Bosworth, 22 August 1485

The battle, stage by stage

1. 22 August 1485, early morning

   Converging on Redemore

   Henry Tudor, who had landed in Wales on 7 August, has camped near Merevale and Atherstone; King Richard III has marched from Leicester and camped on the high ground around Sutton Cheney and Ambion Hill. On the morning of 22 August Henry's small army — about 5,000 by Historic England's estimate (modern figures range to 8,000), with perhaps 1,800–2,000 French mercenaries — comes east along the old Roman road now called Fenn Lane. The royal army, put at anything from 7,500 to 15,000, comes down onto the low ground the sources call Redemore. Thomas, Lord Stanley and his brother Sir William, with perhaps 3,000–6,000 men, hold off to the south toward Dadlington and Stoke Golding, committed to neither side.

2. Morning

   Either side of the marsh

   Polydore Vergil, Henry's later official historian, says a marsh lay between the armies, 'which Henry purposely kept on his right'. Foard's survey found peat in the old meadow land here and puts that marsh at Fen Hole, beside Fenn Lane, about 3 km south-west of the traditional site on Ambion Hill. Norfolk and his son Surrey lead the royal vanguard of archers and billmen, with the guns; Richard is behind with his household; Northumberland has the rearguard, probably on the left. On the other side, Oxford commands the vanguard, which in practice is almost all of Henry's army, with Talbot on the right and Savage on the left; Henry waits behind with a few horsemen. The royal guns open fire.

3. Morning

   Oxford's attack on Norfolk

   Under fire, Oxford leads the rebel vanguard north around the marsh, keeping it on his right, and strikes the royal vanguard on its flank. Accounts suggest the sun was then behind him. Most of the lead round shot the survey found, about 34 balls of several calibres scattered over more than a kilometre around Fenn Lane, is thought to come from this phase. It is the largest group of late-medieval round shot recovered from any European battlefield, though the guns probably mattered less than the archers and bills.

4. Mid-morning

   Norfolk killed; Northumberland stands

   Oxford orders his men to keep within ten feet of their standards and re-forms them into a dense body (some accounts call it a wedge). They press on, and the royal vanguard begins to give way. Norfolk is killed. One later ballad says Sir John Savage killed him, and tradition puts his death at the foot of a windmill, possibly near today's Apple Orchard Farm. Northumberland, on the royal left, does not move. Historians still argue over whether that was treachery or because the marsh and the Stanleys stood in his way.

5. Late morning

   Richard's charge at Henry

   Told that Henry is some way behind his own lines with only a small guard, perhaps on his way to the Stanleys, Richard leads his household knights in a mounted charge to end the battle by killing him. Vergil writes that Richard killed Henry's standard-bearer, Sir William Brandon, with his own hand, and unhorsed the giant Sir John Cheyne. Henry's bodyguard, with foot soldiers (French pikemen in some modern readings), holds. The line of the charge drawn here is conjectural: the survey put it along the north edge of the marsh, toward the spot where the boar badge was later found.

6. Late morning

   Sir William Stanley's intervention

   At this point Sir William Stanley commits his men, by most accounts about 3,000, on Henry's side. They come up from the south and surround Richard's small group, pushing it back toward the marsh. The Crowland chronicler and Vergil say Richard was offered a horse to escape and refused it. Lord Stanley's own part in the fighting is unclear. Most accounts have him holding back to the south.

7. About noon

   Richard killed

   Richard's horse is reportedly stuck in the mire. He fights on foot and is killed: 'fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies,' says Vergil. Molinet says a Welshman struck the fatal blow with a halberd. His skeleton, found in Leicester in 2012, has eleven wounds, nine of them to the head. A silver-gilt boar badge, Richard's own emblem and the kind worn by his close retinue, was found in 2009 at the edge of the former marsh. It may mark this last fight, although the find spot shown here is only approximate. The royal army breaks; Surrey is captured. The 1511 chantry at Dadlington, where battlefield dead were buried, suggests the flight and killing reached that far.

8. 22 August 1485, afternoon

   Crown Hill

   The battle has lasted about two hours. Henry's army gathers on the rising ground by Stoke Golding, later called Crown Hill. A contemporary account says it was 'a mountayne hyghe' where the soldiers cried 'King Henry!'. Lord Stanley places Richard's circlet on Henry's head; the story that it was found in a hawthorn bush comes from later tradition. Richard's body is stripped and carried to Leicester for display. About 1,000 royalists and perhaps 100 of Henry's men are thought to have died. Henry VII dates his reign from 21 August, the day before the battle, so that those who fought for Richard can be attainted as traitors.