It may be well to briefly recall the circumstances under which this momentous battle was fought. One after another the English had been compelled to surrender to the victorious armies of Charles VII. their fortresses in Poitou, Angoumois, Guyenne and Gascony; so that of their immense province of Aquitaine, which at one time stretched from the Loire to the Pyrenees, they possessed nothing. Even Bordeaux, after remaining faithful to England for 200 years, was a French city at the middle of the fifteenth century. It would probably have remained so without any fresh appeal to arms if Charles VII. had treated the inhabitants with the same justice, and accorded them the same liberties which they enjoyed while they were the subjects of the English kings. It is a truly remarkable fact that, although these kings were so intimately connected with France by blood and ambition, they had borrowed enough of the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race for establishing foreign possessions upon the solid basis of reciprocal interest to make their administrative policy in Aquitaine incomparably better by its equity, the facilities which it afforded for local government, the assertion of individual rights, and the growth of communal prosperity, than that of the French kings and the great nobles who, while owing homage, to the crown, were virtually sovereigns.
At no time was there much dissatisfaction with the rule of the English sovereigns and their seneschals in Western Aquitaine. It was only in the wilder parts of the country, such as the Quercy and the Rouergue, where Celtic blood was, and still is, almost pure, and where the people were very difficult to govern—Caesar had found that out before Henry Plantagenet, Becket, and John Chandos—that there were frequent revolts, entailing as a fatal consequence in those feudal ages barbaric repression. Throughout the flourishing Bordelais the people became firmly and thoroughly attached to the English cause, not less than the Alsatians and Lorrainers became attached to that of France in later times—although there is no historical parallel between the origin of the two connections. Bordeaux was like another London when the Black Prince held his splendid but profligate court there. Commercial interest had doubtless something to do with this fidelity of the Bordelais, for the wealthy English soon learnt to appreciate the delicate flavour of the wines grown upon the chalky hillsides by the Garonne and the Dordogne, and 500 years ago ships came from London and Bristol to Bordeaux and returned laden with pipes and hogsheads; but a sagacious and—the times being considered—a large-minded and generous system of government gave to the people that feeling of security which was then so rare, and which was the beginning of all patriotic sentiment. French writers who have studied this subject frankly admit that we have here the true explanation of the strong attachment of the Bordelais and the Gascons to the English cause. As an illustration, it may not be amiss to translate the following passages from 'Les Anglais en Guyenne,' by M. D. Brissaud:
'The Aquitanians had reason to thank the English Government for not having treated them as foreigners, like the inhabitants of a conquered province, as the people of Ireland, for example, had been treated, and for having confined its action to the development of judicial institutions, of which the germ was found in the feudal system of France…. The kings of England not only refrained from setting themselves in opposition to the local justice of the arrière-fiefs; we have seen them, and we shall see them again in the history of the communal movement, favour the extension of trial by peers, while accommodating at the same time their administrative system to the spontaneous manifestations of opinion in a continental country. They even took care in the composition of the courts that the Aquitanians should not feel the supremacy of the foreigner. With rare exceptions, the personnel of the courts of justice was recruited from among the inhabitants of the province—a precious advantage at a time when the predominance of provincial feeling caused those magistrates who were sent from the North of France into the South by the Capetian royalty to be regarded as foreigners and enemies. The consequence of this choice by England of Aquitanians in preference to English in the composition of the courts was that under Philippe le Bel or Philippe de Valois Guyenne had a right to consider itself in possession of a milder and more impartial system of justice than other provinces of the South already attached like Languedoc to the crown of France.'
When, therefore, the Bordelais fell under French rule, the exactions of Charles and the cynicism with which he broke faith, together with the stagnation in the wine trade, caused the people to wish very heartily that the English would return and try their luck again with the sword. A revolt was secretly planned, in which many of the powerful barons of Aquitaine leagued themselves with the burghers of Bordeaux, for the nobles were as dissatisfied with the new state of things as the commoners. The Earl of Shrewsbury, notwithstanding his great age, came over from England with a very small following, and placed himself at the head of the insurrection. The name of Talbot was sufficient to fire the Bordelais and the Gascons with enthusiasm and confidence. As the news of his landing in the Médoc spread, men rushed to arms and raised the old battle-cries of the English in Aquitaine. Bordeaux opened its gates immediately to the veteran leader, and the example was quickly followed by Libourne, Castillon, St. Émilion, and other strong places in the district. This was in the month of October, 1452. It was not until May of the following year that Charles VII. decided to risk the fortunes of war with the two armies which he had mustered—one on the Garonne, and the other on the Charente. By that time the whole of Western Guyenne was again English. The plan of campaign followed was the one laid out by the long-headed Jean Bureau, a man of figures and calculations—a small Moltke of the fifteenth century. He had been the King's treasurer, his argentier; then the Bastard of Orleans made him Mayor of Bordeaux, and now, because he had a taste for guns, he was Grand Master of the Artillery. He advised Charles that the best course to adopt in order to spoil the English scheme would be to take possession of the roads leading to Bordeaux, and thus cut off communication with the interior. Now, Castillon was an important strategical point, commanding one of the principal gates of the Bordelais, and it was resolved to make a vigorous effort to snatch this fortress, which was but weakly garrisoned, from the hands of the English. The army, which was under the nominal command of the Comte de Penthièvre, but whose ruling spirit was Jean Bureau, accordingly marched on Castillon, and the King's army moved in the same direction. Talbot, having tidings of the enemy's plans, hurried eastward with all the forces he could muster to the relief of the garrison. His main object, however, was probably to prevent a junction of the two armies. He was confident of being able to defeat both if he could engage them separately.
