In the dusk of the March morning, with a strong north wind blowing in their faces, the clumps of Yorkist billmen and archers commenced to mount the hill. No opposition was made to their approach, but when they had advanced for one thousand yards along the summit of the plateau, they dimly descried the Lancastrian host in order of battle, on the farther side of a slight dip in the ground called Towtondale. At the same moment the wind veered round, and a heavy fall of snow commenced to beat in the faces of the Lancastrians. So thick was it that the two armies could only make out each other's position from the simultaneous shout of defiance which ran down each line. Fauconbridge, whose wing lay nearest to the enemy, determined to utilise the accident of the snow in a manner which throws the greatest credit on his presence of mind. He sent forward his archers to the edge of the dip in the plateau, with orders to discharge a few flights of arrows into the Lancastrian columns, and then to retire back again to the line of battle. This they did; the wind bore their arrows into the crowded masses, who with the snow beating into their eyes could not see the enemy that was molesting them, and considerable execution was done. Accordingly the whole Lancastrian line of archers commenced to reply; but as they were shooting against the wind, and as Fauconbridge's men had withdrawn after delivering their volley, it resulted that the Northeners continued to pour a heavy flight of arrows into the unoccupied ground forty yards in front of the Yorkist position. Their fire was so fast and furious that ere very long their shafts began to run short. When this became noticeable, Fauconbridge led his men forward again to the edge of Towtondale, and recommenced his deadly volleys into the enemy's right wing. The Lancastrians could make little or no reply, their store of missiles being almost used up; their position was growing unbearable, and with a simultaneous impulse the whole mass facing Fauconbridge plunged down into Towtondale, to cross the dip and fall on the enemy at close quarters. The movement spread down the line from west to east, and in a few minutes the two armies were engaged along their whole front. Thus the Lancastrians, though fighting on their own chosen ground, had to become the assailants, and were forced to incur the disadvantage of having the slope against them, as they struggled up the southern side of the declivity of Towtondale.
Of all the battles of the Wars of the Roses, perhaps indeed of all the battles in English history, the fight of Towton was the most desperate and the most bloody. For sheer hard fighting there is nothing that can compare to it; from five in the morning to mid-day the battle never slackened for a moment. No one ever again complained that the Southern men were less tough than the Northern. Time after time the Lancastrians rolled up the southern slope of Towtondale and flung themselves on the Yorkist host; sometimes they were driven down at once, sometimes they pushed the enemy back for a space, but they could never break the King's line. Each time that an attacking column was repelled, newly-rallied troops took its place, and the push of pike never ceased. We catch one glimpse of Warwick in the midst of the tumult. Waurin tells how "the greatest press of the battle lay on the quarter where the Earl of Warwick stood," and Whethamsted describes him "pressing on like a second Hector, and encouraging his young soldiers;" but there is little to be gathered about the details of the fight.[5] There cannot have been much to learn, for each combatant, lost in the mist and drifting snow, could tell only of what was going on in his own immediate neighbourhood. They have only left us vague pictures of horror, "the dead hindered the living from coming to close quarters, they lay so thick," "there was more red than white visible on the snow," are the significant remarks of the chronicler. King Henry, as he heard his Palm-Sunday mass in York Minster ten miles away—"he was kept off the field because he was better at praying than at fighting," says the Yorkist chronicler—may well have redoubled his prayers, for never was there to be such a slaughter of Englishmen.
