There is a dearth of scholarship in English covering the end of the Hundred Years War. If you want to know what happened in France after the Treaty of Arras in 1435, you’re going to have a hard time. That was partly why I was so excited to get my hands on A.J. Pollard’s book about John Talbot. Talbot was a legendary English military figure; the bulk of whose career was career was spent in France between the years 1435 and 1450 – with a brief but disastrous return in 1452-3. Talbot is probably most widely known to medieval history enthusiasts for his dramatic death at Castillon in 1453, the final battle of the war where French commander Jean Bureau’s artillery obliterated the English charge – often seen as a turning point in European warfare. John Talbot was more than just the man who died in an arguably reckless charge in southwest France and A.J. Pollard’s account of his extensive military career both fleshes out the man and fills in a large historiographical gap in our understanding of the Hundred Years War.
I should mention now that this book is far from new. A.J. Pollard originally wrote it in the early 1980s and it is in part based on work he did for his PhD thesis in the late 1960s. I read a 2005 reprint of the book, which includes probably the single best introduction to a second printing of any book I’ve ever read. In it, Pollard outlines not only the history of the book itself, but the historiography of what has come since its first publication, helpfully putting the book in its updated context. It is interesting that no other book fills the exact niche of John Talbot and the War in France and despite the fact that in some places it is based on 50+ year old research. It remains a vital source of information on a much-neglected period of Anglo-French warfare.
Many histories of the Hundred Years War are more than happy to skip directly from the end of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance at the Congress of Arras in 1435 pretty much directly to Charles VII’s reconquest of Normandy and Gascony from 1449-1453, if the even cover the latter in any detail at all. What Pollard does is really dig into the period between the 1435 Congress and the 1444 Treaty of Tours, which ceased hostilities until the English foolishly restarted the war in 1449. Pollard also gives valuable background on who Talbot was, his rise to prominence, and his limited military career in the early fifteenth century but it’s really these disastrous years that are the focus of the book. Pollard shows how Talbot, as well as several other commanders, were able to achieve remarkable success with limited resources during a chaotic administration. Not quite winning the war but doing enough that when peace negotiations happened in 1444 England was in the strongest position it could be. During these years they also weren’t facing the full brunt of Charles VII’s attention, and Pollard is always clear that the war was somewhat doomed – Talbot was fighting a losing engagement but he was fighting with remarkable tenacity and effectiveness.
Don’t believe that Pollard is here to lionise Talbot. While he is definitely impressed with Talbot’s successes against the odds, he is quick to point out that during Talbot’s infrequent stays in England during this time, and particularly after his capture and release in 1450, he was a source of constant chaos. Frequently in dispute with neighbours over his various holdings across England, he was not above kidnapping someone he was actively engaged in a court case with to win leverage over them. Pollard’s picture of Talbot is of precisely the kind of warrior you wanted abroad causing problems for someone else. In that way more than most he fits a classic picture of the knightly class. Pollard also comments on how none of this should be seen as lacking in chivalry, Talbot was perfectly chivalric in all its good and bad implications.
Pollard also includes an interesting section examining the captains and retinues of men who served under Talbot in France. This has echoes of Anne Curry’s work in the early fifteenth century, and with good reason because Pollard was Curry’s PhD supervisor. The sections lack the depth seen in more modern studies of this kind of material, which is understandable since Pollard didn’t have access to tools like the medieval soldier database or the library of scholarship that has been produced in the last few decades. Still, even with these limitations it is impressive the level of detail he achieves and well worth a read for those of a more prosopographical mind.
John Talbot and the War in France is an impressive piece of scholarship from a major figure in medieval English history and I really enjoyed it. My only complaint is that I wish it was longer and went into more detail in places – the Castillon campaign features of course but is not examined in detail. This is probably because this is more of a biography of a man and his career than an in-depth exploration of the campaigns and battles fought during the waning of the Hundred Years War, but I would have loved if it was both!