Charles VII’s government assumed power in Bordeaux in a carefully prepared piece of political theatre beginning in the early morning of 23 June as agreed. The Herald of Bordeaux stood on the ramparts to call for help from the English, greeted, as expected, by thunderclaps of silence. The ceremonial could have begun then, but the entry of Dunois’s forces (with some uncontrollable elements deliberately kept back at a safe distance) did not take place until a week later. The cathedral chapter’s registers record that Civitas Burdegale est regni Franciae on 29 June. The day after, Dunois in his white armour assembled the procession at the Chartrons Gate where he received the keys presented to him by the jurats, and the parade filed into the city led by the archers. After the captains and their troops came a white palfrey led without a rider carrying the royal seal to represent the king’s presence. Archbishop Juvenal des Ursins of Reims, the Chancellor of France, followed immediately behind. Then came Dunois and his subordinate generals. They all made their way to Saint-Andrew’s Cathedral to be met by Archbishop Pey Berland in the splendour of his cope and mitre and with his archiepiscopal cross carried before him.1 The fact of his wearing a penitent’s hair shirt next to his skin was his own secret until his final days. He washed it himself in private.2
Olivier de Coëtivy, Seigneur of Taillebourg, the newly appointed seneschal of Guyenne, drew attention to himself with a scene of his own in this spectacle. All the French dignitaries who processed into the cathedral nave followed the example of Dunois in swearing a solemn oath on the Gospels held out for them by Pey Berland to uphold the particular customs of Guyenne even though it had become a province of France. Not so the new seneschal: he refused to speak in the occitan language of Bordeaux and took his oath in French with no mention of the freedoms, privileges and customs at all. Moreover, the Chancellor of France (the other archbishop present) ordered all who were present to obey the seneschal as they would the king in person.3
Since the previous invasion inland by way of the River Adour had stopped short of Bayonne, and its inhabitants remained loyal to the King of England, Dunois left the Château d’Ombrière within a few days to conduct a campaign against them. The military governor of Guyenne, the Count of Clermont, and the new mayor, Jean Bureau, also left for royal service elsewhere. Coëtivy was left in complete charge with only a small garrison to support him.4
It is worth our while to pause for a moment to take note of Olivier de Coëtivy since he has a considerable part to play in the story of the consolidation of French royal power in Guyenne. The Coëtivy family originated in Brittany. During the first part of the fifteenth century, there were four brothers, three of whom became prominent in the entourage of Charles VII, introduced into his court by their uncle, Tanguy du Châtel, whose association with Charles when he was the rejected Dauphin we have already seen. The oldest was Prégent de Coëtivy, Admiral of France, who had been instrumental in the suppression of the rebellion against Charles VII by feudal magnates known as the Praguerie in 1440 and rewarded with the great castle and lordship of Taillebourg in the Saintonge, which dominated a major stretch of the River Charente, for ousting Maurice Plusquelec and his brother who had sided with the rebels. He was also given the wardship of the three young daughters born to the king by his mistress Agnès Sorel, dame de Beauté. Prégent was killed by a stray cannon ball during the siege of Cherbourg in 1450, and his younger brother Olivier, after a dispute with Prégent’s widow, inherited the castle and the wardships. The third brother, Alain, became a cardinal and papal legate whom we shall meet in Bordeaux later on, and the fourth, Christophe, was a military man who did not share the prominence of his brothers. Olivier had fought under the command of Charles d’Albret at Saint-Sever and Dax in 1442 and was knighted for his bravery on the battlefield of Formigny in 1450.
Being himself at Taillebourg to direct the initial stages of Dunois’s campaign, Charles VII had appointed Olivier as seneschal of Guyenne, ready to take office after the expected victory. Olivier responded to the trust placed in him by unwavering loyalty to the Valois king. Once in command of Bordeaux, he alienated the commercial classes there and the nobles who held lands round about. He had not taken any oath to maintain their liberties and set about ignoring them. With the support of Jean de Fou, Bureau’s assistant mayor, and the lord of Messignac, the seneschal began to impose a French monarchical style of government and taxation, regardless of the treaty ratified by the king.5 This was abhorrent to the members of the jurade, since it flew in the face of the oaths that his superiors had made in the Cathedral. They realized what they had lost in the system accepted by the English kings/dukes who appointed seneschals, constables and mayors but left them as autonomous administrators while contributing to their prosperity by buying their wines.
The citizens were disgruntled. After a year, in July 1452, a delegation was sent to Charles VII, finding his itinerant court once more at Bourges. They approached him direct for a redress of their grievances, taking with them the letters with the great seal attached in which he had undertaken to maintain their privileges only a year before. They protested that when they were under English domination they were exempt from land tax, and they never had soldiers billeted on them. They would know how to defend themselves if they were to be attacked in future. After consulting his council, the king replied that the defence of Guyenne required sacrifices and he was not able to exempt them from payment of taxes. Troops were necessary – he meant French troops, not Gascon ones – to assure the defence of the province and the taxes imposed by the seneschal were meant to pay their wages in the spirit of the ordinance of 1445. The Estates-General ought to be called to regularize the situation. According to the chronicler Thomas Basin, cited by Ribadieu, the king had good reason to fear the ‘frauds and machinations of the English in Aquitaine’, who were deprived of the wines and were not able to sell their cloth on to the Spaniards as they had been accustomed to do.6
Indeed, as the Gascon Rolls clearly indicate, Henry VI’s government gave the appearance of being in a state of denial about the defeat and carried on making grants and appointments in Gascony as if nothing had happened.7 On 20 October, the captal de Buch was made captain of the town and castle of Bazas and in January 1452 he was given other lordships. On 18 February, Robert of Rokeley was confirmed as castellan of Lesparre, despite the desire of Pierre de Montferrand to have his fortress back now that the Earl of Huntingdon no longer needed it.
