In this episode of Instruments of Death we investigate how weapons and body armour were developed by taking a look at the impact of the Battle of Towton during the Wars of the Roses.
It’s Palm Sunday and the year is 1461. In a remote field in Yorkshire two massive armies are facing each other and preparing to go into battle. The weather is freezing, snow begins to fall, and men of both sides are praying to their God for victory and deliverance, but they both know that no quarter will be asked or given.
Suddenly the sky becomes dark with deadly arrows, soldiers scream as they are hit, but this is only the beginning. Soon men are in pitched battle, hacking into each other with their swords and axes, skulls are crushed, limbs are severed, and the snow runs red with blood - the Battle of Towton is in full cry.
It’s almost impossible for us to imagine the hell of medieval pitched battles, the bloodlust, the noise, the sheer brutality of the fighting. They were tests of strength, endurance, and of course raw courage. It was quite literally, kill or be killed!
No one really knows exactly how many men fought at the Battle of Towton but fifty thousand would be a fair estimate. It was just one battle in what history remembers as the Wars of the Roses, the long struggle for power between the houses of York and Lancaster, the white rose and the red rose.
In this documentary we examine why weapons such as the poleaxe and the longbow, were so deadly in the hands of medieval men-at-arms. We see the effects they had on the human body, and how the wounds they inflicted were treated. We’ll find out how the weapons were made, what men did to try and protect themselves, and try to get into the hearts and minds of the men who fought here at Towton more than 500 years ago.
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3 мар 2022
