The Battle of Castillon

John Talbot, then in his seventies, led 3,000 English troops into Bordeaux. He was reinforced by his son with 3,000 more men. The French dispatched several armies to the region and set up a siege camp (”parcq en champ”) around the town of Castillon, which was held by some 5,000-6,000 English infantry and 1,000 horse. This maneuver induced Talbot to sally forth to relieve the garrison at Castillon. With about 6,000 English and 3,000 Gascons, he made a 30-mile forced march to the French camp, then immediately attacked with his cavalry before his infantry could join him. This rash decision brought on the battle. The French were mostly armed with bows, swords, axes, lances, and other nongunpowder weapons. Although an engineer rather than a noble, Jean Bureau took effective, though not official, command. Also present was Giraud de Samian, a famous and experienced cannoneer, and Jean’s brother, Gaspard. The Bureau brothers had pioneered the royal French artillery, and may have brought as many as 300 guns to the battle. Their exact types are not known. These guns are ofttimes reported as being all ”cannon,” but 300 cannon would have been a fantastic number for the period and simply beyond credibility. It is likely that the largest number were handguns of various types (though these may have been large caliber muskets, resting on tripods and served by two or three men each). Some larger cannon were also certainly present.

In any case, the French had more gunpowder weapons and field guns at Castillon than any battle fought to that time in Europe, and they used these to inflict enormous, flesh-tearing losses on the English. Talbot and his forward cavalry detachments were lured onto a preset firing line of big guns by a feigned withdrawal of the French wagons and baggage. Following blocks of English horse were thus caught in enfilading fire even as they were torn apart by point-blank cannonades from the big guns to the front. Arrows storms also rained down on the English, while French arquebusiers peppered their ranks.

The English infantry arrived late, piece-meal, and exhausted, adding their numbers to the carnage without increasing the fighting power or position of Talbot’s force as a whole. The cumbersome English artillery train never even made it to the battle. Talbot’s horse was killed beneath him by a cannonball, and the old man was finished off while on the ground by an axe swung by a French archer. At Formigny, just three years earlier, two French cannon had played an important role in the victory but the French infantry and cavalry did most of the killing. Castillon was the first battle where gunpowder weapons, and specifically artillery, unquestionably decided the outcome against a less-modern and more poorly armed force. The casualty toll confirmed the one-sided outcome: compared to about 100 French dead the English lost nearly 4,000 men, almost all who made it to the battlefield. If red revenge was still wanted by the French for their misery and losses at Cre´cy (1346) and Agincourt (1415), it was had in full measure at Castillon. Bordeaux surrendered on October 19 and the last English troops in France (other than at Calais) were allowed to sail home from La Rochelle.