The Battle of Bosworth continues to be an event in history filled more with questions than answers. Except for its outcome, few details of the battle were documented at the time. The four contemporary chroniclers all show signs of bias and are limited through second hand information. Not a single surviving eyewitness account is to be found. Thus, who actually fought, how the battle unfolded, and even where the battle took place has been left to conjecture. In addition, historians have only been able to theorize about the motivations of critical participants including Northumberland and Richard himself .
What we do know is that valuable support was withheld from Richard due to the inaccessibility of the terrain or through malice. At a critical moment, Richard, in a heroic effort to eliminate his foe led a small contingent of knights directly at Henry. William Stanley, seeing an opening led his troops in and cut Richard off from the rest of his support. Northumberland was either unwilling or unable to offer assistance. Stanley’s men were able to push back Richard’s assault and pick off the king and his knights. Due to timely intervention by the Stanleys and the lack of intervention by Northumberland Richard was killed and Henry Tudor carried the day.
Click here to see David Starkey’s Battle of Bosworth video.
Thanks to an archeological expedition led by the Battlefields Trust some exciting new evidence has come to light.
Click here to see Battle of Bosworth New Evidence.
The actual battle has been determined to be several miles from where it has been commemorated. The large number of cannonballs that have been found will change the way historians view the role of cannons in medieval warfare. And the silver gilt boar gives evidence of where at least one of Richard’s own men fell.
As historians and archeologists continue to analyze this new evidence some questions will be answered and many more created.
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