When their deputation returned from Bourges, they expressed more vociferous indignation. The situation was made worse when Clermont, the military governor, ordered – from his absence – the Three Estates to put all the Guyenne fortresses on a war footing at the first signal he might give, as was required of any province of the kingdom.8
What happened next is not entirely clear. Jean Chartier, monk of Saint Denis, Charles VII’s official chronicler, claimed that, at the beginning of September1452, certain Gascon nobles, following the initiative of Pierre de Montferrand, ‘who could be compared to Judas’ for breaking their oath to Charles VII along with some of the jurats, had found a way of sailing to England under false colours, and, once there, had ‘arranged and plotted great treason’ in re-affirming their allegiance to the English ‘should they desire to return’.9 Henry VI and his council had agreed to send John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, to the Bordelais country with a relief expedition in October.10
There was another chronicler, writing twenty years after the events in question, Thomas Basin who, as Bishop of Lisieux, had been very supportive towards Charles VII but was exiled from court when Louis XI reversed his father’s policies at his accession in 1461. Basin presents a slightly different account of what happened, asserting that the Gascons and people of Bordeaux sent a delegation – the members of which are not named – to tell the English that, were they to return, they would be admitted and welcomed back.11
The present-day English historian Malcolm Vale has claimed that Basin’s assertion ‘may well be fictitious’,12 pointing out that his French counterparts in the nineteenth century onwards, like Henri Ribadieu,13 Gaston du Fresne de Beaucourt,14 Robert Boutruche,15 and Yves Renouard16 have specified the personnel of the delegation as Jean Chartier had: Pierre de Montferrand, soudic de La Trau, Gaston de Grailly, captal de Buch, and his son Jean, who was married to Margaret de la Pole, and had been the Earl of Kendal (Candale in Gascon) since 1446. These accounts assert that this delegation urged Henry VI’s council to send John Talbot’s expedition off to take back control of Gascony.
Pierre de Montferrand was certainly an Anglophile, married to Mary, the Duke of Bedford’s natural daughter. As such, he had led the naval battle in the Gironde before Blaye the year before against the French and Breton fleet from La Rochelle and, defeated, had been treated graciously when he took his oath to Charles VII. He had gone to Bordeaux after that and was still there when Talbot reached the city.17 Furthermore, Gaston and Jean de Grailly were not present when Dunois made his triumphant entry into Bordeaux. Since they were both Knights of the Garter they were not able to swear the oath to Charles VII and went instead to the Kingdom of Aragon. They kept faith with Henry VI but took no part in any delegation to him in 1452. Kendal did go and live in England, but not until after 1453.18
There was, however, a Gascon from Bordeaux who had had access to the English court since 1449. This was Pey de Tasta (Pierre de Tastar), Dean of the Collegiate Church of Saint-Seurin (Severin), situated outside the city walls. He had been granted the revenues of several English parishes and cathedral prebends to support his status as a diplomat, and he was in a position to influence discussion in the royal council of which he was a member and frequently present at its meetings.19 He was still active in this capacity even after the Yorkists had ousted the Lancastrian party – until his death in 1467.20
How, then, did Talbot’s expedition to recover Gascony come about?
In the opening months of 1452, Richard, Duke of York was beginning to assert himself against the Lancastrian government. He had already accused the Duke of Somerset of treason for not having defended Rouen vigorously enough in 1450. John Talbot had been held hostage there by the French conqueror, and Charles VII kept him prisoner until mid-1450, by which time the conquest of Normandy was complete. Then he released him to make a pilgrimage to Rome as he had told him that was his only wish.
Upon his return to England afterwards, Talbot may have looked forward to a measure of retirement, being over sixty, but he was required to deal with a dispute that had arisen between him and Lord Berkeley over an inheritance, and to defend his position at the king’s court at a time when the dispute between York and Somerset was becoming more and more intense. He maintained his connection with Somerset, and received from him, along with his son Lord de Lisle, the governorship of Portsmouth. He was also associated with York, but, when York tried to replace Somerset as the king’s chief adviser in February 1452,21 Talbot stood by the king and Somerset and was required to arbitrate between the two factions.22
Charles VII, meanwhile, was making plans to unify his kingdom further by taking Calais.23 In March 1452, Talbot was appointed to command a fleet for use against a French attack there and fend off possible raids on English coastal towns. Recruiting measures were well in hand when Charles VII was known to have decided not to go for Calais after all. Talbot was then appointed to punish rebels who were still active in the wake of Jack Cade,24 maintaining the unrest expressed in his rebellion in south-eastern England after the loss of Normandy.
