Why siege a castle

The present-day notion of medieval warfare is of longbowmen standing shoulder to shoulder loosing arrows and knights charging across open fields before engaging in brutal hand-to-hand battle. Hastings, Bannockburn, and Agincourt come to mind. Such battles, however, were the exception, for during the Middle Ages warfare was a much more complicated affair that more often than not involved siegecraft.

Throughout medieval Europe and the Middle East, the castle functioned as a private fortress that, among its other roles, physically—and symbolically—proclaimed the status and strength of its lord to all comers, friend or foe.

Even the simplest earth and timber motte and bailey castle, used to great effect by the Norman kings of England, validated the power of the conquering force.

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, castles evolved into powerful fortresses capable of defying intensive assaults. At the same time, in order to combat strengthened castle defenses, siegecraft developed.

By the late Middle Ages, few major campaigns took place without at least one castle siege. Indeed, while battles such as Crcy have gleaned all the glory, it was not until the siege of Calais in the following year that the English made significant progress in their fight against France. The successful castle siege skillfully combined sophisticated science with specific standards of conduct known to, but not always practiced by, the participants.

Ultimately, the siege dominated medieval warfare for at least as long as the castle dominated the social and political order of the day. Sieges, likewise, involved much more than bombarding a fortress until either the garrison surrendered or the defenses were overcome.

In fact the medieval siege was a complex, highly choreographed process that ended with a castle assault only when other tactics had failed to force a surrender. Besieging a castle involved assembling and paying an army, gathering supplies, and hauling them to the siege site.

Because the costs were so high, military leaders normally did not rush into a siege. Indeed, if a besieging army lost too many men in an initial onslaught, it was often forced to retreat or give up the siege entirely. Consequently, the full-out siege was normally a last resort, unless, of course, the attacking king or lord had a particular investment in breaking his opponent.

Early medieval sieges were generally directed against towns or major cities, which were often fortified, rather than at individual castles. As castle sieges became more commonplace, besiegers devised methods to overcome increasingly complex defenses.

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, siege warfare became increasingly sophisticated, and by the mid-fourteenth century enormous timber war machines had become the mainstay of virtually every investment.

At the same time, specific conventions for conducting a siege were well established. The most practiced soldiers followed traditional protocol, which encouraged honorable negotiation and surrender before an attacker pummeled the garrison into submission.

Commanders first had to devise an overall strategy for taking the castle. They had to consider from where in the realm the best archers, skilled carpenters, blacksmiths, sappers, and engineers could be drawn. Other considerations included how much timber, lead, tools, nails, food, drink, livestock, and other provisions were required for the duration of the siege and where they could be acquired.

In the meantime, the besiegers began to assemble vital materials, laborers including miners, carpenters, and masons , knights, and other fighters. Among the items required for the siege were iron, hides, charcoal, leather, and some nineteen thousand crossbow quarrels. The king ordered protective screens, bolts, hammers, mallets, wedges, tents, wax, and a variety of spices. He also made sure that several siege engines were readied and that gynours, or gunners, were on hand to operate the machines.

The most satisfying way to successfully conclude a battle was without fighting. Indeed, many more sieges were settled by negotiation, bribery, or forms of intimidation than open warfare. Given the huge effort involved in coordinating a siege and assembling an army, potential besiegers made at least cursory efforts to convince the garrison, the constable, or the lord of the castle to surrender peaceably.

Surrender under honorable terms was a common way out of a siege. In many cases, the besiegers allowed the defenders a period of time, ranging from a week to forty days, to decide whether or not to give in. Truces effectively delayed a full-blown assault, so that the constable could contact his lord for directions on how to handle the situation or to gain assistance at the castle.

If members of a beleaguered garrison knew they had enough food and drink to carry them at least forty days or had notice that relief was on its way, they knew they might survive the investment. Truces also gave the defenders time to construct their own siege engines, shore up their defenses, and build wooden hoards, or fighting platforms, on the battlements.

If the garrison refused surrender demands, the siege began with an overt act by the attackers, a symbolic sign of intent. At the siege of Rhodes in , for example, Muslim forces hoisted a black flag to warn their opponents that they would attack. At times, attackers threw javelins or shot crossbow bolts at the castle gateway to signal their intentions.

