User Guide

But it is far too easy to trivialize
the Wars. Like all civil conflicts,
they were savagely contested. They
were marked by a ferocity and bru-
tality practically unknown in the
history of England before or since.
Although the various battles were
often small, and most victories owed
more to treachery or accident than
to skill or force of arms, blood was
spilled freely. (Though one foreign
commentator remarked that the
English fought very curious wars:
“...once they have gained a battle,
they do no more killing, especially
of common people.“)
A number of victories were cele-
brated by the beheading of cap-
tured leaders, especially as the
Wars progressed. This can be
traced to the fact that the several
campaigns were primarily a strug-
gle between opposing factions,
vying for political power with no
sweeping or revolutionary ideals at
stake. Although the Yorkists
claimed a constitutional cause for
their revolt, both sides were cut
from the same political cloth.
The intermittent struggle that
spanned the reigns of Henry VI,
Edward IV and Richard III was also
characterized by the way many local
disputes between various noble
Houses were fought under the ban-
ner of the continuing “Civil War”. In
the far north, the Nevilles and the
Percies
had been bitter rivals for
centuries. The victory of the Yorkist
cause in the north was really the
triumph of the House of Neville at
the expense of the House of Percy.
In southwest England, an inter-
minable feud between the
Courte-
nay Earls of Devon and the upstart
Bonville family drew major players
into the Wars, who sided with their
supporters in a local dispute over
lands and titles.
An unfortified town in
the Midlands, west of
Leicester.
For those nobles bold enough, the
Wars of the Roses provided opportu-
nities for advancement and accumu-
lation of power as established fami-
lies fell by the wayside and local