page_title: John Hastings, 2nd Earl of Pembroke
section_title: Military career
hierarchical_section_title: John Hastings, 2nd Earl of Pembroke / Military career
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Château de Bourdeilles
context_page_description: John Hastings, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, KG, was a fourteenth-century English nobleman and soldier. He also held the title Baron Abergavenny. He was born in Sutton Valence, the son of Laurence Hastings, 1st Earl of Pembroke, and Agnes Mortimer. His father died when John Hastings was only a year old, and he became a ward of King Edward III whilst remaining in his mother's care. The King arranged for John to marry Edward's daughter Margaret in 1359, which drew John into the royal family. However, Margaret died two years later. John Hastings inherited his father's earldom, subsidiary titles and estates in 1368. The same year he made a second marriage, to Anne, daughter of Walter, Lord Mauny. The following year Pembroke commenced the career in royal service that was to consume the rest of his life. The Hundred Years' War had recently reignited in France, and in 1369 Pembroke journeyed to Aquitaine.
  There he took part in a sequence of raids, sieges, and counter-measures against the French, with both notable successes and failures.
context_section_description: Much, if not most, of John Hastings' life was devoted to royal service, and this begun in October 1364 when he was in attendance on King Edward III at Dover. Five years later he entailed  and enfeoffed a chunk of his earldom, with the reversion going to the King; these were granted to his feoffees who granted them back to him for five years. His first active service came in the same year, when he accompanied the King's son, the Earl of Cambridge to Aquitaine, with a force of 400 men-at-arms, to reinforce the Black Prince's campaign which had suffered severe setbacks following his intervention in the war of Castilian succession. They landed at St Malo—apparently escaping the notice of a local French commander—and began the long march south, aiming to join with Prince Edward in Angoulême, whom they reached in late April 1369. They arrived at a period of military setbacks for the English, and Archambaud, Count of Périgord, was attempting to join forces with the Duke of Anjou; the earls of Pembroke and Cambridge were tasked immediately to destroy as much of Archambaud's lands as possible. This they excelled at, burning property and putting inhabitants to the sword. After this chevauchée into Périgord, Pembroke's force successfully captured Bourdeilles castle after an eleven-week siege– mainly, in fact, due to the fact that the garrison made a mistimed sortie and allowed the English army entry. Knighted soon after by the Earl of Cambridge himself,  he continued to campaign in both Anjou and Poitou, involving much raiding, some of it alongside Edward, Prince of Wales. By June Pembroke was raising a large army to relieve pressure on the north march of Poitou; he and Cambridge were joined by Sir John Chandos around this time. They arrived in the Vendée at the end of June 1369, and captured Roche-sur-Yon as a result of the French captain betraying the town to the English. This was one of the "most significant enclaves" the French held inside English France, and it belonged to "no less a person" that the Duke of Anjou himself. Following the taking of Roche-sur-Yon Pembroke led a successful campaign into the Loire Valley. Although he failed on the first attempt to capture Saumur, he took and held both of the main bridges across the River Loire between Saumur and Nantes.  Already greatly fortified, Pembroke strengthened and garrisoned them. This campaign greatly diminished the ability of the French to attack through the western march of Poitou.
  By this time, tensions had started appearing among the English generals, particularly between Pembroke and Chandos. This was based on their vastly different social status; as Jonathan Sumption put it, Pembroke "may have had the grander name but his inexperience showed." Although Chandos had by now been appointed Seneschal of Anjou, Pembroke—with what a biographer terms "aristocratic arrogance"—refused to serve under Chandos, who was, Richard Barber reminds us, only a banneret. It is possible that Pembroke was acting under the advice of his council, but either way, their armies were kept separate from each other on account of this. As a result, that October (or, says Sumption, December) he invaded Anjou with just his own force of 300 lancers on a fire-raising raid to Puirenon. Pembroke spent long enough there to attract attention; he was ambushed by Louis de Sancerre or Jean de Bueil (both commanded the French forces to the east of the Loire) and about 600 men: "Pembroke's men were still struggling to form lines across the village street when the French horsemen charged into them." About 100 of Pembroke's men were killed or captured, and he left behind a quantity of supplies, horses and materiel. Not only was he unable to fight the attacking force off, but, having escaped to a house at the edge of the village, Pembroke was forced to call upon Chandos for his assistance  "In revenge," says Cokayne in his Complete Peerage, he attacked the town again, before being despatched to relieve Belleperche, in early 1370, where he raised the French siege. At the same, Pembroke's own agents had recruited 3
caption: Bourdeilles Castle; captured by Pembroke soon after his arrival in France.
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