In the mid-1960s, research was
under way for two doctoral dissertations concerning John Talbot,
first earl of Shrewsbury. At Bristol University in the UK,
A. J. Pollard took on the study the baronial Talbot family in the
fifteenth century, while at Princeton University in the US, Reginald
Brill sought to explore Anglo-French warfare between the death of
King Henry V (1422) and the Truce of Tours (1444) through the military
activities of John Talbot. It would come to pass that Pollard, not
Brill, would publish the examination of the military career of John
Talbot in the closing decades of the Hundred Years’ War. There
is a small irony here as Brill saw himself as a military historian
while Pollard does not see himself as one. In the late 1970s Pollard
wrote the typescript of the book currently under review, using the
research for and some of the text of his 1968 doctoral thesis on “The
Family of Talbot, Lords Talbot and Earls of Shrewsbury in the Fifteenth
Century,” plus the scholarship of others during the intervening
decade; he completed the book in 1980. While the text was in press,
he continued to make modifications until publication in 1983. For
the republication by Pen &
Sword Books in 2005, he added the “Preface to Second Edition,” in
which is related the history of the book’s development and
discusses the scholarship since 1983 that touches upon the book’s
themes.
With the exception of chapter 1, John
Talbot and the War in France 1427-1453 contains two kinds of
chapters. The first type are those narrating Talbot’s military
biography in chronological periods: 1427-36 (ch.
2), 1436-50 (ch. 4), and 1450-53 (ch.
8). The second type is four interspersed chapters exploring various
topics related to Talbot’s activities: Lancastrian Normandy’s
organization (ch. 3), Talbot and his
soldiers (ch. 5), Talbot and war profits
(ch. 6), and Talbot and chivalry (ch.
7). Pollard’s chapter organization allows the reader
several approaches for reading his book. For a continuous narrative
of Talbot’s life as a soldier, one simply reads chapters
1, 2, 4, and 8. For an in-depth discussion in the topical chapters,
the reader just turns to the particular chapter that is of interest,
and each topical chapter stands well by itself. Pollard’s
organization is quite appealing in that it presents the reader
with an alternative to just reading the book straight through cover-to-cover.
Regardless of how one approaches
the book, the reader will curiously find little concerning Talbot’s
life in his home country, England. Little is said about his involvement
in the rule of either England or his own estates. Pollard points
out that when in England, Talbot’s behavior was rather violative and
grasping. This sort of behavior, however, was more the norm than
the exception in fifteenth-century England after the death of Henry
V, as can also be seen, for example, in the career of Sir John Fastolf.
Although Talbot was often at odds with Fastolf for
his having conducted a fighting escape from the English defeat at
Patay (18 July 1429), while Talbot was left to be captured by the
French, both men were similar in being more than just English captains
in Lancastrian France. Their lives were quite varied, being
merchants, owning ocean-going ships, holding large tracts of land
in France, advising the government on political and military matters
as well as being huge creditors of the English crown. Talbot’s
military actions embodied the tension between the chivalric ideals
of the knightly class and the grimness of late medieval warfare in
the closing years of the Hundred Years’ War. The values of
the former continually clashed with the realities of the latter.
Somehow, through the seeming never ending grinding of the day-to-day
military demands, Talbot kept going and answering each challenge
with varying success.
Although contemporary Frenchmen
referred to him as “Le Roi Talbot” with the exception
of his lieutenancy of Guyenne in 1452-53, Talbot never held supreme
office in France. Always he acted as a subordinate to others though
usually as their leading military commander. His superiors did the
governing while he did the fighting. Whether he began as a hard ruthless
man, he, like Fastolf, became one who was
often ruled by a harsh self-interest. Talbot’s brutal behavior
both abroad and at home was more the rule than the exception in the
reign of Henry VI, and Pollard shows this in Talbot’s case.
Despite losing his two greatest battles, Patay on
18 June 1429 and Castillon on 17 July 1453, Talbot’s ability
to conduct war as an administrator and a combat soldier was largely
responsible for the quotidian English maintenance of Henry V’s
conquests in Northern France as detailed in this book. Thanks to
Pen
& Sword Books, today’s readers may obtain at a very reasonable
price this new edition of Pollard’s still highly relevant study
that lets the reader see how John Talbot accomplished this feat.
Note that Pollard’s doctoral
thesis is available on the Internet through British
Library EThOS.