Medieval warfare was just as terrifying as you might imagine
中世纪战争一点也不比你想象的温和
Dec 16th 2010 | TOWTON | from PRINT EDITION
THE soldier now known as Towton 25 had survived battle before. A healed skull fracture points to previous engagements. He was old enough—somewhere between 36 and 45 when he died—to have gained plenty of experience of fighting. But on March 29th 1461, his luck ran out.
现在被人们称为陶顿25（Towton 25）的战士在陶顿战役前还参加过别的战斗，有愈合的头骨骨折为证。他年纪不小（死时约在36~45岁之间），想必战斗经验已颇为丰富。但在1461年3月29日，运气没有再次眷顾他。
Towton 25 suffered eight wounds to his head that day. The precise order can be worked out from the direction of fractures on his skull: when bone breaks, the cracks veer towards existing areas of weakness. The first five blows were delivered by a bladed weapon to the left-hand side of his head, presumably by a right-handed opponent standing in front of him. None is likely to have been lethal.
这一天，陶顿25头部总共受到8处创伤。我们可以通过他头骨骨折方向精确判定受伤顺序：当骨头断裂时时，裂缝总是向薄弱之处扩展。起先的5击使用的是利器，击打部位在头部左侧，应该是被右手持械的对手从身前击中。这5击均不致命。
The next one almost certainly was. From behind him someone swung a blade towards his skull, carving a down-to-up trajectory through the air. The blow opened a huge horizontal gash into the back of his head—picture a slit you could post an envelope through. Fractures raced down to the base of his skull and around the sides of his head. Fragments of bone were forced in to Towton 25’s brain, felling him.
基本可以确定是第6击要了他的命。有人从他身后手持利刃砍向他的头颅，从下至上贯穿了整个头部。这一击在他的头部后侧撕开了一道巨大的水平豁口，足以塞进一个封信。骨折一直延伸到头骨底部，并向头部两侧扩展。骨头的碎片迸入了他的大脑，终于使他倒地不起。
His enemies were not done yet. Another small blow to the right and back of the head may have been enough to turn him over onto his back. Finally another blade arced towards him. This one bisected his face, opening a crevice that ran from his left eye to his right jaw (see picture). It cut deep: the edge of the blade reached to the back of his throat.
但敌人并未就此罢休。他的头部右后方又遭受了一次较轻的袭击，这使他转了个身。最后，又一柄利刃朝他砍来，将他的面部一分为二，从左眼一直砍到右颌（见图）。这一砍砍得极深，锋刃已经触及到喉部后侧。
Thorny tales 争议传说
Towton is a nondescript village in northern England, between the cities of York and Leeds. Many Britons have never heard of it: school history tends to skip the 400-or-so years between 1066 and the start of the Tudor era. Visitors have to look hard to spot the small roadside cross that marks the site of perhaps the bloodiest battle ever fought in England. Yet the clash was a turning point in the Wars of the Roses. And, almost 550 years later, the site is changing our understanding of medieval battle.
陶顿是英格兰北部约克和利兹之间的一个平凡小村庄。许多英国人压根就没听说过这个地方：在他们的历史课本上，从1066年一直到都铎王朝开始的400年间是一片空白。游客们得睁大了眼睛留神乡村小路牌，才找得着这个或许是英格兰历史上最惨烈战役的现场。然而这场战役乃是玫瑰战争的转折点。而大约550年之后，这片战场改变了我们对中世纪战争的认识。
In Shakespeare’s cycle of eight plays, the story of the Wars of the Roses is told as an epic drama. In reality it was a messy series of civil wars—an on-again, off-again conflict pitting supporters of the ruling Lancastrian monarchy against backers of the house of York. According to Helen Castor, a historian at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, the wars arose from the slow breakdown of English government under Henry VI, a man who was prone to bouts of mental illness and “curiously incapable” even when well. As decision-making under Henry drifted, factions formed and enmities deepened. These spiralling conflicts eventually drove Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, to assert his own claim to the throne. York was named Henry’s heir, but he was killed in December 1460. His 18-year-old son, Edward, proclaimed himself king just before the battle of Towton.
