As the first new history of the battle in a decade, this authoritative and eye opening account marks the 500th anniversary and brings our knowledge of the conflict up to date. Expert knowledge and detailed maps look at the key events, the 1135 campaign and the minor battles of Millfield and Norham, and a full profile of the respective forces and deployments, and convey the battle's course concisely and clearly. A key read for those interested in military history or the period in general.
Flodden 1513: the biggest and bloodiest Anglo-Scottish battle. Its causes spanned many centuries; its consequences were as extraordinary as the battle itself. On September 9, 1513, the vicious rivalry between the young Henry VIII of England and his charismatic brother-in-law, James IV of Scotland, ended in violence at Flodden Field in the north of England. It was the inevitable climax to years of mounting personal and political tension through which James bravely asserted Scotland’s independence and Henry demanded its obedience. In Fatal Rivalry, George Goodwin, the best-selling author of Fatal Colours, captures the vibrant Renaissance splendor of the royal courts of England and Scotland, with their unprecedented wealth, innovation, and artistic expression. He shows how the wily Henry VII, far from the miser king of tradition, spent vast sums to secure his throne and elevate the monarchy to a new standard of magnificence among the courts of Europe. He demonstrates how James IV competed with the elder Henry, even claiming that Arthurian legend supported a separate Scottish identity. Such rivalry served as a substitute for war—until Henry VIII’s belligerence forced the real thing. As England and Scotland scheme toward their biggest-ever battle, Goodwin deploys a fascinating and treacherous cast of characters: maneuvering ministers, cynical foreign allies, conspiring cardinals, and contrasting queens in Katherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor. Finally, at Flodden on September 9, 1513, King James seems poised for the crushing victory that will confirm him as Scotland’s greatest king and—if an old military foe proves unable to stop him—put all of Britain in his grasp. Five hundred years after this decisive battle, Fatal Rivalry combines original sources and modern scholarship to re-create the royal drama, the military might, and the world in transition that created this bitter conflict.
Osprey's examination of the Battle of Flodden, in which the Scottish and English armies clashed on 9 September 1513. The Scots were superior in terms of artillery and well-trained in the new Renaissance tactics, whereas the English deployed more traditional methods. Historically, this battle is well-known as the last in which the longbow played a role and the first in which artillery had a considerable effect. Recognized as the greatest Scottish defeat in history, it resulted in the death of Scotland's king. It plunged the country into mourning and extinguished Scotland's threat to Henry VIII's reign for the next three decades. This book examines battle, the different tactics of the opposing armies and the personalities of the commanders.
In England and Scotland at War, c.1296-c.1513, Andy King and David Simpkin bring together new perspectives on the Anglo-Scottish conflict from Dunbar to Flodden. The essays focus on the military history of the wars from both sides of the border.
The first comprehensive study of this war helps us understand how each country to defend the frontier, and the political issues which drove the Anglo-Scottish wars of the 1520s. The Anglo-Scottish War of 1522-1524 saw the mobilisation of tens of thousands of men and vast amounts of resources in both England and Scotland. Beyond its British context, the war had a European significance: it formed an element in the wider Valois-Habsburg struggles over Italy, with the complex systems of alliances spreading the repercussions of this struggle far across the continent and to the borders of England and Scotland. Recent years have seen the emergence of a renewed debate around the status of the Anglo-Scottish frontier and the wider political and social conditions which predominated in the borderlands of each kingdom. Although there has been a move to present the Anglo-Scottish border as a porous frontier where the populations on either side were closely connected, these neighbourly links imploded rapidly in wartime when frontier populations were co-opted into a national struggle. It is significant that borderers were responsible for inflicting the heaviest violence on each other during the war. Drawing on an unprecedented access to English and Sottish sources of the conflict, this book offers an important new contribution to both Scottish and English history as well as the wider military history of late medieval and early modern Europe. Aspects of military mobilisation, logistics, the defence of frontiers, the use of violence against civilians and wartime espionage feature prominently.
