For that enthusiastic patriot Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Burne, a military historian of the old school, the death of Sir John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, at the Battle of Castillon in 1453 marked the end of the Hundred Years' War. Without peerless Talbot, the English Achilles, all hope of regaining the land lost since the coming of Joan of Arc faded. But what a death! His head adorned only by a purple velvet cap (for, when ransomed three years earlier, he had sworn an oath never again to wear armour against the French king), Talbot had brought a small company by forced night march over the hills of St Emilion to take his enemies by surprise, driven the first group of them out of town, and then hurled his men against a wall of French cannons, hoping that once more his name alone would put the French to flight. This time it did not, and Talbot was cut down as he tried to rally his troops. The French leaders raised a tomb to their fallen opponent; their chroniclers remembered him. As one put it, such was the end of ‘ce fameux et renommé chef anglois qui depuis si longtemps passoit pour l'un des fleaux le plus formidable et plus jurez ennemis de la France dont il avoit paru estre l'effroy et la terreur’ (‘this famous and renowned English leader, who for so long had been one of the most formidable scourges and most committed enemies of France, which regarded him with terror and dismay’).