The Battle of Lewes, 1264

Today I'm going to talk about the famous Battle of Lewes, fought on the 14th of May 1264. The battle forms back of the backstory to my next book, Nowhere Was There Peace, shortly to be released by Fireship Press.

Much has been written about Lewes, but I want to concentrate on the fate of the unfortunate Londoners who supported Simon de Montfort against the army of King Henry III. Below is a rather good map of the battle and how it went down:

The causes of it are complex, but can be summarised thus: Henry III was something of an autocrat, and the favouritism he showed his wife's foreign relatives, refusal to compromise with his Barons and general political and military incompetence all came to a head in the 1260s. The French nobleman and Earl of Leicester, Simon de Montfort, put himself at the head of a coalition of baronial rebels. After much argument and grave wagging of beards, both sides started to gather armies in the spring of 1264.

The seal of Simon de Montfort (c.1208-1265)

By May the King's forces had arrived at Lewes in Sussex, where they camped to allow time for reinforcements to join them. Henry based his troops near Saint Pancras Priory, while his eldest son, the hard-nosed Lord Edward, commanded a force of mounted knights and men-at-arms at Lewes Castle, to the north of his father's position.

There had been no wars in England since the reign of King John, Henry's father, and the preparations for the battle seem to have been pretty messy, with both sides gathering men where they could. De Montfort only had about five thousand men, about half the number of the royalists. His army was split into four divisions: one led by himself (though he had broken his leg in an accident and had to lead from the back in a litter), one by his son Henry, another by Gilbert de Clare, and the fourth by Nicholas de Segrave.

This last division consisted of what might be fairly described as a rabble of volunteers, ill-armed London citizens who had flocked to join de Montfort's army. The King and his family were particularly unpopular in London, thanks to the severe taxes Henry imposed on the citizens and the perceived tyranny of his Queen, Eleanor of Provence, and her foreign relatives. Some time prior to the battle, the citizens had expressed their dislike of Eleanor by pelting her barge with mud and stones as it floated down the Thames. Her son Edward had never forgotten the insult dealt to his mother, and waited impatiently for his chance of revenge. At Lewes he got it.
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Tomb of Henry III

Knowing that he was outnumbered, de Montfort tried to avoid a battle by opening negotiations with the King, who refused them. De Montfort responded by making a sudden night march from his camp at Fletching to Offam Hill, just a mile from Lewes. The royalists were surprised by this maneuver, and even more surprised when de Montfort launched a surprise attack in the early hours of the morning, attacking and routing a group of royalist troops sent out to forage for supplies.

The royal army now heaved into life. Edward moved the quickest, and led his knights in a charge straight at Segrave's Londoners, still performing an excellent impression of a hopeless rabble. Unsurprisingly, they broke and ran like rabbits before the onrushing steel-clad monsters on enormous horses, and were slaughtered as they ran. The merciless pursuit continued for several miles - Edward had allowed his savage temper and desire for revenge to get the better of him, and had left his father's left flank exposed.

Royalists and rebels get stuck into each other at the Battle of Lewes

In the absence of Edward's cavalry, the King was obliged to order his centre and right flank to advance up Uffham hill and engage the baronial forces waiting for them. Many of the royalist soldiers had no experience of warfare, and had to endure an arrow-storm as they struggled up the slope towards a line of dismounted knights and men-at-arms, all bristling with various killing tools.

Neither the King or his brother, the Earl of Cornwall, possessed much in the way of military ability. Cornwall's division was the first to crumple, his men succumbing to panic shortly after the first blows were exchanged and streaming back down the hillside. Henry's men stubbornly fought on for a while longer, but broke when they were attacked in flank and rear by de Montfort's reserves.

By now, Edward had managed to regather his knights and lead them back to the battlefield. There they witnessed the royalists in full retreat back to the castle and priory, closely harried and pursued by the rebels. Edward was all for launching a death-or-glory counterattack, but first tracked down his father, who persuaded him that it was better to surrender and accept de Montfort's terms. His uncle, the luckless Cornwall, was found hiding in a windmill and dragged out to taunts of "Come out, come out, you wicked miller!"

The verdict of battle was reversed in the most emphatic fashion at Evesham, over a year later, but the slaughter of the Londoners at Lewes is significant to my tale. One young stonemason's son in particular manages to escape from the field, slung over the back of a packhorse and bleeding from wounds inflicted by the swords of Edward's knights. Who is he? Wait for the book to find out...

