Richard III (33 page)

Even at this very last moment the King does not seem to have distrusted Northumberland, although he must have known that some sort of treachery was being planned. During the night a jingle had been nailed to Norfolk’s tent:

No doubt all the King’s suspicions were centred on the Stanleys. He sent an order to Lord Stanley to join him at once, if he wanted Strange to stay alive. The reply came that Lord Stanley did not feel like joining him and had other sons. Richard at once ordered that Lord Strange be beheaded. But his captains refused to obey the order, so instead he gave instructions for the young man to be kept under close arrest until he could deal with him after the battle. He realized that not only the Stanleys but some of those closest to him were of questionable loyalty.

As the King pondered his strategy, he was looking on a forest of banners. On both sides peers and knights banneret (such as Ratcliff and over a hundred others) had their personal standards borne before them as rallying points for their men. Banners were still the best – indeed the only – method of grouping combatants into semi-coherent formations.

Henry Tudor’s forces were so heavily outnumbered that he had only the sketchiest of centres. It was commanded by the Earl of Oxford, who was in charge of the little army’s tactics. Sir Gilbert Talbot had the right and Sir John Savage the left. Henry was behind them, with a pitiful reserve which consisted of a single troop of horse and a few foot soldiers. A frantic plea to Lord Stanley to join him received an alarmingly evasive answer. Even Vergil admits that the Tudor was ‘no little vexed and began to be somewhat appalled’. He was in what seemed to be a hopeless situation.

Looking up, he could see the dread King’s mighty host on the hill, poised to hurtle down and destroy him and his outnumbered troops. A vivid eyewitness memory of the terror on Mount Ambion above is preserved by ‘The Most Pleasant Song of the Lady Bessy’; the challengers saw how the Plantagenet Satan ‘hoveth upon the mountain’. Since the Stanleys appeared to have deserted them, Henry’s followers
had only two choices. They could run for it – and no doubt many wanted to – but everyone knew that their merciless enemy would pursue them to the death. The sole alternative was an attack uphill despite all the odds. There was just a chance that Richard’s narrow front would prevent him from making full use of his overwhelming numbers; it would be impossible for Northumberland to march down and round to take them in flank in time. Furthermore, firing downhill may have made the royal army’s serpentines even less accurate than usual. Oxford, a brilliant commander, took what in the circumstances was the only possible decision. If those with him could not match his bravery, they had at least the courage of despair.

Oxford skirted the marsh at the bottom of Ambion Hill, and then began to lead his troops up the slope. Richard’s archers shot flight after flight at them. The King, determined to smash them while they were deploying and before they could launch a proper attack, ordered the Duke of Norfolk to advance. The old warrior and the front ranks of the van charged downhill. In all logic he should have annihilated so puny an enemy. But he was faced by Oxford, who knew just what to do. The Earl ordered his men to group round his banners – i.e. around their officers – and not to move more than ten feet away from them, bunching the troops into a tight wedge which cut Norfolk’s attack in two. The royal soldiers were taken aback by this manoeuvre and, fearing a trap, withdrew to regroup. There was a brief lull in the fighting. Then the opposing centres came to grips again in a savage hand-to-hand struggle. Tradition says that the Duke engaged Oxford in personal combat and wounded him slightly, but that the Earl hacked off his chinpiece, whereupon a stray arrow hit the old man in the throat. Surrey was surrounded and gave up his sword to Gilbert Talbot. The murderous slogging match continued, though it is clear that the King’s troops were astonished by such a reception.

They had never before encountered, new Swiss style infantry, whose pikes fended off mounted men-at-arms with ease. Nor had they faced arquebuses that fired armour-piercing bullets.

Looking down, Richard must have been badly shaken by Norfolk’s death and by the enemy’s advanced weaponry. Plainly he was already pessimistic enough about the way the battle might go. He had had his cannon roped together to stop them being overrun by a more formidable force than that of his rival – it
was the Stanleys whom he feared. But so far they had shown no sign of moving.

Below, Henry was still waiting forlornly. He had taken up a position where the Stanleys could join him, but they had not done so. Without them, despite Oxford’s heroic performance, he knew that his defeat was inevitable. Henry decided that his last hope lay in throwing himself on their mercy; if they would not come to him, he would go to them. With his small bodyguard and his Red Dragon banner, carried by William Brandon, he began to ride towards their lines. He was taking a desperate risk. Had he reached the Stanleys, he might well have been seized and handed over to the King as a proof of their loyalty.

On the hill above, Richard was further alarmed by the Earl of Northumberland’s totally unexpected refusal to try to bring his troops into action. The Earl might not have been able to take Oxford in flank, but he could probably have prevented the Stanleys from joining the enemy by placing his force between them. In any case the King must have been worried by his own men’s increasingly poor morale; there was the possibility of large-scale desertion. As it was, he himself was over-excited.

