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It was, however, but a last flicker of the flame; in July, 1453, at the siege of Castillon, the aged Talbot was slain and the war at once came to an end; the south passed finally into the kingdom of France. Normandy and Guienne were assimilated to France in taxation and army organisation; and all that remained to England across the Channel was Calais, with Havre and Guines Castle.
The position, moreover, was very judiciously chosen, considering the impossibility in which the French were placed of selecting high ground. The camp was in a fork formed by the Dordogne and its small tributary, the Lidoire, which flows in a south-westerly direction, and falls into the broad river a mile or two above Castillon.
He gave his men a rest after their toilsome march over rough ground, and put off the decisive battle until the morrow. In the meantime, he placed himself in communication with the garrison of Castillon, and arranged that a sortie in force should take place on the signal being given for the great tug-of-war.
In a march to relieve Castillon on the Dordogne Shrewsbury suddenly found himself face to face with the whole French army. His men were mown down by its guns, and the Earl himself left dead on the field. His fall was the signal for a general submission. Town after town again threw open its gates to Charles, and Bordeaux capitulated in October.
It was then like the Castillon of some troubadour's song; now it was a mean-looking little sun-baked town modernized to downright plainness, with no remnant of its ramparts remaining save a sombre old Gothic gateway near the river, and no ecclesiastical architecture deserving notice.
On entering Nules, Peterborough had sent orders for Lord Barrymore's regiment of British infantry, at that time under the command of Colonel Pierce, to march from Vinaroz, where they had been sent with the rest of the infantry from San Matteo to Oropesa, a town about nine miles from Castillon, where he had collected all the horses he had obtained during his march.
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