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Preface of the Article
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Home>Russian Historical Encyclopedia>Volume I>The Scarlet and White Rose Wars
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The Golden and White Roses of the War (eng.
The Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) — internecine feudal (civil) wars, which were a manifestation of the deep crisis experienced by England in the second half of the XV century, and resulted in a protracted struggle for the English throne between two coalitions of aristocratic families — the "parties" of York and Lancaster.
The Wars of the Roses consisted of several battles between the troops of York and Lancaster and a series of usurpations of the English throne.
Title
Contemporaries did not name the events of the third quarter of the XV century.
The War of the Roses.
The only known usage of that time is "Cousin Wars".
The idea that a civil conflict is denoted by two opposing emblems of roses arose at the end of the XV century.
The white rose was one of the main emblems of Edward IV and the House of York, the use of the red rose as a symbol of the Lancastrians and, as a result, the emergence of the thesis of competing emblems dates only to 1485.
Thanks to Henry Tudor, the idea of their unification became a common place of English propaganda.
Historiography
Until now, there is no consensus in historiography regarding the dating, nature and causes of the War of the Roses.
Modern British historiography is characterized by a tendency to define the Wars of the Roses as a series of loosely connected battles and usurpations of the throne, which practically did not affect the lives of contemporaries.
An important role is given to the importance of the personalities of the English monarchs of that time — the incapable Henry VI and the ambitious Richard III.
Russian historiography considers the War of the Roses as a manifestation of a general crisis that engulfed not only the political, but also the social and economic spheres of life in England of the XV century.
Chronology
In accordance with how the nature of the War of the Roses is understood, the dating is also given: 1450-1487 (MacFarlane), 1452-1497 (Goodman, Brown), 1459-1487 (Pollard), 1437-1509 (Carpenter).
The number of wars is usually defined as 2 or 3, which, as a rule, coincide in time with the periods of active hostilities.
The main difference is made between the struggle for the throne between the Yorks and Lancasters (before 1471) and between the Yorks and the Tudors (1483-1485/87).
Reasons
The formal reason for the War of the Roses was the controversial claims of the Lancastrian dynasty to the English throne.
Henry VI was the great grandson of John of Gaunt, the third son of King Edward III, and York was the great grandson of Lionel, the second son of this king, besides the first representative of the Lancastrian dynasty — Henry IV seized the throne in 1399, forcibly forcing King Richard II to abdicate.
However, the War of the Roses began in difficult conditions for England: 1) defeat in the Hundred Years ' War (1453);
2) suppression of the Jack Cade Rebellion (1450);
3) the weakness of the central government due to the inability of King Henry VI to manage the kingdom and the resulting substitution of the power of the king by the power of a narrow group of people who made decisions for him;
4) difficult economic situation.
An important role in the emergence and duration of the War of the Roses was played by both objective reasons (the system of social ties within the nobility) and subjective factors — conflicts of aristocratic clans.
Course of action
Initially, Richard, Duke of York, fought for control of a weak king.
He opposed the group that ruled on behalf of the feeble minded King Henry VI, important members of which were Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and Henry VI's wife Margaret of Anjou.
He succeeded in establishing a protectorate over the king, but he was soon removed from the court of Henry VI.
The beginning of open wars.
the action was initiated by the Battle of St. Albans (May 22, 1455), when Richard, Duke of York, defeated the Lancastrian supporters.
Richard managed to restore his influence at court, and he was appointed protector (ruler) of the kingdom.
After being removed from power, Richard declared his claims to the English throne and rebelled.
The Yorkists won victories at the battles of Blore Heath (23.09.1459) and at Northampton (10.07.1460), which allowed to conclude an agreement under which Richard was recognized as the heir of Henry VI and again appointed protector (October 1460).
Margaret of Anjou, the wife of King Henry VI, led the forces of Lancastrian supporters.
The Yorkists were defeated at the battles of Wakefield (10.12.1460) and St. Albans (17.02.1461).
Richard, the leader of the Yorkists, died along with the Earl of Salisbury.
He was replaced by his eldest son Edward, who, with the support of the Earl of Warwick, the heir to the Earl of Salisbury, defeated the Lancastrians at the battles of Mortimer Cross (02.02.1461) and at Towton (29.03.1461).
Henry VI was deposed, and Edward IV (1461-1483) was crowned in June 1461.
However, the war did not end there.
