John Talbot, John Fastolf and the death of chivalry

Abstract

John Lord Talbot and Sir John Fastolf are perhaps the best known English captains of the fifteenth century. The two men were bound together forever by their involvement in the disastrous defeat at Patay on 18 June 1429. Talbot and Fastolf have carved themselves unique places in English history, but less attention has been paid to their reputations across the Channel in France. The lives and reputations of Sir John Fastolf and John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, were both shaped by the battle of Patay on 18 June 1429. Valois chroniclers were presumably less informed about the disagreements between Fastolf and Talbot, and certainly had less reason to defend Fastolf. The modern memory of Fastolf and Talbot owes the most to William Shakespeare. Woodcock has identified some evidence to support the notion that Talbot was remembered with fear in sixteenth-century France.