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From Brexit to Churchill statues it’s apparent that many Brits fetishise WWI and WWII. This won’t last. Let me tell you about a battle you may not have heard of even though more Englishmen perished at it than at any other. 1/15
The memorialisation — or fetishisation, if you like — of the two world wars is presumed to be something that will be always with us. We *know* about the Battle of Waterloo but we don’t obsess over it (much). Why? 2/15
It’s part of our supposed “national story” but we don’t feel it in our guts. That’s got to be partly because it took place many generations ago. 3/15
For all that they were iconic conflicts, the memory of “our” world wars only really lingers because we know people who lived through them. But we’re losing the last living links with them. 4/15
When I mentioned “forgotten battle” I didn’t mean Waterloo. I meant the Battle of Towton. Heard of it? Yes? Then you may be from Yorkshire or you’re an ace historian. For most other people it’s ... 5/15
Upwards of 28,000 Englishmen died at the Battle of Towton, more than at any other single day conflict we've been involved with, and we've been involved with (and caused) a great many. 6/15
Historians don't much doubt the huge number of herald-reported dead. It could even be an underestimate given that many of those who fled the battle were tracked down and killed (some in the pubs of York.) 7/15
28,000 is a greater number of dead than those killed in the Battle of Britain, Dunkirk and the Normandy landings combined. 8/15
At no other point in history have more Englishmen died in one day, not even during the Battle of the Somme, when 19,000 died. 9/15
We don't fetishise or memorialise the Battle of Towton because it took place nearly 560 years ago. A bloody battle that took place in 1461 ain't gonna fool 60-year-olds into thinking they were at El Alamein. This, bizarrely, happens with WWII. 10/15
With the passage of time we'll forget about these world wars, possibly because other tragedies will take their place. This forgetting isn't a sin, as many "veterans" and Daily Mail editorialists would have you believe. It's natural. 11/15
This isn't to demean or belittle the sacrifices made in these wars — by people you may have known personally — but we have to recognise these two conflicts loom large because they are close. 12/15
When they fade to grey, which they will, our particular national psychosis will fade with them. A staggering one percent of the English population died in the Battle of Towton yet very few have heard of it today. 13/15
There are no personal connections to the poor sods who died in the rising fields of Towton, or drowned in the Cock beck which was so full of corpses there was, for some years afterwards, a spot remembered as the Bridge of Bodies. 14/15
Oddly enough, I only know about the Battle of Towton because of a rights-of-way dispute over a lawn, which I wrote up here a few years ago: https://roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/battleoftowton/ fin/15
Oops. Should have mentioned — this was a battle during the War of the Roses, a civil war really; Englishmen against Englishmen. Who really really hated each other cos of perceived slights, and a few murders.
