Did the Battle of Lewes, which saw King Henry III defeated 750 years ago, lead to England's first tentative steps towards representative democracy?
As bloodied bodies littered the South Downs, the King hid in a priory.
His father, King John, had been forced to sign Magna Carta by England's rebellious barons, now Henry had suffered even greater humiliation at their hands.
His victor was Simon de Montfort, the French-born Earl of Leicester, who was fighting for the rights of England to be governed by the English.
After the battle, where de Montfort's forces were outnumbered by two to one, he forced the unpopular King to transfer nearly all of his powers.
What followed for a year and half - before de Montfort was eventually killed and mutilated in the Battle of Evesham - was an experiment in representative democracy.
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