Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (46 page)

Pizan’s influence on the arrangement of Henry’s forces may have come from the French influence of Chandée, but it seems that Oxford himself was a keen follower of Pizan’s work, having most likely read it in the original French: the earl could speak both English and French – a later inventory records that he owned ‘a chest full of French and English books’ worth £3 6s 8d. William Caxton would later translate
The Four Sons of Aymon
‘out of French at the request and comandment of ye right noble and virtuous Earl, John Earl of Oxford, my good, singular and especial lord’.

More revealing, however, is the fact that Caxton would also later be asked by Henry to translate the
Fais d’armes et de chevalerie
into English. According to his epilogue to his translation,
The Book of Faytes
of Armes
, Caxton recalled how Henry had personally invited him to Westminster in January 1489, where he asked the printer ‘to translate this said book and reduce it in to our English and natural tongue and to put it enprint to the end that every gentleman born to arms and all manner men of war captains, soldiers, victuallers and all other should have knowledge how they ought to behave them in the feats of war and of battles’. It was Oxford, who was standing next to Caxton, who then handed him a copy of Christine’s work. This seems to be a telling clue that the earl himself had full knowledge of Pizan’s work. Maybe during his years of imprisonment at Hammes Castle, living on a hardly insubstantial allowance of £50 a year, Oxford was able to spend his time reading military treatises such as Pizan, absorbing their advice, at the same time reflecting on the reasons for his catastrophic defeat at the battle of Barnet, when a lack of military discipline had allowed his forces to become separated from the standards, ending in disaster. If this was the case, the lessons Oxford had learnt from Pizan would be employed with devastating effect on the battlefield.

If Richard’s initial preparations that morning had been thrown into confusion by Henry’s sudden advance, the king quickly seized the momentum as his forces were hastily drawn up into battle order. In preparation, Richard ordered his standards to be unfurled: they included his own insignia of the white boar, though previously Richard had ordered one ‘banner of sarcenet of our lady’, ‘one banner of the Trinity’ together with banners depicting St George, St Edward and St Cuthbert, four standards ‘of sarcenet with boars’ and ‘one of our own arms all sarcenet’ with ‘three coats of arms beaten fine gold’ which may have been present on the battlefield.

Cartloads of guns and cannon that had been brought from the Tower by Sir Robert Brackenbury were wheeled into their positions. Artillery remained close to Richard’s heart, with the king taking a keen interest in the latest military technology. In June 1480, as Duke of Gloucester, Richard had written to the French king Louis XI thanking him for ‘the great bombard which you caused to be presented to me’, acknowledging that ‘for as I have always taken and still [take] great pleasure in artillery I assure you it will be a special treasure to me’. Upon his accession as king, Richard had ensured that his own arsenal would match
that of any Continental monarch. John Donne had been appointed as Master of the Armory at the Tower of London, on a wage of 12d a day. Under his charge, Henry Wydeboke was appointed yeoman and keeper of the armory and ‘habiliments of war’ at 6d a day. William Clowte ‘of Gelderland’ had been employed as a ‘gunmaker’ along with William Nele, while the king’s official armourer was Vincent Tetulior, paid a salary of £20. In March 1484 Thomas Rogers was sent to Southampton to purchase twenty new guns and two serpentines for £24.

The artillery that Richard now had ranged against his enemy was a memorable sight, with the ‘Ballad of Bosworth Field’ describing how ‘They had 7 scores Serpentines without doubt / that were locked & chained upon a row / as many bombards that were stout.’ Molinet, who may have received his information from the French mercenaries facing opposite on Henry Tudor’s side, described how the king had a ‘great quantity’ of range artillery – described as ‘
engiens volants
’, translated literally as ‘flying objects’.

Even this impressive range of firepower could not detract from the sheer number of men gathering under the king’s standard. ‘You never heard tell of such a company, at sowte, seige, nor no gathering’, the author of the ‘Ballad of Bosworth Field’ remarked. According to the ballad, Sir William Stanley looked down upon Richard’s army from his vantage point near Stoke, to witness the battle line stretched out for five miles, across which no ground could be seen ‘for armed men & trapped steeds’, their armour glittering as bright ‘as any gleed’ – a burning coal. ‘To tell the array it were hard for me’, the poem’s author recalled. Estimates of the exact number of the king’s forces vary wildly from an implausible 70,000 to 40,000, and 20,000 men, though perhaps more realistically Vergil indicates that Richard’s forces numbered around 15,000 in total.

