RICHARD III AT BOSWORTH. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED? - READING MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY

In my quest in search for the true Richard III, I've found and read  an article from  Military History Monthly,  December Issue: "Bosworth. What really happened?"

I'm not a fan of wars, battles and military technical details at all, but this analysis draw my attention, starting from its title: What really happened? How was it possible that the smaller, weaker army led by Henry Tudor defeated the apparently well-equipped and more numerous contingent fighting on Richard Plantagenet's side? 

Last summer in July I visited the small  Church of St James at Sutton Cheney, in the tiny village of Bosworth Market, where King Richard is said to have prayed and heard his last holy mass before his death,  and I was also at Bosworth Field (see On the Footsteps of Richard III). The sense of sadness I experienced in those places, especially  facing that beautiful huge plain where the final battle took place, was deep indeed.  I'd really like to understand what happened there. What about you?

Battlefield archaelogy has transformed our understanding of how king Richard III lost his throne. Military History Monthly assesses the evidence in this interesting essay I want to share with you. 

King Richard III had somewhere between 10, 000 and   15, 000 men on the battlefield. These included his own and his leading supporters' retinues, plus shire-levies from London, the South East and the Midlands. Furthermore he had an impressive train of artillery and - according to the magazine - a number of men equipped with handguns. 

Henry Tudor's army was, instead, much weaker. However unpopular Richard may have been in some quarters, the Yorkist incumbent, based in the mainly pro- Yorkist and wealthy south-eastern part of England, was playing a strong hand. The usurper, attempting to revive a discredited and much-decayed  Lancastrian cause on the basis of a somewhat tenuous claim to the throne, had been able to master only around 5,000 men. Some 2,000  of these were French mercenaries, the rest  mainly men raised  in South Wales in the Tudor interests by Henry's uncle, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke. (From the mentioned article pp. 18/19)

But the balance was more even than at first appears:

1. Henry Tudor's mercenaries probably also included handgunners and artillery men.
2. The powerful Stanley affinity brought to the battlefield somewhere between 5,000 and 8, 000 men and their allegiance uncertain  were first kept waiting in the wings (one of the hypothesis - not in this article - states it was because King Richard kept one of Stanley's sons as a prisoner)   but then in the final part of the fighting, they supported Henry Tudor crashing the Yorkist forces.
3. Disloyalty contributed to Richard's defeat. The rearward battle commanded by the Duke of Northemberland appears to have hung back and take no part in the fighting. Accident or treachery?

Substantially, Bosworth was a modern battle fought by professionals led by experienced military commanders: Richard III on one side and the Earl of Oxford on the other one. But the details remain obscure and we  are left with the impression that  treachery highly contributed to the final result.

The article goes on describing the probable strategies used by both sides always reminding us that the precise course of the struggle on the Yorkist right is unknown.

Richard's army may have been divided into three battles, commanded by the Duke of Norfolk (with the "vaward"), himself ("the main") and Northumberland (the"rearward"). (...)His plan may have been to use superior numbers to envelop the flanks of the heavily outnumbered Tudor force as they closed - after they had advanced across the marsh to engage the Yorkist front, under fire from cannon, handgunners and longbowmen. If this was the plan, it was too obvious for a wily old veteran like the Earl of Oxford. (...)

Oxford shifted his entire army to the left and then hurled it against the Duke of Norfolk's men on the royalist right. Oxford's move was a gamble ... A lesser man then Oxford might have flunked it. (pp 19-20)

Henry Tudor

King Richard III

After reading the dramatic narration of those events in Sharon Kay Penman's The Sunne in Splendour, even these highly technical description conveys a certain tragic emotionalism to me.
What seems sure is that in the supreme crisis of the battle, king Richard led a mounted charge which would became the context for Shakespeare's famous scene. It may be that the king saw an opportunity to crush Oxford's attack or, having the Stanley already started their advance (if they had not moved before, they certainly did in the final phase and opposing king Richard), he may have decided on a final, desperate attempt to reach the usurperer on the other side of the field and cut him down. We know the rest. The sad, tragic end of a great king: King Richard was both the second and last English King to die in battle. After the victory, Tudor had him stripped and paraded ignominiously through the streets of Leicester.

I found the final part of the article, recognizing Bosworth as the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, particularly interesting:

"Bosworth was the last great battle of England's Middle Ages in more senses than one. It was a battle of a transitional era in society, politics, and military affairs. Feudal anarchy was giving way to a modern state. The Yorkist government of Edward IV had been a modernising one with strong support among local squires, yeoman farmers and urban traders. The Tudors, though they claimed the Lancastrian mantle, were in the same mould" (p. 20)


The source for this essay in Military History Monthly - December Issue is Sir Charles Oman, A history of the Art of War in the Middle Ages (in two volumes by Greenhill Books 1991 hardback or 1998 paperback). 
A report on the Battlefields Trust investigation of the Bosworth battle site can be found at www.battlefieldtrust.com