Blood Cries Afar (11 page)

Philip may have simply wanted the refugees out of the way for an assault on the castle. Throughout the winter the castle had been bombarded and assaulted, but with few tangible results. Spring was imminent and with it could be expected a renewed military campaign by John. John had slunk back to England in early December, having dismantled a number of castles which he feared Philip might make use of on his advance to Rouen. These were not the actions of an inspiring military leader. Shortly after Christmas the King of England was at Oxford where he organised the granting of war subsidies from both the laity and the clergy. This was the beginning of a concerted effort to raise war finances: tallages were levied on towns; privileges and concessions went on the market; goods in ports were taxed at a fifteenth. Scutage was also collected: a number of barons were fearful of losing their lands in Normandy and were therefore prepared to pay ‘shield-money’ in lieu of providing an actual military presence on campaign.
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Philip had probably heard of these preparations. Further delay incurred mounting dangers and left unfinished business in other territories, especially in Poitou; Philip could not afford to have the best part of his army indefinitely tied down at one siege, no matter how important. John’s inactivity over the last three months was not going to last. By the end of February 1204, Philip was making ready to storm the castle.

Another phase of major engineering works now took place. Philip concentrated his forces around the narrow stretch of land that reached out to the castle rock. This was the only accessible approach to the castle, a fact reflected in the intricate construction of the castle itself; its design was focused to counter any attack from this direction. By massive military landscaping, the whole area before the castle was flattened and widened, an enormous task which involved the breaking-up and removal of rocks. The purpose was two-fold: to provide a quicker and safer approach to the castle’s outer defences; and, most importantly, to facilitate the movement of siege machines – ballistae, mangonels, trebuchets – closer to the castle walls. Protected runs allowed soldiers to fill the ditch before the salient tower with various materials, thereby creating firm ground for the belfries to threaten the walls; but it remained highly dangerous work. It was clear to the defenders what the French had in mind, and they directed their fire on these manoeuvres, inflicting heavy casualties. Nevertheless, the task of filling the moat was continued, its importance and dangers understood by those taking it. At the siege of Acre, directed by Richard the Lionheart and King Philip during the Third Crusade just over a decade earlier, a story circulated of a mortally wounded woman asking for her body to be thrown into the town’s moat to fill it and to help with the attack.
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The crusading spirit was not so prevalent at Château Gaillard; but the exercise and its purpose remained the same, ensuring the loss of many lives in its accomplishment. The defenders were equipped with their own mangonels and ballistae, which they used with varying effect. The protected path to the ditch had enabled at least one very large belfry to be drawn up to the walls. From this huge wooden tower, crossbowmen and archers aimed their bolts and arrows down on the garrison with deadly results, easing the plight of the French working to fill the moat.

Events suddenly speeded up. Before the moat was half-full, the French descended ladders into the moat and then set them up on the other side. The ladders, however, were too short to be of much use and the soldiers had to resort to using their daggers and swords to assist them in clambering up the rock to the base of the walls. These men were terribly exposed to the missiles falling down on them from above; covering fire from the belfry together with the shields strapped to their backs and held above their heads afforded them some protection. In the siege tower the crossbowmen and archers of Périgas Blondel demonstrated why they were so highly regarded, and so well rewarded, by King Philip. The air whistled with sounds of bolts, arrows and slingshots from both sides. Philip, exhorting his men onwards from the front ranks by the edge of the ditch, exposed himself to the dangers of the fierce combat and was struck several times (if we are to believe William the Breton), but his shield and armour protected him from serious injury. However, it is unlikely that Philip had forgotten Richard I’s fate five years earlier and probably orchestrated the assault from a reasonable distance.