Then, suddenly, preparations against France were restarted for reasons that are not clear. An aggressive action being planned can be seen in Talbot’s commission issued on 6 July for command of ‘an army for the keeping of the sea in which journey he must achieve much good’.25
It could be speculated that Dean Pierre de Tastar’s lobbying in the English king’s council had influenced the decision to give Talbot full administrative and military power and authority as Henry VI’s lieutenant in Gascony on 2 September 1452.26 The details of conditions and personnel in the Bordelais shown in the sixteen clauses of the long document suggests that someone who knew the territory well had been consulted, but, of course, although it would be simple to suggest that it had been Tastar, there were many ways besides for the council to have gathered such information.
The French commanders expected Talbot to disembark in Normandy, which explains their lack of preparation when he landed his troops unopposed near Soulac on the northern tip of the Médoc peninsula on 17 October. His march from the Atlantic coast to Bordeaux took only six days and met with no resistance. The late eighteenth century Bordelais antiquarian, Abbé Jacques Baurein, found an oral tradition still current in the Médoc that held Talbot’s troops accountable for the widespread destruction of farmsteads and religious buildings there, when in reality the damage was done a year later by French soldiers led by Clermont, Foix and Albret in reprisal for the rebellion in the Bordelais. Elsewhere, Baurein reports that, even after 300 years, ‘le roi Talbot’ was still invoked as a bogeyman figure with whom mothers threatened their badly-behaved children.27
How was it possible for John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, to re-establish English domination in Bordeaux and the areas surrounding it so easily? His rapid passage across the Médoc can be explained by the fact that the lordships inland from Soulac had, before the French conquest, been held by those most sympathetic to an English return. Pierre de Montferrand had not long ago been lord of Lesparre, just south of Soulac. Even with only his poor lordship in the Landes called La Trau, he still felt part of the Bordelais Anglo-Gascon establishment, despite the oath to Charles VII that he had been compelled to take after his defeat at Blaye. Similarly, Gaillard de Durfort lord of Blanquefort, just north of Bordeaux, remained loyal to his Anglo-Gascon past. Both of these nobles would be included in the list of twenty names certified by Clermont, the lieutenant-governor of Guyenne issued in October 1453, after the second conquest, as ‘the most blameworthy of rebellion’ in Bordeaux whom the king of France had banished.28 Perhaps Talbot’s easy passage through these territories can be explained by local constant loyalty to their recently dispossessed seigneurs. The people between the Atlantic and Bordeaux were used to English domination and did not hinder its re-establishment.
Resentment among the residents of Bordeaux against Seneschal Olivier de Coêtivy’s ignoring of their customs and privileges need not have produced a general uprising against French rule, but there was a conspiracy instigated by Pierre de Montferrand centred on a religious fraternity in the parish of Saint-Michel near the Garonne waterfront to admit Talbot when he should arrive. This was confirmed by information gained afterwards under torture by French judges from one of Mayor Shorthouse’s former sergeants,29 and an account provided by someone, probably a priest, implicating Pey de Tasta, about the breaking down of the Beyssac Gate to let Talbot’s troops in.
They overpowered the limited French garrison quickly in a surprise attack on the night of 22–23 October 1452.30 By the morning, Talbot had established his command post, there had been minimal resistance, and in the following days he imposed his rule in the suburbs of Bordeaux, the Médoc and the Entre-Deux-Mers. By Christmas, he had taken the towns in these areas. The conspiracy had allowed a comparatively simple takeover, but those who had planned it very soon faced a new problem.
Talbot’s regime was harsher than Coëtivy’s had promised to be. He imposed new taxes to pay his troops who behaved like an occupying force rather than as the liberators it was hoped they would be. Then, despite the great financial slump which was gaining in intensity,31 the spring of 1453 saw the arrival of substantial reinforcements under the command of Talbot’s son by his second marriage, recently created Viscount Lisle. The Duke of Somerset had consolidated his power somewhat in Henry VI’s court and in the royal council, after the news of Talbot’s success had reached Westminster.
The mandate for the payment of Lisle’s troops was issued as early as 30 January. By this, Lisle’s salary was fixed at six shillings a day, while bannerets were to receive four shillings, knights two shillings, and they were themselves responsible for providing their own horses, weaponry and armour. Spearmen were to receive twelve pence, and archers six, ‘with rewards accustomed’. A commission for taking ships under the king’s orders was issued on 19 July and mandates followed for the requisitioning of ships to transport these reinforcements to the mayors of Plymouth and Dartmouth, to the bailliff of Fowey, and to the mayor and sheriff of Bristol on 17 August. There had already been a mandate issued for the shipping of 1,000 quarters of wheat for the provisioning of Bordeaux issued to Sir Thomas Browne on 1 August, and it is interesting to note that one of the signatures on it was that of the Bordelais Pey Tasta, dean of of Saint-Seurin, alongside that of the treasurer and Speaker Thorpe of the House of Commons.32
‘The shame of 1450 had been effaced.’33 The 1453 Parliament34 produced more than 22,450 pounds in a grant to pay for Lisle’s troops and transport.35 Twenty-six ships from England arrived in Bordeaux with provisions for them.36 This force re-took the fortress of Fronsac, still regarded as the key to the security of the Bordelais.
