The Blacksmith's Sons

Welsh longbowmen played a significant part in the One Hundred Year War, their contribution to the English victories at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt has been well documented.There are three parts to The Blacksmith Sons, which covers a period from 1360 to 1429.The first part tells the story of two sons of a blacksmith from Caldicot in Gwent, Gethin and John, recruited to the army after killing a deer, and their participation in an English expedition by the Earl of Buckingham to France and the failed Siege of Nantes.In Nantes, the young archers suffer from a desperate food shortage as they watch the French city regularly resupplied with food, and one of them almost dies from dysentery, which devastates the English camp.The second part tells of Gethin and John and their sons, Rhys and Edgar’s involvement in the Owain Glyndwr uprising. John becomes a trusted captain of Owain Glyndwr after successful overseas campaigns as a mercenary in France and Spain.In the third part, Rhys is missing the camaraderie and thrill of the battle, and keen to emulate John’s achievements, enlists in Henry IV’s army, which returns to France, and tells of his role in the Siege of Harfleur, the Battle of Agincourt and the Siege of Orleans, which Joan of Arc ends. However, he is captured by the French during this time and spends four years in a prison cell.Among the tales of battles fought and of successful and failed sieges, there are tender moments of love found and then cruelly ripped away.