At length the object for which Warwick's stubborn billmen had so long maintained their ground against such odds was attained. The column under the Duke of Norfolk, which was to form the Yorkist right wing, began to come up from Ferrybridge. Its route brought it out on the extreme left flank of the Lancastrians, where the high road skirts the plateau. Too heavily engaged in front to suspect that all the army of York was not yet before them, Somerset and his colleagues had made no provision against a new force appearing beyond their left wing. Thus Norfolk's advancing columns were able to turn the exposed flank, open an enfilading fire upon the enemy's left rear, and, what was still more important, to cut him off from all lines of retreat save that which led across the flooded Cock. The effect of Norfolk's advance was at once manifest; the battle began to roll northward and westward, as the Lancastrians gave back and tried to form a new front against the unsuspected enemy. But the moment that they began to retire the whole Yorkist line followed them. The arrival of Norfolk had been to Warwick's men what the arrival of Blücher was to Wellington's at Waterloo; after having fought all the day on the defensive they had their opportunity at last, and were eager to use it. When the Lancastrians had once begun to retire they found themselves so hotly pushed on that they could never form a new line of battle. Their gross numbers were crushed more and more closely together as the pressure on their left flank became more and more marked, and if any reserves yet remained in hand, there was no way of bringing them to the front. Yet, as all the chroniclers acknowledge, the Northern men gave way to no panic; they turned again and again, and strove to dispute every step between Towtondale and the edge of the plateau. It took three hours more of fighting to roll them off the rising ground; but when once they were driven down their position became terrible. The Cock when in flood is in many places unfordable; sometimes it spreads out so as to cover the fields for fifty yards on each side of its wonted bed; and the only safe retreat across it was by the single bridge on the Tadcaster road. The sole result of the desperate fighting of the Lancastrians was that this deadly obstacle now lay in their immediate rear. The whole mass was compelled to pass the river as best it could. Some escaped by the bridge; many forded the Cock where its stream ran shallow; many yielded themselves as prisoners—some to get quarter, others not, for the Yorkists were wild with the rage of ten hours' slaughter. But many thousands had a worse fortune; striving to ford the river where it was out of their depth, or trodden down in the shallower parts by their own flying comrades, they died without being touched by the Yorkist steel. Any knight or man-at-arms who lost his footing in the water was doomed, for the cumbrous armour of the later fifteenth century made it quite impossible to rise again. Even the billman and archer in his salet and jack would find it hard to regain his feet. Hence we may well believe the chroniclers when they tell us that the Cock slew its thousands that day, and that the last Lancastrians who crossed its waters crossed them on a bridge composed of the bodies of their comrades.
Even this ghastly scene was not to be the end of the slaughter; the Yorkists urged the pursuit for miles from the field, nearly to the gates of York, still slaying as they went. The hapless King Henry, with his wife and son, were borne out of the town by their flying followers, who warned them that the enemy was still close behind, and were fain to take the road for Durham and the Border. Only Richard Tunstal, the King's Chamberlain, and five horsemen more guarded them during the flight.
When Warwick and King Edward drew in their men from the pursuit, and bade the heralds count the slain, they must have felt that their fathers were well avenged. Nearly thirty thousand corpses lay on the trampled snow of the plateau, or blocked the muddy course of the Cock, or strewed the road to Tadcaster and York; and of these only eight thousand were Yorkists. The sword had fallen heavily on the Lancastrian leaders. The Earl of Northumberland was carried off by his followers mortally wounded, and died next day. Of the barons, Dacre, Neville, Mauley, and Welles, lay on the field. Thomas Courtney the Earl of Devon was taken alive—a worse fate than that of his fellows, for the headsman's axe awaited him. Of leaders below the baronial rank there were slain Sir Andrew Trollope, the late Lieutenant of Calais, Sir Ralph Grey, Sir Henry Beckingham, and many more whom it would be tedious to name. The slaughter had been as deadly to the Northern knighthood as was Flodden a generation later to the noble houses of Scotland; there was hardly a family that had not to mourn the loss of its head or heir.
The uphill fight which the Yorkists had to wage during the earlier hours of the day had left its mark in their ranks; eight thousand had fallen, one man for every six in the field. But the leaders had come off fortunately; only Sir John Stafford and Robert Horne, the Kentish captain, had fallen. So long indeed as the fight ran level, the knights in their armour of proof were comparatively safe; it was always the pursuit which proved so fatal to the chiefs of a broken army.
FOOTNOTES
[5] There is nothing authentic to be discovered of the story mentioned by Monstrelet, and popularised in Warwickshire tradition, that the Earl slew his charger at Towton to show his men that he would not fly.