Richard led out his entire army or ‘host’ from their camp, drawing it into an extended single line. According to Vergil, Richard’s force, ‘well furnished in all things’, was extended to ‘such a wonderful length’ with both footmen and horsemen packed together ‘in such a way that the mass of the armed men struck terror in the hearts of the distant onlookers’.

This was exactly the effect that Richard had hoped to achieve. The king’s decision to form his army into a ‘remarkably extensive line of
battle, close-packed with infantry and cavalry’, seems remarkably similar to the textbook military advice given by Christine de Pizan, who wrote how the vanguard should be ‘of considerable length, with menat-arms arranged close together, so that one should not pass another, the best and most select being in the fore-front, the marshals with them, following their standards and banners’. On the wings at their sides should be placed ‘the firepower, cannoneers along with crossbowmen and archers similarly arranged’. Behind this first line of the army, the ‘principal battle formation’ composed of a ‘great mass of men-at-arms’ with their captains in their midst, ‘their banners and standards raised’.

Despite the impressive size of his army, the sheer mass of soldiers in itself presented a problem. Many of the men gathering under the king’s standard had been recruited by the commissions of array, like Thomas Longe from Ashwellthorpe, ordinary men whose military expertise and experience would have been limited. The Crowland chronicler observed that, leaving Leicester, Richard’s army had been made up of a ‘countless multitude of commoners’. To solve the problem of having a large number of troops without any military expertise, Christine de Pizan suggested that while the ranks lined up and were arranged, ordered by the constable of the army so that ‘none are to get out of order’, if there were a ‘considerable number of common people’ in the army, they should be ‘used to reinforce the wings in well ordered ranks behind the firepower’ and commanded by experienced captains. Pizan also wrote how they should be placed ‘in front of the major part of the formation, so that if they should be tempted to flee, the men-at-arms behind them would prevent it’. To ensure discipline within his amateur ranks, Vergil in his printed work, though omitting the detail from his original manuscript, described how Richard went further, ordering that his ‘scouts’ should patrol along the ranks, ‘flying hither and thither’ to ensure that his men remained committed to the battle.

Pizan suggested that in the middle of the formation should be placed the ‘commanding prince’, his principal banner held by ‘one of the best and important men in the army’ in front of him, ‘on which the formation keeps its eyes’. Behind the main battle formation or ‘principle battle’ should be arranged the rearguard. These were to be organised in order to ‘support those in front’; the rearguard should be composed of
yeomen on horseback, ‘who can aid the others if they have need of it’, holding the horses of their masters, while at the same time ‘forming an obstacle so that no one can attack the army from the rear’. If there were enough men in the rearguard, Christine de Pizan advised, another battalion could be formed, composed of ‘those who are most eager to fight, and are expert in their skill with arms’ who might have their backs turned to both the vanguard and the ‘principle battle’, in case the army came to be attacked from behind by the enemy.

Following Pizan’s advice, at the front of his army Richard placed his archers in a vanguard led by the Duke of Norfolk and Sir Robert Brackenbury, formed into ‘a most strong bulwark’. At the rear of the extended battle line was the king himself, accompanied by a ‘select force’ of soldiers. Richard was surrounded by his most loyal servants, his personal guard otherwise known as the ‘knights of the body’, including Richard’s household men, esquires of the body and household knights, described by Vergil as a ‘chosen strength of soldiers’. To Richard’s left and nearly three-quarters of a mile behind according to one account, a rearguard was to be commanded by the Earl of Northumberland, apparently accompanied by 10,000 men; according to the bailiff of one of the earl’s sixteenth-century successors, the earldom was able to raise at least 9,000 men from its Yorkshire and Cumberland estates alone, including 3,000 horse.

As Richard arranged his forces spread across the lower slopes of Ambion Hill, probably on an elevated position around the 300-foot contour line of Ambion, the exact position and direction of his men would be crucial. The ‘Ballad of Bosworth Field’ relates that, after raising his banners, Norfolk arranged the position of Richard’s vanguard and archers ‘speedily’, keeping ‘to the sun and wind right’.

