Margaret’s father, John Beaufort, was one of his unfortunate companions. But Thomas let this slight by the enemy go to his head, refusing to wait for his archers to form up behind him, and instead charging off into the gathering gloom with only a mounted force of knights accompanying him. This was desperate stuff, for the French had been out-generalled and out-fought at Agincourt, and Henry V had cleverly used his archers as part of a highly effective battle plan. In Agincourt’s aftermath, some of the French nobility had taunted the victors that the English aristocracy was no match for them, and had won only because of their reliance on a mass of peasant soldiers and a killing weapon that had no chivalric merit. This clearly rankled with him, and on the spur of the moment Thomas now decided that he would win a victory even greater than that of Henry V. Thomas had not been present at that great battle: he had contracted dysentery during the siege of Harfleur, and – like many others in the English army – had been forced to return home. However, the full English army was not ready to go into battle and Thomas rode off at speed without his archers, who formed the majority of his raiding force and whose dreaded longbow had been one of the principal reasons for Henry V’s stupendous victory against the French at Agincourt in 1415, some six years earlier. Halfway through a meal, Thomas believed he had a chance to surprise and overwhelm his foes – and, throwing all caution to the wind, commanded his surprised followers to saddle up, and led a mounted charge in the direction of his opponents. According to the chronicler John Hardyng, a number of the assembled English aristocrats began a heated discussion of Thomas’s impulsive decision even as his army began to form up, for the order to ride into battle had been issued during an early-evening banquet, when a supposed informer announced the proximity of a French army, reinforced by a large contingent of Scottish soldiers (who were fighting as their allies, against the English). The English commander’s behaviour was so reckless that a mutiny nearly broke out in his ranks. Baugé was one of the worst English defeats in the Hundred Years’ War. John Beaufort was captured at the disastrous English defeat at Baugé in 1421, when Henry V’s younger brother Thomas Duke of Clarence impetuously attacked a much larger Franco-Scottish army during a raid into Anjou. The story of Margaret’s father was a tragic one. He died a day before Margaret’s first birthday and was buried with little ceremony in Wimborne Minster in Dorset. Somerset’s campaign was a fiasco, and the duke returned home in disgrace, was banished from court and then – rumour had it – committed suicide, unable to brook his calamitous fall from favour. Indeed, her father – one of Henry VI’s military commanders – had been elevated to his dukedom two months before her birth, as he prepared to lead a major expedition to France in the closing stages of the Hundred Years’ War. Margaret was born into a major aristocratic family, closely related to the ruling Lancastrian dynasty, a guarantee of social pre-eminence and landed wealth. Lady Margaret Beaufort was born on, the only child and heiress of John Beaufort Duke of Somerset and his wife Margaret Beauchamp of Bletsoe. She was strong-willed and ambitious and reached the pinnacle of her power and influence during the reign of her son, when she was known simply as ‘the King’s Mother’. Margaret was courageous, intelligent and astute, a formidable plotter during the Wars of the Roses, a woman whose deep personal piety never interfered with her political pragmatism. When that son became Henry VII of England on 22 August 1485, after vanquishing his rival Richard III in battle at Bosworth, it was as much Margaret’s triumph as the king’s. Lady Margaret Beaufort’s life is a dramatic and moving story of a woman in the late Middle Ages who never saw herself as a victim, someone who suffered greatly and bore terrible dangers yet fought like a tigress to advance the fortunes of her only son, Henry Tudor.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |