January 2006

Parish History Episode 57 Newer, Noisier Wars.

Though contemporaries did not know it, the age which we call mediaeval was, in the Fifteenth Century, drawing to a close. Thanks to the patronage of popes like Nicholas V (mentioned two months ago in this history), the “Gothic” styles in art and architecture were giving way, first in Italy, and then throughout Europe, to those of the Renaissance. The synthesis of mediaeval thought was breaking down, as the laity asked questions and evolved heresies. The feudal system itself was being threatened by the increasing use of firearms.

Such weapons may first have been used by the Chinese of the Sung Dynasty, who seem to have defeated an invasion by the Jurchen Tartars in 1161 with the aid of explosives. It was however to be about two centuries before such devices featured in European warfare. Cannons came to be used increasingly during the course of the Hundred Years’ War, but chiefly as siege weapons. The first extensive use of field guns, as also of hand-guns, seems to have been made during the Hussite Wars. In those campaigns both sides could blow each other to pieces with a clear conscience, for each army - the one fighting under the banner of the Cross, the other under that of the Chalice - was opposed by those whom they saw as heretics. A generation later, it was in the Wars of the Roses that the use of artillery came to England.

King Henry VI, it may be recalled (from the article “Cardinals, Kings and Rectors”, in the Signpost of August, last year), had ascended the Throne in 1422 at an age of only ten months old, and had had a most unfortunate upbringing. His mother had, one year later, fled to Wales, leaving England’s infant king as the tool of rival barons and bishops who each aspired to govern England in a Council of Regency. The boy king was, as he grew to manhood, seen by his subjects as nothing more than a puppet, controlled by those great lords, and he seems to have lost all confidence in himself, and from time to time took refuge in bouts of what appears to have been schizophrenia. The victories of the French across the Channel, which continued even after the capture and burning of Joan of Arc, and the steady erosion of the English possessions in France, did not help the royal prestige, but in the long run the young king’s self-respect was possibly even more seriously dented by his marriage, at the age of twenty-four, to Marguerite of Anjou, the daughter of one of the few French nobles still, at that late date, supporting the English claim to the French Throne. The marriage in no way halted the continuing run of defeats for English arms in France, but Queen Marguerite proved to be a woman of masculine energy who rapidly took over the government of her husband’s Court and Kingdom.

By 1453 the English had lost everything in France, except for the port of Calais, and of course the Channel Islands. The barons in their English castles seethed with rage at this end to what had seemed, in the time of Henry V (the present king’s father), a great and glorious adventure, epitomised by the splendid victory at Agincourt. Those who had personally adventured in France had lost prestige (it does no good to a warrior’s reputation, when he is known to have run away from a maiden), their castles swarmed with idle men-at-arms, veterans of the French wars, and they despised their weak and foolish king, himself the scion of what was now beginning to be seen as the illegitimate Lancastrian line. In particular, Richard, Duke of York, the grandson of Edward III’s youngest son, began to put himself forward as a more likely man to wear England’s Crown than Henry VI, the grandson of Henry Bolingbroke.

Eventually, as the old story has it, he and his supporters plucked themselves white roses, and made war on the supporters of the House of Lancaster, whose badge became the red rose. The conflict began with the First Battle of St. Albans, in 1455, by which the Yorkists captured London. Throughout the next five years a series of engagements was fought between the two factions. Many of the battlefields lay in Hertfordshire, which possessed the approaches to London, while others lay further North, in the Midlands or in the Vale of York; but much of the fiercest fighting lay on the borders of the Kingdom, in the Welsh or the Scottish Marches, where the most powerful barons had their strongholds. During most of those five years the Yorkists held London, but Duke Richard was never crowned, though he was more and more adopting the style of a king. Fortune seemed to turn against York when, in December, 1460, Duke Richard was defeated and killed in the Battle of Wakefield*. His army, now commanded by his son, Edward, was pursued almost to London by the victorious Lancastrians, who won a further victory in the Second Battle of St. Albans, fought in February, 1461.

Their triumph seemed for a moment complete, but the citizens of London, who had admitted the defeated remnants of the Yorkist army into their town, closed the gates against the Lancastrians, as Queen Marguerite’s hungry soldiery had won an unfortunate reputation for savagery and atrocities during their recent campaigns, not least during their march from Wakefield to London. As she had insufficient supplies to maintain a siege of London, and the countryside of Hertfordshire had already been devastated by the rival armies, Marguerite withdrew Northwards in order to sustain her armies.