The duke, by now in his sixties, was an experienced military commander, who had seen service in the French wars during the 1450s, where he had reportedly been wounded and taken prisoner at the English defeat at the battle of Castillion in 1453. He had fought at Towton, in several military campaigns in the north during the 1460s, and had been at Barnet in 1471, where he had clashed with the Earl of Oxford’s forces. Vergil, who would have met men who had known the duke, describes him as ‘a man very politic and skilfull in wars’. Norfolk also spoke French fluently, acting as Edward IV’s lead envoy during the
negotiations at Picquigny in 1475; he owned a number of French books, including the military treatise
The Tree of Battles
by Honoré Bouvet. It is likely that the duke would have been familiar with Christine de Pizan’s work. As he drew up his vanguard, placing the archers in the front rows of his men, with the morning sun rising in the east to the left of his position, and in the early morning still behind him, the duke was deliberately following the standard military practice set out by Pizan, who recommended that, in drawing up a line of troops, a commander should ‘set thy troops in so large a place that thou may move and turn all times of the day with the sun and have the sun and the wind on thy back and in thine enemy’s visage’. By these means, Pizan wrote, ‘the sun shining in one’s face troubleth his sight full sore, and likewise doth the wind that filleth them with sand’. The arrow’s flight would also be helped by the wind, and ‘alighteth more sore and beareth a greater strength’.

With their armies drawn up, both Richard and Henry made their final battle preparations by addressing in person their assembled armies, even if only a few would be close enough to hear them. In doing so, both men followed a long tradition of leaders attempting to inspire their forces before battle. Christine de Pizan had urged every military leader to do so, observing that ‘the good admonition of the valiant leader increases determinations, courage, and strength. For this reason he should often and firmly show his men the rightness of their cause and the enemy’s errors, and how they are obligated to the prince and the country, admonishing them to do well, to be valiant – promising offices and great gifts to those who do so – and, in fact, to give an example to the others.’ Richard’s speech was filled less with optimism than an abject sense of fear, telling his assembled troops ‘that the outcome of this day’s battle, to whichever side the victory was granted would totally destroy the Kingdom of England. For he also declared that he would ruin all the partisans of the other side, if he emerged the victor, predicting that his adversary would do exactly the same’ to his own supporters ‘if the victory fell to him’. A later sixteenth-century account by the chronicler Edward Hall, although embellished with details of the battle that cannot be substantiated, giving as it does the official version of history as the Tudors wished it to be written, nevertheless captures well the final moments before battle. Hall highlighted how
Richard’s oration focused on Henry the ‘unknown Welshman, whose father I never knew, nor him personally saw’, who intended to ‘overcome and oppress’ the country with ‘a number of beggarly Bretons and fainthearted Frenchmen’.

According to Hall, when Henry ‘knew by his foreriders that the king was so near embattled, he rode about his army, from rank to rank from wing to wing, giving comfortable words to all men, and that finished (being armed in all pieces saving his helmet) mounted on a little hill, so that all his people might see and behold him perfectly to their great rejoicing’. While most of Henry’s speech, related by Hall nearly seventy years later, must have been placed in his mouth for literary effect, one line in the speech stands out, reflecting Henry’s own uncertain predicament: ‘Backward we cannot fly: so that here we stand like a sheep in a fold circumcepted and compassed between our enemies and doubtful friends’.

No doubt Henry’s passing comment referred to Thomas Stanley who, despite his promises the day before, now refused to join his army, only making the cryptic comment, to be interpreted either way, that ‘he would lead his men into the line’ when Henry himself ‘was there with his army drawn up’. Still, as battle approached and Henry had moved his men into position, Stanley remained stationary, his army positioned between both forces. The ballads, which suggest that the battle was fought in a ‘vale’ surrounded by hills, depict both Sir William Stanley and Lord Thomas Stanley camped on the same side of the battlefield to Henry’s right, watching from hilltops where they would have been afforded an excellent view of both armies marching towards one another. According to one ballad, Sir William Stanley ‘removed to a mountain full high’, possibly around the hills sloping towards Stoke, where he looked down ‘into a dale full dread’ to witness the sight of Richard’s army; shortly afterwards Richard himself ‘looked on the mountains high’ where he spotted Lord Stanley’s banner, possibly the same ones that Stanley had ordered to be fashioned out of crimson and blue sarcenet for the French expedition ten years earlier.