"Towton: Wind, bows and distance. Todd's Workshop" Topic

Well worth a watch, I find the Todds Workshop videos very entertaining and informative and it looks like he's having great fun!

YouTube link

Yep, he has done some interesting videos.

Not totally scientific methodology, but compelling evidence that the people of the time knew what they were talking about!

Unfortunate he quotes the 1% of English population died, which didn't happen. The numbers at Towton were considerably less than that.

The big problem with the video and the Towton story is that effective archery range is less than 100 yards, and that archers trained to shoot at a flat trajectory of about 50 yards. So why would the Lancastrians shoot off all their arrows at a range in excess of 100 yards, especially into a snow storm, at a trajectory they would know to be ineffective?

The fact that a following wind means arrows fly further shouldn't really be a surprise, should it?

I love watching this guy on youtube, he knows his stuff.

Trebian, the Lancastrians probably kept shooting into the snow storm because they were being hit by the Yorkist archery, so believing if they were in range of the enemies archery then the enemy must be in range of theirs!

I started a very lengthy debate here many years ago regarding the Towton casualties and why are modern day historians and scholars trying to dumb down those statistics!

@chrisminiaturefigs: The question is why anyone would shoot at that range in the first place. Otherwise your point is a good one. No one is dumbing down those statistics. There are no contemporary statistics, just wild guesses. The only physical casualty count taken after the battle would have been for nobility. The casualty and army sizes are based on biblical precedents, not actual counts of people or payrolls, unlike continental invasion armies. When I did my work on Edgcote I started with credible chroniclers giving 43,000 or 20,000 a side. Utter nonsense. BTW Even the Towton Archaeological teams doubt the massive numbers. Go check their website out.

And the big numbers don't fit on the battlefield.

Trebian, nobody will ever know the true number's involved in the battles or casualties, but it was widely proclaimed at the time 28,000 perished at Towton. I do not want to get into an argument on these casualties as we are clueless but i will say if the contemporary accounts of the times are rarely believed then how can these modern experts hold any authority on them.

@chrisminiatirefigs: We are not clueless. The 28,000 was not widely claimed at the time. The number comes from one source, repeated. The job of the historian isn't just to repeat verbatim what's in a source. The job is to look at all of the evidence and understand and explain it. The desperate clinging to the large numbers for Towton means we can't get close to what happened. We have a similar issue for all WotR battles. Have a look at the late lamented Mike Ingram's book on Northampton 1460, or even my book on Edgcote.

The largest battle in English history probably took place in Yorkshire, but was Marston Moor, not Towton.

An interesting couple of points made but I would like to correct some assertions regarding the video (not the history). First of all, the commentator makes it clear that 'we dont know how many people died at Towton' but says that 'some estimates' say that up to, (repeated twice) 1% of the MALE population of England died on that day. He doesn't quote that 1% of the English population with the certainty given above.

Secondly, the video was there to demonstrate the effects of wind on an arrow either shot with the wind or against it. The opening comments were there to set the scene and to engage the audience. I'm surprised that this has been misunderstood and misrepresented.

I am interested that there is some doubt regarding the 'Faulconbridge Gambit' of shooting at range with the wind against the Lancastrians. If they were only shooting at 50 yards, it hardly seems likely that the Lancastrians couldn't see their opponents, even in a snowstorm and that the wind would have had very little effect at this range and at a flat trajectory.

So perhaps the whole story regarding the arrow exchange is made up. Who knows it's a good story though. As for firing at 50 yards, the effective range might be at that range when it comes to accurate 'killing' shots but I doubt that the archers held their fire until 50 yards. Perhaps part of the tactics in using a long range shot was to provoke the other side to charge into closer range – it's difficult to charge and shoot.

Part of the attraction of the period for me is that we dont know exactly what happened and so it makes the period fun for wargamers.

Arcane Steve, i for one did not misunderstand the video, legend say's the Lancastrians feeling the sting of the Yorkist arrows returned fire until all their arrows were spent( and i previously gave the most likely answer to this), the Yorkist archers then collected those spent arrows and loosed them back at their original owners, the success of the Yorkist's in no small part due to the snow and wind blowing into the Lancastrians faces.
I enjoyed watching Todd demonstrate this as entirely possible but it was pretty obvious anyway, what flies the way of the wind shall be carried by it.
As to the rest of the battle i will believe what our ancestors said at the time , the archery duel and how it played out, the long duration of the battle, the lad in a bur tree, the ebb and flow, the despair of the Lancastrians on seeing their left collapse in rout , the terrible carnage in the rout, rivers of blood and bridge of bodies! And all the way to York.

It's an entertaining video But I am not aware of any authority, or even legend, suggesting either Yorkists or Lancastrians at Towton used 21st Century compound crossbows to fire ash (?) arrows. It does prove beyond any doubt that the parabolic mode of fire demonstrated is hopelessly inaccurate even with the highly-engineered crossbow used.