This was, for the moment a success story, dependent upon Somerset’s political re-establishment within the king’s council, but there lurked behind it a dire need for promised loans to be translated into hard cash. On 3 August 1453, a letter sent in the king’s name to the abbot of Bermondsey, reminding him that at the time when Lisle, Moleyns, Camoys and others were sent ‘for the succour and relief of our duchy,’ he had promised to make a loan of forty pounds, but it had not yet been paid into the treasury, ‘whereof we marvel’. He is asked to pay it in immediately against an undertaking to repay it once the tax guaranteed by parliament had been received ‘at midsummer next coming’. A threat follows that if he does not cough up immediately, the abbot will have to come to Westminster to explain himself and face ‘our great displeasure’. The day after, requests for new loans were dispatched to nine other individuals, including a canon of St.Paul’s Cathedral, William Brewster, the dean of the Chapel Royal, William Say, the abbot of Christchurch in London, Sir Thomas Tyrelle, and an alderman of the city of London, Nicholas Wyfold, expressng ‘great necessity’ and the need for urgency, and adding the same threat that had been offered to the abbot of Bermondsey. So there was need for the council to extract what can only be seen as forced loans in the present circumstances. Three weeks later, letters went to the abbot of ‘Saint Osyes in Essex’ and to the prior of St. Botolph in Colchester demanding pettifogging sums of twenty pounds from each that had been promised but not yet paid, once more threatening royal displeasure if the money was not provided against an assurance that it would be repaid out of an expected grant by the clergy in the next Canterbury convocation. The same assurance of repayment out of future tithe receipts from the same convocation was offered to the mayor and fellowship of the Calais Staple for a loan of seven thousand pounds that that they had already paid was made on 11 July 1454, that is, a good while after Bordeaux had been lost.37
* * *
From May 1453 onwards, Charles VII’s plans for a second conquest of Guyenne began to take effect. The expense of providing for the occupation of the newly re-acquired Normandy coupled with the necessary re-conquest of Guyenne was going to be enormous. The compagnies d’ordonnance had to be paid for out of funds in the royal treasury. There was no time for the necessary delays to allow the normal processes of taxation. Liquid capital was needed yesterday. Charles VII had recourse to his money-bags, his argentier, Jacques Coeur.
It is worth pausing to examine this man’s career. He was the son of a furrier (pelletier marchand) in Bourges and he stood out from his contemporaries which allowed him a reputation for financial and commercial acumen during his lifetime. The chronicler Thomas Basin praised him effusively. Coeur equipped fleets for trade in cloth between Alexandria, Africa and the Orient, using the river Rhone to bring expensive silk cloth and perfumes into France. He grew up among furriers at the court of Jean de Berry, then of the Dauphin Charles at Bourges, setting up a money workshop (atelier monetaire) in the town in 1427. He took part in financing Joan of Arc’s army. His next move was to become maître des monnaies in Paris in 1436. Three years later, he was Grand Argentier to Charles VII, which means that he was responsible for the purchase by the king’s account of all provisions needed for the court, the kind of career that had been open to talent since the time of Philippe le Bel in the early fourteenth century.
The task of a royal moneyer involved being a purveyor of luxury goods on very favourable terms. He bought in the king’s name and sold in his own or by using ‘straw men’. In Jacques Coeur’s case, because of his close association with the king, and the king’s need for finance for his actions in Normandy and Aquitaine, the moneyer acquired a political rôle as well. He was put in charge of raising taxes in Languedoc, before the invasion of Guyenne began, as well as being supervisor of the salt tax there. He was ambassador to Genoa in 1446 and involved in the various meetings taking place to resolve the remaining issues left by the ending of the Great Schism in the western Church thirty years before.38 Politics gave an extra dimension to what he did as a financier, which means that he was able to circumvent the usual Italian intermediaries when he made his contacts in the Orient.
He owned a fleet of four galleys which plied Mediterranean routes to provide the royal court with spices. Because he had become essential to the consolidation of the king’s position at the head of French society, Charles VII ennobled him in 1441 after the defeat of the Praguerie with lordships confiscated from disgraced nobles like Georges de La Tremouille or the Duke of Bourbon in his native Berry, Poitou, the Bourbonnais and the Nivernais. By virtue of this he became a courtier and set up a sort of pawnbroker’s shop to supply the nobility and their ladies with fine clothes and expensive plate armour as well as ready cash. He set up a business at Tours, but he always accompanied the king on his progresses. One of his sons became archbishop of Bourges at the age of twenty-six, and another married Isabelle Bureau, whose father had also been ennobled for his services as an essential artilleryman.39 He also set up offices in Italian cities and he profited from mineral deposits in the Lyonnais and the Beaujolais. His success as a parvenu naturally incited jealousy at court and he was accused of corruption. In early 1452 this goose was a convenient provider of all the golden eggs that the king needed. The king had already taken a great deal of finance from him for the maintenance of ships and galleys and it was Coeur’s money that had paid for the first invasion of Guyenne, intended to be re-paid in due course from the treasury of Poitou.
