The Battle of Towton 1461

Yesterday was the 561st anniversary of what was one of the more important, and probably the bloodiest, battles in English history, that of Towton fought on a snowy Palm Sunday in 1461. At stake was who was to occupy the throne, the Lancastrian King Henry VI or the Yorkist King Edward IV and also a major settling of scores between the rival nobles and their retainers with their opponents.

I have posted about the battle previously in 

Palm Sunday Field 1461 and Towton links from 2010, The Battle of Towton - 550th anniversary in 2011, Towton - remembering the dead in 2012, Victims of the Battle of Towton in 2014 and Palm Sunday Field in 2015. Last year I added to this series two more posts which can be seen at The Battle of Towton 1461 and, with a set of links to online presentations, at Towton videos

Witnessing as we are today the horrors of contemporary aggression against the people of the Ukraine and the destruction of lives, of families, of communities and of cities, if not yet, of a country one is inevitably faced by questions about the morality or immorality of warfare. If the Russian action in Ukraine is patently immoral in its motivation and destructiveness how do we look at past conflicts, be they a few years ago, fifty or more years ago or five hundred years ago? 

The Wars of the Roses were, of course, fought between quasi-professional armies and with little civilian involvement, there were no bombardments of cities or the mass destruction modernity can bring. Nonetheless warfare is warfare and human suffering is human suffering.

In a recent post to their members The Tewkesbury Battlefield Society offered these thoughts on how one can link that important and bloody battle in 1471 and what is happening today. It is, I think, worth sharing:

The Society has always been at pains to stress its position that the Battle of Tewkesbury is to be commemorated, and certainly not celebrated. For nearly all the participants it would have been by far the most pointless and frightening episode in their lives, even if they survived it. They were ‘cannon fodder’ in more recent parlance. Even at the distance of five hundred and fifty years there is ample evidence of post-traumatic stress amongst the survivors, something they have in common with ‘cannon fodder’ in the thousands of conflicts since. 

Whilst some wars might be claimed to have some moral purpose, and have moved freedom forward, or stopped it being moved back, most, and that definitely includes the Wars of the Roses, did not. They were about the egos of people who are simply seeking power. They were about the right of the country’s elite to dominate and exploit. Fourteen short years after the sacrifices of 1471 there was another battle and another regime took power, with no good consequences for most of the population.

Last year we were marking the anniversary, following the progress of the armies towards the battle and we had correspondence with members in Ukraine, discussing the similarities with events in Ukraine’s past. In the fifteenth century, the country was part of the Lithuanian state, later to be disrupted by the Polish-Lithuanian Union, which brought intolerance of their Eastern Orthodox religion and the inevitable persecution of believers.

It has been said many, many, times, but there is no other way of saying it. We all thought that the war against Hitler was to be the last war in Europe caused by the obsessions of a megalomaniac; that civilisation had taken us beyond that. We now know how wrong we were. Mr Putin obsesses on past glories and past empires. Someone less consumed with his imagined grievances would have taken the long view and realised that winning the peace is more important than winning the war, and subjugating a nation with terror is a very short-term victory which in the longer term will have consequences. 

There is small comfort to the Ukrainian people in knowing that the population of the rest of Europe are feeling impotent but doing what they can to support them, and from here in Tewkesbury it seems so little. Maybe just getting the message to Ukraine that we are outraged by the hell they have been so unjustly put through by the latest in a long line of despots who think that destroying proud and ancient cities and murdering their people is acceptable whilst he lies to the people of Russia about what his army are really doing to those towns and those people. Maybe some of our small Russian readership will see this as well  and understand the outrage which their leader has created in every other corner of Europe.

Sunday March 6th, was Forgiveness Day in the Russian Orthodox Church’s calendar. These sins will take a very, very, long time to forgive, which is a tragedy for the whole world.  

I am not a pacifist - as a historian one knows only too well that sometimes the use of military force is necessary and that is the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church. 

The current situation in the Ukraine can focus our minds, can horrify us, can, and should, evoke our prayers and charity. As we reflect on that it can also enable us to also feel the human pulse of past conflicts, the fears, and the bravery of young, and not so young, men

facing what might be, were to be for some, their last hours. The terrors of being at Towton or Tewkesbury in 1461 or 1471 feel just that bit closer, just that but more immediate, just that more human than being just another date in a history book, To those who were there the uncertainty and the fear, the adrenaline rush and the exhaustion, and the conflict of inner turmoil was doubtless every bit as intense as that being felt in Kyiv and Kharkiv today.

Pray for peace, pray for those who are engaged in fighting, pray for the departed.