Life in a Medieval Castle

by Joseph Gies

  At the prayers of the leaders the king spared three Templars, so that they might serve Our Lord in the Holy Land in their habit. The chaplain of the castle was set free by the archbishop for trial in an ecclesiastical court…

  Falkes himself took the cross and was allowed to leave the country and go to Rome. The castle was dismantled except for the inner bailey, where living quarters were left for the Beauchamp family, earls of Bedford; the stones of the towers and outer bailey were given to local churches (poetic justice, since they had been built with the stones of two churches pulled down for that purpose by Falkes).

  Garrisons surrendering at discretion were not usually so harshly dealt with. In ordinary conflict, without the added passion of religious difference or rebellion against authority, the whole garrison might be spared. Or the knights might be ransomed and the foot-soldiers massacred or mutilated. Often a rebel castle surrendered before it was absolutely necessary, in return for the garrison’s being allowed to depart in freedom.

  Even a castle sited on rock, well-provisioned with food and water, and stout-walled against artillery might still be taken by ruse. Usually the ruse was of the Trojan horse variety, that is, designed to effect entry by a small party. A popular trick was the nocturnal “escalade,” a silent scaling of the wall at an inadequately guarded point. Another was a diversion designed to draw defenders away from a secondary gate or weak point that might then be suddenly overwhelmed. A third was penetration by means of a special ingress, such as a mine, a disused well, or a latrine, as in the case of Richard the Lionhearted’s Château Gaillard in 1204. Occasionally the garrison might be lured into a sortie, so that the attackers could penetrate the gates as the defenders fled back into the castle.

  Another form of ruse involved disguise. The attacking army might raise the siege and ostentatiously march away, but remain just out of sight. Some of its soldiers, donning the dress of peasants or merchants, might then gain access to the provision-hungry castle and seize the gatehouse. Knights were sometimes smuggled into a castle concealed in wagonloads of grain. The men of Count Baldwin of Flanders rescued their lord from imprisonment in a Turkish castle in 1123 by disguising themselves as peddlers and daggering the gate guards.

  The dominant role of the siege helps explain one of the most characteristic aspects of medieval warfare: its stop-and-go, on-again-off-again pattern. Truces were natural between adversaries who might for long periods remain within ready range of communication but safe from each other’s attack. In the war between Prince Louis of France and Henry III, at least five truces were made between

  Château Gaillard: The keep of Richard the Lionhearted’s stronghold on the Seine can be seen above the corrugated wall of the inner bailey. (Archives Photographiques)

  October 1216 and February 1217, all related to castle sieges.

  A shrewd commander besieging a castle might take advantage of a truce to plant a spy or bribe a member of the garrison. He might obtain valuable information, for example on the castle’s supplies, or he might arrange for a postern to be opened at midnight or a rampart to be left unguarded. In 1265, a spy, apparently disguised as a woman, reported to Henry III’s son Edward (later Edward I) that the garrison of Simon de Montfort’s Kenilworth Castle planned to leave the stronghold for the night in order to enjoy baths in the town. According to the Chronicle of Melrose, the king’s men surprised Simon’s knights asleep and unarmed, and “some of them might be seen running off entirely naked, others wearing nothing but a pair of breeches, and others in shirts and breeches only.”

  Simon’s son (Simon de Montfort III), in command of the party, regained the castle by swimming the Mere, the castle’s lake, in his nightshirt. His father was killed three days later in the battle of Evesham, and the following spring young Simon had to defend Kenilworth Castle against the royal army. Despite a terrific pounding by siege engines, the castle held out against every assault, beating off a giant cat carrying 200 bowmen, and destroying another with a well-directed mangonel shot. Even the intervention of the archbishop of Canterbury had no effect; when the prelate appeared outside the castle to pronounce excommunication of the garrison, a defender donned clerical robes and jeered from atop the curtain wall. The king offered lenient terms, but Simon turned them down. It was nearly Christmas when Simon, his provisions exhausted, slipped out of the castle with his brothers to escape abroad, permitting his starving and dysentery-ridden garrison to surrender.

