Of course, disease could also strike inside a besieged town, where the need to accommodate refugees and reinforcing soldiers often made for very crowded conditions. When Jerusalem fell to Saladin, to take an extreme example, “there were people there from Darum, Ramla, Gaza and elsewhere, so many of them that they filled the streets and churches and walking was impossible.”115 Epidemics do, however, seem to have struck defenders much less often than besiegers, perhaps because the townsmen were used to the local microorganisms and had better shelter and sanitation systems. On the other hand, starvation, which was a possibility but by no means a certainty for besiegers, was the inevitable fate of the defenders if the siege continued long enough. Either side might eventually reach the point where one or the other of these difficulties made it impossible to continue the siege. Both in the sources and in modern accounts (including this chapter), there is a tendency to focus on sieges pressed with unusual resolution: they are the most interesting and most complete tellings of the basic story. But it is important to bear in mind that most sieges either failed or succeeded before that point (where one side or the other was unable to continue) was reached. Sieges often broke up because the leaders of the besieging army found the soldiers unwilling to continue. This could happen for many reasons: because the money to pay them had run out, or because their service obligation had expired, or both, or because the army was needed elsewhere, to respond to a counterinvasion or rebellion or other emergency, or because it had become clear that success was unlikely in the end and that it would be better not to continue expending vast resources on a lost cause. Another common reason for raising a siege was the approach of a relief army that the besiegers did not feel strong enough to face with confidence. Conversely, defenders often surrendered when they calculated that they had met at least a reasonable minimum standard of honorable resistance and concluded that no relieving army would come to rescue them. If they surrendered while their walls were intact and their food stocks not exhausted, they could expect to get good terms; if they pressed the defense to the bitter end, the enemy could be expected to punish them for their obstinacy so as to set a precedent for future sieges, for example by allowing them their lives but forcing them to abandon their goods to the victorious soldiers.
Breaking off a siege was often a truly agonizing experience for army leaders, as the resources wasted in the effort were principally theirs, and the failure was attributed more to them than to their men. James the Conqueror recorded how, when it began to appear that he would have to abandon the siege of Borriana due to lack of supplies and the eagerness of his infantrymen to return home to harvest their crops, he purposely exposed himself to enemy fire from the walls, “to allow those inside to wound us, so that, if we had to raise the siege, it could be said that we raised it because of the wound we had received.”116 The soldiers were likely to have more mixed feelings. They would share some of the king’s sentiments, feeling dismay at failure and the waste of their own time, effort, and suffering, and at losing the chance for loot and vengeance on their enemies. On the other hand, the decision of the army leaders to break off a siege often resulted from the eagerness of the troops to escape hard conditions or to get back to their homes and their own affairs.
Leaders would normally conceal any doubts they felt about the likelihood of success in a siege, to avoid stiffening the resolve of the defenders and to discourage desertion. Hence, the decision to end a siege was likely to come as somewhat of a surprise to the soldiers. A demoralized army in retreat was a tempting target, and the last to leave could pretty well expect to be attacked by the garrison as they departed. Everyone, but especially the camp followers, would therefore want to move out as quickly as possible. Considerable haste and disorder was likely to ensue, and panic was a real risk. Where bridges had to be crossed, the situation could be grim. In 1346, after Edward III began a great campaign of devastation in northern France, his adversary, King Philip, ordered the duke of Normandy to break off the siege of Aiguillon, far to the south. In the ensuing rush to evacuate, many men were pushed off the Garonne bridge and drowned. In such situations, siege engines were usually abandoned or set afire along with the soldiers’ huts.117 This too involved potential for disaster, as at the end of the long siege of Arras in 1414:
When they saw how expensive everything was getting. . . and everywhere their horses dying of hunger, the [army’s leaders] had peace proclaimed. . . at about three o’clock after midnight. They left the tents after the proclamation had been made; it said that no one on pain of hanging should set fire to his lodging, but the Gascons. . . did just this. They set fire to everything they could because they were angry at being forced to withdraw. The fire spread fast and came right up to the back of the King’s tent; the King himself would have been burned if they had not got him out on the safest side. Those who escaped said that more than five hundred men lying sick in the tents were left there and died in the fire.118
Well-organized armies would, of course, employ a rear guard and perhaps set an ambush for pursuers, but in the chaotic wake of a major failed siege, even the former elementary step was often absent.119
The announcement of an agreement to surrender a town was almost equally likely to be a surprise to the besieging troops, since leaders generally kept negotiations quiet for a variety of reasons. As with the opposite case, the soldiers often had mixed emotions about such arrangements: happiness at the successful completion of a mission and likely the opportunity to go home, perhaps after substantial hardship; relief at avoiding the danger of an assault; but also often regret at losing the opportunity for a profitable sack. The surrender itself, however, would likely come only several days after the agreement was concluded and announced. Very often, surrender deals included a “conditional respite”: the defenders were allowed to make one last appeal to their lord, informing him that they would have to surrender their town unless relieved by a certain day. In the interim, there would be a truce between the besiegers and the defenders, allowing no bombardment or assaults and no repairs or sallies. When the day came, if a relief army had not approached or had failed to attack, there would be a formal ceremony of surrender. The leading bourgeois, and perhaps their colleagues from the garrison, would present the keys of the city to the victor, who would then make a ceremonial entry into his conquest, likely proceeding to the main church to give thanks for his success. Typically, the town would then simply enter into the lordship of its captor, but if the defenders had held out too long or inflicted too many casualties, they might be expelled, with or without their movable possessions, or they might be required to stand aside under guard while the troops plundered their homes.