Then Richard identified his rival’s party behind the unmistakable dragon banner cantering over the plain beneath on its way to the Stanley lines. ‘Now tide me death, betide me life,’ he may well have exclaimed like Arthur on beholding Mordred at the last battle. ‘Now I see him yonder alone he shall never escape mine hand.’ If he could intercept Henry, he might win the battle and the entire campaign at one blow. Yet in doing so he would place himself at the mercy of the Stanleys. It was not a brilliant tactical manoeuvre, as is sometimes claimed, but an insane gamble – his father had thrown away his life in exactly the same foolhardy gesture a quarter of a century ago. After a quick drink from ‘Dickon’s Well’ (as it is still known) Richard ‘all inflamed with ire’ ordered his Household to charge. The heavily armoured horsemen couched their massive lances.

The Knights and Esquires of the Body thundered down the hill with their master, under the banner of the white boar. The two little forces – the King had no more than a hundred men with him, Henry perhaps fifty – collided on Redmore Plain. At the first shock of impact Richard killed William Brandon with his lance, sending the banner of Cadwallader crashing to the ground. He then struck down the gigantic Sir John Cheyney out of the saddle with his axe. The Household did equally lethal execution, they and the King ‘making way with weapon on every side’, as Vergil was informed long after. Richard personally slew more of his rival’s party in the mêlée – he may even have exchanged blows with the Tudor himself. The latter’s men began to despair, though the inexperienced Henry, who had never been in battle before, was fighting better than they had expected. But in a matter of minutes he too would have been cut down.

Only a short distance away, barely more than half a mile off, Sir William Stanley could see what was about to happen. If Henry died, he himself would be doomed. (Ironically the new Tudor King was to behead him ten years later.) With his 3,000 men in their red jerkins shouting ‘Stanley! Stanley!’, he charged to the rescue – just in time.

The Royal Household was overwhelmed. Robert Brackenbury had already been slain by his old friend Walter Hungerford, one of the Tudor’s escorts. Others of the henchmen fell – Richard Ratcliff, John Kendall, Robert Percy, Walter Hopton – and the King was told that he must flee. He refused. ‘I will die King of England,’ he replied fiercely, ‘I will not budge a foot!’ His horse was killed under him and somehow a fresh horse was brought to him, but he would not mount it. With wolfish courage he went on swinging that murderous axe on foot. The far from uncritical Croyland writer says that at last, ‘pierced with numerous and deadly wounds, he fell in the field like a brave and valiant Prince’. Even the violently hostile Rous tells us, ‘He bore himself like a noble soldier and, despite his little body and feeble strength, honourably defended himself to his last breath, shouting, again and again that he was betrayed and crying “Treason! Treason! Treason!” ’ Vergil too admits that ‘King Richard alone was killed fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies.’

Molinet says that ‘when [Richard] found himself alone on the battlefield, he rode after the others, but his horse galloped into a marsh from which it could not free itself and then a man from Wales came up and struck him dead with a halberd.’
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Molinet is borne out by the Welsh poet Guto’r Glyn, who writes how the boar’s head was shaved by Rhys ap Thomas, although it is more likely that one of Rhys’s foot soldiers did it – a halberd was not a gentleman’s weapon. Dismounting and finding himself surrounded, Richard had taken off his helmet, supposing that even rebels would respect a sovereign. However, instead of deference, they aimed swords, pole-axes and halberds at his unprotected head, inflicting terrible wounds. Streaming with blood, he fought back until a final halberd blow ended his agony and the King of England went down into the mud.

The royal army fled immediately after Richard’s death. Oxford
pursued, killing many. In all, nearly a thousand men died in the battle. Lovell escaped, but Catesby was captured – to be executed shortly afterwards. One of the Stanleys placed the King’s coronet on Henry VII’s head. Northumberland rode down from the hill to kneel and pay homage, and to be put under arrest. The battle of Bosworth (as it was later named) had lasted only two hours. Perhaps it was over by as early as 8 o’clock in the morning.

The Croyland chronicler was revolted by the bestial way in which Richard’s corpse was treated – after it had been stripped, insults were heaped on it ‘not exactly in accordance with the laws of humanity’. More speaks of it being ‘hacked and hewed of his enemies’ hands, harried on horseback dead, his hair in despite torn and tugged like a cur dog’ Someone stabbed him through the right buttock with a dagger or a sword, as further humiliation.

A halter was strung round the dead monarch’s neck. Finally the mangled remains, covered in blood and mud, were taken back to Leicester for a pauper’s burial on the crupper of Blanc Sanglier’s horse, the pursuivant being made to carry his late master’s banner of the white boar in mockery.
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For two days it was hung up naked and for the first time men other than valets or tailors could see his crookback. Then it was thrown into a rough, hastily dug grave at the Grey Friars priory – the beggars’ church – without shroud, coffin or requiem.

The
Great Chronicle of London
records wonderingly,