  Bohemund d’Hauteville captured the powerful Saracen stronghold of Antioch by a combined bribe and ruse. Corrupting Firuz, an emir who commanded three towers, with promises of wealth, honor, and baptism, he had his own Frankish army feign withdrawal. That night the Franks returned stealthily and a picked band scaled the walls of Firuz’ sector, killed resisting guards, and opened the gate. By morning the city was in the hands of Bohemund, who true to knightly tradition, even in a Crusade, had already extracted a promise from his fellow barons that the whole place would be turned over to him.

  The chronicler of the Gesta Stephani related with relish the story of a ruse that was worked on Robert Fitz Hubert, one of the barons who rebelled against King Stephen and “a man unequaled in wickedness and crime,” at least according to the partisan historian. Fitz Hubert took Stephen’s Devizes Castle by a night escalade and then refused to turn it over to the earl of Gloucester, on whose side in the civil war he was supposed to be fighting. But Fitz Hubert came a cropper in negotiating with a neighbor baron, none other than John Fitz Gilbert the Marshal, father of William Marshal, whom the chronicler describes as “a man equally cunning and very ready to set great designs on foot by treachery.” John had seized Marlborough, a strong castle belonging to the king. Fitz Hubert sent word to John that he would make a pact of peace and friendship, and that he wanted to parley with him at Marlborough. John agreed, but after admitting him to the castle behaved characteristically; he shut the gates behind him, “put him in a narrow dungeon to suffer hunger and tortures,” then handed him over to the earl of Gloucester, who took him back to his own castle of Devizes and hanged him in sight of the garrison. The knights of the garrison then accepted a bribe and turned over the castle to the earl of Gloucester.

  The following year, 1141, King Stephen’s side scored a decisive victory in the war by another extraordinary military tactic, a siege of the besiegers. The Empress Matilda, Stephen’s rival for the throne, and her brother, the earl of Gloucester, laid siege to the castle of the bishop of Winchester. The bishop appealed for help to Stephen’s supporters—Stephen being at the moment a prisoner—and hired knights himself. Stephen’s queen (also named Matilda) brought an army reinforced by troops nearly a thousand strong sent by the city of London. The besieged occupiers of the bishop’s castle flung out firebrands, burning down the greater part of the town, including two abbeys, while Stephen’s forces guarded the roads into the town to prevent provisions being brought to the townspeople, who were soon suffering from famine. By way of diversion, the earl of Gloucester began to fortify the abbey of Wherwell, six miles distant.

  But the king’s forces…suddenly and unexpectedly arrived at Wherwell in an irresistible host, and attacking them vigorously on every side they captured and killed a great many, and at length compelled the rest to give way and take refuge in the church. And when they used the church for defense like a castle, the other side threw in torches from every quarter and made them leave the church…It was indeed a dreadful and wretched sight, how impiously and savagely bodies of armed men were ranging about in a church, a house of religion and prayer, especially as in one place mutual slaughter was going on, in another prisoners were being dragged off bound with thongs, here the conflagration was fearfully ravaging the roofs of the church and the houses, there cries and shrieks rang piercingly out from the virgins dedicated to God who had left their cloisters with reluctance under the stress of the fire.

  The Empress Matilda and the earl of Gloucester decided to raise the siege and save their army, but as the besiegers were movi
ng out of Winchester, the alert royal army fell upon it from both sides and routed it. The chronicler reports:

  You could have seen chargers finely shaped and goodly to look upon here straying about after throwing their riders, there fainting from weariness and at their last gasp; shields and coats of mail and arms of every kind lying everywhere strewn on the ground; tempting cloaks and vessels of precious metal, with other valuables, flung in heaps, offering themselves to the finders on every side.