In July 1452, while Charles VII was Olivier de Coëtivy’s guest at Taillebourg, Coeur was arrested, ostensibly on suspicion of having poisoned Agnès Sorel who had died in February1450 (the real cause of her death was the mercury used to treat her illness). After his trial and exile, Coeur’s fortune was put up for auction and the king’s procurator-general was to conduct an enquiry in the Paris Parlement which would keep him occupied until 1457. Charges of minting false money, having commercial relations with the Saracens (which was forbidden by law), forging the king’s seal for his own use, and misappropriating the Languedoc revenues were brought against him. He was found guilty of all this on 23 February 1453, but not of having poisoned the king’s maîtresse en titre. He was to do penance, to buy back a Christian slave from the Saracens whom he was alleged to have sold to them, to repay 10,000 écus to the treasury and to be exiled from France.40 The palace that he built for himself at Bourges, after the sale of all his movable goods, was left to his birthplace and remains as a monument to his prosperity, suitably adorned with a statue of him in front of it.41
So there was to be adequate financial backing for the four army corps that would be ready to invade the Bordelais for a second time. The count of Clermont was appointed as the king’s lieutenant-general as well as military governor of Guyenne as he was already. He took up his position on the southern frontier of France. The count of Foix assembled his army in the Béarn to operate alongside Clermont. Marshals of France Jallongues and Lohéac, Admiral Bueil, Chabannes, Rouault, Penthièvre, and Beaumont, the Seneschal of Poitou, were to recover the length of the Dordogne. The fourth army commanded by the king in person, was held in reserve. Clermont’s staff included Charles II of Albret, his son Orval, who had brought terror to the Bordelais in 1450, Poton de Xaintrailles and, among others, Foix’s brother Lautrec.42
Foix advanced northwards to take Saint-Sever and the Bazadais, and then moved into the Médoc. Clermont began to move towards Bordeaux and received a dispatch from Talbot, dated 21 June 1453, brought by two heralds, to say that he was looking forward to an honourable encounter with the French commanders but one that would not harm the poor people of the province.43 Clermont and Foix joined forces while Talbot moved to Martignas and hesitated. When he saw the size of his opponents’ contingents, he forgot his promise to the jurade that he would bring Clermont back as his prisoner and hastily withdrew to Bordeaux.44 Unable to find provisions all at once for so large a force, Clermont and Foix separated to see what would happen.
Meanwhile, the third army corps took Chalais in the Angoumois which had re-admitted the English. A force under the lord of Anglade went out from Bordeaux to its aid, but soon returned with Rouault’s troops in pursuit as far as Gensac, where the chase was called off. From Gensac, on the advice of Jean Bureau, French divisions surrounded Castillon and delegated the conduct of the siege to him and Rouault who took the town and reinforced it with an artillery park nearby where the little river Lidoire joins the Dordogne.45
Talbot, well-experienced from nearly thirty years of combat in Normandy, would have preferred not to have marched out of Bordeaux to fight at Castillon. He did not understand the system whereby the towns around were considered as god-daughters (filleules) by the jurade of Bordeaux and entitled to its help in times of danger. The chronicler Mathieu d’Escouchy asserted that Talbot planned to remain within the walls of Bordeaux, resist attack and then retaliate. But Talbot’s chivalric principles were touched by the charge of cowardice made against him and he went out to Castillon against his better judgement.46 Admiral de Bueil made the reasonable suggestion, however, that Talbot had decided to take on Bureau before he went against larger armies of Clermont and Foix.47
Talbot reached Castillon after a day’s and a night’s march from Bordeaux on 17 July at dawn. He led his vanguard cavalry to take the Saint-Laurence Priory on the northern edge of the town, where he intended to wait for his infantry and artillery to catch up with him. French troops that he had pushed out of the priory rushed to take shelter among Bureau’s artillerymen who were only two kilometres away. Talbot let his troops broach the barrels of wine they had found in the priory cellar, and told his chaplain to get things ready for Mass.
At that moment, he was told that the French seemed to be abandoning their artillery emplacement because a cloud of dust was seen rising above it. Talbot accepted the proposition that this signalled withdrawal from conflict on the part of the enemy and gave the order to go off in pursuit without waiting for the main body of his army to arrive.
It was a dry July morning in south-west France and dust was unavoidable as horses were moved away from the guns in anticipation of an engagement. Sir Thomas Everingham, Talbot’s standard bearer, returning from reconnaissance, said that there was no sign of withdrawal on the part of Bureau’s artillery: on the contrary, ‘everything was calm over there; they were behind their palisades, not at all troubled, and very prepared to all appearances to sell their lives dearly.’48 Everingham advised Talbot to wait until the rest of the Anglo-Gascon army had arrived but Talbot did not accept his observations. He had already been accused of delaying by the citizens of Bordeaux and decided upon precipitate action. He ordered such cavalry as he had with him, as was usual, to dismount and advance towards the French defences. The loyal Everingham was in front with Talbot’s banner.
