There was no time to argue. Henry needed to organise his army into battle now. With a clear shortage of men, lacking the additional 6,000 that the Stanley forces would have provided, ‘making a virtue out of necessity’ Henry was forced to make a ‘simple line of battle’, formed out of a single line with two wings ‘as best he could because of shortage of men’.9 With his archers placed out in front, under the command of John, earl of Oxford, on the right wing he placed Gilbert Talbot in command, and John Savage in charge of the left wing. The French forces, commanded by Philibert de Chandée, had been arranged separately from the English army, and had assembled alongside the right wing of Henry’s forces, stationed ‘a quarter of a league away’ from Tudor’s vanguard. Henry himself followed behind on foot; according to Vergil’s original account, he progressed ‘with difficulty’ and was only ‘surrounded by one squadron of cavalry and a few infantry’ that comprised his standard-bearer, Sir William Brandon, and other French mercenaries. A French solider later recalled how Tudor ‘wanted to be on foot in the midst of us’.10 In total, Henry’s troops did not amount to more than 5,000 men compared to the royal army of 15,000.11 Henry must have realised that the odds were stacked against him.
With the battle lines on either side drawn up, it was not long before both sides had caught sight of each other’s standards in the distance. As men rushed to put on their helmets, Richard’s men awaited the king’s ‘signal to advance with ears pricked’. Yet Richard remained uncertain of his enemies’ precise movements. As Henry’s forces approached the marsh between the two armies, suddenly they snaked leftwards, keeping the marsh to their right. It was an ingenious decision, with the marsh providing a natural defence from sudden attack. Until the army passed the marsh, Richard calculated, it would prove impossible for his own left flank to attack. Waiting, he held back his attack for now. According to Vergil, Henry’s chosen path around the marsh had also allowed him to have ‘the sun behind them’; if this was the case, then Tudor would also have gained the advantage of having sunlight shining in the eyes of the enemy.12
When Richard saw that Henry and his men had ‘passed by the marsh’ he ordered his army to attack. ‘Raising a sudden shout’, the archers fired a volley of arrows at Tudor’s forces; in return, ‘not slowing the fight’, the enemies’ archers returned fire. The melee of battle was well captured by a supporter of the Stanleys, who later set down his experiences into ballad form. ‘The archers let their arrows fly; they shot of guns; many a banner began to show that was on Richard’s party; with ground weapons they joined.’13 Soon the armies had drawn near enough for close combat to begin with drawn swords. As both sides became immersed in bloody strokes and hand to hand conflict, however, there was a sudden change in the formation of Tudor’s army.
What exactly occurred at this point in the confusion of battle is difficult to discern. According to the chronicler Jean Molinet, after Richard’s cannon and artillery opened fire, the French mercenaries seem to have been able to establish ‘by the king’s shot the lie of the land and the order of his battle’. Molinet believed that it was this opening salvo that allowed the French to urge the main force to be reassembled, and ‘in order to avoid the fire, to mass their troops against the flank rather than the front of the king’s battle’.
