Bosworth thoughts (was My Reaction to Leicester)

Jan wrote: "I bought Mike Ingram's book on Bosworth while I was at the battlefield centre last Sunday & this is what he says in it about Northumberland, paraphrased. According to the CC where Northumberland was positioned with a large company of reasonably good men no engagement could be discerned & no blows given or received. According to Molinet Northumberland ought to have charged the French but did nothing except to flee, for he had an undertaking with the earl of Richmond. MI thinks it unlikely that Northumberland had done any deal as he was imprisoned after the battle & that more likely his men ran for it when they saw the French cause Norfolk's line to collapse or when they realised the king was dead. Now there's a contradiction here. Either Northumberland & his men could not see the fighting & had to wait for news of the deaths of Norfolk & the king to arrive, or they could see & had a chance to join in on the king's side. Either way Northumberland appears to lack initiative &/or commitment. One of these days somebody could draw up the different versions of the battle in a table." Doug here: Needless to say, I don't believe as experienced a commander as Richard would leave such a large proportion of his available troops in a position to have no effect on the fighting - which rules out the attempt by the CC to explain Northumberland's actions. I haven't read Mr. Ingram's Bosworth book, but I must say I don't see Molinet's report of an "undertaking" between Henry and Northumberland necessarily precluding Northumberland's future imprisonment. After all, Molinet was trying to explain why Northumberland *hadn't* charged *the French*, but what if the "undertaking" *did* exist* only substituting "Richard" for "the French"? Such an "undertaking" between Henry and Northumberland may have been for Northumberland to capture Richard after Norfolk had led his men into the fighting and Richard only had his household troops (50 men? !00?) for defence. Or it may have been that, once the fighting began and, for whatever reason, Richard entered the fighting, Northumberland was to lead *his* troops in an attack on the Yorkist rear. In any case, the idea was for Northumberland to *actively* participate in defeating Richard. Whichever it was supposed to be however, Northumberland discovered, *after* the plan had been agreed to, that his men *wouldn't* obey him if he ordered them to either capture Richard *or* attack the Yorkists from the rear. So the Earl did the only thing that would allow *him* to come out of the affair with some shreds of honor: he ran and blamed that action on his men refusing to fight. Richard nearly reached Henry. Had he done so Tudor would have died and I don't see Henry not recognizing that. So then the question for Henry would be: Why did Northumberland allow Richard to get to me? And until *that* question was answered to Henry's satisfaction, Northumberland would be viewed as a "traitor" to, ironically, those committing treason. Doug