The Hundred Years War - Desmond Seward [102]
In the summer of 1442 King Charles invaded Guyenne. He captured the castle of Tartas and the towns of Saint-Sever and Dax, and took prisoner Sir Thomas Rempston, the Seneschal of Gascony. La Réole also fell, but its garrison held out in the citadel. However, the French failed to take Bayonne, let alone Bordeaux as they had hoped, although they menaced the capital until the end of the year. The English Council could not make up its mind whether to send reinforcements to Guyenne or to Normandy. Eventually Talbot was sent to the northern duchy with a new army of 2,500 troops, but Bordeaux was left to fend for itself.
Talbot had been in England where he had received an enthusiastic reception and was made an Earl. He had been a national hero for many years ; when he was captured at Patay in 1429 the fund for his ransom was widely subscribed. His triumphs in France were known throughout the land. Ordinary English people seem to have been surprisingly well informed about the progress of the War. Bishops were usually asked to pray for the success of major campaigns and then to hold services of thanksgiving or intercession (depending on the outcome); these were repeated at parish level and no doubt brought a certain amount of news. Great victories were celebrated by processions at St Paul’s and other cathedrals. There were proclamations read out in market-squares and at county courts. Then there were the ballads, such as that composed on the discomfiture of the Burgundians at Calais in 1436. Nor must ‘ale-house gossip’ be despised ; and a good deal of information must also have come via the retinues of the magnates, who kept open house. From the chroniclers it is clear that rumours were circulated by returned soldiers and were absorbed with avid interest.
The contemporary chroniclers’ pride in English victories is (by way of Holinshed) echoed by Shakespeare. He makes a French nobleman ask :
Dieu de batailles! whence have they this mettle?
Is not their climate foggy, raw and dull?
He boasts of his nation’s military superiority:
O noble English, that could entertain
With half their forces the full pride of France,
And let another half stand laughing by,
All out of work, and cold for action.
Indeed, King Henry V, despite anachronisms, accurately reflects how fifteenth-century Englishmen felt about the Hundred Years War.
In April 1443 Beaufort’s nephew, John Earl of Somerset, was made Captain General of France and Guyenne. It was a political appointment, as the Cardinal wanted to overshadow York. To add insult to injury the Council coolly asked York to ‘take patiens and forbere him for a tyme’ about the £20,000 he had spent on the War from his own pocket. Somerset, one of the most incompetent commanders of the entire War, landed at Cherbourg with 7,000 troops and led a seemingly aimless chevauchée through Maine and into Brittany. He refused to tell his plans to his captains, saying fatuously : ‘I will reveal my secret to no one. If my shirt knew my secret I would burn it.’ (Basin comments that even his shirt was incapable of divining something which did not exist.) His one positive action was to seize the Breton town of La Guerche, which he only returned to its Duke for a cash payment; it was not the best way of ensuring Brittany’s neutrality. After a few weeks he returned to England where he found himself a laughing-stock and was banished from court. He died shortly afterwards, some said by his own hand.
Yet the idea of a chevauchée was not altogether foolish. In 1435 that old vulture Sir John Fastolf, realizing that England could no longer afford the expense of long sieges, had proposed that two small armies