Gervase Markham

Estimates vary, but most historians place both sides at somewhere between fifty thousand and seventy thousand men.

Some chroniclers even claim more.

The Yorkists fielded a formidable longbow contingent under the command of Lord Fauconberg, while the Lancastrians were heavily reliant on pike squadrons from Scotland and mercenary archers who had served earlier campaigns.

The numbers were amplified by levies brought in by local gentry eager to prove their loyalty to their liege.

Archaeologists have recovered more than twenty graves across the Towton field, with one single trench containing up to sixty-seven bodies stacked in a single layer.

Some victims show blunt trauma to shoulders, suggesting melee combat was widespread.

The sheer number of skeletal remains challenges medieval chroniclers who limited figures to around fifteen thousand.

It also underscores that the battlefield may have been more chaotic than later retellings implied, with soldiers falling on both sides, not only the defeated.