In 1464, 2 rebellions broke out in the north of England, suppressed by John Neville, Marquess of Montague.
The deposed King Henry VI was captured again in 1465 and was imprisoned in the Tower of London.
In 1467-1470, relations between Edward IV and the Earl of Warwick gradually deteriorated, eventually leading to the transition of Warwick, along with the Duke of Clarence (Edward IV's younger brother), to the Lancastrian side (1470).
Edward had to flee the country, in Burgundy, and Henry VI was restored to the throne (1470-1471).
Upon returning from Burgundy Edward's victories at Barnet (14 April 1471) and Tewkesbury (may 04, 1471) over the forces of Warwick and Margaret, wife of Henry VI, the last landed in England with the support of the French king Louis XI.
Warwick and the son of Henry VI were killed, and Henry VI himself was again deposed and imprisoned in the Tower, where he soon died.
The restoration of Edward IV to the throne is considered by some researchers to be the end of the War of the Roses.
Strengthening his power, Edward IV brutally dealt with the Lancastrians and rebellious Yorkists.
After the death of Edward VI (1483), the throne passed
White rose — heraldic emblem of the house of Yorkalaya rose heraldic Scarlet rose — heraldic emblem of the House of Lancaster
to his infant son, Edward V, however, the latter's uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, deposed the child on the grounds that he was illegitimate, and imprisoned him together with his brother in the Tower, where the children soon died.
The executions and confiscations carried out by Richard III against his opponents led to general dissatisfaction with his rule.
The opponents united around Henry Tudor, a distant relative of the Lancasters.
At the Battle of Bosworth (August 22, 1485), Richard III was defeated and killed.
The king was Henry VII Tudor, who marked the beginning of the Tudor dynasty.
By marrying Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward IV, he united the Lancaster and York dynasties.
Traditionally, the ascension to the throne of Henry VII marks the end of the War of the Roses, but some researchers are inclined to extend this period until the Battle of Stoke (1487), when the army of another pretender to the throne, Lambert Simnel, and his supporter the Earl of Lincoln, whom Richard III once appointed as his successor to the English throne, was defeated.
The appearance of other contenders for the English throne (Perkin Warbeck declared himself Richard III in 1491) allows us to extend the period of the War of the Roses even further.
In general, military operations were interspersed with long periods of relative calm.
Results
As a result of the War of the Roses, there was a change of dynasties in England, since both branches of the Plantagenet dynasty (Lancasters and Yorks) were destroyed and had no direct heirs.
During the War of the Roses, a significant part of the old aristocracy was exterminated (although recently researchers have been talking about the psychological effect that losses had on the surviving representatives of this stratum), which allowed the royal power to "close" the entire system of social ties, to concentrate power in its own hands.
The importance of the gentry and the emerging bourgeois elements interested in strengthening the royal power increased.
This contributed to the establishment of Tudor absolutism.
Окончание Войны Алой и Белой Розы обычно рассматривается как конец периода Средневековья в Англии.
Лит.: Браун Е. Д. Джентри в эпоху войн Роз: опыт социокультурного анализа.
Москва, (Дисс.), 2003; Кузнецов Е. В. Общественно политическая борьба в Англии II половины XV века.
Горький, 1959; Сливко С. А. Социальная борьба в Англии в конце XV в. и формирование английского абсолютизма.
Омск, 1965; Carpenter C. The Wars of the Roses.
Politics and the Constitution in England, c. 1437–1509.
Cambridge, 1997; Conflicts, Consequences and the Crown in the Late Middle Ages / Ed. by L. Clark.
Woodbridge, 2007; Goodman A. Lander J. R. Crown and Nobility 1450–1509.
Montreal, 1976; McFarlane K. B. England in the Fifteenth Century.
London, 1981; Murph R. C. Rewriting the Wars of the Roses: the 17th Century Royalist Histories of John Trussell, Sir Francis Biondi and William Habington.
London, 2007; Pollard A. J. The Wars of the Roses.
Basingstoke, 1988; Ross Ch.
The Wars of the Roses.
London, 1987; Wagner J. A.
The Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Roses.
Santa Barbara, 2001;
The Wars of the Roses: Military Activity and English Society, 1452–97.
New York, 1981;
The Wars of the Roses / Ed. Pollard A. J. Basingstoke & New York, 1995.
А. А. Анисимова.
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