在莎士比亚笔下，《玫瑰战争》是八台连环史诗剧。但在现实中，玫瑰战争可谓英格兰国内的一场乱战——当政的兰开斯特家族和约克家族的支持者们战了又和，和了又战。据剑桥大学悉尼苏塞克斯（Sidney Sussex）学院历史学家海伦•卡斯特（Helen Castor）的说法，玫瑰战争的起因是亨利六世治下的英格兰政府逐渐陷入了分裂。亨利六世是位精神病患者，即使在正常状态下也“不可理喻”。在争夺亨利王朝决策权的过程中形成了不少派系，彼此之间渐成水火。最终，约克公爵理查•金雀花（Richard Plantagenet）在混战中脱颖而出，自称将接过英格兰的王冠。约克被入继亨利之大统，但在1460年被杀。随后，其子、年仅18岁的爱德华自立为王，此时正在陶顿战役前夕。
That set the stage for a vicious fight. Edward had his father and brother to avenge. After killing him, Lancastrian forces had impaled York’s head on a lance and adorned it with a paper crown. Following years of skirmishes others had scores to settle, too. In previous encounters, efforts had been made to spare rank-and-file soldiers. At Towton, orders went out that no quarter be given. This was to be winner-takes-all, a brutal fight to the death.
一场恶战由此而起。爱德华身背父兄血海深仇。金雀花被杀后，兰开斯特军给他的头颅被戴上一顶纸王冠，挑在长矛上示众。随后几年，各方恩怨冲突不断。在陶顿战役之前，各方只是务除魁首，不问伍卒。但陶顿战役的军令是格杀勿论。这是一场血战到底的决斗，赢家将一统江山。
The result was a crushing victory for the Yorkists and for the young king. Edward IV went on to rule, with a brief interruption, until his death 22 years later—a death that triggered the final stage of the conflict and the rise of a new dynasty under Henry Tudor. The recorded death toll at Towton may well have been inflated to burnish the legend of Edward’s ascent to the crown. Yet there can be little doubt it was an unusually large confrontation.
最后，陶顿战役以约克派和年轻国王大获全胜告终。爱德华四世由此登基，开始了22年的国王生涯，期间只发生过一次小动荡。爱德华四世驾崩后，玫瑰战争战火重燃，不久后以亨利•都铎建立新王朝而告终。陶顿战役的战果记载很可能被大大夸大了，因为要给爱德华的登基增添几分传奇色彩。但毫无疑问，这是一场不同寻常的大交锋。
In a letter sent nine days after the battle George Neville, the then chancellor of England, wrote that 28,000 men died that day, a figure in accord with a letter sent by Edward to his mother. England’s total population at the time is thought not to have exceeded 3m people. George Goodwin, who has written a book on Towton to coincide with the battle’s 550th anniversary in 2011, reckons as many as 75,000 men, perhaps 10% of the country’s fighting-age population, took the field that day.
在陶顿战役之后9天寄出的一封信中，时任英国宰相乔治•内维尔（George Neville）写道，28 000人在战役中丧生，这与爱德华寄给其母的信中的数字一致。当时英格兰人口总数大概不会超过300万。乔治•古德温（George Goodwin）在其为纪念陶顿战役550周年（2011年）而写的书中认为，那天大约有75 000人参加了战斗，相当于英格兰从军适龄人口的10%。
They had been dragged into conflict in various ways. Lacking a standing army, the royal claimants called on magnates and issued “commissions of array” to officers in the shires to raise men. Great lords on either side had followings known as “affinities”, comprising people on formal retainers as well as those under less rigid obligations. These soldiers would have been among the more experienced and better-equipped fighters that day (foreign mercenaries were there, too). Alongside them were people lower down the social pyramid, who may have been obliged to practise archery at the weekend as part of the village posse but were not as well trained. Among this confusion of soldiers and weaponry, almost certainly on the losing Lancastrian side, was Towton 25.