On occasion, siege engines hurled missiles. By the late Middle Ages, cannon fire signaled the beginning of sieges. Engineers would also begin erecting bulky, intimidating siege engines. Other soldiers fomented dissent in the surrounding countryside in an effort to recruit supporters and seize control of crops and other resources—assuming landowners and peasants had not already torched them.

After gathering food, livestock, and other items for their own use, they intentionally burned their own lands to prevent the enemy from gaining any benefit from them. Often the resulting famine left the besiegers no alternative but to retreat.

Once the ditch could be crossed or the moat forded, the initial offensive could proceed rapidly. Often relatively light, the early assault primarily featured an escalade—an attempt to scale the curtain wall by ladders. The key to an escalade was for the attackers to climb the ladders as quickly as possible, leap onto the battlements, and begin fighting the defenders. During this effort, archers, crossbowmen, and slingers outside the castle provided protective fire for their comrades while shielding themselves behind screens known as pavises.

The onrush would take place at several spots along the curtain wall in hopes of splitting up the garrison, diverting attention, and gaining access at whatever point might weaken.

They might also begin hammering the masonry defenses with picks, iron bars, and other tools while protected inside a hide-covered timber-and-iron framework, known variously as a cat, rat, tortoise, or turtle, which had been wheeled to the castle wall. Of course, the defenders made every effort to thwart the escalade by shoving ladders away from the walls, shooting at the besiegers, and dropping stones, quicklime, or hot liquids upon them.

It took nimble, sure-footed, quick-thinking men to maneuver their weighty armor and weapons and scale the walls successfully. At the siege of Caen in , Sir Edmund Springhouse slipped off a ladder and fell into the ditch. French soldiers overhead swiftly tossed flaming straw on top of the Englishman and burned him alive. During the siege of Smyrna, Turkey, also in the fourteenth century, one of the besiegers climbed halfway up a ladder. When he rested and took off his helmet to see how much farther he had to climb to reach the top, a crossbow bolt shot from the battlements hit him between the eyes, killing him.

If an escalade proved successful, the besiegers would chivalrously offer the garrison a final chance to surrender with honor or to call a temporary truce. On the other hand, when an escalade failed to make a serious dent in the defenses, the attackers intensified the onslaught. They also began constructing siegeworks or a siege castle, sometimes called a countercastle, in preparation for a prolonged conflict. No two sieges were ever conducted in exactly the same way. An army might employ several different types of siege engines to bring down the battlements while also attempting to force surrender by other means.

Medieval siege engines originated in Greek, Roman, and ancient Chinese warfare. Archimedes was responsible for advancing siege technology, which the Greeks had introduced before the fourth century b.

Once enough of the wall had been removed a fire was lit beneath the wooden props and the miners left the mine. When the props burnt through there was nothing holding the castle wall up and it would collapse. The corners of square castles were the weakest part of the construction and this is where the miners would aim to tunnel beneath.

Transport yourself back up to a thousand years and explore historical buildings as they may have appeared in the past. Stone Keep. Siege Engines. Tower House. Middleham Castle. Episodes Episode Index. Z List of Medieval People. Life in Medieval Times. Castle Index Page Castle Development. Glossary of Terms. Please note that the TimeRef website is currently being redesigned.

Siege Preparations The besieging army had to protect itself from attacks from the castle's inhabitants and possibly their supporters outside the castle. Types of Siege Engine.

The Trebuchet This was the largest of all siege engines. A Siege Tower The siege towers or belfry was designed to allow attackers to get up over the top of castle walls. The Battering Ram The battering ram was used to destroy the gates or walls of a castle. The Cat The cat or sow was a wooden shed mounted on wheels. The Mangonel The mangonel was another siege engine that propelled boulders. Explore a virtual siege Explore a landscape showing different kinds of siege engine, including the trebuchet, siege tower and battering ram.

Click image to explore the siege. Trebuchet Game Beta Version. Instructions: Click the trebuchet or press the space bar to launch the projectile. They stopped anyone entering or leaving the castle, so that the people inside would run out of food and be forced to surrender. When supplies ran low, the defenders might have to eat horses, dogs, and even rats. Before the invention of gunpowder, castles were almost impossible to break into.

The attackers would fire arrows at the defenders, try to scale climb the walls, and use catapults to batter the walls. Catapults like the trebuchet and the mangonel hurled rocks and other missiles at the castle walls and the people inside.

The walls and towers were difficult to break down.