Boosted by the success of naval campaigns in the Western Isles and support for the Danes, James IV, in a misguided attempt to support France when that country was invaded by Henry VIII's troops, ordered the Scottish army across the Border. At Flodden he faced English troops under the Earl of Surrey, and although having a big advantage in terms of numbers, suffered a defeat so humiliating that it dented Scotland's confidence for centuries. James IV lost his life at Flodden, and also took with him the flower of the Scottish nobility, in addition to as many as 10,000 Scottish soldiers, both Highland and Lowland. It was nothing less than catastrophe. In this re-assessment of one of Europe's last medieval battles, Peter Reese considers Flodden against the patterns of both countries' traditional military rivalry and the personal animosity that existed between James and Henry. He discusses the men who made up both armies, their contrasting weaponry, systems of command and military tactics, and considers the major part the battle played in the road to the unification of Scotland and England. A number of maps allow the reader to follow the events of the battle in close detail.
While much attention has been paid to the commemoration of conflict in the twentieth century, this book is the first to consider conflict memory in the long term, arguing that modern practices were not created out of the mud of the trenches, but evolved from much longer practices. From the fourteenth century to the present day, this work analyses the changing commemoration and memories of British battlefields at home and overseas, from Bannockburn (1314) to Bosworth (1485) to Basra (1914-1921). Across these seven centuries, there have been a series of recurring post-battle rituals that have shaped and continue to shape memories of conflict. Three distinct but overlapping periods of memory can be delineated: In the later Middle Ages battlefields were consecrated by the burial of the fallen and often by the erection of a battlefield cross, or chapel or chantry to pray for the dead. The second phase began with the Protestant Reformation in the 1530s, when pilgrimage and prayers for the dead was abolished, and battlefield chantries were dissolved and many battlefield crosses were demolished. Memories shifted from the dead to the living, especially the bodies of surviving veterans who commemorated the conflict by their wounds, and from soil and stone to print and ink. The third phase began in the eighteenth century when antiquaries and others established new monuments on past battlefields. Monuments to survivors and the dead were established on contemporary battlefields such as Waterloo, once again hailed as sacred ground hallowed by bloodshed, fit destinations for a pilgrimage. Not just officers but ordinary soldiers began to be memorialized by name on the battlefield, culminating in the cult of the names of the dead enshrined by the creation of the War Graves Commission in 1917, and the idea that battlefields should be preserved unchanged as seen in modern heritage management. Drawing on a wide variety of literary and historical sources and taking a uniquely longue durée approach, the book explores and links memory-making practices from across the period to reconsider the ways in which battlefields are commemorated and re-commemorated. In so doing, it makes a unique contribution to a wide range of historiographical fields: British history since the fourteenth century, memory studies, heritage studies, landscape history, conflict archaeology, and military history.
"The themes of this book were addressed at a major international conference in 2013, and the expanded papers are presented here as chapters with an introduction by Ian D. Rotherham. The papers are grouped around several themes: Military Landscapes; Battles and Battlefields; The Impacts of Conflict and War; War & Peat in the Peak District; and Non-military Campaigns. As we approach the centenary of the Great War (WW1), matters of landscape, terrain, resources and strategies become increasingly topical and relevant. The relationships of people and landscapes, of economies and conflicts, and ecology and history, are complex and multi-faceted. For peatlands, including bogs, fens, moors, and heaths, the interactions of people and nature in relation to history and conflicts, are both significant and surprising."--
"The themes of this book were addressed at a major international conference in 2013, and the expanded papers are presented here as chapters with an introduction by Ian D. Rotherham. The papers are grouped around several themes: Military Landscapes; Battles and Battlefields; The Impacts of Conflict and War; War & Peat in the Peak District; and Non-military Campaigns. As we approach the centenary of the Great War (WW1), matters of landscape, terrain, resources and strategies become increasingly topical and relevant. The relationships of people and landscapes, of economies and conflicts, and ecology and history, are complex and multi-faceted. For peatlands, including bogs, fens, moors, and heaths, the interactions of people and nature in relation to history and conflicts, are both significant and surprising."--