Henri Ribadieu,49 followed recently by George Minois,50 relied for their information on the Memoirs of Jacques du Clercq, a contemporary chronicler,51 to provide accounts of Talbot’s comportment on the battlefield. It is helpful to look at that source scrupulously. Talbot was mounted on a ‘little palfrey’ (de Clercq says haquenée) and did not dismount like the others because he was an old man (he seems to have been little more than sixty, though some accounts have him as nearly eighty); he had twenty-four banners unfurled, including Henry VI’s standard of St. George, that of the Trinity, and his own. His attack began with great valour. The palfrey was soon a victim to the artillery and fell on top of Talbot, who was wearing no armour apart from his brigandine,52 which was ‘a sleeveless jacket’ to which ‘small, rectangular plates of iron were rivetted’ for ‘flexible protection’.53 He was not wearing full plate armour because, when he was held as a hostage at Rouen three years earlier, Charles VII did not hold him to ransom, and even gave him money, in return for which, he promised ‘of his own will’ never to wear armour against the French king or his people again, and that he would go to Rome as a penitent. As we have seen, once he had returned to England, he was not able to leave his old life behind him and began warfare again.
Talbot was held to have been one of the most valiant among English knights and commanders. His career stretched from the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, where he fought for Henry IV against the House of Lancaster’s opponents, through active service in Ireland and France until this time.54 He was created a Knight of the Garter in 1424.55
As an independent commander, he became conspicuous for his personal valour, but there were also instances of a cruel, even murderous, tendency in him. He ostensibly maintained the ideals of chivalry, one of the main characteristics of which was the faithful keeping of oaths once made: his ‘small palfrey’, for example, could not have borne his weight if he had been wearing plate armour. When his tomb was opened in 1884, he was found to have a fractured skull.56 His body was identified by means of a known dental peculiarity and the severity and nature of his wounds testify to his body being unprotected. His brigandine (Beaucourt calls it a gorgerette) was brought to Charles VII at La Rochefoucauld by Jacques de Chabannes and the king said, ‘God have mercy on this good knight.’57
The lords of Montaubau and Hinnaudière with the Duke of Brittany’s troops over whom they had command, came down from the heights above the Dordogne to support the French forces. The English survivors of the cannonades turned their backs and were chased away by them, leaving their banners on the ground.58 Even so, several Englishmen and Gascons escaped to find refuge in the town and castle of Castillon. These included the captal de Buch’s son Kendal, Bertrand de Montferrand and the lord of Anglade. Pierre de Montferrand escaped. The next day, the French brought their cannon before the town and more prisoners were taken, including Kendal. In the end, the Anglo-Gascons no longer had an army of any mobility and, since their most daring commander was dead, they could do nothing more than withstand three months of siege in Bordeaux itself.59
In his recently published biography of Charles VII, Philippe Contamine based his account of the battle on three immediately contemporary letters. The first is by an unknown person who quotes from another letter from Guy de La Roche, the seneschal of Angoulême which relates how Jacques de Chabannes and Joachim Rouault were assailed near the artillery park by Talbot’s impetuous advance to place his banners in front of the cannon. Gerard de Samain, an experienced gunner, gave the order to fire and at each shot five or six of the English fell and the rest drew back. The French troops rushed out of the gun emplacement on foot and on horseback to make straight for Talbot himself. He was thrown to the ground, one of the archers slashed at his throat and lui bailla une epée parmi le fondement. Some of the English turned and were chased as far as Saint-Emilion. Others took refuge in Castillon.60
The second letter, written a mere five days after the battle, was from Charles VII in person to correspondents in Lyon. He insists that there were Gascons in Talbot’s force at Castillon at nine in the morning. The Anglo-Gascon attack on the French camp lasted an hour and they fought resolutely. Talbot died along with many others. The survivors took to boats on the Dordogne to get away, or ran off aimlessly, or took refuge in Castillon. The king does not name any of his field commanders, nor does he mention his artillery. However, what he does say is that Clermont and Foix went immediately to the Médoc after the battle. French ships were moored in the Gironde and Bordeaux found itself directly threatened.
And the third letter in Contamine’s presentation was written by the Count of Maine’s herald, sent to Poitiers reporting in the broadest terms that Talbot had been defeated, an indication that the news spread to the great towns of the kingdom very quickly.61
It is likely that the news of Talbot’s defeat and death reached Henry VI’s court at Clarendon in the first week of August. The king was subsequently taken ill, and his lapse into a cataleptic stupor was sudden. Royal writs that were as a rule regularly issued suddenly stopped after 11 August, and members of the council at Westminster attempted to fill the void by taking over routine administrative duties.62 The king was taken to Windsor and remained in seclusion throughout the winter of 1453–1454.63 In contrast, Charles VII ordered Te Deum to be sung at the news of Castillon.