For a while, no one on Richard’s side seemed to know what was happening. ‘As if terrified because they suspected a trick’, momentarily they ceased fighting. In their amazement, it seemed as if the enemy were withdrawing, as orders were shouted that no soldier was to advance more than ten feet from the standards. The order had come from John, earl of Oxford: the earl, fearing that his own men were becoming swamped in the king’s far larger army, understood the dangers of an over-enthusiastic army that sacrificed discipline. At the battle of Barnet, he had commanded the Lancastrian vanguard that, having assumed victory, had later been hacked down and crushed in the thickening mist, as they confused their Yorkist opponents for men on their own side. Oxford was not prepared to make the same mistake. Now, his troops, following their commanders’ orders, ‘all pressed close together and withdrew a little way from the battle’.14
Any hopes that Tudor’s forces had fallen back were illusory. Instead, having collected his forces together in a tight formation, the earl of Oxford ordered his forces to attack Norfolk’s vanguard ‘on the one side’, possibly outflanking the royal vanguard from the left, while ‘others on the other side made a wedge’ which they drove straight through Richard’s front line, causing the king’s formidable line of troops to become separated. Acting as a co-ordinated pincer movement, ‘together they pushed forward and they renewed the battle’.15
‘There now began a very fierce battle between the two sides’, the Crowland chronicler wrote, describing how Tudor’s own forces separated into two wings, with the earl of Oxford, ‘a very valiant knight, with a large force of French as well as English troops’ taking up a renewed position opposite the duke of Norfolk. After ‘several feats of arms on both sides’, Richard’s vanguard was broken and soon dispersed as the French, according to Molinet, ‘obtained the mastery of his vanguard’. Norfolk and his son, the earl of Surrey, were now left fatally isolated. For Oxford, who had his own scores to settle with the duke, having lost his confiscated lands to Norfolk, there could be only one outcome. Molinet wrote how the duke was captured, and taken to Tudor, and was then sent to the earl, ‘who had him dispatched’.16 While this cannot be corroborated, another ballad account described how the elderly duke was killed near the windmill, dispatched by John Savage.17
As Richard watched with disbelief as his vanguard crumbled under the attack of Oxford and the French forces, something else had caught his eye. In the distance, the king could make out the fluttering of Thomas, Lord Stanley’s banner. Finally Stanley had revealed his true intent; he had chosen to bear arms against the king. Richard would have no choice but to order the execution of his hostage, Stanley’s son, George, Lord Strange. The Crowland chronicler described how, as ‘the leader and troops of the enemy moved steadily up on the king’s army’, Richard ordered that Strange be beheaded ‘on the spot’. ‘However, those to whom this task was given, seeing that the matter in hand was at a very critical stage and that it was more important than the elimination of one man, failed to carry out that king’s cruel command and, on their own judgement, let the man go and returned to the heart of battle’.18
Meanwhile the fighting continued on the front lines, described as ‘a battle of the greatest severity’. It was soon apparent that something was wrong. Vergil later wrote how Oxford and his men, ‘after a brief fight, also routed the others who were fighting in the first battle line, of whom a great number were killed in the flight itself’. Norfolk’s vanguard had been crushed, but Richard’s rearguard, led by the earl of Northumberland, should have stepped up to renew the fighting.19 Yet, according to the Crowland chronicler, ‘in the place where the earl of Northumberland was posted, with a large company of reasonably good men, no engagement could be discerned, and no battle blows given or received’. ‘Many, especially northerners in whom the king so greatly trusted’, the chronicler observed, ‘took to flight without engaging, and there was left no part of the opposing army of sufficient significance or substance.’20 Vergil wrote how ‘many more, who had followed Richard against their will, easily abstained from fighting and slipped secretly away, inasmuch as they were not desiring the safety, but rather the destruction, of their king, whom they hated.’ The majority of Richard’s army, Vergil believed, would have done so ‘from the beginning if it had been possible’, but had been prevented from doing so by Richard’s ‘scouts flying about hither and thither’. Northumberland, Jean Molinet observed, should have ‘charged the French’ but instead ‘did nothing except to flee, both he and his company, and to abandon his King Richard’.21 For the chronicler Robert Fabyan, the battle had been ‘sharp’, although ‘sharper it should have been, if the king’s party had been fast to him. But many toward the field refused him, and went
unto that other party. And some stood hoving afar off till they saw to which party the victory fell.’22
Northumberland’s inaction, and the flight of his men, was treason enough, yet other accounts of the battle suggest that the earl may have even taken up arms against the king. A Spanish account of the battle written by Diego de Valera, but based on a first-hand account given by Juan de Salazar, who was present with Richard at Bosworth, described how Lord ‘Tamerlant’, who had been entrusted with Richard’s left wing, ‘left his position and passed in front of the king’s vanguard’, at which point, ‘turning his back on Earl Henry, he began to fight fiercely against the king’s van, and so did all the others who had plighted their faith to Earl Henry’.23 Could this possibly have been the case? Valera later wrote how ‘Tamerlant’ had given his assurance to Henry Tudor, along with ‘sundry other leading men’ who had given Tudor their oath, that they ‘would give him assistance when they came to battle and would fight against King Richard, and so they did’.24 Jean Molinet also believed that the earl ‘had an undertaking with the earl of Richmond, as had some others who deserted him in his need’.25
