Very few castles were taken by direct assault. Starvation and disease reduced a garrison to the point where they had to surrender or die. Chivalric courtesy and elaborate rules surrounded the surrender of a castle—agreements that might or might not be honored by the victors. For example, the castellan might agree to surrender the castle if relief or reinforcements did not arrive within a certain period of time. Under these circumstances the defending force might be allowed to leave with their arms and honor intact. But often the victorious army failed to honor the terms of surrender and slaughtered the entire castle guard. Usually the castellan or lord of the castle left the castle for prison or execution.
After a long siege the defeated forces might be so debilitated by starvation and disease that they died shortly after the siege was lifted anyway. Treachery was always a possibility, and many castle and city gates were opened by people who expected to receive large rewards for their treachery. Ingenious tricks and disguises also played a part.
Although castles were often turned into prisons in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, medieval prisons were small. Writers of romantic fiction have made much of dungeons and torture, but medieval justice was usually direct and swift. Traitors were usually killed before they could escape to enjoy their reward. The only prisoners worth keeping were the wealthy nobles who were held for ransom. For them the great tower made an excellent and secure prison. Important captives lived in luxury. After his capture at the battle of Poitiers (1356), King John of France lived in a London palace, hunted in the royal preserves, and was not eager to return to France.
Chateau-Caillard: Richard the Lionhearted's Castle and Its Horrible End
Richard the Lionhearted, who became king of England in 1189, had inherited Aquitaine (western France) from his mother Eleanor and inherited Normandy and Anjou—and England—from his father Henry. As duke of Normandy and Anjou, Richard was a vassal of the king of France, but he controlled more land in France than did the French king. Although Richard had been an ally of Philip Augustus in the Third Crusade, in 1192 he went to war with the king over his French lands. Richard built Chateau-Gaillard (he called it the “cocky castle”) on a cliff above the Seine north of Paris to defend his claims to Normandy. He began his castle in 1196 and boasted that he finished it in a year (in fact it may never have been completely finished). Having experienced the advantages and defects of the great crusader castles, Richard put all his expertise to work in the design of his Norman fortress.
Richard chose an excellent site, in the territory of the archbishop of Rouen, who objected strenuously until Richard paid him a handsome sum for the land. The site is a narrow plateau, about 600 feet long and at most 200 feet wide, surrounded by deep ravines leading down to the river Seine. On one side a narrow spit of land links the site to its hinterland. A walled town (Les Andelys) stood at the base of the cliff, and Richard also built a tower on a small island in the river. Dams and obstacles in the water inhibited an enemy’s approach from the river, while during peacetime these river defenses enabled the castle’s commander to support the garrison by levying tolls on the river traffic. Richard also raised money by selling rights of citizenship to residents of the town.
The castle consists of three separate units along the plateau. An attacking army had to approach the castle along this land route, capturing one fortification after another. First, a walled outer bailey, which was built like an independent castle, blocked the approach. Huge round towers defended its curtain wall. From this outer bailey, a bridge with a drawbridge over a very deep moat led to the gate into the middle bailey. Again a curtain wall with one rectangular and three round towers enclosed a large area where Richard built his inner bailey with its tower. This fortress-within-a-fortress became a concentric (double-walled) castle with a wall that resembled a series of round towers. Rising at one side of this “corrugated” wall and commanding the river side of the castle was the great tower. This tower had massive walls about 16 feet thick and a battered base that made mining virtually impossible. Its massive pointed keel also deflected blows, and inverted buttresses supported a fighting gallery.
As long as Richard was alive to command and reinforce it, the castle stood securely. But Richard died in 1199, and his brother John was not an effective general. Philip Augustus moved to the attack, laying siege to the castle in the summer of 1203. The constable of the castle was Roger de Lacy of Chester, who had sufficient supplies and a large garrison of about 300 men to hold the castle for King John. Roger expected to hold out for as long as a year, while the English king gathered resources to relieve the castle.
The town and the river fort soon surrendered to the French king, and the siege of the castle began in earnest in August. About 1,500 civilians from Les Andelys fled to the safety of the castle and added to the strain on the provisions. Aware that he probably could starve the castle into submission, Philip built ditches, walls, and timber towers around the castle to prevent supplies from entering. These fortifications were beyond the defenders’ arrow range, so they could not destroy or even harass the attackers. With nothing to do but stand guard, the castle garrison undoubtedly suffered from a loss of morale during the long winter.
Two months into the siege, Roger de Lacy realized he could not feed all the people who had taken refuge within the castle walls. He evicted the oldest and weakest, who could not help in the defense, and the French army permitted them to leave. But later when de Lacy had to expel the rest of the town, the French closed their lines. When the people tried to return to the castle, they found the gates locked. Trapped between the opposing forces and forced to live in the ravines around the castle walls, they slowly starved.
The final attack on Chateau-Gaillard began at the end of February 1204. First the French had to take the outer bailey. They used stone-throwing machines to keep up a barrage while they filled the castle ditch so that they could haul in a siege tower. But the French troops were so eager to attack that they did not wait for the tower. Instead they used scaling ladders to climb from the bottom of the ditch to the base of the main tower whose foundations they mined, causing the tower to collapse. With the outer walls breached, the garrison had no choice but to withdraw to the middle bailey.
