A Successful Medieval Siege Involved Good Psychology and a Dose of Chivalry
By: Nicol Valentin
Tags: War, Culture, History, Technology, Psychology

A Successful Medieval Siege Involved Good Psychology and a Dose of Chivalry

Brute force was never top of the list

“If a conflict breaks out in England one or other of the rivals is master in 10 days or less. It is a custom in England that the victors in battle kill nobody, especially none of the ordinary soldiers because everyone wants to please them.” — Memoirs of Philllpe de Commynes, French writer and diplomat (1447–1571)

Can this be right? What about knights — and lances — and melees? Medieval men loved a good fight — didn’t they?

Well, sure they did sometimes. However, in a landscape festooned with castles, there was a better way to get what you wanted — the siege.

We’ve already looked at what life was like for castle defenders here, but what was it like for the attackers? If you think besieging a castle meant a lot of sitting around twiddling your thumbs, think again. There was much to be done and, as always, the rules of chivalry need to be followed. Well, they were supposed to be anyway. After all, a gentleman should be civil, and in a siege that civility had to start right from the beginning. In fact, it started even before that.

Feeling angry? Let’s talk about it

It was vitally important for a siege to have an obvious starting point. However, before a siege could officially begin, the defenders needed to be presented with the demands of the attacking lord.

If the two sides came up with an agreement (i.e. the defenders gave their adversaries everything they wanted), the lives and property of the people in the castle would be spared. Should they refuse, they were guilty of treason toward the besieging lord. As traitors, they were fair game for all those nasty punishments like rape, seizure of goods, death, and whatever else an angry attacker might think up.

Now, if you were the captain of the besieged castle, this put you in a pretty precarious position. On one hand, you have a duty to guard your lord’s property. He’s not going to be pleased if you casually give his fortress away to his enemy. On the other hand, should the castle fall, the new lord might chop you up like liver for his kitty’s dinner. Either way, your stuck — someone is going to want your head. So what do you do?

Well, if you were smart, you would have this all sorted out beforehand. What you needed were your lord's wishes written out and signed in triplicate. The document would specify exactly how long you were expected to hold out, and the conditions on which you could surrender without fear of losing your honor.

Most of the time, part of these conditions included holding a castle until reinforcements had the chance to arrive. So assuming you weren’t immediately giving in to the besieger's demands, things would proceed to the next step.

On your mark, get set, go

Usually, there was an event to signify the siege was officially starting. It could be something as simple as throwing a spear or javelin, or as grand as a shot being fired from a siege engine.

After this, the fun began. Nobody wanted to just sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for a castle to fall. The clock was ticking, and they wanted to get the thing over and done with ASAP. Attackers, therefore, had a menu of strategies they could pick from in order to help move things along.

According to historian Jim Bradbury, there were 6 S’s to siege warfare. Attackers had their choice of Suborning or subverting key defenders, Scaring the garrisons with “propaganda,” Sapping the walls, Starving the population, Storming the defenses, and Shelling the besieged. Don’t worry, the defenders weren’t left out, they had their S’s too.

These included Stripping the countryside to deprive the besiegers of the opportunity to forage, Sallying forth in sorties to attack enemy positions and assets, Sapping the attacker’s mines and machines, Suborning and subverting elements of the besieging forces, and Shelling enemy positions. How many of the S’s were used, and in what order was entirely up to the commander and the specifics of each siege.

Hurry up and starve

Starving the population was an easy one and really didn’t require much effort by the besiegers.

All they had to do was wait for supplies inside the castle to run out. This came with its own risks, especially if the besieged were well stocked. Even the attackers risked hunger and diseases like dysentery, so the longer they sat, the more likely something would go wrong. On top of that, no one wanted to be parked outside a castle when the weather started to turn cold. However, there was an even more pressing problem.

Imagine you’re in the middle of a siege and suddenly half your army walks out because their terms of service are up. In England, forty days was the usual agreement. After that, they grabbed their swords and their superman lunchboxes, and home they went. Poor Simon de Montfort had this very problem when he fought the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) in Southern France. It’s said he lost up to 40 strongholds because of men walking away from the fight.

Gonna rock this place

Shelling the castle walls was a good way to keep your troops busy and wear out the nerves of the besieged.

Trebuchets, which are similar to catapults, were a popular option. Large stones could be hurled at the castle's walls, but other things like burning tar or sand were employed. Engineers plotted and tinkered to make sure the weapon would have the greatest effect possible.

Considering these things could shoot up to 200 times a day, I’d say they did a pretty good job. The largest trebuchet ever built was called the War Wolf. Its height was between 300 and 400 feet, and it’s estimated it could hurl stones at speeds up to 120 miles an hour.

