The real scene of Richard III's last battle
Updated on 28 October 2009
There's nothing like being at the front of a bill block closing for combat, to make your bowels turn to water, writes battle of Bosworth re-enactor Tim Lambon.
Grimacing faces; cries of fear, yells of anger, grunts of determination and sheer effort.
A medieval meat grinder advancing at a walking pace to the inevitable clashing of steel, slice of flesh and snap of bones.
Vicious blades and sharpened hooks on the ends of 10-foot poles that slam down at groin height as you close with the enemy.
It may be re-enactment, but the energy and violence is there. And it's a realistic glimpse of just how terrifying it must have been to be in the front line at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.
Every year for nearly a decade I've made the journey in August, north from London with Richard III's ghost at my shoulder, to the field where we thought he lost his crown and his life. And today we know for certain we've been going to the wrong place! The real battle field's two miles away to the south and west from Ambion Hill where Richard's banner has proudly flown for years.
I'd always wondered why there'd never been any artefacts found around Ambion Hill and the land didn't really fit into the descriptions by the chronicles of the time.
But I put much of that down to the comprehensive propaganda campaign the usurping Henry Tywdr (Henry VII after Bosworth) later mounted in paranoia about the security of his throne.
His spin continued with vigour through the Tudor period and on through the centuries, muddying the waters and making it difficult to sift fact from fiction.
But knowing the actual place doesn’t really change how one feels about the memory of the battle.
It will be great finally to stand where Richard stood before his fateful last charge down the hill to oblivion, but sobering to know that this is where the last true king of England gambled everything.
Having fought to within spitting distance of the terrified Henry, Richard felled the standard bearer who would have been at Henry's side, before the soggy ground mired his horse and the meat grinder got him.
Foot soldiers, probably French mercenaries or wild Welshmen, hauled him from his horse with bill hooks and hacked him to death.
A terrible end for anyone, and inglorious for a King who, reading behind the propaganda, was a just and much loved sovereign in his time.
Non nobis, non nobis, Domine
Sed nomini tuo da gloriam.
