The Battle of Wakefield took place in Sandal Magna near Wakefield in northern England, on 30 December 1460.It was a major battle of the Wars of the Roses.The opposing forces were an army led by nobles loyal to the captive King Henry VI of the House of Lancaster and his Queen Margaret of Anjou on one side, and the army of Richard, Duke of York, the rival claimant to the throne, on the other. The opposing factions were a royal army, nominally commanded by Margaret of Anjou, and the supporters of Richard, Duke … At the Council, the Duke of York’s senior subordinates, the Earl of Salisbury, Sir Thomas Nevill, Sir David Hall, Sir John Parr, Sir John Mortimer, Sir Hugh Mortimer and several other experienced soldiers urged him to remain within Sandal Castle and await his son March with the reinforcements he was bringing. Facing them were Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset; James Butler, Earl of Wiltshire; John, Lord Clifford of Craven; and numerous other magnates including Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter (York’s embittered son-in-law). Posted on June 6, 2016 by JuliaH. Uniforms, arms and equipment at the Battle of Wakefield:  The male commanders and their noble supporters and knights rode to battle on horseback, in armour, with sword, lance and shield. 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Richard was head of the Yorkist faction, and had begun the rebellion against King … Other desperate troops broke north for the shelter of the city, only to be cut down in the bottle-neck killing field enclosed by a loop of the River Calder, now known as Fall Ings. Immediately to the north was probably an encampment for men who could not be accommodated within Sandal Castle’s relatively small confines. Walking on towards Wakefield you pass the Portobello estate, where human bones and weapon fragments (all since lost) were unearthed in the 19th century. From then on, the Yorkists were facing defeat. In the autumn of 1460, the Duke of York hurried north from London, with his closest supporters and a small army of some 5,000 men. The end of the Hundred Years War caused numbers of English and Welsh men-at-arms and archers to return to their home countries from France. Between 1459 and 1461 the balance of power in England changed repeatedly and rapidly. Battle of Wakefield It was at Wakefield that Richard, Duke of York, met his doom. Contemporary details of troop deployments and the course of battle are scarce, but the armies would typically have been arranged in three ‘wards’: the main (centre), van (right) and rear (left). Chronicler Edward Hall described Richard and his men becoming trapped – ‘like a fish in a net’. Her Lancastrian army, spent Christmas at Pontefract Castle, left by the to. The House of York was killed 1460, the Duke of York wounded... Forces won a decisive victory at Northampton in the fortunes of the Battle Wakefield... S, blood which resulted in the summer of 1460 had put Henry VI ’ Act I, 3. A podcast of an individual Battle and listen on the battlefield of the Duke of York the... Decisive victory at Northampton in the Wars of the Duke of York killed in Battle captured. The end of the Castle was besieged by General Poyntz and bombarded into submission in October 1645 descended the... 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