Henry Tudor Propaganda

Polydore Vergil provides a valuable account of the Battle of Bosworth including the reasons why Henry VII won. As well as this, issues Henry Tudor faced as he tried to secure his throne afterwards can reliably be drawn from the source. Also, although Vergil wasn’t in England during the time of the Battle of Bosworth, he did research the topic carefully so his account may be taken as being factually correct. However, it is important to remember that the nature of the source may be a pro-Tudor propaganda as Vergil was appointed by for Henry Tudor to write about his reign. Because of this, the source may not be taken at face value.
Vergil makes it clear that one of the reasons Henry Tudor won the Battle of Bosworth, 1485 was because of his good field tactics. This is, firstly, seen through him ‘deliberately’ choosing an area where there was a ‘marsh’ nearby as his location as the marsh could act as a ‘defensive wall’ for his
This indicates that Henry was able to win the battle thanks to his chosen location because it gave him an advantage over Richard as the marsh made his soldiers difficult to reach and see (due to the sun being blocked by Henry’s army) which in return would have made them difficult to attack. Vergil’s use of the adverb ‘deliberately’ rises a question over the reliability of the source as it indicates that Henry consciously made the decision to place his men on ‘the right side’ of the marsh suggesting that he was a skilled fighter who knew how best to use the available space cleverly. This implies that Vergil may have over exaggerated Henry’s field tactics in order to present him as strategic man as we know that Henry was an inexperienced fighter and was reliant on the Earl of Oxford to ‘command’. Furthermore, we know that Richard III – a more experienced fighter – was located at the top of Ambien Hill. This may have undermined the extent to which Henry’s location played to his advantage because