MILITARY CAMPAIGNS, DURATION OF

Although warfare between Englishmen for control of the government or possession of the Crown occurred from the 1450s to the 1490s, fighting was not continuous throughout the period. The military campaigns of the WARS OF THE ROSES were few, intermittent, and brief.

From the first Battle of ST.ALBANS in May 1455 to the Battle of STOKE in June 1487, adherents of the houses of LANCASTER and YORK engaged in thirteen major battles, such as those at TOWTON, BARNET, and BOSWORTH FIELD; several smaller encounters, such as the Battles of TWT HILL and HEXHAM; and numerous raids, rebellions, and assaults on castles. However, most of this fighting across a span of more than thirty years was compressed into a few active phases of two to three years, within which large armed forces were actually in the field for only a matter of weeks. The main periods of active campaigning occurred between the autumn of 1459 and the spring of 1461, the summer of 1469 and the spring of 1471, and in the autumn of 1483 and the summers of 1485 and 1487. 164 MILITARY CAMPAIGNS, DURATION OF Being an island kingdom, England had not experienced the nearly continuous warfare that the HUNDRED YEARS WAR and other conflicts and rebellions had brought in the previous century to FRANCE, BURGUNDY, and other continental states. As a result, England lacked the standing armies (and the arbitrary taxation that supported them) that had developed in France under CHARLES VII and in Burgundy under Dukes PHILIP and CHARLES. The only ongoing military establishments in fifteenth-century England were a royal bodyguard of 200 archers created in 1468, the 1,000-man CALAIS garrison, and the forces raised at Crown expense by the wardens of the marches to defend the borders with SCOTLAND. The important role that elements of the Calais garrison had in the outcome of several battles, such as LUDFORD BRIDGE in 1459, illustrated how nonmilitarized England was.

This lack of military experience meant that England lagged behind the continent in the use of ARTILLERY and handguns and in the development of military fortification.Whereas an avoidance of pitched battle and a highly developed siegecraft characterized continental warfare, the Wars of the Roses witnessed almost no sieges, no sacks of major towns, little pillage or destruction of the countryside, and a series of brief campaigns and pitched battles, the winner of which usually gained immediate control of the government. In hisMEMOIRS, the Burgundian chronicler Philippe de Commines observed that the English “were the most inclined to give battle” and that when fighting erupted in England “one or the other of the rivals is master within ten days or less” (Gillingham, p. 28). With sieges largely unnecessary and the problem of supply making it difficult to keep large armies in the field for long periods, active campaigning, as shown in the following table, occupied less than a year and a half of the more than thirty-year period encompassing the Wars of the Roses.

See alsoArmies, Recruiting of; Armies, Supplying of

Duration of Major Campaigns, 1455–1487*

Campaign Battles Duration

1455: 18–22 May St. Albans 5 days

1459: mid-September to mid-October Blore Heath, Ludford Bridge 30 days

1460: 26 June–19 July; 9–30 December Northampton,Wakefield 46 days

1461: 2–26 February; 13 March–1 May Mortimer’s Cross, St. Albans,Towton 75 days

1462–1463: 25 October–6 January Lancastrian seizures and Yorkist recaptures 74 days of the Northumbrian castles of Alnwick, Bamburgh, and Dunstanburgh

1464: 24 April–15 May Hedgeley Moor, Hexham 22 days

1469: 5–26 July Edgecote 22 days

1470: 6 March–14 April; 13 September– Losecote Field; Overthrow of Edward IV 64 days 6 October

1471: 14 March–27 May Barnet,Tewkesbury; repulse of the Bastard 75 days of Fauconberg’s assault on London

1483: 18 October–8 November Buckingham’s Rebellion 22 days

1485: 7–22 August Bosworth Field 16 days

1487: 4–16 June Stoke 13 days

Total 464 days or 66.3 weeks

*Adapted from Anthony Goodman,The Wars of the Roses, New York: Dorset Press, 1981, pp. 227–228.