* * *
What sort of man was John Talbot, created Earl of Shrewsbury in 1442? We can see that he was pious in a conventional fashion, and fervent for chivalric ideals. When Margaret of Anjou had arrived in England as Henry VI’s Queen in 1445, Talbot and his countess, Margaret Beauchamp, who had accompanied her from France, presented her with an illuminated book containing fourteen essays about the way knights were supposed to conduct themselves. After more than twenty years as a Knight of the Garter, he certainly respected the order’s values.64 This chivalric spirit remains full of contradictions for us as we try to understand it in the context of late medieval warfare. A great deal had changed in society since the days of William the Marshal. The Black Death had so diminished the population of Europe that a stratified order in society was giving (or even had given) way to relations governed by patronage and the cash nexus, conditions known to English historians at least since 1945 as ‘bastard feudalism’, where a market set by labourers or tenants was more important than one set by landowners:65 the world represented in the Paston Letters.66
This was reflected in the organization of European armies, especially such as fought each other in the stages of the Hundred Years War conducted between the houses of Lancaster and Valois. ‘Old Talbot,’ ‘England’s Achilles,’ could be seen as a survivor from two centuries before. As Malcolm Vale has said, ‘… if the knight really passed away in the fifteenth century, he spent a long time a-dying.’67 The world of late medieval chivalry as it was evolving is not our world and cannot be. Malcolm Vale again: ‘… despite changes in technique and strategy the single combat – and, above all, the associated notion of individual honour – retained its importance.’68 This was Talbot’s world and we have to take it seriously if we are to be able to assess his impact on events. This was the man who told his chaplain on the morning that would see his death, ‘I will never hear Mass unless I have this day spilt the blood of the company of Frenchmen which is over there in the field before me.’69
Talbot, says his biographer, was by nature irascible, often brutal, cruel, even vicious.
During the summer of 1451, Talbot ruthlessly and shamelessly exploited his own high renown and position of favour at court, as well as the general powerlessness of the crown in the face of popular unrest and baronial feuding [Cade’s rebellion and the return of Richard, Duke of York from Ireland] to further his own private ambitions. Behind the public image of England’s champion, lay a grasping and self-seeking baron, whose propensity for creating domestic disturbance was undiminished by decades of fighting against the French. At the same time, Talbot was not prepared to throw himself into the principal feud undermining the Lancastrian monarchy – that between York and Somerset. There was nothing altruistic or statesmanlike in this – merely another calculation of self-interest. Talbot was placed in a potential dilemma by the conflict between York and Somerset, for he was closely attached to both.70
Jean Chartier said of him after his death:
This famous and renowned English commander spent a long time as the most redoubtable flail and the most determined enemy of France, of whom he appeared to be the dread and terror. 71
Concrete examples of his cruelty are documented. At Laval in 1428, he had sixty-five men, including priests, executed as traitors, presumably without due process of law. Similarly, in the garrisons at Jouy and Crépy in 1434, and at Gisors two years later, he hanged citizens for surrendering to the French and, after his raid into Santerre in 1440, he burned over three hundred men, women and children at Lihors in their village church, a horror comparable to the action of the Nazis at Oradour-sur-Glâne in 1944. The examples multiply, but according to the rules of war at the time, none of this would have appeared excessive – at least to the perpetrator.72 Chivalry was on its way out in mid-fifteenth century warfare, but its code was still binding upon Talbot as he single-mindedly applied his devotion to the Lancastrian cause.
Yet the rise of self-conscious support for a particular monarch as such, and the development of stable gunpowder that did not ignite when jolted in carts – both phenomena of Talbot’s lifetime – were calling all in doubt. The last word on Talbot could well be:
… it is possible that acting upon incorrect information, Talbot unfurled his banner [at Castillon] and opened the battle before he discovered that he was launching his men against an impenetrable position: to have retreated then would have brought lasting dishonour … A deep and genuine commitment to the code of chivalry as he understood it offers the most convincing key to Talbot’s character and career.73
This uncompromisingly military figure had been granted total administrative and judicial authority over the lands in Gascony that he was to re-take, and once he had assumed them the Bordelais had no difficulty in seeing him as a conqueror, rather than the liberator for whom they had hoped. They had never expected anything like this from an English lieutenant-governor, even from the Black Prince or from John of Gaunt. From December 1452, all ships arriving in the Gironde Estuary had to put in at La Marque and at Lussac in the Médoc to pay charges before they were permitted to enter the Garonne and the port of Bordeaux, which ‘suggests a harshness which was uncharacteristic of the English administration of the Duchy’.74 The inhabitants of Libourne remained loyal to France and ‘implored the French garrison not to desert them’.75 From the moment they arrived, the English troops ransacked houses and churches, stealing jewelled reliquaries and anything valuable they could lay their hands or their sword points on. New taxes were imposed and harshly collected, and it seemed as though this situation could have been permanent when, from March 1453, Talbot’s staff was enlarged by the arrival of his son, Viscount Lisle (who would also die on the field of Castillon), Roger, Baron Camoys (who would be appointed as English seneschal to replace Coëtivy on 4 July76), John Lisle, Robert Hungerford, Lord Moleyns and John, Bastard of Somerset. So nearly 5,000 troops were stationed in revived English Gascony until October 1453 whereas, previously, troops were usually and for the most part raised at need within the duchy itself. This was not the kind of English return that any of the Gascons had hoped for.
