks. The main periods of active campaigning occurred between the autumn of 1459 and the spring of 1461, the summer of 1469 and the spring of 1471, and in the autumn of 1483 and the summers of 1485 and 1487.

Being an island kingdom, England had not experienced the nearly continuous warfare that the HUNDRED YEARS WAR and other conflicts and rebellions had brought in the previous century to FRANCE, BURGUNDY, and other continental states. As a result, England lacked the standing armies (and the arbitrary taxation that supported them) that had developed in France under CHARLES VII and in Burgundy under Dukes PHILIP and CHARLES. The only ongoing military establishments in fifteenth-century England were a royal bodyguard of 200 archers created in 1468, the 1,000-man CALAIS garrison, and the forces raised at Crown expense by the wardens of the marches to defend the borders with SCOTLAND. The important role that elements of the Calais garrison had in the outcome of several battles, such as LUDFORD BRIDGE in 1459, illustrated how nonmilitarized England was.

This lack of military experience meant that England lagged behind the continent in the use of ARTILLERY and handguns and in the development of military fortification. Whereas an avoidance of pitched battle and a highly developed siegecraft characterized continental warfare, the Wars of the Roses witnessed almost no sieges, no sacks of major towns, little pillage or destruction of the countryside, and a series of brief campaigns and pitched battles, the winner of which usually gained immediate control of the government. In his MEMOIRS, the Burgundian chronicler Philippe de Commines observed that the English “were the most inclined to give battle” and that when fighting erupted in England “one or the other of the rivals is master within ten days or less” (Gillingham, p. 28). With sieges largely unnecessary and the problem of supply making it difficult to keep large armies in the field for long periods, active campaigning, as shown in the following table, occupied less than year and a half of the more than thirty-year period encompassing the Wars of the Roses.

Further Reading: Gillingham, John, The Wars of the Roses (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981); Goodman, Anthony, The Wars of the Roses (New York: Dorset Press, 1981); Ross, Charles, The Wars of the Roses (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987).

Harlech

Reconstruction of the castle in the early 14th century, seen from the sea.

 

Gatehouses The King's gate at Caernarfon is one of the most powerful of gatehouses, begun in 1283. In front of the entrance is a turning bridge; the front end rose up into a recess while the rear dropped into a pit behind. The passage was heavily defended: if the gatehouse had been completed it would have had no less than five wooden doors and six portsculli along its length. Evidence in the existing walls suggests that the never-completed rear section made the passage turn at right-angles, thence over a second drawbridge before arriving in the lower ward.

In order to enter the great gatehouse at Harlech, the visitor was required to pass the outer gatehouse with its twin turrets and turning bridge, the pit into which it dropped forming an additional obstacle. Then followed the main gate passage, arched throughout its length and flanked by huge towers. The first obstacle was a two-leaved door closed by a drawbar running into a slot in the wall thickness. There followed two portsculli, behind which was another door with drawbar. Further down the passage was a third portcullis, with possibly yet another set of doors in front. The room directly over the gate passage was a chapel flanked either side by a vestry but it also received the two forward portsculli when raised; the third came up into the larger of the two rear rooms. The fact that this floor housed the winches for operating the portsculli suggests it was used by the constable. Above was another floor, a residential suite laid out the same way and presumably designed for the king or some persons of rank. The rear of each tower was provided with a stair turret and, additionally, a door on the first floor at the rear led on to a platform and thence to an external stair to ground level, allowing access when all the gates were shut.

Master James of St George probably designed the splendid triple-towered gatehouse at Denbigh; once past the twin towers at the front, a vaulted hall was entered (with a chamber on the floor above).The rear tower blocked further egress, forcing a right turn into the ward.

On the estuary of the River Dwyryd, on the site of a former Welsh fort, built by Master James of St George for Edward I, 1283–90, costing £9,500. The sea was closer then to the castle. It had a concentric plan with a wide moat on two sides. A massive twintowered gatehouse faces east. The inner curtain has round corner towers. The curtain to the narrow outer bailey is low, dominated by the inner bailey. Master James became constable of Harlech 1290–3. It was besieged by Welsh rebels in 1294 but relieved. Repairs were made in the 14th century. Harlech was besieged and taken in 1404 by Owen Glendower with French allies, to become his base, and recovered by Lord Talbot in 1408. In the Wars of the Roses Harlech was taken over in 1468 by Dafydd ap Ieuan, whose men were the original ‘Men of Harlech’. The castle was besieged and taken by Yorkists under the Earl of Pembroke. It was held for the royalists in the English Civil War.

