This is a useful book for the specialist and the non-specialist alike. It is valuable for its account of both warfare at the time and in its reconstructions of individual battles. These are excellent, informed, and considered descriptions, bearing in mind how limited are the original accounts. For these Santiuste draws extensively upon up to date interpretations. In all that I would agree with the positive views of most of the reviews, but would enter a few reservations about other things.
Like too many books on this period there seems to be an implicit bias that the Yorkists were ipso facto good because they were successful. Edward IV is not just the subject of the book but starts to become the hero. The same material could show that although he was successful he was in many ways reprehensible.
Edward could turn on the charm, he and the Yorkists were good at the fifteenth century version of PR, but, given the opportunity, he was often ruthless and indeed vicious in dealing with opponents. What we do not necessarily know is why he pardoned some, and what his thinking was in these cases. This is where evidence is, alas, lacking.
The idea behind the book is good - but we need more information to make the picture more complete. So not just Edward as being a successful leader because he won battles, but evidence appears to be lacking as to what made him so - not just being 6’3”, firing up his troops with morale boosting speeches and interpretations of the three suns at Mortimers Cross, and fighting in the heat of the fray. As to the battles he won - how much did luck and the weather feature as determinants at Towton and Barnet, let alone treachery at Northampton? Equally he was wrong footed on the military-political front several times in 1469-70. What we lack is more insight into to his training, formation or natural ability - its lack is not the author’s fault but it limits what he can really say.
Did Edward IV improve his military resources in terms of recruitment, organisation or weaponry? There is something on artillery, but was he significantly in advance of contemporaries such as Charles of Burgundy and Louis XI, though in this aspect he avoided the fate of James II of Scots. What was his impact, if at all, on warfare? Did he have time to think about strategy and tactics in the period up to 1471 when he was actually fighting battles? What, if anything, was his input into his brother’s 1482 campaign against the Scots? Questions like this are largely unanswered, and probably unanswerable.
Inevitably this tends at times to become another biography of the King rather than to fulfil its laudable aim of analysing his military competence and achievement. We see how Edward IV won battles but not necessarily why.
Posted 11.12.2022
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