by Sean McGlynn
It often occurs that through … those who chase after plunder before the battle is over, that which is thought to be already won can be lost again and lives and reputation as well. It can also happen in relation to such people who are very eager for booty that when there is action on the battlefield, there are a number of men who pay more attention to prisoners and other profit, and when they have seized them and other winnings, they are more anxious to safeguard their captives and their booty than to help bring the battle to a good conclusion.54
Henry V was clear that this was not going to be the case at Agincourt. Financial motivations were not in themselves damaging – in fact, they conferred significant military advantages in recruiting and motivating troops – but it was often deemed necessary to suppress them for the greater military and political good. In the cases studied in this chapter, valuable prisoners were executed and their ransom forfeited so that a greater military objective may be achieved. For as much as gain was a great motivator for one’s own troops, fear was often an even greater demotivator for enemy ones.
For ruthlessly effective commanders, fear was considered one of the most powerful weapons. Much as students of history are accustomed to the chivalric bravado of medieval chronicles and chansons de geste, writings from the Middle Ages did not shy away from the terror their own soldiers faced in war. In 1104 in the Holy Land, Ralph of Caen relates how Archbishop Bernard was amongst the crusaders put to flight by the Muslims: ‘His heart was heavy with fear. He called out to his fleeing companions…. Many crusaders turned a deaf ear and galloped on, so hard of hearing did their terror make them. Nor did anyone have sympathy for his friends, so much was he taken up with his own fear.’55
Gilles de Muisit describes the fear of the French in the aftermath of their defeat at Courtrai in 1302: ‘They were so terrified that many of them could not eat.’56 In 1327, foreign knights faced a barrage from English archers at York, Jean le Bel recalling, ‘Never did men live in such fear, and in so great danger of their lives, without any hope of ever getting home again, as we did then.’57 Suger informs us of the panic that struck the French at the siege of Chambly in 1102: ‘The army was so frightened that some of the men hardly hoped to survive…. In their state of unbearable fear … some were getting ready for flight…. Thrown into terror by the sudden need to escape, everyone rushed together, each paying no heed to the others.’58
The fear of facing certain death as a prisoner is portrayed by Joinville’s vivid account of his time as a captive of the Muslims in Egypt in 1250. He and his men witnessed daily executions of prisoners, usually by beheading. Those who refused to convert to Islam and those who fell ill, like Joinville’s priest, were summarily despatched. Joinville’s group of prisoners were expecting at any moment to be dragged from their prison room and treated likewise. One day, some thirty Saracens entered with swords drawn and axes at the ready.
I asked Baudouin d’Ibelin, who was well acquainted with their language, what these men were saying. He told me that they were saying that they had come to cut off our heads. At once a great number of people crowded round to confess their sins to a monk of the Holy Trinity…. I for my part, unable to recall any sins I had committed, spent the time thinking that the more I tried to defend myself, or to get out of this predicament, the worse it would be for me. So I crossed myself and knelt at the feet of one of the Saracens who was holding an axe….59
A fellow knight confessed himself to Joinville who absolved him. Immediately afterwards, however, such had been his fear, Joinville could not remember a word of what he had been told. The crusaders were not killed, but led to the hold of another ship, where they were packed in tightly, expecting to be taken out and killed one by one. They spent a night of terror, squalor and misery before the threat of execution passed.
Fear could lead to armies crumbling or being weakened through desertion, even by their leaders: Stephen of Blois abandoned the First Crusade and Joinville witnessed important nobles flee the Battle of Mansurah in 1250. This made morbid and catastrophic anticipation a powerful component of a general’s armoury. In 1337, the knight Jean de Beaumont is reported as saying that when ‘in the tavern drinking strong wines’, knights are brave enough to take on the most formidable opponent, ‘but when we are … on our trotting charges, our bucklers round our necks and our lances lowered, and the great cold is freezing us altogether and our limbs are crushed before and behind, and our enemies are approaching us, then we should wish to be in a cellar so large that we might never be seen by any means’.60 Such dread was heightened when it was known that an enemy was particularly ferocious. Some French nobles attempted to persuade Philip the Fair in 1304 to cease the war with the Flemish because they did not take prisoners.