I'm with Trebian on the scale of the battle. One highly-researched modern site estimates the number of participants on both sides together as little more than the 28,000 alleged casualties and there is no evidence of the whereabouts of thousands of bodies, only the much smaller number actually found. Where did the 28,000 bodies go?

MacColla, you may have missed it but the crossbow had a pull weight similar to the average longbow. I would imagine a longbow of similar power would produce the same results.

As for research and book authors on Towton, they all seem to come to their own conclusions on numbers involved and casualty counts, but overall they always put out far lower numbers, why, because they are modern humans living in a totally different age and cannot comprehend the larger numbers.

As to bodies, large quantities of bones were removed from the battlefield at different periods over the centuries, due to them becoming exposed on the surface, and reburied in Saxton church yard. Far more are likely to be buried further afield as most of the Lancastrians were apparently killed in the rout.
There has been little development in the area and the only graves found was the one time at Towton hall during building work,funny enough despite the fact a mass grave and a few other bodies were discovered under the building no one had a clue they were there!

@chrisminiaturefigures: I think you can believe a lot of the anecdote from the time (although beware what is contemporary and what is not) without believing the numbers. I'm afraid you have it back to front on the numbers and modern historians. Medieval people rarely saw crowds in their 10s of thousands, so estimating large numbers was difficult. I go into this in more detail in my book on Edgcote that has a whole chapter about estimating WotR battle sizes. Many of the army size numbers in monastic accounts use biblical numbers as that's their reference point for writing and demonstrating their erudition.

@Macolla is right about their lack of evidence for massive casualties. There are no massed graves with hundreds of bodies in them. They have at most 40 -50 people. Also, note that under Richard III the bodies were dug up and buried in consecrated ground. They did not rebury 28,000 bodies – the consecrated ground isn't big enough. The "large quantities" of bones removed over time include Romano-British burials. The question of how many died and where the bodies went exercises historians a lot.

@Trebian: How many battlefields are there in history, where are all the bodies! Very few have been found.

I have stated my belief regarding the bodies in my previous post, but will go further.
You are correct Richard III had many of the bodies dug up and reburied, but i would suspect these were likely the main pits who's locations were common knowledge and likely in the area where the main battle took place.

As to the rest i would guess they are scattered in the direction of the rout, the Towton Hall bodies are 1 mile away and no one new they were there(a spot with human habitation).

What you have to take into account is the rout reportedly went on all the way to York, also many fleeing Lancastrians were not only caught in bloody meadow but at the Wharf where the bridge was reportedly broken down.

Overall the victims of the battle cover a very large area and finding any of the sites they were buried in will probably only come by chance like the Towton Hall graves.

In respect of "Where are the bodies?", this is an interesting read: link . The article is written by Anne Curry and Glen Foard.

Where routs take place along or across waterways there's a good chance that the bodies are scattered down stream, and that there are no mass graves. We know at Killiecrankie in the Jacobite risings that the locals physically put the bodies in the river to save burying them, so they may well be scattered over quite an area. Otherwise, once men get away from the battlefield, whilst the pursuit may take place for many miles, men will throw equipment away and get off the roads to avoid being caught. Also we know from other conflicts how physically difficult it is for men to kill people for a sustained period of time due to the exertion involved. Plus, of course, if the dead are scattered over a wide area, who went and counted them? We don't even have payroll lists for the armies, so it is probable they weren't even counting up the number of men each side had before the battle in total, let alone carefully enumerating those that died when all the victors wanted to do was get back to London and consolidate their hold on the throne.

A very fine link Trebian, it is a very interesting read indeed.

Overall Towton comes over as an unusually large and momentous event with all the legends and descriptions of the battle coming from word of mouth of the participants who were there, and it these legends we must rely on as it is very unfortunate that Medieval man felt little need to write books of their, shall we say wartime experiences, unlike in modern times!

Perhaps it is for the best Towton holds on to its secrets, lost in the mist of time, steeped in mystery and legend, it is what makes it so fascinating to study, ponder and debate!

The largest battle in English history

If you go for English soil, I assume this would be the final battle of Boudiccas rebellion?
Not many "English" around, of course.

If its on English soil with English participation, would Flodden not have more in total?

Just curious, not trying to derail the threat…

Well yes that final battle of Boudicca, Watling street might very well be top candidate for largest, but also for the costliest in life too!
Once again though it is even worse to confirm than Towton, we only have the words of the Romans as to how many Britons they fought and killed that day, and no one even knows where the battle took place!
When talking of Towton the real controversy is not so much how large the armies but the casualties!

Thanks. On first glance it indeed seems that the difference in casualty assumptions for Towton is really pretty large, especially compared to contemporary "climax" battles like Seckenheim, Montlhéry or Molinella. Far more deadly, too. A different kind of war, obviously – though still short of what Skanderberg did to the Ottomans when he could.

As far as Roman sources go, we at least have so many of them that historians can estimate (a bit) how much salt they need to read them.