At the foot of the salient tower which formed the apex of the two angled forward walls, the French used picks to dig out a hole at the wall’s base large enough to provide them with shelter from the stones and arrows cascading down on them. From here Philip’s miners went to work. The contemporary chronicler Robert of Auxerre identifies the importance of miners to the French king: they operated like moles and followed Philip everywhere.
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These miners are a prime consideration in Philip’s reputation as a castle-breaker; they had gained much experience from services to their employer, especially at successful sieges such as Le Mans in 1189 and Boves in 1185. As these sappers mined under the foundations of the tower they supported the roof over their heads by means of sturdy timber pieces, cut from tree trunks. They excavated the mine in relative safety; the defenders had not yet organised an effective counter-mine to break in on the French tunnel and halt their progress. The miners piled up some tinder, lit it and hastily withdrew from the mine as the timbers burned. They got out just before the props went and the roof caved in. With its foundations eaten away and all the underpinning gone, half of the tower came crashing down into the moat, filling the air with dust. Not only did this leave a breach through which the French could storm; the masonry rubble from the tower also helped to fill the moat further and made a passage across it easier. Faced with the immediate prospect of storming, Roger de Lacy ordered his men to torch the buildings of this outer ward of the castle, not wishing to leave the enemy any useful materials or cover and also probably with the intention of buying some time for a retreat. This hastily done, the garrison manning this untenable sector withdrew quickly across the drawbridge to the castle’s middle bailey. Before the flames had died down or the smoke had cleared, the French, led by Cadoc, poured through the breach to take the outer ward. On the ruined remains of the tower he raised his banner.

The middle bailey was guarded by a ditch 30 foot wide and a strong wall; it was no less formidable than the first defences. The French were keen to keep up the momentum that they had just created and did not allow themselves to be daunted by this broad moat and staunch rampart. They immediately launched themselves on a follow-up attack. A group of sergeants scouted around the edge of the ditch in the standard practice of searching for a relative weak point in the defences. They found one. Almost inevitably, given his misfortunes in war, it had been created by King John. A year earlier he had a building added to the middle ward. William the Breton describes the building’s upper storey as consisting of a chapel and the lower one a latrine,’against religion’, he complains, appealing to spiritual outrage. At a shallower part of the ditch Peter Bogis and some comrades scrambled unseen down and across the moat until they were directly beneath the chapel window. Bogis, standing on the shoulders of a companion named Ralph, with considerable agility was able to reach the window and pull himself up. Remarkably the window had been left unbarred and Bogis climbed into the chapel. An alternative version puts forward the idea that Bogis, presumably of slight build, actually clambered up the latrine chute and opened up the window from the inside. Either account should not be dismissed: during the First World War, one of the most powerful fortresses in the world was taken in a very similar manner.
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From the window Bogis lowered a rope to his men and pulled them up. Once inside, the band of Frenchmen began to break down the door to the interior of the ward. The noise of their efforts alerted the defenders who feared they were about to be subjected to a mass break-in by the enemy. As before, in their panic they decided to abandon this ward also, and so they fired it (although it is possible that they may have intended only to burn the building the French were in). Then they hurried back to the strongest part of the castle – the inner bailey which housed the keep. As the French troops outside the castle watched this drama, they feared that Bogis and his group had been engulfed by flames. They had in fact taken shelter in a vault used as an armoury and survived the blaze. To the undoubted cheers of their onlookers, Bogis and his men emerged from the smoke to cut the ropes of the drawbridge and lowered it to their fellow soldiers. The French troops rushed across.

The inner bailey was enclosed by a 500ft wall eight feet thick. It was less a wall than a series of seventeen D-shaped towers, or convex buttresses, providing tremendous strength and the capability for withering flanking fire. The keep itself, surrounded by its own ditch 50 feet across, was the same thickness as the wall. De Lacy was left with less than 180 men to defend it, a sufficient number under his experienced leadership, although fatigue would have been a further factor with which to contend. However, like the middle bailey, this part also suffered from a major design flaw. The gate-house, though well positioned at an awkward point for attackers, had no drawbridge; instead the ditch was spanned by a bridge hewn out of the rock itself. Thus the weakest part of the inner ward – its entrance – could not be protected by the wide ditch. That noted, any approach across this bridge might expect to encounter the deadliest barrage to repel it. The most intense action of the whole siege now led to its climax.