Vengeance was a factor in Charlemagne’s treatment of the Saxons and Richard the Lionheart’s slaughter of the Muslims at Acre; but the desire to create fear was just as important. The wish to project fear was a paramount – and effective – objective at Agincourt, Hattin and Wexford. In the localized and claustrophobic atmosphere of siege warfare, it was an even more potent and devastating weapon, as we shall see in the next chapter.
4
SIEGES
Sieges provide history with some of the great set pieces of war in the Middle Ages, and with some of its worst atrocities. The immediate and localized event of the siege; the large proportion of non-combatants commonly involved, swelling further the already significant number of soldiers engaged in the operation; the crucial importance of the siege to the success or failure of a campaign; the frequently astonishing amount of money, resources and time invested in sieges; and the particularly savage but finely developed laws for siege warfare: all these combined to increase the magnitude of the dreadful consequences for the defeated when a castle’s or town’s defences were breached by storm.
Medieval warfare quite literally centred on sieges. The English won all the major battles in the Hundred Years War – Crécy, Poitiers, Nájera and Agincourt – but were still ultimately defeated because they lost their strongholds in numerous sieges. Wars were fought for the control of land, and land was controlled by castles. The popular image of the castle standing strong and alone, dominating the local, rural landscape, tells only part of its story. Castles were mostly constructed in towns and cities, which themselves were usually walled, thus creating further layers of defence. The very fact that population densities reflected concentrations of wealth, economic production and central administration made them paramount targets of military campaigning. Where castles were built in isolation, as in frontier regions and in the Holy Land, towns would frequently and quickly spring up around them. The obvious effect of this military–civilian symbiosis was the inevitable and direct involvement of non-combatants in the wars of the time. Even when castles stood separately from settlements, as Château Gaillard still does high above Andelys on the Seine, they were the first place of refuge sought out by the surrounding communities when rumours of approaching armies spread, or the smoke from enemy depredations was seen in the distance. Stone walls and a garrison afforded greater security than an open village, and it was a lord’s most fundamental duty to protect his subjects. But castles were far from being purely defensive architecture; their proliferation in marches and border territories is testament to their offensive intent as forward bases for military incursions.
Whether in a defensive or offensive role, the primary function of a castle was to subjugate an area and assert the authority of its lord over it. The ability to do this depended less on the walls and towers, but on the garrison within; without sufficient manpower, architecture counted for nothing. For this reason garrisons would contain mounted soldiers. Cavalry played a necessary role in sorties from castles under siege; but in the lifetime of a castle, these were very rare events – if they occurred at all – and they certainly would not justify the expense of maintaining mounts and knights. It was the cavalry force that gave a castle its operational range. As renowned castellologist R. Allen Brown e
xplains it, ‘the mounted elements of the garrison could swiftly respond to danger and command the surrounding countryside, riding out at will to protect or enforce the loyalty of neighbouring districts, or to launch attacks on marauding hostile forces, or to devastate the lands of their enemies’.1
The range of such activities has been calculated as a radius of up to ten miles, a distance that would permit cavalry to leave and be back at their castle within the hours of daylight. In the Midlands of England during 1174, knights from Leicester rode to Northampton to plunder the town. This military capability made the taking of castles, or at least their containment, a priority for commanders in the field who did not wish to be ambushed or to have their supply lines broken. Even more seriously, an unconquered castle was both a potent symbol of resistance and, more practically, one that could receive large numbers of reinforcements who could then operate in the area from a secure base. Field armies regularly comprised men taken from castle garrisons en route. Whether for defence or attack, the size of a garrison was a barometer of the political environment at any moment in time.