Again a deep ditch prevented further attack. As the French studied the castle walls, one man, named Peter the Snub Nose, saw a weak point and a possible way in. The arrangement of windows high on one wall suggested there might be a chapel and well-appointed living quarters, which would have garderobes. Peter and his friends searched the base of the wall until they found the place where the drain from the garderobes emptied. In a daring sneak attack, the men climbed up the drain and emerged under a large window where they boosted each other into the castle. Once inside they made so much noise that the castle guard thought a large force had entered. The defenders started a fire, hoping to burn up the invaders, but the wind shifted, carrying the flames back through the building, and the defenders had to retreat to the inner courtyard. Peter and his men escaped the flames and opened the doors for their comrades.
The end was near. The English had about 180 men left. The attackers smelled victory. They brought in a “cat”—a mobile, roofed gallery—for protection and began to mine the gate. The English cut a counter-mine and drove the attackers back, but the double mining operation weakened the base of the wall. The French brought in their stone-throwing machines, and the volleys of rocks combined with the weakened foundations caused the wall to collapse. Still the English fought on—with only 36 knights and 120 other men. They moved into the tower, but to no avail. In March 1204, Chateau-Gaillard fell to the army of King Philip Augustus, and with the loss of the castle the English lost their claims to Normandy.
The Siege of Rochester
King Richard the Lionhearted’s brother, King John, lost Chateau-Gaillard but gained Rochester Castle. The barons who opposed King John and forced him to sign a charter of rights (the Magna Carta) in 1215 had taken control of Rochester Castle. The king laid siege to it. His troops kept up a steady barrage, hurling rocks with their siege machines, but the garrison threw the missiles back from the battlements with such force and accuracy that they killed the royal troops at an alarming rate. The king’s men changed tactics and began to mine the curtain wall. The mining proved successful, and the troops rushed through the breach in the wall to engage the garrison in hand-to-hand combat. The outnumbered rebels retreated to the Norman tower. The miners then went to work again and brought down the southwest corner. But the garrison continued to fight, driving back the royal forces time after time. Supplies ran out in the tower, and the starving garrison finally surrendered after a siege lasting nearly three months. The southwest turret was rebuilt as an up-to-date round tower.
New Designs: The Towered Wall
Chateau-Gaillard had utilized the last of the newly built, huge great towers, and Rochester had depended on its early-twelfth-century tower. During the course of the thirteenth century, defense shifted to a towered wall, the enceinte or enclosure castle. Two plans emerged: the castle could rely on a series of courtyards, which had to be taken one after another, or on a concentric defense, in which a second wall entirely surrounded the inner wall. Plans became more compact, and buildings filled the space around the wall of the inner bailey. Towers were added to the walls, developing a true curtain wall (so called because it “hung” between towers) in which every section could be seen and defended from projecting towers. The towers themselves were rounded into cylindrical or D-shapes so that no flat surface tempted a battering ram, and every surface could be surveyed. Wherever possible, stone replaced wood at the top of the wall. Stone machicolations replaced wooden hoardings.
Chinon
Two castles are associated with both the French and the English—Chinon and Angers. The castle of Chinon stands on a cliff rising above the Vienne River. A Gallo-Roman camp and then a fortress of the counts of Blois once stood on the site. Later the counts of Anjou acquired Chinon, and King Henry II of England (who was also count of Anjou) built much of the fortress we see today. Henry died at Chinon in 1189, and his son and heir Richard the Lionhearted also died at Chinon, after the battle of Chalus. John Lackland,
Henry’s youngest son, became king (1199-1216). John had abducted the fiancee of the count of La Marches, Isabelle d’Angouleme, and married her at Chinon. Outraged at his conduct, John’s French vassals rebelled, giving Philip Augustus an excuse to attack the English. The French took Chinon in 1205, and the treaty signed at Chinon in 1214 confirmed John’s losses.
The castle of Chinon, like Chateau-Gaillard depended on defense in depth (that is, multiple layers of defense) and the inaccessibility of its magnificent site. Like Chateau-Gaillard the castle consisted of three parts separated by dry moats. Modern reenactors have constructed, and left, a medieval siege machine in the ditch. The earliest section of the castle, the stronghold on the promontory commanding the river, dates to the tenth and eleventh centuries. It had six towers and later a huge round tower—the “Donjon of Coudray”— built by Philip Augustus. Used as a prison for the Templars when Philip IV suppressed them in the fourteenth century, the tower still stands. A deep ditch separates this early castle from the middle castle, the principal residential ward. On the south side, looking out over the river valley, was the royal residence. (Chinon gained fame as the meeting place of Charles VII, who lived there from 1427 to 1450, and Joan of Arc.) Protecting against an approach from the land side was the forecastle, which has been demolished. The plan of Chinon is typical of castles where the defense consists of a series of independent fortifications and assumes that as one part fell to attackers, the defenders could retreat to the next section, all the time hoping for relief from their allies. Chinon also shows the new disposition of domestic buildings—hall, kitchens, lodgings—along the outer walls, resulting in a central courtyard.
World History