Undermining the local authority

Not everyone was fortunate enough to have a trebuchet as powerful as the War Wolf. Since castle walls ranged between 7 and 20 feet thick, hurling stones wasn’t always going to bring about a quick conclusion. So while some men were busy bombarding the walls, the sappers started their work.

Sapping, or undermining, was basically digging a tunnel under the castle wall. Wooden supports were inserted, then burnt away in hopes the collapsing ground would take the castle walls with it. Although shields and tunnels offered protection for the diggers, the process wasn’t foolproof. Defenders could build counter-mines that intercepted those of the enemy to drive them out.

The most famous use of undermining is probably the attack on Rochester Castle in England in 1215. King John had his men tunnel under the southeast corner turret of the tower. After propping it up with wood, he ordered the fat from 40 slaughtered pigs, “of the kind not fit for eating”, be placed in the tunnel to really get things fired up. It worked, and John's men eventually took the castle.

We control the horizontal and the vertical

Chivalry was all fine and dandy, but it was certainly something that could be set aside when it no longer suited one's needs.

A psychological attack was one of those times. All types of trickery and deception could be used to wear down the morale of the besieged. The enemy might forge a document to the besieged commander from his sovereign ordering him to surrender. Soldiers might disguise themselves and slip into the castle, or a knight thought to be friendly might have secretly switched allegiance.

Sometimes feelings of hatred grew so high, commanders were killed right in the middle of discussing terms of peace. Poisoning the water supply and catapulting dead animals or dung over the walls to spread disease were other methods attackers used that on paper were just not cricket.

Then again, some days a guy was just in the mood for a little fun. Just take the siege of Rennes in Brittany in 1356–57. According to the story, an English esquire named John Bolton got bored while sieging the Breton castle and went hunting. It was a wise decision too because he came back with three braces of partridges. Pleased with himself, he rode up to the castle wall and offered to sell his catch to feed the ladies trapped inside. Well, this hit the pride of one of the Frenchmen, Olivier de Mannay.

How about you come over here and I’ll win those birds for the ladies by a duel, he suggested.

Well, not surprisingly, the governor refused to open the gates to let Bolton in. However, De Mannay was determined to fight. He swam across the moat, won the duel, and swam back to the castle — with the birds in hand.

All right, that’s a wrap

Possibly after all this, the attacking army broke through the walls. Maybe their siege towers were put to use, and the men overran the castle. Then again, maybe they didn’t, not every siege was successful. Anyway, a full-blown assault really wasn’t beneficial to anyone.

More often than not when a fortification did fall it was due to human weakness or because relieving forces failed to come to a garrison’s aid. Either way, when it came down to it, everyone involved would much rather see the thing resolved by negotiation rather than warfare. For one, the attackers would much rather take important people prisoner than have them killed.

These guys were an opportunity for financial gain in the form of ransom, and good insurance for the day when the present winner was on the losing side. For the besieged, as long as you made some effort you were usually ok in the eyes of your peers. And if it was hopeless, and you gave in at the start, well usually people understood that too.

The good thing is, surrender didn’t have to end in total tragedy. David of Scotland offered the besieged at Wark in 1138 not only freedom if they surrendered, but fresh horses. (They had eaten theirs when the food ran out.) Then there was Conrad III, who wanted to imprison all the defenders except the women. He agreed to let them go with whatever they could carry.

They carried out their men.

Notes and sources:

As I mentioned in the last post, in the early days, towns were held under siege more than castles. However, the process was the same either way.

Just because people wanted a siege to end quickly, doesn’t mean it always happened. The sieges of Chateau-Gaillard (1203–4) and Rouen (1418–19) each lasted nearly six months; Calais (1346–47) took eleven months.

Don’t know what I mean by “we control the horizontal and the vertical?” Oh, you youngins. It’s from a TV show, The Outer Limits. You know, back in the day when T.V.’s had tubes and analog dials.

Medieval Warfare: A History, Maurice Keen (Oxford University Press)

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/kenilworth-castle/history-and-stories/siege-kenilworth-castle/

https://stpaulscastles.weebly.com/square-towers-or-round-towers.html

https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/siege-warfare-and-women-8th-c-17th-c

https://deremilitari.org/2013/06/the-myths-of-medieval-warfare/

https://deremilitari.org/2013/11/medieval-siege-warfare-a-reconnaissance/

http://www.castlesandmanorhouses.com/architecture_03_walls.htm

http://www.medieval-life-and-times.info/medieval-weapons/under-siege.htm

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/10-things-sieges/

https://deremilitari.org/2013/06/the-myths-of-medieval-warfare/

https://www.ancient.eu/article/1230/siege-warfare-in-medieval-europe/