The death of a King

Richard III was surrounded by soldiers and hacked to death after losing his helmet in battle, analysis of his remains suggests.
      Medical scanners were used to establish that the king suffered 11 injuries from enemy soldiers at Bosworth Field in 1485.
      The 32-year-old died after two blows to the back of his head – one from a sword and the other from a halberd, a medieval axe-like weapon.
      As nine of the injuries were to his skull, researchers at Leicester University suggest he had lost his heavy helmet.
      The two other injuries may have been inflicted after his armour was torn from his body.
      Wounds to his buttocks probably came as his bloodied corpse was paraded around the battle ground, they suggest.
      The medical evidence establishes the most detailed account of Richard III’s death ever attempted and is published today in the Lancet medical journal.
      Study author Professor Sarah Hainsworth said there was evidence of a ‘sustained attack’ by several assailants.
       She added: ‘What we have to remember is that medieval battles were bloody and brutal.
       'They had to make sure people really were dead – and then they put the body on display so everybody would know it was true.’
        'The absence of defensive wounds to the king’s arms and hands indicates that he was still armoured – while his face was left relatively untouched in order to confirm his identity afterwards, she said.
        The monarch’s remains have been studied since his skeleton was found under a car park in Leicester in 2012. He was the last English monarch to die in battle, perishing in the final campaign of the Wars of the Roses between the Houses of Lancaster and York.
        Evidence suggests he was not the hunchback depicted by Shakespeare and others. Experts now know he had a slightly curved spine that would not have affected his prowess in battle.
        He probably did not walk with a limp and was probably a fair and just ruler – not the tyrant and child murderer of lore.
        However the new findings suggest that Shakespeare at least gave an accurate account of Richard III’s death.
        Evidence that he died without his helmet supports accounts that he had lost his horse in a swamp – immortalised in the Bard’s famous ‘My kingdom for a horse!’ line.
        The head injuries are consistent with some near-contemporary accounts of the battle, the researchers said in findings published in The Lancet medical journal on Wednesday.
       'The wounds to the skull suggest that he was not wearing a helmet, and the absence of defensive wounds on his arms and hands indicate that he was otherwise still armoured at the time of his death,' said Sarah Hainsworth, a professor of materials engineering at Leicester University, who co-led the study.
        The remains of King Richard III were found by archaeologists under a municipal car park in the central English city of Leicester in 2012 and subsequently identified by experts from the city's university.
        A court ruled in May this year that the king should be reburied near to where he was slain in battle, dashing the hopes of descendants who had wanted his remains to be taken back to his northern English stronghold of York.
        According to historical record, the monarch was killed in battle on Bosworth Field, near Leicester, on Aug. 22, 1485, and those accounts suggest Richard was forced to abandon his horse after it became stuck in a mire and was then killed fighting.
        His death was the culmination of the Wars of the Roses, a bloody 30-year power struggle between Richard's House of York and the rival House of Lancaster.
        Hainsworth's team used whole body computerised tomography (CT) scans and micro-CT imaging to analyse trauma to the bones and determine which of Richard's wounds might have proved fatal.
        They also analysed tool marks on bone to identify the medieval weapons potentially responsible for his injuries.
         According to Guy Rutty, a pathologist on the research team, 'the most likely injuries to have caused the king's death are the two to the inferior aspect of the skull -- a large sharp force trauma possibly from a sword or staff weapon, such as a halberd or bill, and a penetrating injury from the tip of an edged weapon.'