参战军队来自四面八方。王室常备军不足，便发动各路诸侯，并向各郡下达“动员令”，征集勤王大军。双方各有由亲兵和游勇组成的队伍，即所谓的“统一战线”。这些（还包括一些外国雇用兵）都是装备精良、经验丰富的斗士。还有不少下层民众也卷入了这场战役，这些人也许平时就有民兵义务，在周末练习射箭，但训练质量终究要差一截。总之，陶顿战役的参与者素质和装备良莠不齐，陶顿25是其中之一，十有八九隶属于战败的兰开斯特军。
The bone collectors 骨骸收集
He gets his name from the order in which he was removed from the ground. In the summer of 1996 builders working at Towton Hall, about a mile away from the main battlefield, discovered a mass grave. Archaeologists from the University of Bradford eventually took charge of an excavation of almost 40 individuals, 28 of whom were complete skeletons. (Further bodies have subsequently been recovered from beneath the dining-room at Towton Hall, which must make for conversation, at least.) The skeletons had clearly been the victims of great violence. Many display the same frenzied wounding as Towton 25. “Imagine one of those movie scenes with people closing in on a cornered individual,” says Christopher Knüsel, one of the original team of archaeologists and now at the University of Exeter. “Usually the camera has to pan away because you cannot show some things. Here you see it.” The location of the bodies, and subsequent carbon-dating, linked them conclusively to the battle of Towton.
陶顿25这个名字来自其出土顺序编号。1996年夏，陶顿厅（Towton Hall）施工人员在据主战场约1英里的地方发现一处万人坑。发掘工作由布拉德福德大学（University of Bradford）考古学家接手，他们清理出近40具个体，其中28具为完整骨骸。（在陶顿厅餐厅下方已发现了另一批骸骨，这一定会成为人们热议的话题）显然，这些骸骨生前遭遇过重创。多具骸骨上的伤痕如陶顿25一样令人触目惊心。“想象一下那些某人被逼到角落绝望受死的电影场景，”克里斯托弗•努赛尔（Christopher Knüsel）说，他是陶顿万人坑考古队的一员，现在艾克赛特大学（University of Exeter）任教，“通常电影镜头会就此打住，转向下一幕，因为有些东西不适合出现在银幕上。但在这里，不会。”这些骸骨的发现地以及碳年代测定结果表明，这些骸骨的主人是陶顿战役的参与者。
It is the only mass grave of known medieval battle victims to have been found in England. The only comparable find is that of a mass grave of victims of the Battle of Wisby in Sweden in 1361, which was excavated in the early 20th century. That find was considerably larger—1,185 individuals from four separate pits—and notable, too, for the fact that the dead had been buried in their armour. The Towton men had been stripped before being thrown into the pit. The only personal effect found in the grave was a silver ring still encircling the little finger of Towton 39; it may have been missed because of the sheer quantity of gore.
这是迄今为止英格兰发现的唯一一处中世纪战争万人坑。唯一可以与之相提并论的是20世纪初在瑞典挖出的维斯比战役（Battle of Wisby）万人坑。维斯比万人坑规模要大得多，在4处相互隔离的大坑中发掘出1 185具骸骨。更令人瞩目的是，这些人是连同身上的铠甲一起被掩埋的。而陶顿万人坑中的骸骨在掩埋之前已被剥得赤条条的，坑中发现的唯一个人物品是陶顿39小拇指上的银指环，大概是因为血肉太过模糊没被发现而留了下来。
But Towton has proved more instructive in some ways. The size of the Wisby find and the way in which the bodies there were removed, with the graves broken into grids and excavated one square at a time, made it almost impossible to reassemble skeletons later. At Towton, under the guidance of Tim Sutherland, an archaeologist who has been researching the battlefield ever since, skeletons were carefully recorded in the grave so that they could be put back together again. As described in “Blood Red Roses”, a book on the archaeology of Towton, this has allowed a more complete picture of participants in the fighting to emerge.