Edward, Duke Richard’s son, then left London. He won a victory in the West, at Mortimer’s Cross in Herefordshire, in March, 1461, securing the Welsh Marches and their military resources for the Yorkist cause, and then swept round the Lancastrian army, into Yorkshire. The Queen marched North to meet him, and the two armies met at Towton, just South of Tadcaster. It was to prove the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil. Tradition has it that the Lancastrians lost forty thousand men, and though that figure is doubted by modern historians, it seems that they had losses of at least twenty thousand.

Ten thousand or so men must have died on the other side, together with innumerable horses. It seems that both commanders drew up their lines of horse and foot in too easy range of the enemy guns - and, thanks to the skill of the gunfounders of Sheffield, the Yorkists had the better guns. The Lancastrians were certainly devastated by their losses. Only once since then has a British army suffered so many casualties, and that was on the First of July, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

And the Somme was at least a partial victory for the British: although on most sectors the British didn’t even reach the German wire, at one point the line was advanced by several hundred yards. But for the Lancastrians, the Battle of Towton was an unmitigated disaster. Their beaten troops retreated even further North, to the Percy lands in Northumberland, which were still loyal to King Henry. Edward did not immediately pursue. He returned to London, where he was crowned King Edward IV. He remained in the South for three years, while fighting continued in the North of England. Henry Percy, Third Earl of Northumberland, had been killed at Towton, but his brother, Sir Ralph Percy, rallied the North for King Henry, and gave refuge to the King and Queen, and to their young son. Queen Marguerite assembled a fresh army, recruited in Northumberland, in Scotland, and in her native France, and continued the fight.

The walls of Newcastle were strengthened, to withstand an anticipated Yorkist assault, while Sir Ralph began to put the Percy castles of Northumberland in good order. He gave Bamburgh castle to King Henry, so that it once again, after an interval of seven centuries, became a royal residence. The defeated King maintained a vestige of royal state there, while he prayed in the chapel of old King Oswald, and read old books about the saints of old Northumbria.

Several Yorkist incursions into the North were repelled, but then in 1464 Lord Montague, a supporter of the new dynasty, came North, bringing the main Yorkist artillery train up with him. He stormed Newcastle, and then, in the Second Battle of Hexham, he brought his army up against that of Queen Marguerite. Once again the guns triumphed, and the Lancastrian forces were destroyed.

While her soldiers were being hunted down by the Yorkists, Queen Marguerite took refuge in a nearby forest, and then, accompanied only by Edward, her young son, she tried to walk all the way to Scotland, keeping as much as possible within the cover of Kielder Forest. At some unknown spot she was accosted by a gang of Border reivers, who saw profit to be made out of the remnants of her royal finery.

When they were about to strip her, she addressed their chieftain, saying, “Sir, I am the Queen of England, the lawful wife of King Henry, and this little boy is Edward, Prince of Wales, your future king.” Thereupon the embarrassed reivers, instead of robbing their captives or holding them to ransom, escorted them to Edinburgh and safety.

(Many modern historians dismiss this tale as a fable, but, true or false, it does perhaps indicate the state of the Borders before the time of Bernard Gilpin).

Meanwhile, while the Queen was tramping through Kielder Forest, the victorious Montague took his artillery train down towards the coast, in order to reduce the Percy castles one by one. Alnwick was battered into submission, and then Dunstanburgh was reduced into the state of ruin in which it still lies to-day. Then he moved on Bamburgh. Here, on a rock high above the plain, the garrison may well have thought themselves invulnerable; though, ominously, King Henry had left off his prayers, and sailed to join his wife in Edinburgh. When the soldiers of the garrison saw the Yorkist artillery train debouching onto the fields below, they realised that they would have been wise to depart with their king. Among Montague’s guns there were powerful bombards or mortars, designed to lob projectiles almost vertically up into the air, so that they would fall down inside the walls of the castle.

After a few days’ bombardment, the castle surrendered. A lesson had been learned. There was no castle so strong - not Constantinople, not Bamburgh - that it could withstand a siege, if the attacker was willing to bring up sufficient artillery. The gunfounders of Sheffield had proved more powerful than King Henry’s in-vocation of the ancient saints of Northumbria.

History would, from now on, be controlled by new forces. The Feudal Age was over. Kings and Despots who commanded the resources to buy big guns could now crush the ambitions of barons in castles : and, it would soon appear, they could crush the powers - the material powers, at least - of the Church.

*By getting himself killed at Wakefield, Duke Richard provided a useful service to future students of physics. They were enabled to remember the colours of the rainbow by committing to memory the outcome of this fight : Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain; or, alternatively - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.

Dick Toy

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