The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [107]
Clearly Parliament believed that York would rise again in rebellion, for it authorised the King to raise 20,000 archers at the expense of the shires and boroughs for six months’ service, if and when they were requested for the defence of the realm. Finally, on 24 March, her betrothal with John de la Pole having been dissolved, Margaret Beaufort was given into the custody of Edmund and Jasper Tudor as their ward. Henry had probably already decided that she should marry Edmund and so bring him her rich inheritance.
In February 1453 the Queen had been distressed by the death of her mother, Isabella of Lorraine, after a long and painful illness, and donned dark blue mourning. However, in April she was cheered by the realisation that she was at long last to bear her husband a child – hopefully a male heir. Curiously, the Queen did not break the news to Henry herself, but asked his chamberlain, Richard Tunstall, to convey ‘the first comfortable relation and notice that our most dearly beloved wife the Queen was enceinte, to our most singular consolation and to all true liege people’s great joy and comfort’, as the King later recorded. He was so delighted with the news that he rewarded Tunstall with an annuity of forty marks. He then commissioned his jeweller, John Wynne of London, to make a jewel called a ‘demi-cent’, and commanded him to deliver it ‘unto our most dear and most entirely beloved wife, the Queen’. It cost £200, a great sum at that time.
Henry had meanwhile been quietly restoring to their former positions all those officers of his household who had been dismissed at York’s request. The activities of these men had been the basis of many complaints made by York, Cade and others, but Henry never learned from his mistakes and by July 1453 they all had regained their former influence.
It was an unsettled and gloomy early summer, despite the Queen’s advancing pregnancy. There was tension in the north between the Percies and the Nevilles, who had long been feuding. Talbot was beset on every side by the French in Gascony; and there was unrest and disorder throughout the kingdom.
Parliament had still not voted Talbot the reinforcements he so badly needed, and in the spring of 1453 Charles VII had taken advantage of this and invaded Aquitaine, bringing with him three armies, all of which converged on Bordeaux from different directions. By the middle of June the French had advanced as far as the town of Castillon, whose inhabitants smuggled out a desperate plea for help to Talbot. The Earl’s instinct counselled caution, as did his captains, but his knightly principles would not allow him to abandon those in distress, and in July he occupied Castillon. Shortly afterwards he received intelligence that the French were withdrawing, but this was not true. On 17 July, Talbot led his men out of the town and gave chase to the ‘retreating’ army, which suddenly turned and confronted him. The French used their new artillery to devastating effect, pushing the English back to the banks of the River Dordogne, where Talbot was cut to pieces with a battle-axe. When the English soldiers learned of his death they quickly surrendered.
Talbot’s death deprived the English of their best commander, the only man who could have stemmed the tide of the French advance on Bordeaux. News of the disaster and of the loss of one of England’s greatest warrior heroes prompted a frantic Queen Margaret hastily to summon Parliament. Parliament now acted – too late. At the King’s request it voted enough money to finance the 20,000 archers, who were to be dispatched with all speed to Gascony in the hope of saving Bordeaux. But corrupt bureaucracy and local inefficiency stood in the way and not a single soldier enlisted. On 19 October 1453 Charles VII entered Bordeaux in triumph, and graciously