Blood Cries Afar (9 page)

Whether through over-confidence and poor guard detailing by the French or through the skill of William Marshal, the English land force approached undetected to the main camp on the left bank peninsula shortly before dawn. But the plan went wrong from the start: the fleet was late for its part in the operation. John’s strategy had been a sound one, and clearly caught the French off guard, but perhaps it had been conceived too hastily. He and his advisers had overlooked the crucial factor of when the Seine could be best navigated upstream that night; consequently, the flotilla was delayed in its journey against the tide. The Marshal, probably unaware of the flotilla’s problems, would not in any case have wished to hold back his attack: if he waited he would lose the advantage of the cover of the night and in the meantime increase the risk of being discovered by the French, a certainty as daylight approached. The better and greater part of the French army had crossed to the other bank; Philip had left only a smaller contingent at the camp. Attached to the siege camp were the non-combatants: ‘merchants,
ribaldi
and scroungers, and all those who march to follow the army camps in order to sell all sorts of things’, writes William. These lay drunk and in a deep sleep in the fields outside the camp (which was almost certainly fortified). At the appointed hour, the Marshal launched his onslaught. His men rushed on the camp. The element of surprise was total. The camp erupted in terrified panic as the alarm went up. All who could, fled to the pontoon bridge in a frenzied effort to escape to safety on the other side and away from the slashing and hewing of English swords and axes. Over 200 were cut down. Such was the weight of numbers on the bridge it partially collapsed: it could not sustain the panicked rush of so many. Already one English objective had nearly been achieved.

William des Barres, the great French general whom William the Breton labels ‘the flower of chivalry’, and who was everything William wished his King to be, halted this precipitous flight. He admonished the fleeing troops and organised his own company of soldiers for a counter-attack. He had torches lit to deny the English the cover of darkness and ordered rapid makeshift repairs to the bridge. When temporary repairs had been put into effect, des Barres’ banners led the French back across the bridge and headlong into a bloody engagement with the English. The English force could not hold the bank or camp against this onslaught and were soon routed; they suffered many casualties, dead and wounded, and a large number were taken prisoner. William Marshal made good his own escape. It is unsurprising that the Marshal’s biographer, who offers copious details of the great warrior’s military career, omits this serious defeat in his writings.

Just as the French were recovering from the exhausting encounter and celebrating their victory, they were faced with the second wave of the English attack: the flotilla had arrived. But it was late. The misreading of tides ensured that the counter-attack had lost its synchronicity. As dawn broke, the English ships could be seen making their way up-river to the isle. Once more the cry of ‘To arms!’ went up. French troops lined both banks and the pontoon bridge; crossbowmen were ordered to take up positions on the bridge’s towers. The bridge was afforded the greatest protection; it was the priority of attackers and defenders alike; on it stood des Barres, Simon de Montfort (of Albigensian Crusade fame) and the elite of the French troops. Alan and his sailors displayed extraordinary courage and determination in pressing on into the midst of the enemy that were arrayed on three sides, especially as the Marshal’s forces were in retreat. His flotilla had been discovered sooner than he had counted on and the Marshal’s assault had obviously alerted the French to the presence of danger. As his ships drew near the bridge they were met with a shower of arrows, javelins, stones and other missiles. Their position in the middle of the river afforded some protection and they doggedly held their course. They reached the bridge with a crash of timbers and a downpour of arrows, crossbow bolts, sling-shots, stones, logs, pieces of iron, boiling pitch and tar let loose by the French lining the bridge and manning the towers. Persevering bravely against this barrage, the English began to attack the fabric of the bridge and to strike at the cables, stakes and boats which held together the beams of the bridge. A deadly hand-to-hand mêlée ensued. William the Breton relates the violence of the combat almost gratuitously, but he captures the horror of medieval combat. Blows by the sword inflict terrible injuries with deadly efficiency: eyes, hands, feet and ears are lost by many victims. Throats are cut. Stones crush skulls. Axes shatter knee caps and clubs spatter brains. One man is engulfed in boiling tar and another sees his intestines hanging from his stomach. It is only when a huge beam of oak is toppled on two boats, crashing into them and holing them that the deadly encounter took a decisive turn. The boats manoeuvred about and employing their oars, retreated down the river, still incurring heavy losses. They were pursued by some young French sailors under the command of Jean le Noir and Galbert de Mantes, the latter proving himself to be one of the heroes of the siege. These caught up with two English vessels and captured them with the complements of crew, soldiers and booty. The rest of the attack flotilla fled to Rouen. John had failed to lift the siege of Château Gaillard.

