SE Academic Review 2023

69 ACADEMIC REVIEW 2023

Richard’s foreign policy owed as much to the legacy of the War with France that had officially finished in 1453 as it did to the state of Anglo-French relations in the period from that point onwards. In assessing Richard’s reign, foreign issues have too often been overlooked in favour of the ‘murders in the Tower’ and Shakespearean intrigue. It is therefore necessary to look at Richard’s aims and failures in the light of the dominating foreign policy issues of his time, and to explore the historical reasoning behind his actions. The background to his reign, the situation that confronted him in 1483 and the consequences of his eventual defeat are crucial to a new understanding of the period. France achieved at Agincourt in 1415 - something denied Henry V by his premature death seven years later. Richard’s father - Richard, Duke of York - had a fair record as Lieutenant of France, successfully defending Pontoise and Rouen and helping secure the Treaty of Tours in 1445 (Horspool, 2017, p. 20). His son’s 32 years saw not a day when the civil and foreign conflicts of England were not present - ‘he was born into, and died in, a time of violence, uncertainty and strife’ (Horspool, p. 24). The mood of the country during Richard’s upbringing, therefore, was one of danger, mistrust and intermittent revolt (Ross, 1988, p. 6). Failure on the foreign stage had brought about internecine conflict at home: it is in light of this, and the struggle of successive rulers to assert authority, that the desire for aggression and victory in France and Scotland must be seen. If, as one of his biographers attests, the young Richard ‘ached with desire to emulate the deeds of legendary knights’, then his later aims and actions are far less surprising (Horspool, 2017, p. 51). The end of the Hundred Years War did not seem a definite fact in 1483, just as the Battle of Bosworth did not immediately appear as the end of the Wars of the Roses 32 years later (Bennett, 1985, p. 119). When Richard came to the throne, therefore, the possibility for future foreign conflict was open.

Richard’s reign ended in failure at the field of Bosworth, when he was defeated by an army of English dissidents, Welsh warlords, French soldiers, Scots militiamen and Breton archers. He had united his enemies against him. Yet Bosworth was more than a battle to unseat Richard from the throne on the basis of personal grievances and obscure hereditary claims: the conflict was a wider one. Richard’s defeat was in many ways England’s defeat; the defeat of the English claims to the French throne which had been at the centre of the Hundred Years War. To look at 1485 as simply the end of the Wars of the Roses, therefore, is to ignore the wider motives and implications of Henry Tudor’s invasion. 1. Ancient antagonism: Richard’s aims and the state of Anglo-French relations Richard III was brought up in the aftermath of the Hundred Years War, and he ruled in the shadow of its failures. Although the official end of the War is dated to 1453, the military apparatus and political mindset of leaders on either side of the Channel remained similar until the victory of Henry Tudor in 1485 and the consolidation of his power over the next decade and a half. The antagonism based on historic claims to the throne between England and France remained a defining fact of foreign policy making, and the threat of invasion from either side a constant. Richard’s actions, both before and during his reign, clearly continued the intrinsic desire of English rulers for war. His defeat did not only ensure a certain level of peace between the two countries under Henry Tudor, it also presented a new framework within which English rulers would conceive of cross-Channel relations, and did away with the almost instinctive force against peace which defined the policies of Edward VI and Richard III (Griffiths, 1986, p. 218). Richard was born in 1452, a year before the Battle of Castillon had effectively ended the Hundred Years War. Maine was surrendered in 1448, Normandy in 1450 and Bordeaux three years later (Webster, 1998, p. 40). The disastrous, and surprisingly sudden, destruction of English military hopes came as an immense shock to the populace whose support for the reign of Henry had been predicated on foreign success and the fulfilment of the victory over