Another Deadline Dragon and the Battle of Tewkesbury

I am sorry to report that I may be falling off the radar screen for a while; I have to do more proof-reading for my publisher and another Deadline Dragon has taken up residence until I am able to get it done. I’ll do my best to give him the slip and stop by now and then in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, here is a very old post about the Battle of Tewkesbury.

On May 4, 1471, the battle of Tewkesbury was fought between the Yorkists and Lancastrians. The victory would go to Edward and the hopes of Lancaster would die with their prince, leaving Marguerite d’Anjou to endure a living death for the next eleven years. When she finally did die, few noticed. The French king did ask for her dogs, though; Louis XI loved dogs.
As odd as it may sound, I enjoyed writing about the battle of Tewkesbury. The battle itself and the events leading up to it were very dramatic and most writers are hopelessly addicted to drama; it is in our DNA. I got to write about the wild race—with Marguerite determined to cross the River Severn to safety and Edward just as determined to stop her from joining with Welsh rebels and postponing their reckoning. The battle itself included an ambush, rather rare in medieval battles, a betrayal, which was not so rare, and a bloody confrontation between two of the Lancastrian leaders, which was beyond rare. Edward showed why he is considered a superior medieval general, Richard showed why Edward had entrusted him with the vanguard despite his youth, and George…Well, George was George, taking credit for ordering his men to kill the young Lancastrian prince.
Tewkesbury is one of my favorite English towns and I have loved its cathedral since my first visit so many years ago. I have never entered it without feeling a strong sense of the past, without envisioning the ghosts of those long dead soldiers as they huddled in the shadows and listened as the abbot sought to keep Edward from entering in pursuit of them. He would pardon the men who’d sought sanctuary in the abbey church—all but the Earl of Somerset and thirteen Lancastrian captains who were taken by force and tried for treason before the Earl Marshal and the Lord Constable, Edward’s eighteen-year-old brother Richard—who grew up in a hurry even by medieval standards. They were found guilty, of course, and beheaded the next morning in the town’s market square, in the shadow of the stone high cross. Edward waived the penalty of disembowelment, the gruesome death for treason since Edward I had ordered it for the Welsh prince, Davydd ap Gruffydd. Unlike the first Edward, the fourth one was capable of showing mercy to his enemies—and sparing a man a drawn and quartered death was definitely a mercy.