A BOSWORTH FRAGMENT: A SOLDIER’S STORY – 23 AUGUST 1485
It is always wonderful to find a new source, and when it is an eye-witness account of a battle, the testimony will be of enormous importance. However, what has been uncovered here is both exciting and problematic and the issues need to be properly discussed.
In 1897 the scholar Alfred Spont wrote a lengthy article on reforms within the French army in the latter part of the fifteenth century, for the journal Revue des Questions Historiques. Three years earlier Spont had contributed another piece to the same journal on the evolution of the French navy in the reign of Charles VIII. Both were exceptionally thorough, using a wide range of archival material, the hallmark of his approach. In his 1897 article, Spont considered the war camp in Pont-de-l’Arche set up in the early 1480s, and then gave a brief, tantalising reference to a letter written by one of these French soldiers in the immediate aftermath of the battle of Bosworth. It was peripheral to his main theme, and he merely extracted a number of lines from the text and in a footnote gave the date and place where it was written.
It has not been possible to trace this letter. Spont was using a considerable amount of documentary material and his footnote reference accidentally collated the letter with another primary source, a petition for pardon (lettre de rémission) from one of the French soldiers, who had fought in the Bosworth campaign and then got into trouble with the authorities on his return home. There is an additional problem. The letter is supposedly written at Chester on 23 August 1485, the day after the battle. This is an impossible distance to travel, and what would a French mercenary soldier be doing there anyway? But there is a possible solution, if what had been actually heard by the Frenchman (with little knowledge of English terrain or geography) was actually ‘Leicester’ not ‘Chester’, for Henry’s victorious army was in fact here on the morning of 23 August, and this would have been an ideal occasion to write a letter home.
On balance, I believe that the letter is almost certainly genuine. It would be nice to think that it might turn up someday. As it stands, here are the two sections that Spont cites, with an accompanying translation. The first sentence says of Richard III:
il vint a tout sa bataille, lequelle estoit estimee plus de XVM hommes, en criant: ces traictres francois aujourd’uy sont cause de la perdicion de nostre royaume.
he came with all his division, which was estimated at more than 15,000 men, crying, ‘These French traitors are today the cause of our realm’s ruin’.
This seems to be a reference to Richard’s cavalry charge, and if 15,000 is an impossibly large figure, it is clearly communicating that Richard came with his entire battle line, a substantial body of men. I have taken the cry of rage to be a reaction to the French manoeuvre, which is indicated by the second sentence, saying of Henry Tudor:
il voult estre a pye au milieu de nous, et en partie fusmes cause de gaigner la bataille.
he wanted to be on foot in the midst of us, and in part we were the reason why the battle was won.
Here I see Tudor’s reaction to the cavalry charge of his opponent. He dismounts and is surrounded by a phalanx of pikemen. I am assuming these were drawn from the vanguard, for Jean Molinet says the Frenchmen had massed there to attack the flank of Richard’s forces and the Crowland chronicler describes Oxford’s vanguard consisting of ‘a large body of French and English troops’. Polydore Vergil tells us that Tudor was some way behind with a small force, a company of horsemen (i.e. Henry was probably mounted) and just a few foot soldiers. It was this vulnerability, for Tudor was still hoping for aid from the Stanleys, which opened the possibility of the charge.
Finally there is the comment ‘in part we were the reason why the battle was won’. Its modest realism seems authentic. I see it as a recognition that the French mercenaries had broken the force of Richard’s attack. The other part must have been the intervention of Sir William Stanley, but the Frenchmen had created the time and the opportunity for that intervention to occur. Once more we return to Richard’s cry of rage and frustration, ‘These French traitors are today the cause of our realm’s ruin’.Their manoeuvre, which he had not seen before and thus could not have anticipated, would lose him this battle.
These are fragments, and it would be unwise to build a whole edifice on top of them. But they do seem to be saying something important, and the scenario I have offered puts them into a possible context. It cannot be definitive, but it does allow a very different way of reading the battle.
The letter is found in A. Spont, ‘La milice des Francs-Archers (1448–1500)’ Revue des Questions Historiques, LXI (1897), p.474. I am grateful to Dr Shelagh Sneddon for her advice on the translation.