Sometimes the surrender of a town would comprise the surrender of its castle or citadel. Often, however, this would not be the case. If the townsmen gave up without the permission of the garrison commander, he might go so far as to burn the town from his refuge, to deny it to the enemy and to punish the treachery or faintheartedness of the burghers. More frequently, the garrison would fall back into the castle and either try to continue holding out or simply negotiate separate terms for themselves, then hand over their fortress in exchange for permission to depart with their lives, limbs, and possessions.
As already noted, one of the main reasons for a town to surrender before hunger absolutely forced it to do so was fear of what would happen if it were taken by storm. When it was, the results were almost always ugly. Once the cry “Town won!” or “Havoc!” went up, commanders allowed or even encouraged brutal treatment of the townsfolk, partly to send a message to the inhabitants of the next town they besieged and partly because they had little choice. Soldiers capturing a place by assault considered a spree of killing, raping, and looting their right. Especially when the defenders were of separate religion or ethnic identity from the besiegers, it was not unusual for men, women, and children to be indiscriminately slaughtered, as when the soldiers of the First Crusade took Antioch:
Neither the victors nor the vanquished showed any moderation or selfcontrol. Bohemund ordered his standard, easily recognized by the Turks, to be placed on top of a certain mountain, in full view of the citadel, which was still resisting, to make the city aware of his presence. Wailing and shrieking filled the city; while throngs pressed through the narrow streets, the brutal, bloody shouts of the victors, eager to kill, resounded. As they recalled the sufferings they had endured during the siege, they thought that the blows that they were giving could not match the starvations, more bitter than death, that they had suffered. The same punishment inflicted upon the hordes of pagans was justly meted out to the treacherous [Christian] Armenians and Syrians, who, with the aid of the Turks, had eagerly and diligently pursued the destruction of our men, and our men were, in turn, unwilling to spare them painful punishment. And yet I say that they would have spared many of them, had they known how to make a distinction between the native pagans and those of our own faith.120
Even when passions were not fanned by group hatred or by the sufferings of a long siege, many men would be killed and many women violated, though where slave-taking was allowed, the profit motive greatly reduced killings. Although this phase of a siege is usually described in the most general terms, even by participants, there is some reason to think that even when the chronicles say that “everyone was put to the sword,” once the townsfolk fled into their homes, the soldiers involved in the sack would generally kill those they met in the streets and anyone who resisted them but spare the rest. We very rarely hear of significant casualties suffered by armies while engaged in a sack, which surely would have occurred if every armed citizen had nothing to lose by fighting to the last. This also seems likely to me on the basis of human nature: both in that most soldiers at this stage would have no desire for more bloodshed and in that even if they did, lust for killing would be counterpoised by disinclination to take on the risks inherent in fighting a desperate man, with no glory or profit to be won.
At the least, the troops would take any and all material goods they fancied, down to the bare walls. Even churches were usually plundered, though not always.121 After a day or three of savagery, the sack might be called to a halt. At that point the surviving inhabitants might be given the chance to accept the new regime and keep at least their homes; but equally well, they might be expelled and see their town burned or the houses reapportioned among the conquerors.
World History