A hiatus and a preview...

I will be away for the next fortnight or so doing some freelance work on behalf of the National Trust, so this blog will probably be very quiet for a while.

Just to (hopefully) whet a few reading appetites while I'm away, I will sign off with a sneak preview of my next book. It is called "Nowhere Was There Peace" - a quote taken from Walter Bower's 15th century chronicle of the history of the British Isles - and will be published very soon by Fireship Press. Below is the mean and moody cover, which I really like.

Fireship are an up and coming press, dedicated exclusively to publishing historical fiction. They have been fantastic to work with and you can check out their website at the link below:

Fireship Press

And here is the full quote from Bower's text, just to give a flavour of the story...

“Moreover all those who supported Simon in that battle were outlawed and disinherited.  The greater part of the Disinherited infested the roads and streets and became robbers…a deadly struggle broke out between the king and the disinherited, in the course of which villages were burned, towns wrecked, whole stretches of land depopulated, churches pillaged, religious driven from their monasteries, clerics had money extorted from them and the common people were ruined. Nowhere was there peace, nowhere security.” 

Walter Bower, The Scotichronicon, p355 
...and that's it, for now! Be back soon :)

New covers...

"The White Hawk (I)" and "Caesar's Sword: The Red Death" have just acquired some smashing new covers...check 'em out!

Caesar's Sword on Amazon

The White Hawk (I) on Amazon

The Last Great General of Rome - Part One

"The Last Great General of Rome": that is how Lord Mahon, writing in 1829, described Flavius Belisarius. It is an inaccurate title, for the Roman Empire - or the Eastern half of it that endured until 1453 - produced many great soldiers and generals after the death of Belisarius, but he was the last to make any serious attempt to restore the power and glory of the Western Empire. He achieved a run of astonishing victories, all the more impressive since he was usually outnumbered and starved of resources by his envious and suspicious master, the Emperor Justinian I.

Possible depiction of Flavius Belisarius, from the Ravenna mosaics

When I decided to write a novel set during the sixth century AD, between the fall of the Western Empire and the rise of Islam in the seventh century, the life and career of Belisarius immediately stood out. He has starred in fiction before, most notably in "Count Belisarius" by Robert Graves (author of "I, Claudius") but I very much wanted to draw my own version of him,

Born c.500 into a noble Illyrian or Thracian family in what is now south-west Bulgaria, little is known of Belisarius's early life. He joined the Roman army as a young man, and swiftly came to the attention of the aged Emperor Justin and his nephew, a clever, sharp-eyed little man named Justinian. Belisarius distinguished himself in the constant wars against the Sassanid Persians, who were chipping away at the shrunken Empire's Eastern frontiers. When Justin died and his nephew succeeded to the throne, Belisarius was made commander-in-chief of the Imperial armies in the East and sent to teach the Sassanids some manners. 

Map of the Roman-Persian frontier

Belisarius proceeded to do just that, and at the Battle of Dara in 530 he routed a Persian army over twice the size of his own by using defensive tactics that he would repeat time and again: uncertain of the loyalty of many of his soldiers (by this time the famous Roman legions were long gone, and the 'Roman' army was largely made up of mercenaries), he dug a number of ditches and waited for the Persians to come to him. Charge after charge of cavalry was repelled, and when the enemy were exhausted Belisarius counter-attacked at the head of his best troops, the bucellari. The Persians were shattered and fled in rout, but Belisarius recalled the pursuit after a  few miles. Wary that the Persians might rally and turn upon his unreliable soldiers, he allowed the majority of the beaten enemy host to escape.  

A year later, at the Battle of Callinicum, Belisarius had cause to regret his hesitation. Reinforced by five thousand Lakhmid Arabs, the reformed Persian army attempted to invade Syria. Belisarius quickly moved against them, and by a series of brilliant maneuvers managed to block their advance. Puffed up by their success so far, his officers demanded the honour of fighting a pitched battle to round off the campaign. Belisarius didn't want to risk it, and attempted to persuade them otherwise. According to the historian Procopius, who accompanied the general on his many of campaigns, he spoke thus:

 "Whither would you urge me? The most complete and happy victory is to baffle the force of an enemy without impairing our own, and in this favourable situation we are already placed. Is it not wiser to enjoy the advantages thus easily acquired, than to hazard them in the pursuit of more? Is it not enough to have altogether disappointed the arrogant hopes with which the Persians set out for this campaign, and compelled them to a speedy retreat?..."