One of those moments that bring a note of levity to such a study as this comes from a document that an erudite eighteenth-century antiquarian in Bordeaux, the Abbé Jacques Baurein, found in the administrative archives of the Ombrière Palace. It is a solicitor’s minute (procès-verbal) which relates the circumstances of Olivier de Coëtivy’s capture. It underlines Talbot’s triumphalist and self-interested attitude to his task.77
Coëtivy, once Talbot’s troops were in charge of Bordeaux, tried to escape from Bordeaux and make his way back, in armour, to Taillebourg – emphasizing the fact that no French force of any size had been left at his disposal.78 Talbot had issued orders that morning that no resident of Bordeaux would be allowed by the English to take any Frenchman prisoner.
The document was written and reproduced in Gascon, but Baurein obligingly gave a French version for the benefit of his contemporaries and any other parties who would be interested later on. The document was registered on 4 February 1453 (notaires are in no hurry, then as now) by a notary at the Ombrière called Jean Bodeti on Talbot’s own orders. Talbot was himself present at the meeting which the document records, together with other witnesses, when a statement was made by an esquire (écuyer) whose name was Bertholet de Rivière. This man and another esquire, Louis de Berthais, had left Bordeaux under the terms of the 1451 peace treaty (de Rivière was from Bayonne and Berthais from Dax79), made their way to England, and returned as members of Talbot’s expeditionary force.
On the morning after the English had been let into the city these two Gascon second-lieutenants passed one Arnaud Bec, a trader (negoçiant) of English origin, who recognized them. Apparently in some excitement, he invited them to come with him to see something that might interest them. He knew where one, or even two, Frenchmen were hiding, and proposed that it would be easy to take them prisoner. If they helped him to do so, he would give them half of what he would receive for their ransom. They agreed, taking an oath on the Four Gospels. They went with him to a garden outside the Cor Gate80 under the ramparts where they found Olivier de Coëtivy and, with him, the Lord of Messignac. They arrested them and led them back into the city to hide them in Arnaud Bec’s house.
All this was taken down by the notary, who went on to record how Talbot reacted to this information. He told them that the half-ransom they were expecting would belong to him, seeing that Arnaud Bec, as a resident of Bordeaux, had no right to take Coëtivy and Messignac prisoners, or anyone else for that matter, since he had, that very morning, specifically forbidden any such action by residents. Besides, Bec was guilty of concealing the prisoners in his house. The other half of the ransom belonged to Talbot as well, seeing that Rivière and Berthais had made themselves accessories to Bec’s crime of acting against his decree – his English origins evidently making no difference to the decision from Talbot’s point of view.
Rivière and Berthais did not accept the injustice of their predicament, and there exists a petition bearing the date of 23 July 1454 which they presented to ‘the right high and mighty prince and our undoubted lord, the Duke of York, protector of England, and to our sovereign lord’s full noble and solemn council,’ claiming restitution of the ransoms which the late and, in their case unlamented, Talbot had taken from them.
They pleaded that they had come to Bordeaux in Talbot’s army at their own expense and with twenty men in their own service and, each in his own way, had survived the carnage and aftermath of Castillon. Berthelot de Rivière was taken prisoner at Castillon ‘in the field’, but was released at the end of the siege of Bordeaux and, remaining loyal to the king of England as a faithful Gascon, migrated to England again as he had previously done in 1451. He had nothing to live on now beyond his trust in his sovereign lord. Louis de Berthais had been captured among the English defending Chalais and was still being held prisoner in France, not being able to afford his ransom because he, like Rivière, had lost his lands and buildings in 1451. They hoped still to be of military use to the English cause. They asked for Olivier de Coëtivy to be restored to de Rivière’s custody and that his ransom should be paid to him and his brother in arms as would have happened if Talbot had not confiscated it. They note that it is evident that Talbot had felt the need to justify himself by having a document drawn up by the notary in the Ombrière.
Receipt of this document by the king’s council is signed by William Wayneflete, bishop of Winchester, by Pey Tasta, dean of Saint-Seurin (not surprisingly), by the Duke of York himself, by the Earl of Salisbury, by Bourgchier (probably the archbishop of Canterbury or, if not, by his brother), by one of the Beaumont family and by the prior of St John of Jerusalem. Added to the parchment is a note that says, ‘The king by the advice of the council [a phrase which conveniently conceals the fact that the king was in a comatose state at the time], wills that letters be sent under the privy seal to the new Earl of Shrewsbury to have the said prisoner brought before the king and his council in the month of Michaelmas next [i.e., September 1454] and that in the meantime he is in no wise to enlarge [set free] the prisoner. And this upon the penalty of six thousand pounds.’ Evidently no notice was taken of this decision because, as we shall see, Olivier de Coëtivy was a prominent figure in subsequent events in Bordeaux, and he regulated his account with the Shrewsbury family from there. We have not heard the last of Berthais …
The fact that he was improperly arrested did not make Coëtivy any the less a valuable prize. Old Talbot shipped him and Messignac off to England along with the deputy mayor, Jean de Fou. He would be a guest of the countess of Shrewsbury and of Talbot’s son by his first marriage (himself a prominent figure in the forthcoming Wars of the Roses) until January 1455, when he was released to go home to raise his ransom.