New to War of the Roses

[Nevyen]

Hi all,

I recently just found this forum and I have to say it has been inspirational, the medieval battle royal posts are just amazing.

I am slowly working on a dark ages project but I've been inspired to get into the war of the roses - I'm hoping I could get some direction on good resources to start with - also trying to get a sense on how the armies organized themselves and fought.

Cheers

Jon-Paul

[Arlequín]

Welcome to the forum Jon-Paul! 

The Wars of the Roses is a fascinating period, but suffers from a lack of period sources, which means there is no short or absolutely defined answer to your question... people have spent their whole academic lives trying to answer your question... and still turn out to have been wrong.

In my opinion, the best books for the period are;

The Wars of the Roses: Military Activity and English Society, 1452-97 by Anthony Goodman
The Wars of the Roses: The Soldiers' Experience by Anthony Goodman
The Medieval Soldier: In The Wars of the Roses by Andrew W. Boardman

The last of these is the most readable, but the first is the most in-depth and is helpful for insomnia too! 

If you just want a basic overview and a sense of how it all worked in practice, I have done a couple of posts on my  Medieval blog on the topic. Like any resource though, it is only my interpretation and opinions of what I have read, and not solid historical fact... whatever that is.

[Nevyen]

Arlequin that is an amazing start you have provided. 

Ill get onto all those books and check out your blog as well- thank you

[pocoloco]

Many thanks Arlequin for the link to your WOTR blog. And I must also get those books to my collection at some point.

[max]

There is also an Osprey book on the Wars, only a brief history in it but good to get a basic idea of what happened.

Welcome aboard by the way!

[joroas]

Yes, Anthony Goodman does not write for the layman, he is very hard to take, I ended up nitpicking odd chapters, there was, indeed, very little of actual soldiers' experience in there.

The problem is that the war is constantly being rewritten as new evidence comes to light, so older books may be out of date rather quickly.....  A result, I assume, of each administration quashing evidence of the previous incumbent, ending with the shabby rendition of Richard III that Henry VII made.

[Arlequín]

Not only new evidence, but older stuff is being re-examined... the Strickland Indenture, which has been part of the bedrock of how we thought retinues may have been composed, is now thought to be a mid-Sixteenth Century copy, re-phrased into 'Tudor-speak', as it uses terms which weren't 15th Century, making it pretty worthless for WotR. I've lost the link to that debate, it was a corker!

Goodman is not for the faint-hearted and indeed 'Soldiers Experience' doesn't do what it says on the tin (still good though). I should have said that if you just want to get into playing the period, rather than in-deep with the period, don't bother reading them.

My usual take on the Ospreys is that for equipment, armour and all that sort of stuff, they are excellent, but even the more recent ones are somewhat flawed when it comes to the 'history' and 'reality' I don't just mean that they disagree with what I think either.

When it comes to Late Medieval warfare, Britain was on the periphery. France, Burgundy and the Italian States were working with permanent (rather than 'standing') armies and selective semi-permanent militias, in one form or another. Troops were being drilled and trained, effective administration was taking place and 'factories' were producing 'official' state equipment.

England was doing the equivalent of 'bring your own bottle to the party' and despite certain contracted individuals maintaining very small permanent, or semi-permanent, bodies of men under arms, the bulk of the armies were still straight out of the fields, marched off and in battle within weeks of being summoned.

The English army which fought at Agincourt spent several months choosing, assembling, assessing and in some cases re-equipping, the men raised before sailing, yet most rules, lists, whatever, treat them and WotR armies as the same... it would be the equivalent of comparing the 1914 BEF with the later conscript battalions (before training) in a sense and saying they were equally as good.

 

[joroas]

Having read, and struggled with, Goodman over the weekend, I have just started reading Trevor Royle's book The wars of The Roses, a lot more readable and modern.

As for what armies looked like, well, as you have found, some of the brushmen on this site are fantastic.  Take a look at the Perry Brothers' version of Tewkesbury, for instance.  But a quick search will reveal a whole host of lovely units.

As for organisation, that's difficult as there was no real standing army.  You could go a long way by creating a few arrays run by some minor and major lords, who lined up on one side or the other usually as the result for a reward gained or expected or as a result of a grievance, pretty much the key to the oft-changing sides in the whole war.  Certainly the early battles were small, but by later standards of warfare, none of them was a huge affair.

[Vern]

I'd also recommend A Short History of the Wars of the Roses by David Grummitt, which is just out - although it has a text book feel (which it pretty much is), it's pretty good for 'in-depth' background.