The French army came down the valley of the Dordogne, and drew near to Castillon when Talbot was still far away. The plan of the leaders was not to attack the town until their camp had been well fortified with earthworks and palisades, for it was felt that they could not be too cautious when an adversary like Talbot was in the country, and possibly near at hand. The entrenched camp was laid out and ordered with a military science in advance of the age. The position, moreover, was very judiciously chosen, considering the impossibility in which the French were placed of selecting high ground. The camp was in a fork formed by the Dordogne and its small tributary, the Lidoire, which flows in a south-westerly direction, and falls into the broad river a mile or two above Castillon. Bureau was given ample time to raise his ramparts, dig his moats, fix his palisades, and set up his park of artillery, on which he laid so much store. Then were detached 800 archers—Angévins and Berrichons—who took up their quarters at an abbey that then existed a little to the north of the town, at the foot of a wooded hill. The fortress was therefore threatened on two sides.
On July 16 Talbot arrived on the scene, and at the first brush obtained a signal advantage by taking the French completely by surprise. On the march from Libourne he did not trust himself to the broad valley, which, being highly cultivated then as it is now, offered no cover, but followed the line of hills to the north of it, on which much of the ancient forest still clung. Thus he managed to conceal his advance until his men broke suddenly upon the unsuspecting archers of Anjou and Berry, and slaughtered them with that thoroughness which was characteristic of mediaeval warfare. Talbot belonged to an age that gave no quarter and expected none. A man down was a man lost, unless he had extraordinary luck. The massacre of these archers put the English army—which, after the drafts made on various garrisons, was now said to be about 6,000 strong—in good spirits. Not many of the fugitives reached the camp. Talbot did not follow up this advantage by attempting an immediate attack upon the fortified position in the plain. He gave his men a rest after their toilsome march over rough ground, and put off the decisive battle until the morrow. In the meantime, he placed himself in communication with the garrison of Castillon, and arranged that a sortie in force should take place on the signal being given for the great tug-of-war. He made the abbey his headquarters, and it has been recorded that the casks of wine found in the cellars of the dispossessed monks were speedily drained.
The momentous day of July 17 broke, and Talbot was waiting to hear mass before risking upon the die of a battle the English cause in Aquitaine, so wonderfully and bloodlessly redeemed in a few months. One of the last of the mediaeval knights, the ardour of his loyalty was tinged with mysticism, and any cause that he had espoused would have become holy in his eyes. He therefore raised those aged eyes now to the God of battles as he knelt in the quiet sanctuary, impatient though he was to see the vineyards and the meadows redden again with the blood that he had been shedding with the zeal of a Crusader for more than half a century. His chaplain was laying the altar, when a sudden movement of armed men disturbed the kneeling octogenarian from his devotions. Tidings were brought that the French camp was breaking up in disorder, and that the enemy was about to escape. At this news the blood of the old warrior began to rush through his veins, and without waiting for the mass, he had his armour brought to him. Clad in iron and mounted upon his white horse, accompanied by his son, the Lord Lisle—Shakespeare's John Talbot—he rode down into the plain. The enemy was not in disorder, but was waiting behind the entrenchments for the expected onslaught.
Talbot gave the order for the attack, and his thousand knights and esquires charged down upon the camp. When they were well within range of Bureau's artillery, the 'three hundred cast-iron pieces mounted on wheels, which they called bombardes,' [Footnote: Chroniques de Jean Tarde.] broke into a roar, and the stone balls worked terrible havoc upon horses and riders. The ground was quickly strewn with heavily armoured men, who lay there as helpless as turned turtles, and who were ridden over by those in the rear. The mediaeval cavalry was shattered or thrown into hopeless confusion by the new artillery. The infantry met with no better success in moving to the assault of the hastily raised ramparts bristling with guns. The English army was demoralized by this unexpected reception. In vain did Talbot ride again and again into the thickest of the fray—the besieged had now assumed the offensive. Even his grand old figure and his rallying cry failed to turn back the tide of disaster. It has been written that in his wrath he struck those of his own party who endeavoured to draw him out of the danger to which he was constantly exposing himself. He felt that at his age it was not worth while to survive defeat, in order that he might die in his bed with a mind tortured by gnawing regret a few months or years later.
But although he resolved not to save himself, he urged his son to flee. On this point there is too much agreement between English and French chroniclers for it to be possible to doubt that Shakespeare's well-known scene between the old and the young Talbot, in the first part of 'King Henry VI.,' was founded on fact. Moreover, what was more natural than that the father, when he saw the evil turn that things were taking, should have said to his son:
'Therefore, dear boy, mount on my swiftest horse,
And I'll direct thee how thou shall escape
By sudden flight. Come, dally not; be gone'?