Both armies were divided into three battles (divisions), four hours were spent as the huge masses of men lined up in the blizzard conditions and awaited the final stragglers. Finally Lord Fauconberg took the initiative as the wind changed direction and blew the snow into the Lancastrians' faces. He led his archers forth and sent a rain of arrows into the massed Lancastrian ranks. Visibility was bad and with the wind blowing in their faces the returning volley of Lancastrian arrows fell way short of their targets. As casualties mounted the Lancastrian army knew the only way to stop the slaughter was to engage the enemy (in Towton 1461, the author calculates that Fauconberg would have been sending about 120,000 arrows a minute into the enemy ranks). In a last clever move, Fauconberg ordered his men (who had loosed all their own arrows by now) to retrieve some of the enemy shafts in the turf before them, while leaving some as obstacles for the oncoming Lancastrians.

Edward gathered his divisions and crossed the Trent, although he lacked Norfolk's eastern contingent, which lagged behind, probably because of the earl's failing health. Edward stormed across the Don River and on the cold, blustery Friday of March 27 approached Ferrybridge. It was plainly vital to secure a bridgehead across the Aire, and Edward sent out a party commanded by John Radcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter, to secure it. After driving back the Lancastrians, Fitzwalter found the bridge broken up, but his men had replaced the planks by the end of the day. With Ferrybridge seemingly secured, the Yorkists camped on the north bank that evening, perhaps lulled into a sense of well-being by the lack of enemy activity. That complacency cost Fitzwalter his life, along with that of Warwick's bastard brother, Sir Richard Jenny of Salisbury, and numerous others, when a 500-man raiding party led by Lord Clifford attacked his headquarters at dawn on the 28th. Chronicler William Gregory placed Warwick in the thick of that action, wounded in the thigh by an arrow as he rallied the survivors, then retreating back across the river. Joining Edward at Pontefract Castle, Warwick delivered a histrionic report of the debacle. Undismayed, the young king elected to retaliate by sending Warwick back to Ferrybridge at noon, but only as a feint. While Warwick kept Clifford engaged, Fauconberg led a strong party that included the veteran captains Sir Richard Blount and Robert Horne of Kent across the swollen Aire, four miles upstream at Castleford, to fall upon Clifford's right flank. A sprawling, untidy melee spread northward from the river's banks as Clifford sought a fighting withdrawal, noticeably unaided by the main Lancastrian force, which could scarcely have been unaware of what was happening. Fauconberg attacked the retreating Lancastrians in Dinting Dale and overwhelmed the survivors. Clifford, it was said, had injudiciously chosen to remove his neckguard, or bevor, and an arrow ended his life. His 7-year-old son, who may have been present, survived to fight at Flodden more than half a century later. John Neville, a knight from the Lancastrian side of that clan, also fell in the skirmish. Somerset has been censured for not supporting Clifford and for subsequently remaining inert while the Yorkist forces were still vulnerably strung out along the line of march. Edward, in the meantime, had no intention of fighting anymore that day. Capitalizing on Fauconberg's victory, he led the main body of his army north again, probably crossing at Castleford, rejoining his uncle later in the day. By the time darkness fell, Edward's vanguard had moved up as far as Saxton, but the rest still struggled behind. He had left his baggage train at Ferrybridge, so his army spent the night with neither food nor protection. Both armies were to spend an uncomfortable night in the open in freezing wind laced with snow, their pickets probably only half a mile apart. The ground on which Somerset elected to make his stand, and from which he seemed so unwilling to budge, lies south of York, with the Wharfe River running behind and the Ouse to the east. York itself, capital of the north, could not be surrendered, and to retreat farther would mean crossing the windswept barrier of the north Yorkshire moors -- an admission of defeat.

It is possible that Fauconberg commanded the Yorkist van, with Edward on the left and Warwick on the right. For Lancaster, Somerset and Exeter led the right battle, Northumberland -- who carried King Henry's banner -- and Trollope commanded the vanguard, and Dacre the left. As the Yorkist battles jostled along the ridge, at about 10 a.m. a strong southerly wind brought the first of several brisk showers of snow and sleet, driven over the exposed heath into the faces of the waiting Lancastrians. Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, wrote that the outcome remained long in doubt.

The casualties mounted, and the weather deteriorated. Both sides declared brief truces to clear the field, so they could continue fighting without tripping over the dead and wounded. At one point Lord Dacre removed his helmet to get a drink, only to be shot dead by a Yorkist archer. By midday, the outnumbered Yorkists were in serious trouble, though there is some suggestion that Northumberland had been slow to engage, and thus the pressure on them was uncoordinated. Deliverance for the Yorkists, in the form of Norfolk's long-awaited banner, appeared through the swirling snowflakes. Norfolk himself had fallen ill at Pontefract Castle on the evening of March 28 (he would die in November). But he marched his division across the Aire on the morning of the 29th and followed the old London road through Sherburn in Elmet, past Dinting Dale, and finally deployed on the Yorkist right. Outflanked, Somerset had to redeploy men from his center and right battles to counter the threat to his left. For Edward, the crisis had passed, though he might be excused if he did not immediately notice. Somerset still had plenty of fight left, and his men battled on.