Belisarius's eloquent pleas fell on deaf ears, and he found himself obliged to fight a battle at Callinicum, in northern Syria. For much of the day the result hung in the balance, but then a squadron of elite Persian cavalry stoved in the Roman right flank and sent their mercenary cavalry fleeing. The Roman army collapsed, and many soldiers drowned as they attempted to swim the Euphrates. Belisarius staged a fighting retreat. He dismounted and stood at the head of his infantry, forming an unbreakable line of shields against the Persian cavalry as they tried to follow up and complete their victory. As night fell, the Persians gave up and the remnant of the Roman army was able to withdraw in good order. 

The Persian victory proved to be a Pyrrhic one. Though victorious, they had suffered terrible casualties and were unable to continue the invasion. Their commander, General Azarethes, was removed from command and stripped of his honours by the furious Persian Emperor. Weary of knocking each other about, both sides agreed to the Eternal Peace, a peace treaty that guaranteed cordial relations between the Roman Empire and Sassanid Persia forever: naturally, it was broken within a few years.  

Emperor Justinian I

Despite his defeat at Callinicum, Belisarius had done well enough in his first Persian campaign to remain in favour with the Emperor. He was recalled to Constantinople, where he was the highest-ranking military officer on the spot when the 'Nika' riots broke out in 532 - the riots were started by the Blues and the Greens, the two major chariot racing factions in the city, and almost resulted in the destruction of Constantinople and the overthrow of Justinian. Belisarius had to move fast to rescue the situation...just how fast will be described in Part Two!

You can follow the adventures of Belisarius and his slightly less-than-devoted officer, Coel ap Amhar, in my novel "Caesar's Sword":

Caesar's Sword

Caesar's Sword

I have just released CAESAR'S SWORD, a slight change of pace from my usual medievalisms: set during the days of the Late Roman Empire, the story could be described as a 'mashup' of Arthurian legend and Roman military history.

Romans seem to be all the rage in historical fiction at the moment. I wanted to do something different, and no recent author that I am aware of has covered the spectacular reign of the Emperor Justinian I (527-65). Justinian's reign saw the last gasp of 'Roman' military might, as his brilliant general Flavius Belisarius reconquered large chunks of the Western Empire that had been lost in the previous century. Starved of resources by his suspicious master, vastly outnumbered by the 'barbarian' nations he fought against, Belisarius managed to pull off a series of stunning victories that marked him out as one of the greatest soldiers of all time. 

Above is part of the Ravenna mosaics that depict the Emperor Justinian and his court: the bearded figure is thought by some to be the only contemporary image of Belisarius

I wanted to tell the story of Belisarius, or part of it, but I prefer not to have historical figures at the centre of the narrative: their lives and destinies are pre-set, and one can't fiddle around with them too much. I had the idea of merging the legend of Arthur, generally thought to have its origins in the late 5th/early 6th century, with the dramatic doings of the Empire. 

One of the more obscure tidbits of Welsh folklore describes Arthur as having a number of sons. This is very different from the more familiar medieval French traditions, in which Arthur's only son is the bastard traitor, Mordred. Arthur never had much luck with his family, and all of his sons in the Welsh tradition come to sticky ends. One of them, Amhar, is described in the Historia Brittonum as being slain by his own father: 

“There is another wonder in the country called Ergyng. There is a tomb there by a spring, called Llygad Amhar; the name of the man buried in the tomb was Amhar. He was the son of the warrior Arthur, who killed him there and buried him.”

How and why Arthur came to kill his own son is not described, leaving writers with much fertile ground for fiction: strangely, the less interesting French versions have prevailed, and the even darker Welsh alternative remains largely unexplored. I came up with my own explanation of why Amhar died, and decided that "Caesar's Sword" would be told from the perspective of Coel, his son. 

Julius Caesar

The title of the book is derived from another old British legend, relating to a sword once owned by Julius Caesar. When Caesar invaded Britain in 55BC (so the story goes) his legions were attacked by a British army led by a prince named Nennius. Caesar and Nennius met in personal combat, and before Caesar was obliged to retreat he left his sword buried in the unfortunate Nennius's skull. 

The prince later died of his dreadful wound, but Caesar's sword was kept by his family and passed down the generations. Known as 'Crocea Mors' (Yellow Death) by the Romans, the British named it "Angau Coch" (Red Death) or "Agheu Glas" (Grey Death). It was said to have been forged by the gods on Mount Olympus, and have the power of slicing through any armour forged by man. Any man unfortunate enough to be struck by the blade would die instantly.  

