August 22- Battle of Bosworth Fields

It�s all about the War of the Roses and for all of you who, like me, couldn�t be bothered to read all of Shakespeare�s collected works:

On August 22, 1485 The English King Richard III (1452-1485), of the House of York, was defeated in the battle at Bosworths Fields, near Leicester, by Henry Tudor, the heir of the House of Lancaster. It meant the end of the War of the Roses for the English crown, between York (White Rose) and Lancaster (Red Rose), that had torn the country for thirty years between 1455 and 1485.

The conflict between the two branches of the Anjou-Plantagenets arose after the deposition of King Richard II by his cousin Henry, Duke of Lancaster, who assumed the throne as Henry IV in 1399, although his claims to the crown were strongly disputed by the Dukes of York, descendants of his uncle Lionel, Duke of Clarence, son of King Edward III.
Henry IV�s son , Henry V consolidated the Lancastrian claims, not least through his years of successful campaigning in France during the Hundred Years War, where after the battle of Agincourt in 1415, he took decisive steps to unite France and England under one crown. His premature death in 1422 prevented that, and after the succession of his one year old son Henry VI, the rival claims of the House of York gained momentum.
England was ruled by a council of regency until Henry VI�s coming of age and when he finally assumed full powers in 1437, Henry VI proved to be a weak and incapable ruler, both at home and in France, where he lost most of the territories, his father had gained.
When in 1453 Henry began to show first signs of a progressive mental illness, another regency council was established, this time led by Richard, Duke of York, his greatest rival to the throne.
Henry VI recovered in 1455, but Richard�s ambitions, fueled by his years as the de facto ruler of England, could no longer be appeased. The country was now split between the supporters of the Lancastrian King and those of his York rival, and military hostilities broke out in 1455. Richard of York fell in the battle of Wakefield in 1460, but his son and heir Edward continued the war for the throne and after the battle on Towton in 1461, where the York forces had routed the Lancastrians, he disposed Henry and was crowned King Edward IV.
But it was far from over, Edward fell out with his strongest supporter, the Earl of Warwick, the most powerful and influential of the English nobles, who re-instated Henry in 1470 and forced Edward to go into exile in France. But Edward came back, and this time with a vengeance, he defeated Warwick, who fell, in the battle of Barnet in 1471, he imprisoned Henry VI in the Tower of London, and taking no further chances, had him eventually murdered.
With no obvious Lancastrian claimant left, for a few years it seemed that the War of the Roses had come to an end. But Edward IV died in 1483, leaving his thirteen year old son Edward V as heir, and his brother Richard as the protector of the under-age King.



Richard III

Richard, one of the archetypal villains of English history, however disputed the claims of his nephew Edward, accusing him to be the product of an illegitimate marriage and therefore unable to reign as King. He forced Parliament to recognize his own claims, and after he had murdered his nephew Edward and his younger brother, assumed the crown as King Richard III.
In the meantime, however, a Lancastrian claimant had re-emerged, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, related through a rather long and complicated lineage to the House of Lancaster.



Henry VII

Henry had been brought up in exile in Brittany, but in 1485 he landed with a force of French mercenaries in Wales, where he assembled his English supporters and from there marched into England, where on August 22, he met the army of the reigning King Richard III in a field near Bosworth, Leicester.
The battle only lasted a couple of hours, and was decided when the Stanleys, two brothers of a noble English family and former allies of Richard, went over to Henry Tudor�s side.
King Richard was cut down, whilst he was trying to attack his rival in person, and the fighting was over. He was the last English King to die in battle.
Henry Tudor proclaimed himself King immediately after the battle, and after marrying Elisabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV in 1486, united the Houses of Lancaster and York , became as Henry VII undisputed ruler of England, the first of the line of Tudor Kings. The rest is, as they say, history.


A rather liberal re-telling of the last moments of the battle has become somewhat famous:

[Enter KING RICHARD.]
KING RICHARD.
A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
CATESBY.
Withdraw, my lord! I'll help you to a horse.
KING RICHARD.
Slave, I have set my life upon a cast,
And I Will stand the hazard of the die:
I think there be six Richmonds in the field:
Five have I slain to-day instead of him.--
A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

[ Enter, from opposite sides, KING RICHARD and HENRY TUDOR; and exeunt fighting. Retreat and flourish. Then re-enter HENRY TUDOR, with STANLEY bearing the crown, and divers other Lords and Forces.]

HENRY TUDOR.
God and your arms be prais'd, victorious friends;
The day is ours, the bloody dog is dead.
STANLEY.
Courageous Richmond, well hast thou acquit thee!
Lo, here, this long-usurped royalty
From the dead temples of this bloody wretch
Have I pluck'd off, to grace thy brows withal.
Wear it, enjoy it, and make much of it.

(From Shakespeare's Richard III)


What else happened on this day?


634 Abu Bekr Abd Allah (61), successor of Mohammed, died. He was a friend, an Arabic merchant, Mohammed�s father-in-law and the first Caliph. Before his death he appointed Mohammed's adviser Omar as his successor.

1642 Civil war in England began as Charles I declared war on the Puritan Parliament at Nottingham. Charles I went to the House of Commons to arrest some of its members and was refused entry. From this point in English history on no monarch was allowed entry into Parliament without permission.

1999 In Switzerland the chief of the secret service, Dino Bellasi, was suspended amid reports that he had embezzled 6 million from the Defense Ministry and used the money to train a secret army.( Swiss secret service! What are they spying on? On rival cuckoo-clock producing countries? A secret army? To take over Liechtenstein? I will fight them with my life!)

Full list:

Wikipedia