I had sent my heralds to parley with his but it was only a formality. Whatever his frame of mind, there was little chance that Edward would let us melt away into the landscape because for him it was fight, or lose everything, either in battle or with his head on the block. I could not suppress a secret admiration for an eighteen-year-old facing up to such a choice.

It took a few tense minutes for the parley to fail and the heralds walked back to their respective lines hurling their warders high into the air. Roars arose from the opposing lines, closely followed by opening salvos from both batteries and immediately the agonized cries of the wounded began to merge with the blood-curdling yells of the hale. Swords were raised and pole-arms lowered for the charge.

What none of us on the Lancastrian side had noticed was that during the hiatus of the parley, Yorkist longbowmen had covertly taken up positions at the edge of a tree-belt on the other side of the River Lugg. They had begun firing their armour-piercing war-arrows almost before the heralds’ warders had landed and although Owen’s Welsh archers quickly returned their fire a number of his company had fallen before Wiltshire’s French arbalesters had wound up their first crossbow bolts. Meanwhile my men braced themselves for the onslaught from Edward’s infantry advance, saving their energy and allowing the Yorkist hotheads to expend theirs by charging at us pell-mell over the rough, frost-hardened ground. We held them off successfully, although the fighting was intense. Meanwhile the guns were exchanging fire to deafening effect and the enemy artillery found an unfortunate number of casualties amongst my men. We were soon tripping over fallen comrades, our feet slipping in their blood.