However, such talk of garrisons and their military functions risks oversimplification. Although many sieges saw castles defended purely by soldiers, the fact is that most included non-combatants. Here the term ‘non-combatant’ has less clarity of definition than it does in battle situations. Inhabitants of a besieged town would find themselves assisting in the defence in one way or another, either voluntarily or coerced to do so. Many cities, as in the Italian states, had strictly enforced regulations that dictated organized roles for its citizens in officially designated quarters of the city. In a siege situation, any assistance – be it providing water and food for the men on the ramparts, dowsing fires or just engaging in what economic activity was possible – was deemed to be furthering the military effort of resistance and prolonging the defence. For a besieger, there was no way of knowing who amongst the besieged had helped the defenders, and who had not. The safe rule of thumb adopted by most besieging commanders was to assume that those beyond the walls were hostile; if they were friendly, why had they not turned on the garrison and opened their gates to him? (Naturally, he would attempt to exploit the fears of the non-combatants to do just this.) The confusion of the battlefield at least had the merit of providing a distinct and identifiable enemy combatant; siege situations, although easier to delineate, allowed stone walls to obscure who was actually doing the fighting. That many of those actively manning the ramparts were non-combatants only inclined the besieging commander further to consider all within the walls as collectively responsible for whatever would befall them. Simon de Montfort, leader of the Albigensian Crusade, was killed in 1218 at the siege of Toulouse by women operating a stone-throwing machine.
It is no surprise, then, to learn that when a fortified place was taken by storm, the result could be horrific, with little or no distinction made as to who among the defeated would go under the sword. Yet the many tragic occasions that saw sieges ended this way were still relatively few amongst the thousands of sieges during the medieval period; and where storm did occur, we have to try and distinguish between fact and hyperbole. As we shall see with sieges, as with battles, massacre was more likely to be the result of calculation and premeditation than just the bloodlust of combat.
SIEGES IN MEDIEVAL WARFARE
The movement of armies on campaign was habitually dictated by the location of castles. Forces moved to and from castles, whether to relieve them from a siege or invest them, to augment their own numbers from garrisons or to install more men into garrisons, to take refuge in them, to collect weapons or to create diversionary tactics. The actions of the rebels and French in the English civil war of 1217 reflects this clearly. Henry de Braybrook, besieged in the Lincolnshire castle of Mountsorrel, sent to the rebels’ headquarters in London for help. After a council of war, a large force was sent to raise the siege. The besiegers, learning of the approach of this large relief force, retreated to the defences at Nottingham, and the siege was thereby lifted. The relief army then moved on to Lincoln, where one of their fellow commanders, Gilbert of Gant, having taken the town, was now besieging the royalists in the castle with no success. When the royalist high command learned of this news, it gathered its forces at Newark Castle and set out to raise the siege in Lincoln. There, as we shall see later, a rare but major battle was fought, resulting in a rapid flight back to the safety of London. In the majority of theatres of war in the West during this period, chronicles would record the campaigns chiefly as a series of sieges. Their central role in medieval warfare is hard to exaggerate.
Just as battles were avoided, so, on occasion, were sieges. A small garrison within a weak, poorly provisioned castle facing a large, well-equipped army might abandon its position – and was often instructed to do so. However, when undertaken, many sieges followed a distinct pattern. The prevalence of sieges in warfare since ancient times had led to a surprisingly formalized style of combat. The sequence laid out below was far from uncommon, many sieges incorporating most of the stages or tactics described. Throughout, it is well to bear in mind John France’s observation: ‘Sieges were simply a very specialized form of battle. They did what battle … was designed to do – to destroy the basic strength of the enemy and acquire it for your own use.’2
One of the first steps taken following any outbreak – or threat – of hostility was the fortification and preparation of strongholds for the possibility of facing a protracted siege. In 1215, with war brewing, King John sent out letters to all the governors of his castles throughout England, ordering them to furnish their castles with provisions and arms and to strengthen their garrisons so that they would be ready to defend them at a day’s notice. Castles that were unprepared were prey to sudden attack. In 1221, Count William of Aumale took advantage of Fotheringay’s skeleton garrison by applying his scaling ladders to it and taking the castle; Thun l’Evêque near Cambrai was captured in 1339 when it opened its gates one morning to allow its enclosed animals out to graze, permitting the enemy lurking outside to rush in.