In the late thirteenth century, King Edward I of England built a sequence of castles from Caernarfon to Conwy to Harlech to secure his conquests in the north of the principality of Wales. In so far as the inhabitants of the country were the direct descendants of the British population of Rome's province of Britannia and the last unconquered region of the empire north of the Alps, it has been said that Edward's victories there represented the final fall of the Roman Empire in the West.

The financial outlay on these "Edwardian" castles was huge (in the 1970s it was calculated that each fortress cost in modern terms the equivalent of a Concorde supersonic airliner) not least because the most up-to-date principles and techniques of fortification were used. The strength of these places was to be demonstrated years later when in 1404 the Welsh rebel Owain Glyndwr laid siege to Harlech. For weeks the place was held by just five Englishmen and sixteen Welshmen—when the castellan made overtures to surrender, the garrison locked him up. In fact, the great castle fell not to assault by its Welsh attackers but because, in the end, the skeleton force defending it decided to accept terms and were bought out. Some sixty years later, it was once more in rebel hands, holding for the House of Lancaster when, in 1461, Edward of York became king as Edward IV. These "Men of Harlech" held out for seven years, harrying the neighboring countryside until in August 1468, after a protracted siege, William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, finally recovered the place for Edward. An indication of the effort involved and the obvious strength of the fortress is found in the Public Record Office, where the accounts show some £5,000 paid to the earl for his expenses.

THE DEVELOPMENT AND INFLUENCE OF FIREARMS

After countless unsuccessful experiments, lethal accidents and ineffective trials, firearms research and techniques gradually improved, and chroniclers report many types of guns—mainly used in siege warfare—with numerous names such as veuglaire, pot-de-fer, bombard, vasii, petara and so on. In the second half of the 14th century, firearms became more efficient, and it seemed obvious that cannons were the weapons of the future. Venice successfully utilized cannons against Genoa in 1378. During the Hussite war from 1415 to 1436, the Czech Hussite rebels employed firearms in combination with a mobile tactic of armored carts (wagenburg) enabling them to defeat German knights. Firearms contributed to the end of the Hundred Years' War and allowed the French king Charles VII to defeat the English in Auray in 1385, Rouen in 1418 and Orleans in 1429. Normandy was reconquered in 1449 and Guyenne in 1451. Finally, the battle of Chatillon in 1453 was won by the French artillery. This marked the end of the Hundred Years' War; the English, divided by the Wars of the Roses, were driven out of France, keeping only Calais. The same year saw the Turks taking Constantinople, which provoked consternation, agitation and excitement in the whole Christian world.

In that siege and seizure of the capital of the Eastern Roman empire, cannon and gunpowder achieved spectacular success. To breach the city walls, the Turks utilized heavy cannons which, if we believe the chronicler Critobulos of Imbros, shot projectiles weighing about 500 kg. Even if this is exaggerated, big cannons certainly did exist by that time and were more common in the East than in the West, doubtless because the mighty potentates of the East could better afford them. Such monsters included the Ghent bombard, called "Dulle Griet"; the large cannon "Mons Berg" which is today in Edinburgh; and the Great Gun of Mohammed II, exhibited today in London. The latter, cast in 1464 by Sultan Munir Ali, weighed 18 tons and could shoot a 300 kg stone ball to a range of one kilometer.

A certain number of technical improvements took place in the 15th century. One major step was the amelioration of powder quality. Invented about 1425, corned powder involved mixing saltpeter, charcoal and sulphur into a soggy paste, then sieving and drying it, so that each individual grain or corn contained the same and correct proportion of ingredients. The process obviated the need for mixing in the field. It also resulted in more efficient combustion, thus improving safety, power, range and accuracy.

Another important step was the development of foundries, allowing cannons to be cast in one piece in iron and bronze (copper alloyed with tin). In spite of its expense, casting was the best method to produce practical and resilient weapons with lighter weight and higher muzzle velocity. In about 1460, guns were fitted with trunnions. These were cast on both sides of the barrel and made sufficiently strong to carry the weight and bear the shock of discharge, and permit the piece to rest on a two-wheeled wooden carriage. Trunnions and wheeled mounting not only made for easier transportation and better maneuverability but also allowed the gunners to raise and lower the barrels of their pieces.

One major improvement was the introduction in about 1418 of a very efficient projectile: the solid iron shot. Coming into use gradually, the solid iron cannonball could destroy medieval crenellation, ram castle-gates, and collapse towers and masonry walls. It broke through roofs, made its way through several stories and crushed to pieces all it fell upon. One single well-aimed projectile could mow down a whole row of soldiers or cut down a splendid armored knight.