但从某种意义上说，陶顿万人坑更有启发意义。维斯比万人坑规模巨大，发掘时将整个坑分成好几部分，逐个发掘，导致尸骸被损坏，无法复原成人。而在陶顿，指导发掘工作的是有多年陶顿战场研究经验的考古学家蒂姆•萨瑟兰（Tim Sutherland），坑中的骸骨被小心编号，因此得以复原。记录陶顿万人坑考古历程的书《血色红玫瑰》（Blood Red Roses）中描述道，这样的发掘方式使这场战役的参与者较为完整地展现在人们眼前。
Who are you calling short? 你说谁是矮子？
The men whose skeletons were unearthed at Towton were a diverse lot. Their ages at time of death ranged widely. It is easier to be precise about younger individuals, thanks to the predictable ways in which teeth develop and bones fuse during a person’s adolescence and 20s. The youngest occupants of the mass grave were around 17 years old; the oldest, Towton 16, was around 50. Their stature varies greatly, too. The men’s height ranges from 1.5-1.8 metres (just under five feet to just under six feet), with the older men, almost certainly experienced soldiers, being the tallest.
在陶顿的土地之下，各色各样的人都有。他们死时年纪各异。年轻人的骸骨可以精确地测定年龄，因为青春期和20来岁时的牙齿发育和骨骼接合有迹可循。在陶顿万人坑中，年纪最轻的死者大约17岁，年纪最大的陶顿16大约50岁。他们的身高也相差悬殊，最低的只有1.5米（略低于5英尺），最高的高达1.8米（略低于6英尺）。身材最高的是一位年龄较大的战士，十有八九是个战场老油条。
This physical diversity is unsurprising, given the disparate types of men who took the battlefield that day. Yet as a group the Towton men are a reminder that images of the medieval male as a homunculus with rotten teeth are well wide of the mark. The average medieval man stood 1.71 metres tall—just four centimetres shorter than a modern Englishman. “It is only in the Victorian era that people started to get very stunted,” says Mr Knüsel. Their health was generally good. Dietary isotopes from their knee-bones show that they ate pretty healthily. Sugar was not widely available at that time, so their teeth were strong, too.
死者生理差别悬殊并没有什么可奇怪的，因为在战役当日，什么样的参与者都有都有。不过陶顿万人坑向我们表明，我们对中世纪男性的印象——矮小、满口烂牙——是大错特错了。这些中世纪男人平均身高为1.71米，只比现代英格兰人矮4公分。“人们开始普遍变矮大概是维多利亚时代的事情，”努赛尔说。他们的健康状况大体不错。膝盖骨营养元素同位素测定表明，他们的饮食相当健康。当时糖尚未普及，因此他们的牙口也保持的相当强健。
Laid out on a laboratory bench in the University of Bradford’s archaeology department, the biggest of the soldiers still look burly (though their bones, without any collagen in them, are incredibly light to handle). They seem to have led active lives. Bone grows in response to strenuous muscular activity, particularly if exercise starts in childhood. For instance, the serving arm of a professional tennis player has as much as a third more bone in it than his non-dominant arm.
最大的一具骸骨被抬上了布拉德福德考古系的实验室工作台，他依然显得那么魁梧，尽管骨骼中早已没有了胶原，变得非常轻。他们生前充满了活力。剧烈运动能够刺激骨骼生长，在孩提时代便开始训练更是如此。比如，职业网球选手的持拍臂会比另一只手臂多出三分之一的骨骼。
Some of the Towton men display the same type of unusual bone density. But it is distributed in a very unmodern way: their upper-arm bones are very well-developed towards the right shoulder and the left elbow. The medieval longbow, which placed huge stress on both the drawing arm and the arm that held the bow steady, may have been responsible. Towton 16 has something known as an avulsion fracture to his left elbow, a condition first clinically identified among young baseball players in America. This injury occurs only in adolescence, when the bones in the arm have not yet fully fused, and may have been caused by attempts to practise with an adult longbow. In 1420s England the teenage Towton 16 was suffering from Little Leaguer’s Elbow.
