It also had the added advantage of avoiding an unpopular alliance with one of England’s traditional enemies, the French. As such, Edward believed an alliance with Burgundy would provide England with stronger commercial ties with many Flemish and Dutch towns. The duke was more than simply a subject of the French king as Burgundy ruled over the Low Countries, which constituted much of modern-day Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. While Warwick favoured an alliance with Louis, Edward preferred an alliance with the Duke of Burgundy. Foreign rulers, particularly the French king, Louis XI, and his main adversary, Charles, Duke of Burgundy, were able exploit these divisions.Įarl of Warwick, also known as ‘the King Maker’. During this instability, problems in England were drawn into a wider sets of events.
The first phase of the wars ended when the Lancastrian king, Henry VI, was usurped by the 18-year-old Edward IV, who then cemented his position by winning the Battle of Towton.Ĭonflict re-emerged a decade later, this time caused by the deteriorating personal relations between the Yorkist king, Edward IV, and his closest ally and advisor, the Earl of Warwick, later known as “ the Kingmaker”. The Wars of the Roses were three distinct conflicts. Remembered mostly as an English-only affair, on the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Tewkesbury, a key event in the wars, it is worth remembering how the wider politics of late-Medieval Europe, particularly France, shaped this important, and often commemorated, part of English history.
In many ways, the wars were really about standards of government. However, they were about much more than that. The Wars of the Roses are normally portrayed as a series of battles between two warring houses, York and Lancaster, over who was rightly king of England.
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