About 1460, mortars were invented. A mortar is a specific kind of gun whose projectile is shot with a high, curved trajectory, between 45° and 75°, called plunging fire. Allowing gunners to lob projectiles over high walls and reach concealed objectives or targets protected behind fortifications, mortars were particularly useful in sieges. In the Middle Ages they were characterized by a short and fat bore and two big trunnions. They rested on massive timber-framed carriages without wheels, which helped them withstand the shock of firing; the recoil force was passed directly to the ground by means of the carriage. Owing to such ameliorations, artillery progressively gained dominance, particularly in siege warfare.

Individual guns, essentially scaled down artillery pieces fitted with handles for the firer, appeared after the middle of the 14th century. Various models of portable small arms were developed, such as the clopi or scopette, bombardelle, baton-de-feu, handgun, and firestick, to mention just a few.

In purely military terms, these early handguns were more of a hindrance than an asset on the battlefield, for they were expensive to produce, inaccurate, heavy, and time-consuming to load; during loading the firer was virtually defenseless. However, even as rudimentary weapons with poor range, they were effective in their way, as much for attackers as for soldiers defending a fortress.

The harquebus was a portable gun fitted with a hook that absorbed the recoil force when firing from a battlement. It was generally operated by two men, one aiming and the other igniting the propelling charge. This weapon evolved in the Renaissance to become the matchlock musket in which the fire mechanism consisted of a pivoting S-shaped arm. The upper part of the arm gripped a length of rope impregnated with a combustible substance and kept alight at one end, called the match. The lower end of the arm served as a trigger: When pressed it brought the glowing tip of the match into contact with a small quantity of gunpowder, which lay in a horizontal pan fixed beneath a small vent in the side of the barrel at its breech. When this priming ignited, its flash passed through the vent and ignited the main charge in the barrel, expelling the spherical lead bullet.

The wheel lock pistol was a small harquebus taking its name from the city Pistoia in Tuscany where the weapon was first built in the 15th century. The wheel lock system, working on the principle of a modern cigarette lighter, was reliable and easy to handle, especially for a combatant on horseback. But its mechanism was complicated and therefore expensive, and so its use was reserved for wealthy civilian hunters, rich soldiers and certain mounted troops.

Portable cannons, handguns, harquebuses and pistols were muzzle-loading and shot projectiles that could easily penetrate any armor. Because of the power of firearms, traditional Middle Age weaponry become obsolete; gradually, lances, shields and armor for both men and horses were abandoned.

The destructive power of gunpowder allowed the use of mines in siege warfare. The role of artillery and small firearms become progressively larger; the new weapons changed the nature of naval and siege warfare and transformed the physiognomy of the battlefield. This change was not a sudden revolution, however, but a slow process. Many years elapsed before firearms became widespread, and many traditional medieval weapons were still used in the 16th century.

One factor militating against artillery's advancement in the 15th century was the amount of expensive material necessary to equip an army. Cannons and powder were very costly items and also demanded a retinue of expensive attendant specialists for design, transport and operation. Consequently firearms had to be produced in peacetime, and since the Middle Ages had rudimentary ideas of economics and fiscal science, only a few kings, dukes and high prelates possessed the financial resources to build, purchase, transport, maintain and use such expensive equipment in numbers that would have an appreciable impression in war.

Conflicts with firearms became an economic business involving qualified personnel backed up by traders, financiers and bankers as well as the creation of comprehensive industrial structures. The development of firearms meant the gradual end of feudalism. Firearms also brought about a change in the mentality of combat because they created a physical and mental distance between warriors. Traditional mounted knights, fighting each other at close range within the rules of a certain code, were progressively replaced by professional infantrymen who were anonymous targets for one another, while local rebellious castles collapsed under royal artillery's fire. Expensive artillery helped to hasten the process by which central authority was restored.

CHIVALRY AND GLORY

Medieval society thoroughly encouraged young males of social standing to seek glory in war. They were provided with role models both in fiction—as in the Arthurian legends or the French “chansons de geste”—and in tales of the feats of contemporary real-life heroes such as England’s Black Prince or Bertrand du Guesclin, the constable of France. The Church sanctified the practice of war, at least if directed against “infidels” or in some other just cause, and the code of chivalry established principles of conduct that a knight should follow.

Chivalry incorporated many of the usual principles of warrior morality, such as loyalty to your leader or to your brothers-in-arms, together with Christian-derived values such as respect for the poor and needy. But the chivalric code was also a practical arrangement between knights to limit the risks of warfare. Being of the same rank and often related by blood or marriage, opposing knights had an interest in avoiding a fight to the death. If they were facing defeat, they could usually surrender in the confident expectation of being treated well as prisoners and eventually ransomed—although there were exceptions to this rule, as when the English King Henry V ordered the killing of French prisoners at Agincourt in 1415.