[15thpanzer]

Welcome aboard Jon-Paul. Some great advice already offered by our more learned forum confederates. Goodman and Boardman are both brilliant in my eyes, especially as I am a certified insomniac. Conversely I did recently pick up in a bargain book shop a copy of Lancaster and York by the Cornwellian historical novelist Alison Weir. I found it a very easy read with a focus on Margaret's struggle to keep the conflict burning. I would and am recommending it. Glad to have another Cousin's War convert. Keep posting. Cheers.

[Nevyen]

Ok so I'm getting somewhere - given the large number of nobility major and minor involved how does one get a handle on who was present?  I'm thinking of either working on forces for tewkesbury or 2nd st albans- 

Is it a matter of building battles based solely on the leader of each battle? or can you get a idea of the nobles and their houses present ? 

[Big Martin]

I can recommend the Freezywater publications on the period - not expensive and the 2 volumes on the battles have a very good list of who was there whilst the volume on liveries and flags is brilliant on painting info. They're what my 2 armies are based around.

[joroas]

The sheer length of the wars and the number of nobles killed or executed, means that the team sheet changed for every battle.  I would suggest that you either pick a battle and stick with it or create a couple of generic armies and change the Commanders, the Perrys have models of all the managers.

[julesav]

Hi

I'd like to recommend Peter Pig's 'Bloody Barons' - it's a fairly simple set of rules with all of the historical battles configured as scenarios for the system, also brief painting guides for 'typical' troops.

If you are new to gaming it's a good general guide, a fair set of rules and you could replace the 30mm square elements with 40mm square ones for 28mm figures if you prefer playing with that size of miniatures!

The Freezywater guides can't be beaten for historical accuracy - but my group didn't get on with the Poleaxed rules, too many markers for our liking!

Cheers

Jules

[Arlequín]

Ok so I'm getting somewhere - given the large number of nobility major and minor involved how does one get a handle on who was present?  I'm thinking of either working on forces for tewkesbury or 2nd st albans- 

Is it a matter of building battles based solely on the leader of each battle? or can you get a idea of the nobles and their houses present ? 

As Joroas says, the list of nobles engaged changed with a degree of regularity, so picking one battle is probably best.

I'll agree with Julesav and Big Martin too about the Freezywater Guides... they aren't perfect, but they are perhaps the most comprehensive guides to coats of arms, livery colours etc. out there and a lot of work obviously went into them.

Who fought at what battle is not so hard to determine, the lists of traitors declared and knighthoods made, helps a lot, along with contemporary accounts in the history books... what they don't tell us is how many men they led, whose livery they were wearing and who stood next to who and where they stood... so guesswork and some common sense is needed. 

There are numerous exceptions, but as a general rule the most senior (or influential) nobles got the command positions in an army, with lower positions going through the ranks. Within a single 'Battle' I would typically expect to find troops largely drawn from the same area, or along the same line of march, except when it was necessary to detach whole contingents to balance lower numbers in a weaker Battle.

So taking Northumberland as an example, he's likely to have several thousand men available, including a Lord or two and probably a number of knights, as retainers, wearing his livery and not their own, possibly in the region of 2k men from York and the East Riding alone. Lords Dacre, Clifford and Neville were also associated with him and may have been paid retainers or well-wishers... with their own liveries, or possibly were leading Percy retainers from Westmorland, Cumberland and the Marches. In all, a small army in its own right, certainly the most part of a Battle for something big like Towton.

Somerset on the other hand was high-ranking and influential at court, but had far less concentrated land and thus less influence in those areas. His own retinue, plus those of his retainers would have been far smaller than someone like Warwick or Northumberland, even his father's household (who held more land) was a few hundred men smaller than Salisbury's in 1455. Somerset used his influence at court to win 'allies' amongst those who were powerful locally, like the Earl of Devon, who was to the South West what Warwick was to the Midlands and Northumberland to the North. Lord Hungerford was another major player in the South-West and a Lancastrian, so even if he didn't see eye to eye with either of the other two, for security on the march, they would have remained as a group.

15th Panzer is mimicking this in a way himself... he's started with Hungerford's Retinue and added to it from there.

Every force, from a massive army down to a company of a hundred men, was formed in the same way... a few men from one hamlet, a few more from another, some more from the main village, with perhaps someone of rank to lead them. A few groups like that combined with a local knight and his household men and you have a retinue. A Lord's Household, combined with a few retinues and you have a contingent... a few contingents... I'm sure you get the idea.