The Hundred Years War - Desmond Seward [100]
If the English were unable to produce another Bedford or another Salisbury, they still possessed a formidable commander in the dashing Lord Talbot.
John, sixth Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford, Knight of the Garter and Count of Clermont, had been born about 1388. A scion of a long line of marcher lords on the Welsh border, he inherited a savage tradition and his first years as a soldier were spent fighting Owain Glyndr. In 1414 Henry V made him Lord Lieutenant in Ireland where he harried the wild kern amid their bogs and forests. Talbot’s French campaigns began in 1419 ; he was present at the siege of Melun in 1420 and at that of Meaux the following year, and later he fought at Verneuil. After a second term in Ireland he returned to France but, as has been seen, he was taken prisoner at Patay and spent four years in captivity. Since then ‘Old Talbot’ had caught the popular imagination with his string of victories. A portrait at Compton Wynyates shows an oddly modern face with strongly marked features beneath thick black hair. Impressive in manner, he was obviously afraid of nothing and his men worshipped him. While possessing an enviable grasp of strategy he had a curiously erratic sense of tactics. A master of the surprise attack, the raid and the skirmish, who knew just one order—‘Forward !‘—Talbot was really a dashing English version of du Guesclin, though without the Breton’s caution. Indeed he was defeated at the only two full-scale battles where he was in command. Nevertheless his opponents were terrified of him. The Irish lamented ‘there came not from the time of King Herod anyone so wicked in evil deeds’—and his name alone could make the French retreat.
In February 1436 Talbot was joined by the new Lieutenant-General of France—the enormously rich Duke of York, a young man of twenty-four whose small size and ugly features hardly matched his soaring ambition. If indecisive and a poor soldier, York was none the less an ally of Gloucester and a vigorous proponent of the War, and he co-operated with Talbot to such effect that the latter soon restored order in both Normandy and Maine. York himself managed to recover Dieppe and a number of towns in the Caux.
At the end of 1436 Poton de Xaintrailles and La Hire appeared in front of Rouen with 1,000 troops, but the citizens remained loyal and would not admit them. So they established themselves in the little town of Ris, ten miles away. Talbot, Sir Thomas Kyriell and 400 mounted men galloped from Rouen to Ris as soon as they learnt where the enemy was. They at once overran the French outposts on a small hill above the town and the fleeing survivors spread panic among their comrades ; when Talbot charged into the town there was no one to stop him, and he captured all the enemy baggage and some valuable prisoners. In January 1437 he and the young Earl of Salisbury took Ivry. The following month, despite bitter winter weather and deep snow and with only 400 men, Talbot recaptured Pontoise twelve miles from Paris, sending in troops disguised as peasants to open a gate to a storming-party camouflaged in white. The French garrison fled, led by Talbot’s former brother-in-arms, Marshal de L’Isle Adam. Talbot then appeared before Paris, where his men crossed the frozen moat and threatened to scale the city walls.
In the spring of 1437 the Earl of Warwick replaced the Duke of York as Lieutenant-General. Warwick was nearly sixty, at that time a ripe old age,