Ransoms could be considerable sums of money, so there was obviously a profit motive at work in the preservation of prisoners’ lives. However much knights might be inspired by the prospect of honor and glory, they usually also had material goals in sight. Many knights were far from wealthy. They might hold fiefs that were small plots of land similar to those worked by peasant families, or they could be younger sons with no expectation of an inheritance. Skill in the use of arms gave a man a chance to better himself. He could forge a distinguished military career, as Bertrand du Guesclin did from unpromising provincial origins, or win lands through participating in conquest, as happened during the Crusades.

COSTLY ROLE
Kings increasingly assumed the exclusive right to confer knighthoods and used this as a means of raising revenue, charging a hefty fee for the privilege. By the 14th century, many qualified by birth to be knights tried to avoid the expense and onerous duties it involved. As well as the cost of the accolade, there was a substantial outlay for equipment and mounts. A knight needed at least two horses when on campaign—a palfrey, or saddle horse, for ordinary travel and a splendid destrier, or warhorse, for combat. Full plate armor, which gradually replaced the mix of chainmail and plate, was very expensive, shaped to offer protection against missiles and sword blows, yet light and well balanced enough to be comfortable when fighting on foot. The knight would also need a lance, a sword, a shield, and probably a mace, war-hammer, or poleax.

Many young men with military ambitions were prepared to pay for the horses and gear but baulked at the cost of a knighthood, or lacked the requisite birth qualification. They remained squires or sergeants, fighting alongside the knights and largely indistinguishable from them on the battlefield. A squire or sergeant might hope to receive an accolade on the battlefield in recognition of some spectacular feat of arms, though such on-the-spot knightings were not common. Knights, squires, and sergeants were collectively known as “men-at-arms”.

Knights broadly fitted into the system of personal loyalty and mutual obligation that shaped medieval society. They might, for example, owe military service as vassals or liegemen to a lord or king in return for a grant of land held as a fief—the classic pattern of the “feudal” system. But in the later Middle Ages monetary arrangements progressively came to the fore. Whether knights lived on their own land or as retainers in a noble household, by the 14th century they would expect to be paid for their services, even though the service was recognized as a feudal obligation. By the same token, they could often pay money in lieu of service—shield tax or “scutage.”

Knights were not always so lofty in their pretensions. Others became outright mercenaries, leading “free companies” that were in effect private professional armies, selling their services to cities and states, none of which could afford to maintain permanent standing armies. Thus the force that a medieval king led off to war would be far from homogenous. It might include his own household knights, his barons or lords and their feudal followers, contingents provided by the military orders, and mercenaries led by their own chiefs. At worst, during times of disorder and social breakdown, knights might degenerate into brigands, using their skills to carve out a dishonest living through robbery, plunder, and pillage.

Well-made armor offered excellent protection and gave a knight full mobility to wield his lance, sword, or ax, in the saddle or out of it. The shock of close-quarters combat was, of course, intense and put a premium upon physical strength and endurance, especially if hot weather made the weight of the armor hard to bear. But fortified by their code of personal honor and duty, knights rarely flinched once combat was joined. Their chief weakness lay in the intemperate aggression and quarrelsomeness of hot-headed individuals bent upon glory. Chronicles of medieval warfare tell time and again of groups of knights unwisely breaking ranks to charge a superior enemy in a self-conscious show of competitive bravery, often in defiance of a battle plan agreed in advance. The knights’ discipline rarely matched their valor.

Even in the 14th century, the battlefield dominance of knights was challenged by lightly armored foot soldiers at Courtrai and Bannockburn and by archers at Crécy. From the second half of the 15th century, gunpowder weapons were increasingly effective, as were disciplined infantry armed with pikes. But armored cavalry was not driven from the battlefield by arrows, cannon or arquebuses. In something close to its medieval form it remained an important element in battles into the late 16th century. By then, however, the social and cultural basis of knighthood had declined with an increase in central state power and the inexorable rise of professional soldiering.

The Wars of The Roses: 1st Battle of St Albans: King HENRY VI captured.

The game is called Medieval 2: Total War.

