But Margaret was as eager to avoid a battle before her Welsh reinforcements reached her as Edward was to force one on.

Slipping aside to Bristol, and detaching a small body of troops to amuse the king by a feint upon Sodbury, her army reached Berkeley by a night-march and hurried forward through the following day to Tewkesbury.

But rapid as their movements had been, they had failed to outstrip Edward.

Marching on an inner line along the open Cotswold country while his enemy was struggling through the deep and tangled lanes of the Severn valley, the king was now near enough to bring Margaret to bay; and the Lancastrian leaders were forced to take their stand on the slopes south of the town, in a position approachable only through "foul lanes and deep dykes." Here Edward at once fell on them at daybreak of the fourth of May.

His army, if smaller in numbers, was superior in military quality to the motley host gathered round the queen, for as at Barnet he had with him a force of Germans armed with hand-guns, then a new weapon in war, and a fine train of artillery.