How Margaret of Anjou fell at Tewkesbury and died a lonely beggar

http://www.lookandlearn.com/ Posted in Famous battles, Historical articles, History, Royalty, War on Sunday, 22 July 2012 This edited article about Margaret of Anjou originally appeared  in Look and Learn issue number 754 published on 26 June 1976. Margaret of Anjou aboard the storm-battered ship which brought the fifteen-year old future queen to England by Clive Uptton Famous throughout the whole of Europe for her beauty and learning, Margaret of Anjou seemed assured of a brilliant future. But history was to shape her life in such a manner as to make her penniless. Her beauty was a legend even at the age of thirteen. It dazzled and  bewitched all who beheld her wherever she or her portrait went. But matchless beauty was not all that this remarkable child possessed. Trained and nurtured with the utmost care, she was famous throughout Europe for her exceptional learning and majestic grace. Princes and noblemen all over the continent aspired to her hand, and it seemed to all who knew the lovely young princess, that hers would be a life of peace, and untroubled happiness. Instead her life was to end in tragedy and miserable humiliation. Her name was Margaret of Anjou. Born on March 24th, 1430, Margaret was the daughter of the chivalrous, gentle King Rene of Sicily and Provence, King of Naples, Duke of Anjou and Maine, and of the headstrong Isabel of Lorraine. From all her ancestors Margaret inherited abundant energy, a love of hunting, of horses and warlike tournaments; from her father a love of art and learning, and from her mother, courage, tenacity and an iron will. Throughout her life Margaret was to call on the courage within her that remained undaunted, almost to the very end of her life. The first test of these qualities came at the age of fifteen when she first set an unsteady foot on England’s hostile soil. A tempestuous storm across the Channel had reduced her ship to a mastless, limping hulk. Sweeping across the mainland, the gale had felled trees, ripped off roofs of houses, and devastated the countryside. Sick, dishevelled, her clothes in tatters and on the point of physical collapse, Margaret arrived to find no friendly welcome from the people of her new home. It was a miracle she had not been shipwrecked. She had come to England to be married to the country’s king, the saintly, politically naive, Henry VI, thus sealing the truce intended to end the Hundred Years War between England and France. Henry was at once enslaved by his young bride and Margaret, in her turn, soon developed an aggressive, protective affection for the king who loved justice and peace above all things. England should have adored a queen like Margaret. Even at so young an age, she showed an aptitude and liking for the hard work of government. Two years after her coronation as Henry’s Queen, the real reign of Margaret of Anjou would begin. More and more she had taken on the duties of government which Henry found so intolerable. Peace-loving, erudite, and deeply religious, Henry was totally unsuited to his task as ruler of a troubled nation and Margaret, wanting to relieve him of all the worldly problems which he found so agonising, resolved to spend her life protecting and ensuring his peace of mind. In less troubled times, her policies would have delighted the nation: lasting peace abroad; at home the restoration of the country’s former prosperity; and the encouragement of trade and the broadening of education. Henry had founded Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, and Margaret founded Queen’s College. She sent to the Low Countries and Lyons for skilled craftsmen to improve the woollen industry and to establish silk-weaving. Unhappily, though, for the majority of English, Margaret would always remain ‘the foreigner’. She ruled England at a time of tremendous change. For thirty years the English were to spill each other’s blood in a dynastic struggle so hideous and appalling that it has gone down in history as one of the most tragic events in the nation’s past. The Wars Of The Roses is a deceptively pretty name for the horrors and atrocities which were carried out in the name of honour and revenge in that bloody civil war. Margaret’s role in the struggle was a decisive one. Without her, the destinies of England, of France and consequently of the whole world would have been different. At the age of 20 she was faced with the task of preventing, almost single-handed, the dismembering of an empire and the total collapse of a dynasty. To save the royal House of Lancaster she would have to crush Richard, Duke of York, the claimant to the throne. She appointed the Lancastrian, Somerset, Constable of England, to the amazed indignation of the nation, who blamed him for England’s defeat at the hands of the French at the end of the Hundred Years War. The most unpopular man in England, he had been made commander of all the armed forces which, in the circumstances, made him absolute master of the government. Richard of York seethed with anger at the sight of his archrival being given such power. He assembled a small army and marched on London to claim the Crown. The Wars Of The Roses had begun. In battle after battle, Margaret was to fight with indomitable courage. At Wakefield, where she won a great victory over the Yorkists, her strategy possessed the inspired brilliance of a Napoleon. In 1461 at the second battle of St Albans, she won another victory.  But soon the tide was to change. On the battlefield of Towton where perished the flower of Lancastrian nobility, there took place one of the worst massacres in the history of war. The day after battle, the rivers nearby still ran red with the blood of Lancaster’s 28,000 dead. Richard of York’s son, Edward, Earl of March, was now King of England. But while she had a breath of life in her body, Margaret would fight to win the crown back for her husband and for her son. After seven years exile in France she returned to England to recover from Edward IV the crown. But the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471 was to be her final battle. Utterly defeated, and mentally broken, the Queen was thrown into a cart and taken away to prison. She would never reign again. Henry, the peace-lover, met his violent death at the hands of a murderer on the orders of Edward IV. Her beloved son was battered to death by Edward IV and his lords, and Margaret herself, after five years in prison, was ransomed, at the price of her French estates, to the French king, Louis XI. When her father died she became a penniless beggar. She had signed away all claims to her family’s lands and in doing this had united France with Maine, Anjou and Provence. Friendless, penniless, and completely alone, she died at the age of fifty-two.