Whether Northumberland and part of Richard’s army had actively turned against the king and taken up arms for Tudor, or whether the earl was simply unable to engage in the battle, trapped behind the marsh and unable to support the king’s vanguard as it was being decimated by Oxford’s attack, it was clear that the battle was already ending before any effective engagement had begun. Polydore Vergil later wrote how Richard’s own commanders recognised that defeat seemed on the cards, and how they ‘saw the soldiers wielding their arms languidly and slowly and others leaving the battle secretly. They suspected treachery and urged him to flight. And as the battle had now manifestly turned against him, they offered a fast horse.’ Richard refused outright. Whether, as Vergil inferred, ‘he knew the people to be hostile towards him and threw away all hope for the future that would come after this’ or whether at this stage he believed outright in his cause, Richard replied that ‘he would make an end either of wars or of his life’, a comment that drew even the admiration of the Italian, who noted ‘such was that great courage and great strength of spirit in him’.26
Vergil’s manuscript account of the battle was written over twenty years after the event, yet the moment when Richard refused to flee and instead fought on is mirrored in other, more contemporary accounts. According to de Valera’s letter detailing the battle, when Juan de Salazar saw for himself ‘the treason of the king’s people’, he confronted Richard, urging the king to flee the battlefield immediately. ‘Sire, take steps to put your person in safety’, he was later reported to have said, ‘without expecting to have the victory in today’s battle, owing to the manifest treason of your following.’ ‘Salazar’, Richard replied, ‘God forbid I yield one step. This day I will die as a king or win.’27
All accounts of the battle confirm that Richard then placed the crown upon his helmet, ready to enter the fray himself. Valera wrote that Richard then ‘placed over his head armour the crown royal which they declare to be worth one hundred and twenty thousand crowns’, along with his côte d’armes over his armour. The very act of wearing the crown, which the Crowland chronicler described as the ‘pretiosissima corona’ – the priceless crown – indicates that Richard viewed the battle as nothing less than a moment of divine intervention, one in which he would either emerge as God’s favoured and anointed king, or nothing. He had already informed his army of the apocalyptic choice that faced either side that morning, declaring that ‘the outcome of this day’s battle, to whichever side the victory was granted, would totally destroy the kingdom of England’.28 For the Yorkist dynasty, it had been battle itself that had won Edward IV the crown; it was at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross that God had supposedly revealed his divine favour in the three suns in the sky, an optical illusion of the light that had been taken as a miracle representing the three ‘sons’ of York. Now Richard hoped for one last miracle; with God on his side, he hoped for nothing less than a second coronation. Polydore Vergil explained that Richard, ‘because he knew for certain that that day would either give him his kingdom at peace again, or take it away for ever, he went into the battle wearing the royal crown on his helmet, so that, indeed, if he was victorious wearing his crown, that would be the day which would give him an end of his troubles. But if indeed he was defeated, he would fall more honourably with the insignia of royalty.’29
Richard was informed by his scouts that Henry Tudor ‘was in the distance with a few armed men gathered round him’.30 Now looking across the landscape, Richard himself could see Henry drawing nearer, recognising him ‘more surely from his standards’. It seemed that Tudor, together with his knights, was riding towards the king himself, the Crowland chronicler wrote, intending to make ‘straight for king Richard’.31 Richard suddenly became ‘enraged with anger’. Throwing himself onto a horse, he ordered that his closest cavalry men should join him in his final charge. Spurring his horse until it reached a galloping pace, the king and his cavalry sped towards Tudor and the men around his standard, ‘from other side beyond the battle lines’, making use of the little territory that had opened up between the battle between the vanguards and the marsh to Richard’s left. When Henry perceived that the king had launched his attack and would soon be upon him, he prepared ‘eagerly’ for battle, ‘because all hope of safety was in arms’.32
As Richard and his men crashed into the side of Henry’s defences, it seemed as though the king had the upper hand. In the first onslaught, several of Tudor’s men were killed and even Henry’s standard ended up being ‘thrown to the ground’ together with William Brandon, who was fatally wounded in his attempts to defend his master’s honour and keep the tattered pennants from being ground into the mud. Richard then confronted John Cheyne, his brother Edward IV’s Master of the Horse, who had helped lead the rebellion against him in autumn 1483. The six-foot-eight Cheyne, undoubtedly renowned for being the tallest soldier of his day, was noted by Vergil as being one of the ‘bravest’ men, yet even Cheyne was no match for the king riding towards him, ‘whom Richard pushed to the ground with great force making a pathway everywhere for himself with his sword.’33 The battle around the standards was both fierce and bloody: Richard’s own standard-bearer, Sir Percival Thirlwall, had his legs cut from underneath him, yet still managed to keep a tight grasp upon the king’s standard. It seemed that as Richard and his cavalry renewed their attack, the situation was becoming increasingly desperate. Henry’s own men, Vergil later admitted, were ‘now wholly distrustful of victory’, yet Henry himself, despite his complete lack of military experience, was still managing to withstand the force of the blows from Richard’s cavalry.34 It seemed that victory was now in Richard’s grasp: his foe, untrained in the arts of war, stood no chance against the king.