The hearts of the garrison trapped in the island fortress must have sunk as they watched the disaster unfold before their eyes and as the flotilla withdrew into the distance. The English offensive had concentrated French minds and shaken them from their complacency; reminded of their own vulnerability, they intensified their action against the island. The besieged had placed some hope in a wooden palisade before the fort as an extra line of defence. It was here the French now turned their attention. Once again Galbert was instrumental in events. Some incendiary devices were prepared and secured in water-tight containers. These were attached by ropes to the waists of a group of men under Galbert’s lead.
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This group swam unobserved (it is not clear whether what follows occurred in the day or at night) to the far, eastern side of the island, which was not so closely guarded: the defenders believed that the castle above them extended security to this part of the wall and had accordingly intensified their manpower on those points most under direct pressure. When in range, the French swimmers hurled their incendiaries at the palisade, which immediately caught fire. The breeze whipped up the flames and carried them into the fort itself. Soon all was engulfed in the conflagration and the whole fort went up in smoke. The shouts of triumph from the French looking on from the river banks were matched by the cries of horror from the isle. As the garrison attempted to seek safety from the blaze, its already critical plight was worsened by the barrage of stones and arrows that continued to assail them from the siege towers of the French. A few managed to escape in boats, but many were overcome by fumes as they cowered in the fort’s vaults. The palisade had proved to be not their saviour, but their nemesis. The French took to their boats and crossed with ease to the island, seized the survivors and made themselves master of the place. King Philip’s men had won him two spectacular early victories: the repulsion of the English relief force and the taking of the Îsle d’Andely, a vital step to taking the castle itself. For John in Rouen, the news was grim indeed.

As William the Breton, who had such a keen military eye, said: ‘The island fortress having been taken, it was easy to take the town.’ This was something the townspeople of Petit-Andely had anticipated: witnessing the fall of the fort, they fled headlong
en masse
into the opened gates of Château Gaillard, placing their trust in the castle’s walls now that their town’s main defence and garrison had been lost. For many it was to be a fatal mistake; for many more the short path to the castle led them to unimaginable and unforeseen horrors. To prevent the empty town and fort from being retaken and in order to press the siege of the castle more closely, Philip filled them with his own people. These comprised not only the garrison needed to guard the place and to assist in the siege, but also new inhabitants – settlers – who, through the spoils of war, now took possession of the fugitive’s homes (Edward III did the same thing at Calais in 1347 after winning an eleven-month siege there, and crusaders cast out the defeated townspeople of Carcassonne in 1213). The two forces to whom this task fell were both mercenary elites: one company under a certain Walter; the other under the famous captain Cadoc, Philip’s counterpart to Mercadier, Richard the Lionheart’s mercenary captain, and now John’s. Philip placed great trust in Cadoc; so much so that his company received the lucrative sum of 1000 French pounds daily. With the town and fort occupied, Philip’s next task was familiar to a commander who had taken a strongpoint by force and intended to keep it rather than destroy it: the repair of the damage done (especially to the bridge) and a general refortification and reprovisioning.

It was at this point, with the castle securely invested, that Philip left to personally conduct the siege of Radpont, which fell in less than three weeks. John, still smarting from his recent defeat, did nothing for this important satellite castle, but instead withdrew to Falaise and Mortain, possibly with the intention of recruiting fresh troops. Radpont’s garrison had made a few spirited sorties, probably prompted by dwindling supplies, but to no avail. Philip wanted to lead his army onto Rouen, but this was not practicable in military terms while the castle of Château Gaillard continued to cast its formidable shadow over French ambitions, tying down vast resources of the French kingdom. With its soldiers occupying the banks, the island fort and the town, the castle’s garrison was easily contained; but an investiture of Rouen, with its reputation of impregnability, would be a lengthy, and hence hazardous process. Château Gaillard had to be taken first.

