Simon de Montfort was one of a group of barons who confronted the incompetent King Henry III in 1258 and took over royal government. Their aim was reform but ultimately their good intentions foundered over political and personal divisions; like a lot of revolutions, it ended in civil war. Montfort was the most die-hard reformer, and had a number of personal grudges against Henry III, who was his brother-in-law. In May 1264 he defeated Henry's forces in battle at Lewes in Sussex, capturing both the king and his son, the future Edward I, after which he ruled England for over a year. But in May 1265 Edward escaped from captivity and led a well co-ordinated royalist fight-back, which soon had Montfort on the run. By the start of August Edward's forces had the earl and his small army of supporters cornered near Worcester. Montfort was waiting for reinforcements led by his namesake son, but Edward had just led a surprise attack on them at Kenilworth. Here's how I wrote up the end of the story in A Great and Terrible King:
But by this time Montfort had crossed the Severn. Having seized the opportunity presented by his enemies’ temporary absence, the earl was now camped on the river’s eastern shore. He was, in fact, only a few miles south of Worcester, but Edward, after his exhausting dash through the night, was unable to contemplate pushing himself of his forces any further. Both armies therefore spent an uneasy twenty-four hours resting in close proximity. During this time, Montfort heard the news from Kenilworth, and not all of it was bad. In spite of its losses, his son’s army was still intact. The hope of uniting their two forces therefore remained undimmed, and with this end in mind the earl began to move his army on the evening of 3 August. Marching under cover of darkness, he aimed to give his enemies the slip for a final time. At dawn the next day, which broke around 5am, his forces arrived in Evesham, and there they paused for breakfast.
Three hours later, their spirits suddenly soared: on the horizon were spotted the advancing banners of young Simon’s army. Their stealthy night-time manoeuvres, it seemed, had been a success. With these reinforcements, they would stand a fighting chance. But then, with equal suddenness, all hope evaporated. From the top of the tower of Evesham Abbey, the lookout called down to Montfort in despair. ‘We are all dead men, for it is not your son, as you believed’.
It was Edward. The royalist army had not been given the slip at all. On the contrary, they had silently shadowed their opponents throughout the night, all the while remaining undetected. Playing the advantage of surprise for all it was worth, they had advanced the last few miles under the banners captured at Kenilworth two days before. Now, at last, the lengthy game of cat-and-mouse of the past two months was over: Montfort was trapped. Evesham lies in a loop of the River Avon, closed in from every direction except the north, and it was here, at the top of the hill, that Edward and Gloucester lined up their army.
The old sorcerer had been out-generalled by both his former apprentices, and he knew it. ‘How skilfully they are advancing’, he exclaimed, before adding, with characteristic arrogance, ‘they learned that from me!’. His only possible escape route was the bridge at southern end of the town, but there was not nearly enough time to get a whole army across it. The earl and his cavalry might flee and leave the others to their fate, but the loss of prestige would spell the end of his career. In any case, flight was hardly Montfort’s style. Instead, he rallied his forces for a final time and marched northwards out of Evesham, up the hill, to face his foes. The sky darkened and a thunderstorm broke.
Montfort’s chances at Evesham were terrible. The element of surprise and the command of the high ground, both so useful to him at Lewes, had this time been seized by his enemies. Once again, the earl’s forces were outnumbered three to one. When the two sides engaged, the wide royalist frontline quickly absorbed and enveloped the smaller Montfortian force. Defeat was inevitable.
So too was death. Well before the first blow had been struck, Edward had let it be known that, on this occasion, the normal rules of chivalric warfare were to be suspended. No quarter was to be given, no surrender accepted. Consequently, as the royalists closed in, the killing began. Montfort’s young knights were dragged from their horses, stripped of their armour, and stabbed. At least thirty of them perished in this way, an orgy of blood-letting not seen for centuries. Montfort himself, meanwhile, had received the special honour of a dedicated death-squad – a dozen men, ‘the strongest and most intrepid in arms’, chosen by Edward and Gloucester on the eve of battle, whose sole task was to find the earl and kill him. Yet in the end it was Roger Mortimer, the pugnacious marcher lord with the personal grudge, who struck the killer blow, running Montfort through the neck with his lance. Others then fell on the earl’s lifeless body, hacking off his hands, feet and head. In a final piece of grotesque savagery, his genitals were cut off and placed in his mouth, and the severed head was dispatched to Mortimer’s wife as a grisly token of her husband’s triumph.
Amidst such brutal carnage, there were few survivors. One man dressed in Montfortian armour had a miraculous escape, but not before he had been wounded in the shoulder. ‘I am Henry of Winchester, your king!’, he cried. ‘Do not kill me!’. Roger Leybourne immediately intervened and saved the stricken monarch, but it was Edward himself who led his father away from the battlefield.
Meanwhile, all around them, the killing continued to rage. Those fleeing across the fields were cut down as they ran. In the town, too, the streets were thick with the slaughtered. Even those who sought sanctuary in the abbey church were not spared. ‘The choir, the walls, the cross, the statues and the altars were sprayed with the blood of the wounded and the dead’, wrote one horrified eye-witness. ‘From the bodies around the high altar, a stream of blood ran right down into the crypts’.
‘The murder of Evesham’, wrote another, ‘for battle it was none’.
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