一些陶顿骸骨显示出相似的反常骨骼结构。但这种结构显然是非现代的：从右肩至左肘部分的上肢骨骼非常发达。这可能是因为拉开中世纪的长弓要求拉弦臂和持弓臂均十分有力。陶顿16的左肘处呈现所谓的撕脱骨折状态，这种骨折最初发现于美国年轻棒球选手。此类伤只见于臂部骨骼尚未完全接合的青春期，致伤原因可能是用成人长弓作拉弓练习。在15世纪20年代的英格兰，不满20岁的陶顿16染上了少棒肘（Little Leaguer’s Elbow）。
Ground work 地面作业
Piecing together what happened on a single day 550 years ago is exceedingly difficult. Even observers would have found it hard to discern a precise order of events in the confusion. Contemporary accounts of the battle may be politically biased or exaggerated. Mr Sutherland says that the idea of medieval soldiers slugging it out for ten hours, as the conventional view of the battle has it, defies credibility; he thinks there was a series of engagements that led to the main battle and that took place over the course of the day.
要拼出550年前某一天的完整图景实在是太难了。即使是专家也难以准确说出当日各事件的顺序。对这场战役的现代描述难免春秋笔法。萨瑟兰说，传统说法——这场战役在激战10小时战后分出了胜负——并不可靠；他认为主战役可能分为好几个阶段，进行了一整天。
For a long time it was assumed that archaeology could not help much. That changed with work done in the 1980s at Little Bighorn in Montana, site of George Custer’s “last stand” against native American warriors in 1876. A brushfire allowed archaeologists to re-examine the site, using metal detectors to map the location of spent cartridge cases and bullets. By matching them to the weapons used that day, researchers could trace the movements of soldiers over the battlefield. The work suggested that the engagement was over far quicker than Custer’s legend implied.
长久以来，人们认为考古学在这方面帮不上忙。这一论点在20世纪80年代被推翻。在蒙大拿州小巨角（Little Bighorn），乔治•卡斯特（George Custer）与印第安人的“最后一战”现场，一场山林火灾使考古学家得以重新考察战场。在金属探测器的帮助下，弹壳和子弹的分布被勾勒出来。研究者将弹药与当日使用的军火进行匹配，从而还原出战士们在战场上的进退。结果表明，这场战役持续的时间远远短于卡斯特传奇故事中所流传的。
The Towton site is 400 years older, presenting greater challenges. The battlefield was first swept for ferrous materials such as arrowheads. That search proved frustrating. The trouble was not too little material, but too much—bits of agricultural machinery and other things dating from after the battle. Looking for non-ferrous items—things like badges, belt buckles, buttons, pendants and coins that would have been ripped off during the fighting—proved to be much more fruitful. After identifying clusters of these personal effects, which seemed to mark the main lines of battle, researchers went back to looking for ferrous materials and started finding a concentration of arrowheads.
陶顿战场要比小巨角古老400年，情景还原自然更为困难。一开始，考古学家清扫整个战场收集箭镞之类的铁质物件。结果徒然无功。问题不是铁器太少，而是太多，其中有大量晚近铁质农具之类的东西。于是，考古学家转而寻找非铁质物件，比如徽章、皮带扣、纽扣、垂饰以及战斗过程中遗落的硬币。这一次收获颇丰。研究者首先识别出几处衣冠冢，从中推断战役的主线；接着再回头寻找铁质物件，马上便发现了箭镞冢。
Arrows were not the only things flying through the air that day. Some of the first bullets were, too. The Towton battlefield has yielded up the earliest lead-composite shot found in England. Mr Sutherland thinks he may have found a fragment of a handgun, which was small enough to be carried around and probably set down on a trestle table or small carriage to be fired.