It is possible - though far from certain - that somewhere along the line the legend of Crocea Mors got mixed up with the stories of Arthur, and formed the basis for Excalibur, Arthur's magical sword. In the Welsh tales Arthur's sword is called Caledfwlch, which roughly translates as Hard Cleaver. The temptation to have Arthur's grandson running around in the glittering, blood-spattered world of the Late Roman Empire wielding Arthur's sword was too strong to resist, and so this forms the nucleus of my tale. 

There is much more to the story, including battles in North Africa, mad kings and corrupt empresses, prostitutes and dancers, chariots and Hippodromes, swords and sandals and blood by the bucketload, so I will say no more for now except to direct kind readers to the link below...

Caesar's Sword is available as a free download on Amazon from tomorrow until Sunday:

Caesar's Sword

The White Hawk on Goodreads

...and at last, I have figured out how to use widgets!

Three paperback copies of Book One of my Wars of the Roses saga, The White Hawk, are now up for grabs on Goodreads. Just click on the icon below to enter...

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The White Hawk

by David Pilling

Giveaway ends April 16, 2013.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

George RR Martin, the Wars of the Roses and me...

I want to talk a little about what influenced me to write The White Hawk, which will be available as a free download on Amazon on Wednesday and Thursday this week. Since this is my blog, I shall!

By God, I love the power.

Besides my lifelong passion for medieval history, and the more recent desire to divert that passion into writing fiction (the other option being re-enactment, and standing in a muddy field in a suit of armour pretending to be the Duke of Somerset ain't my thing), the major inspiration was "A Song of Ice and Fire", George R.R.Martin's brilliant fantasy series.

                                 

Some free advertising

There are many good reasons to love this series, but for me it is the power politics and vicious intrigue between the various 'Houses' of Westeros that make the books so compelling. Frank Herbert pulled off a similar trick with the Great Houses of Atreides and Harkonnen in the first couple of Dune novels.

Westeros is essentially a late medieval environment, and the noble families of Stark and Lannister etc are fantasy versions of the medieval dynasties that fought like rabid dogs over the crowns of England and France in the Middle Ages. The bloodstained doings of the Plantagenets and Capets seem to be particular inspirations, no more so than the vicious round of aristocratic infighting remembered as The Wars of the Roses.

This era has always provided ideal breeding grounds for fiction, and I'm by no means the first author to have the bright idea of writing a series of novels set during the period. I did want to avoid writing about the various kings and nobles, or at least relegate them to secondary roles. The answer was to invent a fictional family.

Thus the Boltons were born. The obvious template for them was the Pastons, the real-life Norfolk family who left an invaluable record of their time in the form of the famous Paston Letters. This remarkable cache of letters provide us with a snapshot of minor English gentry and their trials and aspirations during the late fifteenth century.

One of the Paston letters

The Boltons are from a similar background to their real-life counterparts, though they have their home in Staffordshire rather than Norfolk. Like the Pastons, they have their sights set on climbing the social ladder.

They also have a number of problem sons. Richard, the eldest, is vengeful and unstable, and his brother James a corrupt and drunken cleric with a taste for local widows. Their mother, Dame Elizabeth, has her hands full keeping the family together. Dynastic civil wars are repeated on a local level, and the Boltons frequently find themselves having to defend their property and their lives. The Boltons often make terrible mistakes, fall in love with the wrong people, and fight on the wrong side during many of the epic set-piece battles fought to decide the future of England.

Book One of the planned three-part series climaxes with the Battle of Towton. This was a holocaust of a battle, perhaps the most dreadful slaughter ever committed on English soil, in which a significant percentage of adult males in England were massacred. 

The Battle of Towton. Nowhere near as much fun as it looks. 

This delightful affair was fought on a freezing hillside in Yorkshire in the middle of a snowstorm. To describe the sheer uncompromising horror and brutality of Towton was a major challenge, and hopefully I managed to convey it to some degree. The result of the battle has a major impact on the fortunes of the Boltons, as well as the kingdom in general, as readers can discover in Book Two...

Below is a link to the Kindle and paperback versions of the book, with the splendid cover art for the Kindle version done by my good friend and co-writer Martin Bolton:

The White Hawk on Kindle and paperback

Please feel free to email me with any questions or comments at Davidpilling56@hotmail.com