How Many Men Fought at Towton.
We attended a fascinating talk given by Chris Berendt of the Towton Battlefield Society yesterday on ‘How Many Men Fought at Towton’. Chris argued very persuasively that both the number of participants and deaths on both the Yorkist and Lancastrian sides has been greatly exaggerated given the logistics of moving large medieval armies vast distances across the country. Chris argued that a Yorkist army of 10000 men leaving London on the 12th of March 1461, would have taken 15-16 days to arrive on the battlefield, and therefore it is hard to visualise their army being much greater than these numbers. The Lancastrians may have had a few thousand more, but you cannot see any way in which the oft quoted figures of 80000-100000 combatants and 28000 deaths being anything more than a exaggeration by the chroniclers.