Philip sent forward a siege machine known as a cat. The cat,
catus
, also known as a sow,
scrofa
, was a reinforced roof on walls – in effect, a huge, mobile shield – under which soldiers and engineers could approach a stronghold’s walls to damage its fabric or to undermine it. The French mining operation met with effective resistance. Roger de Lacy now ordered a counter-mine to be excavated; this opened up on the French mine where the French miners were attacked and forced to retreat, their work only partially completed. By early March an enormous petraria, called ‘Chadaluba’, was brought to bear on the walls, discharging its artillery of large stone blocks against the ramparts. The wall, weakened both by the effects of Philip’s miners and, ironically, by de Lacy’s counter-mine, collapsed when struck by the petraria for the third time. The besiegers, seeing the creation of this breach, hurled themselves forward. They scrambled up and over the tumbled masonry and stormed the breach in force.

Despite the hopelessness of the situation, de Lacy and his men fought on. Even now they disdained what would have been the most honourable of surrenders. However, overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers, they were soon under physical restraint and led away in chains. They were lucky not to have been slaughtered on the spot: the laws of war placed the fate of victims of a successful storming in the hands of the victor. According to the anonymous chronicler of Béthune, de Lacy met with a relatively lenient, if ignominious treatment. Each day throughout the long siege, when called upon to yield up the castle, de Lacy defiantly replied that he would never surrender the fortress, even if he were dragged out by his feet. His heroic defence did indeed end in this dishonourable manner.
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He and his garrison were shackled in irons. King Philip had finally taken Château Gaillard.

Both the Anonymous of Béthune and Roger of Wendover provide alternative endings to the siege. Both agree that the English were, at the last, starved out (Philip’s early strategy). The Anonymous states that the garrison capitulated after exhausting their food supply, which included their horses. Wendover claims that de Lacy and his men, ‘preferring to die in battle to being starved’, mounted their warhorses, rode bravely out of the castle in a daring sortie, and killed many of the enemy before they were eventually overcome, and then only with great difficulty. These two accounts offer plausible scenarios; but it must be considered that they cover the siege in only a few lines, and the details concern themselves with only the siege’s finale.
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William the Breton, despite his faults, was an eyewitness to these dramatic events.

In the warm afterglow of victory following the brief outburst of triumphalism meted out to de Lacy, Philip afforded a genuinely magnanimous treatment to the enemy commander who was detained prisoner on parole in France. De Lacy was one of the few men King John placed consistent faith in: he contributed £1000 toward paying his ransom to secure his release from France; on his release he made him sheriff of Yorkshire and Cumberland, entrusting him to help defend the volatile north from Scottish incursions.
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John had recognised the great, if ultimately futile, service de Lacy had rendered the English crown by his lengthy defence of Château Gaillard; it was the king’s own fault not to have profited from de Lacy’s defence. By the time of the siege’s conclusion at the end of the first week in March, de Lacy had been left with some auxiliaries, 120 men-at-arms and 36 knights. Only four defending knights were killed during the siege.

For six months, Philip’s army, estimated at between 2300 and 2500 strong on the Normandy frontier at this time, was preoccupied with this siege; but John had failed to secure any advantages from this situation. Powicke ponders whether the garrison would have performed even better in a less ‘complicated’ castle; he questions whether the castle’s defences were too restrictive; if its ‘elaborate arrangements’ were ‘mutually injurious’; or, indeed, if it was too scientifically advanced for its defences to be fully understood and exploited by its garrison.
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These are valid questions; however, de Lacy was an experienced commander and, over the course of the siege, would have studied, analysed and exhausted all of the castle’s defensive potential. What is curious is that such a justly renowned castle, rightly considered as the apogee of castle-building, should have, in John’s chapel and the bridge of rock, such serious design flaws in its innermost defences. Whatever the possibilities might have been, the English and French forces had played their part in perhaps the most epic siege of the entire Middle Ages. Its consequences were soon apparent to all.