A Virtual Tour of Towton Battlefield (Continued)

Here they formed their own battle-lines – a little less formidable than those opposite since Edward had only 30,000 men with him when he arrayed his army. A full division of his rearguard were still crossing the Aire, where they were delayed by the illness of their commander, John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk.

On both sides, the men settled for the night, in their lines, in their armour, those on the Lancastrian side for the second night in succession. And the weather was bitterly cold, a strong gale blowing from behind the Saxton ridge carrying heavy rain and snow flurries with it to drench the unsheltered ranks.

With the dawn of Palm Sunday, 1461. the men were relieved to stand and re-dress their lines, eat and drink what they had or could find and prepare for imminent battle. Each commander – Edward IV and Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset – kept their lines stationary. Each waited for the other to leave their strong position and make the attack.

Edward, still awaiting the arrival of his missing 5,000 East Anglians, decided to use the weather to "prick" his opponent into attacking. The strong westerly gale was still blowing snow and frozen rain into the faces of the men opposite and Fauconberg would see what he could do with his Kentish archers.

He applied an old ruse de guerre he had learned in the Wars with France, ordering his archers forward to fire a single volley and then retreat 60 paces. This they did and the half-blinded Lancastrian bowmen responded firing volley after volley into the blizzarding snow. All their shots fell short and soon they ran out of ammunition. Fauconberg then ordered his men forward again and they re-opened their own, more-effective fire, using the spent arrows of Lancaster to supplement their own quivers.

The resultant, continuing barrage was more than the ranks of Lancaster could bear and Somerset agreed his division commanders might move forward down the slope into Towton Dale and up again to the ridge on the other side, where they could come to hand blows with their enemy and push them back, off their ridge and down the reverse slope to destruction.

The lines came together, lancastrian troops charging up the light green slope in the picture' and a terrible slogging match ensued with no quarter asked or given and piles of dead and dying repeatedly thrown aside to enable the living to continue their awful struggle. Eventually the greater numbers of Lancaster forced the wings of Edward’s army backwards and Somerset’s men pushed forward on to the ridge itself. As the day lengthened, the Yorkist army was driven together, each line impeding the other and defeat could not be long delayed.

But then, as the men of York were starting to look behind them for escape routes and Edward was struggling to hold his line together, the missing division arrived. Norfolk led his 5,000 men up the slope from the Ferrybridge Road and they crashed into the flank and rear of the Lancastrian left. The weary men of the red Rose were pushed off their hard-won ridge by Mowbray’s charging column and peeled back, away from where the lone Hawthorn now stands, diagonally across the field, striving desperately to hold their line together.

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