My latest novel, Hawker and the King’s Jewel (Canelo Adventure 2022), begins where you might expect a book about the Yorkist dynasty would end: the battle of Bosworth Field and the death of Richard III. The novel has only one battle in it and this is the one, a battle fateful for my main characters and one that sets them on a new but uncertain path. How does one go about describing a real historical battle in fiction? What viewpoint should be taken?
What we know today as the Battle of Bosworth Field, fought on the 22nd of August 1485, was for many years originally called the Battle of Redemoor. The town of Market Bosworth is actually three kilometres from where we now know the battle was fought. In fact, we have probably learned more about this, one of the most famous battles in English history, in the last 20 years than we have learned in the previous 500.
Surprisingly, most of the accounts of Bosworth were written many years (or decades) after the fact and in most cases by men who were not even there. And as with most primary or secondary sources, some are more useful than others. The difficulty for historians has been in sorting the wheat from the chaff in these near-contemporary accounts. The advent of modern battlefield archaeology using ground-penetrating radar and other tools, finally pinpointed the actual location of the battle in 2010. It lies just a stone’s throw south of Fenn Lane and 600 metres due west of the village of Dadlington. Many artefacts have been found: lead cannon shot of the period, armour, arrowheads, and most poignantly, a small silver-gilt badge in the shape of a boar—Richard’s personal badge.
We do know the battle could have gone either way. Richard’s army of around 10,000 probably outnumbered Henry’s and both armies had competent field commanders, veterans of conflicts on the continent as well as previous battles on English soil. Young Henry Tudor, unlike Richard III, was not a warrior and had little if any experience of open battle. But his commanders took advantage of the terrain when they deployed for the fight and secured both flanks from attack. For whatever reason, overconfidence or impetuous fury over the rebellion, King Richard marched down from the heights of nearby Sutton Cheney thus ceding the high ground. He may have been better off instead by forcing Henry to climb to attack him.
Once battle was joined, Richard was confronted with marshy ground on his left flank and “hedgehogs” of mercenary French longspears on his right. This constrained the charge of his cavalry and the initial stages of the battle, after an exchange of bowshot and cannon fire, devolved into a brutal push of spear and pole weapon among the men-at-arms and militias of both sides with archers joining in, armed with sword and buckler. After some two hours of fighting, Richard’s vanguard began to break on the right flank due to the press of the spear formations. He and his commanders must have realized that the line would be “rolled up” unless some action was taken. Around the same time, by several accounts, the Earl of Northumberland’s forces to Richard’s rear, mainly conscripted townsmen and farm labourers, began to slowly dissolve, fleeing north.
The king must have known that his situation was fast becoming desperate. But Henry’s forces, under the command of the Earl of Oxford, had now formed into wedges leaving large gaps along their line. Several accounts agree that Richard and his mounted knights charged in, deep into Henry’s line and looking to find and kill him, thus ending the battle and the rebellion. King Richard himself was said to have lanced Henry Tudor’s standard bearer, unhorsing him, before cutting his way through with sword, hammer or axe to get towards Henry’s bodyguard. It is also believed that Henry may have sought refuge among the spearman rather than face Richard directly in combat.
But the final act that ended the Plantagenet dynasty was the intervention of Thomas Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby, whose army had been waiting and watching on a rise of ground just to rear of Henry’s position. Richard had probably been counting on his neutrality (he had Stanley’s son, Lord Strange, as a hostage) but if this was the case it would have been a dangerous gamble—and foolhardy. When these mounted knights and infantry rushed down and engaged Richard’s men and not Henry Tudor’s, the die was cast. King Richard was at some point unhorsed—quite possibly in marshy ground—and it is likely he was eventually cut down by a flurry of pole weapons such as halberds and bills. From the sources (and most recently the autopsy on Richard’s bones found in 2012) it is likely his body was stripped naked on the field and ritually humiliated, with wounds being delivered long after he was dead. Richard’s death ushered in the Tudor dynasty but the new king, Henry VII, would spend the next ten years fighting to secure his throne against Yorkist supporters at home and abroad and never felt truly safe the rest of his reign.
When fictionalizing great battles, novelists can choose from many viewpoints. Rather than opting for a “bird’s eye” panoramic description, I chose a more personal one. The viewpoint of one man, in armour, and in the fight. In a medieval battle, confusion reigned. Maintaining formations was difficult, issuing commands once battle was joined was doubly so. Wearing a helm with an eye-slit made peripheral vision a challenge. For the participant, the battle is a series of grinding one-on-one fights or a push against a wall of faceless opponents thrusting their pole-weapons and spears. Survival could come down to skill at arms of course, but luck would also play a big role. An arrow or crossbow bolt could end the life of even the most skilled man-at-arms or knight.
By taking this as the writer’s viewpoint, a sense of personal jeopardy and the fog of war can be recreated for the reader. By making the action personal, the reader can share in that sense of risk and danger, and hopefully, bond with the protagonists doing their best to survive the carnage.