当时，能在天上飞的不仅有箭，还有最原始的子弹。在陶顿战役现场发现了英格兰历史上最早用于实战的铅弹。萨瑟兰认为他可能还找到了一片手枪残骸，这支枪已经小到能够随身携带，但可能仍需支架才能发射。
The arrows would have been fired as part of the opening exchanges. Accounts of the battle report that the Yorkist archers reached their target, but that the Lancastrians fell short, forcing them to move forward to engage in hand-to-hand fighting. The stress of this kind of fighting was immense: a few of the Towton skeletons had been clenching their teeth together so tightly that bits of them splintered off. This central confrontation would have been responsible for many deaths: Mr Sutherland says he has found a total of five pits on the battlefield that may be mass graves and plans to excavate them next year. But it was unlikely to have been the place where the Towton skeletons died. Their burial location, a mile from the battlefield, is one reason to think so. The way they were killed is the other.
战役可能以双方对射为开端。据战役报告记载，约克军弓箭手击中了目标，而兰开斯特军射不到那么远，只能冲锋陷阵去打肉搏战。肉搏战的压力是巨大的：一些陶顿遗骸把牙齿都咬碎了。这处中央战斗可能造成了巨大的伤亡：萨瑟兰说，他已经找到五处可能的万人坑，计划于明年开始挖掘。但陶顿遗骸肯定不是死于中央战场。他们被掩埋的地点距离战役现场有1英里之遥，这是原因之一。他们被杀的方式则是原因之二。
Whereas many of the skeletons found at Wisby in Sweden had lots of wounds to their lower limbs, the Towton group had suffered a disproportionate amount of damage to their heads. Shannon Novak, a forensic archaeologist at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University who worked on the skeletons when they were first uncovered, was responsible for working out when and how wounds had been inflicted.
很多瑞典维斯比万人坑中的遗骸有不少下肢伤口，但陶顿遗骸的伤口绝大量集中在头部。雪城大学麦克斯韦学院（Maxwell School of Syracuse University）的法医考古学家香农•诺瓦克（Shannon Novak）在出土的第一时间便开始对这些遗骸进行研究，她负责找出伤口是何时以及如何产生的。
Injuries that have been sustained well before death are easy to spot because of the way fractured bone smooths as it heals. But before the discovery of the Towton skeletons, less work had been done to distinguish blows sustained at the time of death from those that may have occurred after burial as a result of rodents, earth-moving equipment and so forth.
在死前很久所受的上很容易鉴别，因为随着伤口的愈合，骨折处会逐渐平滑。但如何区分死时所受之伤与被埋后因啃噬、推土设备等因素造成之伤呢？在陶顿骸骨发现前，人们在这方面的进展颇为有限。
Overkill 赶尽杀绝
By looking at the different ways that bone fractures when it has fluids in it and when it has dried out, Ms Novak found that 27 of the 28 skulls she examined had suffered blows at the time of death. Not just one, either. Both Towton 16 and 25 were struck eight times and Towton 10 six times. Towton 32 suffered no fewer than 13 different blows to the head.
诺瓦克仔细研究了骨头在体液挥发之前和之后发生骨折的区别，认定她所考察的28具头颅中有27具在死亡时遭遇了重击，且不止一次。陶顿16和陶顿25遭遇了8击，陶顿10遭遇了6击。陶顿13则至少遭遇了13次不同的打击。
According to Graeme Rimer of the Royal Armouries, Britain’s arms museum, medieval weapons had the capacity to decapitate or amputate at a single stroke. “Given how much damage you can do with one blow, why land another 12?” he asks. There were signs of mutilation, too: marks on the left side of Towton 32’s head suggest that his ear had been sliced off.