ARMIES OF THE WARS OF THE ROSES

The Calais garrison of over 1,000 men was England's only standing army. The town was a vital Yorkist base in the winter of 1459-60, and Calais troops formed the core of the Yorkist army which invaded in June 1460. However, Andrew Trollope, a Calais commander and renowned soldier, refused to fight Henry VI (October 1459) and became a leading Lancastrian captain until his death at Towton. The government also paid the wardens of the northern marches (usually from the rival Neville and Percy families) to retain a few hundred soldiers, but their private forces were more important. French and Burgundian rulers supplied mercenaries to back invasion in 1470-71 and 1485-87. Their importance grew as noble participation in the wars declined after 1461. The major source of soldiers was noblemen's retainers and tenants. The Percys and Nevilles could field up to 10,000 men each for short periods, many of whom were experienced in border warfare. The Yorkist lord Hastings raised 3,000 men in 1471, and the Stanleys fielded large contingents between 1485 and 1487. The reluctance of tenants to serve far from home, and the nobles' ability to pay them were the main limitations.

At Towton (1461), seventy-five per cent of lords and much of the gentry fought on the Lancastrian side. The Yorkists had fewer lords, but they were the wealthier. Armies became smaller in later wars. At Bosworth, twenty-eight of thirty-five lords failed to turn out for Richard III. Experience taught them it was safer to wait and accept the victor, who could then summon soldiers from towns and counties: in 1455, Coventry equipped 100 archers for Henry VI, and sent the same number with Warwick to Towton. However, by 1470-71, their daily wages had to be raised by fifty per cent to attract recruits.

The largest armies fought at Towton, over 20,000 men on each side; Edward may have had 9,000 at Barnet (1471), Warwick more; at Bosworth, Richard heavily outnumbered Henry Tudor's 5,000 men, although Sir William Stanley's army redressed the balance, and not all of Richard's army was engaged. Archers predominated, outnumbering "men-at-arms by seven or more to one. English archers were highly rated in Europe. In the civil war battles both sides had them and they were less influential than in the Hundred Years' War, their main function being to cover the men-at-arms and to break up defensive formations. However, their absence compromised the Yorkists at Edgecote. Other footmen were armed with bills (poleaxes). The elite men-at-arms, all landowners, were encased in expensive armour. Nearly all battles of the civil wars became slogging matches in which the men-at-arms on foot played the dominant role, though cavalry were also used, as at Towton, Tewkesbury, and Bosworth. Most armies had field artillery, although this was used only at the start of battles because its rate of fire was relatively slow; mounting it in field defences went out of fashion after 1460. There were few sieges in the civil wars, although Edward IV possessed an impressive siege train. The English made little use of handguns, and the mercenary gunners from the Continent made little impact in the wars.

The main goal in the civil wars was political power rather than control of territory, so the campaigns of the Wars of the Roses were brief and ended in battles. This was not due to lack of military skill; many of the nobles who commanded in the 1450s had experience in the French wars, and younger captains like Somerset, Warwick, and Edward IV, who learned from experience, were capable soldiers. It was desirable to limit campaigns to avoid causing damage by foraging, and to reach a conclusion before the levies dispersed. Analysis of the campaigns of 147071, for which there is detailed evidence, shows that both sides manoeuvred skilfully. York (in 1459) and Warwick (in 1461) paid dearly for failure to reconnoitre. Edward IV's handling of his men before Barnet and at Tewkesbury also shows some tactical skill and, in contrast to the English experience in the French wars, it was often the attackers who won battles.

Sources rarely refer to the crucial role of logistics. To invade Scotland in 1481, 500 carts were requisitioned to carry supplies, and more would ferry provisions from Newcastle. In civil wars such preparations were impossible, and the mobility of armies suggests that there were no large wagon trains. Armies carried a few days' provisions and equipment in wagons. In 1459, the Yorkists used wagons for protection at Blore Heath and Ludford Bridge. In 1460, London furnished Yorkist transport. Supplies were purchased or seized from towns, depending on their lord (Stamford, Wakefield, and Ludlow were York's towns) and the state of discipline. The best sources were the largest towns like London (1461), York (1470), and Bristol (1471). Requisitioning and looting were often indistinguishable, but living off the country meant dangerous dispersal (as the Yorkists found in December 1460), while plundering alienated the population. Margaret kept her northerners, who had a bad reputation, out of London in February 1461 in deference to fears of pillaging, thus leaving the city open to Edward.

An army on the march was preceded by light horse called 'scourers', harbingers, or aforeriders whose tasks included arranging billets and victuals, and scouting. Accurate reconnaissance gave Edward a crucial advantage in 1470 and 1471, whereas the failure of York's and Warwick's scouts (December 1460 and February 1461) resulted in defeat. Contact between opposing harbingers provided knowledge of the enemy's location, and thus sending aforeriders in one direction, and the main body in another was used to deceive the enemy by Warwick in March 1470, and by Margaret in April 1471.