The Battle of Tewkesbury

           The fourth battle I fought in was mere weeks after the third.  It was not two days after the battle at Barnet that word came to our lord King Edward IV that King Henry VI’s wife, Queen Margeret Anjou whose soldiers had nearly done me in at Saint Alban’s all those years ago, was gathering a rebel army in the west.  We had hardly enough time to rest before we were off again, this time to the west to catch the Queen before she and her army could cross into Wales. It was a hard and bitter march from London to the Cotswold's before we finally caught up with the Queen’s forces in the hills below Tewkesbury near where the river Avon meets the river Severn.  



When we were arrayed for battle the following morning, we saw that Queen Margeret’s forces were pitched amid a mess of lanes, hedges, and diches, making their position most difficult to approach. The King, however, directed us, his artillery, to fire upon the enemy’s right flank to force it by heavy bombardment to vacate its defensible position and, lo, it worked! Our volleys most vigorously pressured the Lancastrian right flank to attack, breaking their formation and drawing them from their cover where my lord King Edward set upon them with his spearmen. I recall wondering why the Lancastrians never returned fire. It was later that I heard that their artillery, to our luck and their misfortune, had been captured by Yorkists in Gloucester.  

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