皇家军械库（Royal Armouries，英国军械博物馆）的格赖姆•莱默（Graeme Rimer）的说，中世纪的兵器足以一击砍掉你的头或是卸下一条胳膊。“既然一击就能致命，何必再加上12下呢？”他问道。遗骸上也有致残痕迹：陶顿22的左脸显示他的耳朵被割去。
The next task was to try to identify the weapons which might have done this damage. Ms Novak took a variety of medieval weapons from the collection of the Royal Armouries and poked them through pieces of acoustic ceiling tile to see what shape they made. Some of the matches were uncanny—the dagger that had to be twisted on the way out, the beak of a war hammer. The puzzling range of blunt, sharp and puncture wounds have their explanation in the lethal versatility of the poleaxe, with its bladed axe, top-spike and hammer (see picture).
下一步需要确定的是什么武器造成了这一伤害。诺瓦克从皇家军械库的藏品中取来不少中世纪兵器作戳刺声学天花板实验，研究它们留下的切口。有些组合相当的诡异，比如出鞘时必须旋转的匕首、装上尖头的战槌。怪异的钝器、利器和戳刺伤可以用一种致命的多功能长柄战斧来解释——这种战斧既有斧刃，又有尖头，还能当战槌使（见图）。
Put all this together and two questions stand out: what had happened to the men’s helmets, and how could their assailants hit them so many times? In the press of battle, after all, you are unlikely to want to spend time and energy landing repeated blows.
所有这些又衍生出两个问题：这些人的头盔到哪儿去了？他们的敌人为什么能对他们施以多次的打击？毕竟，在纷乱的战斗中，完全没有必要耗费时间和力气做重复打击。
At this distance any theories are likely to remain plausible rather than proven. But the likeliest explanation is that the Towton soldiers (or some of them, at least) were among the Lancastrian soldiers routed from the battlefield. The secret of success in medieval battle was to hold ranks, so that comrades on either side would still be protecting your flanks. That is particularly true given the steep ground shelving away from the plateau where the main battle was fought. “If you move, you lose,” says Mr Sutherland.
在几百年后的今天看来，能解释这两个问题的理论不少，能被证实的却没有。但最有可能的解释是这些陶顿战士（或至少其中一部分）是溃逃到此处的兰开斯特军。在中世纪战争中，保命的关键是稳住阵脚，以便盟友保护你的两翼。这一点在陶顿战役——主战场是一片高原之麓的陡坡——尤为重要。“只要一移动，你就败了。”萨瑟兰说。
On the run from the battle, with Yorkist soldiers in pursuit (some of them doubtless on horseback), the men would have soon overheated. They may have removed their helmets as a result. Overhauled—perhaps in the vicinity of Towton Hall, which some think may then have been a Lancastrian billet—and disorientated, tired and outnumbered, their enemies would have had time to indulge in revenge. Even at this distance the violence is shocking. “It’s almost as if they were trying to remove their opponents’ identities,” says Mr Knüsel of the attackers’ savagery. Thanks to some unsuspecting builders and a team of archaeologists, they did not entirely succeed.
从陶顿战役中溃散的败卒被约克军穷追不舍（显然，部分追兵是骑兵），很快便热得不行了，于是便脱掉了自己的头盔。他们可能在陶顿厅——有人认为那里当时可能是兰开斯特军的营地——被约克军追上。这些溃卒失道、困乏、人数也少，只能束手就戮，让对手享受复仇的快感。即使在几百年后看来，场面之暴力仍令人震惊。“他们显然是要把对手从地球上彻底抹去。”努赛尔如此描述攻击者的残忍。但由于无心插柳的建筑工人和一群考古学家，他们的算盘并没有完全成功。
from PRINT EDITION | Christmas Specials作者: showcraft 时间: 2011-1-3 20:37