Meanwhile, watching the drama of the battle unfold, Thomas, Lord Stanley, and his brother Sir William Stanley had barely moved from the positions they had taken up at dawn, their forces arranged on the hills to the south, near the villages of Dadlington and Stoke. Richard’s possession of Thomas’s son, George, and the threat that the king might order his execution if either one of the brothers moved against the royal forces had made it impossible for either Thomas or William to join Henry Tudor’s forces, though by this stage Richard most likely viewed their inaction as treason itself. Sir William Stanley, having already been declared a traitor by the king several days previously, had nothing to lose, though he may have wished to follow his elder brother’s command. If Thomas, Lord Stanley, and his troops still refused to engage, Sir William realised that Tudor’s life was in the balance. If Richard were to defeat Henry, then William must have known that he too would be a dead man soon.
With Richard and his cavalry pressing down on Henry Tudor and his small detachment of soldiers, Stanley decided to act. Giving the order for his forces to thunder into battle, Stanley’s move came too fast for Richard. ‘Down at a bank he hyed, and set fierce
ly on the king’, one ballad later recalled, while another observed how Stanley’s soldiers appeared as a flash of red and white jackets.35 Richard’s small band of 200 cavalry were no match for Stanley’s 3,000-strong army. Nevertheless, according to Valera, Richard ‘began to fight with much vigour, putting heart into those that remained loyal, so that by his sole effort he upheld the battle for a long time’. For others, many knew that flight would be their only chance of survival. As Richard’s forces began to turn and take flight, the deserters were ‘picked off’ by Stanley’s forces, with Vergil describing how ‘a great number … were killed in the rout’. Still Richard fought on to the last, until he was simply overwhelmed. ‘On his standard then fast they did light’, one observer recalled, ‘they hewed the crown of gold from his head with dowtfull dents.’36
Only the Burgundian chronicler Jean Molinet suggests that Richard, witnessing the desertion of his army, and finding himself ‘alone on the field, fled with the others’.37 It was then that his horse in flight impaled itself and the king was ‘soon met by Welshmen, one of whom with a halberd killed him’.38 While Richard’s army may have deserted him, Molinet is alone in believing that Richard attempted to flee; the Crowland chronicler was explicit that Richard died ‘not in the act of flight’.39 There are several, speculative accounts of how Richard met his final end. The Crowland chronicler states that he was ‘pierced with numerous deadly wounds’; a later ballad described vividly how the king’s helmet was beaten into his skull until his brains poured out, while another Welsh poet believed that it had been a Welshman, possibly Rhys ap Thomas according to later legend, who had ‘killed the boar, and shaved his head’.40 The discovery of Richard’s remains allows further speculation as to what exactly were the wounds that Richard may have suffered in his final moments. While we cannot know what injuries Richard sustained to the soft tissue of his body, his skeleton bears witness to several severe wounds, some of which would have proved instantly fatal. It is certain that Richard was not wearing a helmet by the time he was killed: a cut mark to his jawbone suggests that his helmet strap had been severed, and his helmet removed. There is evidence that Richard had been involved in a struggle, for another wound, this time a diamond-shaped puncture to his right cheekbone, indicates that he had been stabbed in the face with what was likely to have been a roundel dagger. Usually employed to deliver a final death blow in battle and able to pierce through plate armour, the weapon seems to have been used in the act of wrestling the king to the ground: the angle of the wound suggests that it had been delivered from behind, as if Richard was being pinned back by his assailant.
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