Somerset and Exeter escaped, but the toll on Lancastrian gentry was high. Besides Clifford and Dacre, Northumberland succumbed to his wounds, and Lords Neville de Mauley and Welles also died on the field. Thomas Courtney, Earl of Devon, was taken prisoner, and his head soon replaced that of Edward's father on Micklegate. The Yorkists lost Lord Fitzwalter and Robert Horne. Overall casualties are impossible to confirm, but 16th-century historian Polydore Virgil estimated them at 20,000. Chronicler Edward Hall gave the precise but unsubstantiated figure of 36,776. The Paston letters, apparently written by another contemporary chronicler, mentioned 28,000 casualties, of which two-thirds or more were Lancastrian. A reasonable assessment might be 12,000-15,000 of Somerset's men, dead or wounded, either on the field or in the rout, while Edward lost about 5,000.

Weight of numbers pushed the Yorkists back initially, but the Earl of Warwick and Edward both fought in the front ranks to encourage their men.The fighting was long and bloody and became so intense that the front lines were frequently forced to stop and remove the bodies to be able to get at each other. As the hours passed the Yorkists found themselves giving more and more ground until they came close to Castle wood. From here two hundred spearmen launched a surprise attack on the Yorkist left flank. Hundreds of men fled and Edward was forced to use his whole reserve to stop his army from breaking up. In the middle of the afternoon the elderly John Mowbray, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, arrived with several thousand fresh men, having finally been able to cross over the repaired bridge at Ferrybridge. The Yorkists fought on with new determination for about an hour, when very suddenly the Lancastrian line broke and thousands of men fled the field. Mowbray was succeeded by the Duke of Norfolk; the Earl of Essex.

It is supposed that far more men died in the rout than in the battle. Several bridges over neighbouring rivers broke under the weight of the armed men, plunging many into the freezing water. Those stranded on the other side either drowned in the crossing or were cornered by their pursuers and killed. Some of the worst slaughter was seen at Bloody Meadow, where it is said men crossed the River Cock over the bodies of the fallen. All the way from Towton to Tadcaster the fields were full of bodies. The fleeing Lancastrians made easy targets for Yorkist horsemen and footsoldiers who killed many men who had dropped their weapons and thrown off their helmets to breathe more freely as they ran. At Tadcaster some men made an unsuccessful stand and were killed. The rout lasted all night and into the morning, when remnants of the Lancastrian army stumbled into York in total panic. Margaret, Henry and Somerset fled north to Scotland, while those Lancastrian lords who were not killed or dispossessed were forced to make peace with Edward IV.

What transpired at Towton on a snowy Palm Sunday, March 29th, 1461, has ever since been something of a mystery. Historically, the battle marked a turning point in the Wars of the Roses that confirmed the Yorkist Edward IV's accession to the throne of England. During the battle and ensuing rout of the Lancastrians, an estimated 28,000 men lost their lives. Most of these individuals had sustained multiple perimortem (around the time of death) injuries from a variety of projectiles and hand-held weapons, many of which bear resemblance to those curated by the National Armouries Museum, Leeds (with whom we are collaborating), and dating to the late Medieval period. In order to document these injuries complete reconstruction of crania was necessary such that the wounds could be sequenced (the process of identifying the order in which blows were delivered and their physical ramifications). Many of the individuals suffered multiple injuries that are far in excess of those necessary to cause disability and death. From the distribution of cuts, chops, incisions, and punctures, it appears that blows cluster in the craniofacial area, in some cases bisecting the face and cranial vault of some individuals and detaching bone in others. Series of cuts and incisions found in the vicinity of the nasal and aural areas appear to have been directed toward removal of the nose and ears. There are few infra-cranial (torso and limb) injuries, which may suggest that these areas were not targeted, that these individuals were wearing armour, or that they sustained their injuries while in a position that did not allow them to defend themselves. The pattern, distribution, and number of these insults argues for perimortem mutilation. Many were left in a state that would have made identification difficult, even more so as they had been stripped of identifiable weapons and clothing prior to interment (a normal practice in the Medieval period).

The day after the battle of Ferrybridge, the Yorkist forces attacked the Lancastrians in a driving snowstorm up a sloping hill at Towton. Using the snow and the wind direction as an aid, the Yorkist archers were able to shoot farther than their adversaries. The Lancastrians believed their best strategy was to charge. After many hours of intense fighting the Yorkist line was showing signs of strain. Fortunately the duke of Norfolk, John Mowbray, arrived with reinforcements and the Yorkist army defeated the Lancastrians. King Henry VI, the Queen, and their son fled to Scotland. Edward IV marched into York. On June 28 he was formally crowned king at Westminster.

What is certain about Towton is that the victory assured Edward's crown and ruined his enemies' cause, though hostilities, mainly in Northumberland, dragged on for another three years. The battle also established the young king's reputation as a brilliant commander. In the long run, however, York's triumph would only be temporary. The civil war would last another quarter century, ultimately ending in the destruction of both rival houses of York and Lancaster, and the emergence of the Tudors.

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