"What contingents of men-at-arms fought on horseback." Topic
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Paskal | 01 Nov 2020 10:35 a.m. PST |
Good morning all , At Bosworth, what contingents of men-at-arms fought on horseback. Thank you. |
MajorB | 01 Nov 2020 11:35 a.m. PST |
Richard was almost certainly mounted. As commander he needed to be seen. As to how many others accompanied him in that final charge is open to debate. IMHO it was probably no more than his immediate bodyguard. |
Paskal | 01 Nov 2020 11:11 p.m. PST |
For the others and for his adversaries we know nothing? |
robert piepenbrink | 02 Nov 2020 1:24 p.m. PST |
We're lucky to know that much, Paskal. You could print out every primary source on Bosworth, and it would be shorter than most "back of the envelope" rules. You could print out every primary source for every battle of the WOTR, and it wouldn't make a decent pamphlet. Everything else is extrapolation. We read ballads and hope they knew something. We know they did X earlier (or later) so presumably they did X at this battle. We find a cannonball on a battlefield, so we guess at which side had a cannon. Some foreigner who may or may not have known what he was talking about says "the English do this/do not do that" and we use this to speculate about some battle he may never have seen. The general rule in the 15th Century is that the English fought on foot unless we have specific evidence to the contrary. I fully agree with that as a general rule, but our sources are not sufficient to be sure we know all the exceptions. Richard might have had a mounted reserve of a few hundred. Some of the Stanleys might have made a mounted charge. Richmond (Henry VII) might have had a mounted bodyguard. We simply don't know. The level of detail you keep asking for is beyond what known surviving source material can provide. |
dapeters | 02 Nov 2020 2:06 p.m. PST |
And of those sources so many of them were written for financial accounting purposes. |
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