Patiently and realistically settling down for a long siege, Philip appreciated that bombardment and storming were unlikely to produce results on their own. And so he resolved to starve the besieged out. He set in motion a series of monumental engineering works. Huge trenches of circumvallation and contravallation were excavated the length of the siege force’s perimeters. These were designed to prevent sorties from the castle and to defend the French siege camp from any further outside relief attempts. One leading historian of the fall of Normandy has cast doubt on these trenches being excavated, but overlooks clear contemporary evidence for this.
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Seven wooden forts (
brestaches)
protected both trench lines and were placed equidistant from each other; each had its own moat and drawbridge and was of considerable strength. All were filled with soldiers. Within the greatly fortified camp the French army, soldiers and camp followers alike, prepared for winter by building wooden and thatched huts to replace their tents. They had created their own small town. Here they were to live – and some die – until the spring. The harsh winter that followed bore witness to perhaps the most tragic episode in all the decades of Angevin–Capetian conflict.

At some unspecified time early on during the siege, the castle’s commander, Roger de Lacy, the Constable of Chester, regretted having opened his gates to the inhabitants of the captured town, Petit–Andely, whose number had been swollen by an influx from the surrounding region, all of whom had sought refuge in the castle from the French forces.
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He realised that with so many mouths to feed his garrison, which had little hope of fresh supplies, would be unable to sustain the siege for long. By itself, however, the garrison had sufficient stores to sustain it for a year. On one occasion, William the Breton informs us that many thousands of non-combatants had taken shelter within the castle’s precincts, but this is clearly an inflated number; the exact figure is hard to ascertain: an upper estimate of 2200 and a lower one of 1400 can be calculated. In order to preserve the stores that would be quickly exhausted by these ‘useless mouths’
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de Lacy evicted some 500 of the oldest and weakest amongst them. The French took pity on the feeble group that emerged from the castle gates and allowed them to pass safely through their lines. A few days later a similar number were turned out from the castle and, being equally incapable of aggression, they were also permitted to cross the besieger’s lines.

King Philip was absent from the siege at this stage, away campaigning and organising help for his Breton allies who were being troubled by John in an attempt to draw the French away from Château Gaillard. When he heard of this lenient treatment of the refugees, he immediately sent orders forbidding the safe passage of any further non-combatants expelled from the castle, regardless of their age or wealth; and he also ordered that any further groups were to be driven back to the fortress. He was keen to ensure that as many people as possible whittled down the garrison’s supplies. De Lacy resolved to send out the remaining townspeople, judging his victuals as sufficient for twelve months if only the garrison and most able men remained in the fortress; all the rest were cast out. The number of this last group of men, woman and children was possibly as high as 1200, but was probably nearer 400; it comprised the weakest and most vulnerable of the refugees. William wrote that de Lacy knew he was sending them to certain death.

What followed was a full-scale tragedy to match any of the worst horrors of the Middle Ages. When this ragged and disorderly band spilled from the castle they believed that they were going to rejoin their families and fellow townsfolk in safety; but instead they were to be subjected to warfare in its most vicious form. They were not met by the opening lines of the besieging forces, but by a hail of arrows and javelins. The French had followed their new orders. The refugees flew back to the castle only to find the gates locked and bolted against them. The guard responded to their pitiful entreaties to allow them back into safety with the words: ‘I do not know you; go and search for shelter elsewhere: it is forbidden to open the gates to you.’ With this the soldiers on the battlements hurled down stones and fired arrows onto the terrified masses huddled below. Racked with fear and panicking from the incomprehensible violence of their erstwhile protectors, the wretched crowd withdrew from the foot of the castle walls, and moved out of reach of the missiles and into no man’s land between the besiegers and the besieged. There on the rocky slopes beneath the castle, they were to remain for three winter months.