Once an enemy force camped outside the walls, negotiations would normally take place in an endeavour to save lives, time and money. If the garrison submitted, it was allowed to vacate the castle unharmed, frequently with its arms and equipment. Truces might be arranged along the lines that, should a relieving force not appear within a stipulated time period, the garrison would hand over possession to the enemy without any bloodshed. This worked in favour of the besieged in Northumberland’s Wark Castle in 1173: its castellan Roger of Stuteville had negotiated a forty-day truce and was rewarded by the arrival of a relief force, thereby saving the castle. Bedford Castle surrendered in 1215 when a seven-day truce expired with no sign of help for the garrison. Negotiated settlements were vital lifesavers; the consequences for a vanquished stronghold that had not come to terms were grim.
A shot from a cannon or siege engine would formally open a siege. Assault on a castle’s or town’s walls came primarily in three forms. Potentially the quickest way was storming. Though the result was often bloody, the losses incurred by the attackers may have been offset by the hazards of a lengthy siege: famine, disease, desertions and the risk of being confronted by a relief army. Escalade – climbing up and over the walls on ladders – was the most hazardous form of all, and for that reason would sometimes occur at night; Robert Bruce took Perth in this manner in 1312. Storming could be ordered at any time during a siege, but particularly when bombardment or mining had taken its toll.
Mangonels, trebuchets, ballistae, belfries and, by the late fourteenth century, cannon were all employed in battering defences, targeting weak spots in the hope of causing a breach. After a fortnight’s battering in 1206, the castle of Montauban had suffered so much damage it was unable to defend itself against a successful storming by English troops.
Whereas some sources identify siege machines accurately, others are more prone to error and generalization. Some nineteenth-century translations
of these sources do not even attempt to separate the machines listed in the original Latin, and replace whole lines with merely ‘siege machines’, or name one or two of them, then finishing off with ‘and other siege machines’. Basically, siege weaponry falls into the three categories, of assault, artillery and engineering (mining).
The chief assault weapon was the siege tower, or belfry. This was a large wooden tower moved on wheels and brought up to the castle or town walls. This usually necessitated the hazardous task of filling in a section of the surrounding ditch first. The lower levels of the tower provided cover for engineers operating at the base of the wall, while its height was designed for two main purposes. One was to allow a body of troops and archers inside to rain down spears and arrows on the defenders manning the battlements, and within the town or castle yard itself. Medieval writers attest to the efficacy of this manoeuvre. The largest towers could even provide platforms for other siege weapons, such as the mangonel (see below). The primary task of the belfry was to lower a simple wooden bridge or walkway over the space between the tower and the wall to allow the besieging soldiers to storm into the town: a highly precarious, but again effective, way of winning a stronghold. This was ultimately how Jerusalem fell to the crusaders in 1099. The psychological impact of seeing the enemy breach the defences and actually on the battlements was often enough to shatter the resolve of the defenders.
Any glory-seeking urge to be the first on the bridge and, the hope was, the first into an enemy stronghold, was countered by the incredible danger it involved. Siege towers were subjected to a withering and concentrated defensive fire; there was the ever-present danger of falling from a great height; the towers were often unstable and had an unnerving propensity to collapse or topple over; and there was the persistent threat of targeted fire taking hold of these wooden structures (soaked hides and other measures were often insufficient protection against this): all combined to make tower duty understandably unpopular. Belfries were a prime weapon of a besieging commander. Some even brought them on campaign, as Henry V did in 1415, ready for quick assembly, but most were built on site. Such was their importance, relief fleets to the crusaders were sometimes dismantled to provide the wood for them.