  Thus the defensive strength of a castle permitted an offensive counterstroke to be launched. Sometimes a castle’s siege was tied into an even more complex strategic pattern. In 1203 one of the few successes of King John in his war against Philip Augustus involved such a pattern. The French king was besieging the great castle of Arques, southeast of Dieppe, held by John’s garrison, while Philip’s ally, Arthur of Brittany, besieged Mirabeau, defended by a force under his own grandmother, John’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. William Marshal and two other Anglo-Nor-man

  Battle scene from the thirteenth-century Maciejowski Bible. Note escalade on the right; above the ladder a soldier, with an arrow through his body, flings a missile down from a tower; below, near the center of the picture, a crossbowman is about to fire at his companion, who wields a battle-axe against the climbing attacker. (Pierpont Morgan Library. MS. 638, f. 10v)

  man earls were striving to relieve Arques when John struck a successful surprise blow at Arthur’s army outside Mirabeau. Arthur’s defeat exposed Philip to a combined attack by the armies of King John and William Marshal, compelling Philip to raise the siege of Arques without an arrow being fired. In retreat, Philip aimed a blow at William’s small force, but William outdistanced him and escaped to Rouen. The following year John’s inability to divert Philip from the long siege of the Chatêau Gaillard brought the fall of that powerful castle, laying open the Seine valley to Philip and eventually leading to the surrender of Rouen and all Normandy.

  Some castles underwent many sieges, others few, and some, like Chepstow, none. Unscathed Chepstow’s history

  Ruins of keep at Arques, Normandy, built by Henry I of England about 1125 and besieged by Philip Augustus in 1203. (Archives Photographiques)

  underlines the castle’s other military function, as a spring-board for offensive action. Chepstow was deliberately designed as a base for aggression in Wales, and was put to effective use for this purpose by William Fitz Osbern and his Clare successors. On occasion Chepstow also served as a base for operations against the royal power, as in 1074, when William Fitz Osbern’s son Roger and the earl of Norfolk rebelled against the Conqueror.

  Pembroke Castle, on the southwest tip of Wales, provides an even more striking example than Chepstow of the aggressive role of the castle. In 1093, during the reign of William Rufus, Arnulph de Montgomery, a Norman baron, arrived at Pembroke by water, built a motte-and-bailey castle on a rocky peninsula on the site of an old Roman camp, and set about subduing the countryside. When Arnulph rebelled against Henry I in 1102, the king seized Pembroke Castle; in 1138 King Stephen granted it to Gilbert Strongbow de Clare, who fortified it; Gilbert’s son Richard Strongbow used it as a base for the conquest of Ireland. Later William Marshal further strengthened the castle by building the great keep and hall. His son William Marshal II, reversing the procedure of Strongbow, brought a force from Ireland, where he served as justiciar, and employed Pembroke as a base for crushing the rebellious Welsh.

  It was often the offensive capabilities of the castle that provoked sieges, but it was its incomparable defensive strength that conferred its military importance. Always ready, requiring little maintenance and repair, demanding scant advance notice of impending attack, the castle remained the basic center of power throughout the Middle Ages.

  XI

  The Castle Year

  FOR THOSE WHO LIVED IN AND AROUND the medieval castle, the seasons of the year were marked by a succession of feast days consecrated by the Church but with pagan origins reaching far back in time. Four seasons, somewhat differently distributed from those of the modern calendar, were marked by ancient agricultural festivals in Christian guise.

  Winter was the season from Michaelmas (September 29) to Christmas when wheat and rye were sown. From the end of the Christmas holidays to Easter was the season when spring crops were sown: oats, peas, beans, barley, and vetches. From the end of Easter week to Lammas (August 1) was summer, and from Lammas to Michaelmas was harvest, or autumn.

  Christmas and Easter were the most important of the season-marking holidays, while Pentecost or Whitsunday, in Maytime (the seventh Sunday after Easter), was of almost equal moment. Each of these three great festivals was celebrated by a feast of the Church followed by a week or more of vacation, followed by another feast, not of the Church but of the people, to mark the resumption of work. Lesser religious holidays had unmistakable roots in husbandry: Candlemas (February 2), when tillage was resumed; Hocktide, at the end of Easter week, the beginning of summer; the three smaller Maytime feasts, Mayday, the Rogation Days, and Ascension; Midsummer, or St. John’s Day, June 24; Lammas, the feast of St. Peter ad Vincula; and finally Michaelmas following the harvest.

  Michaelmas marked not only the beginning of winter but the beginning of the castle’s fiscal year. As the villagers opened the hedges to allow cattle to enter the harvested fields and graze on the stubble, and as plowing and harrowing began on the previously fallow fields, the castle stewards and manorial officers totaled up their accounts.

  November was slaughter time, the “blood month” of the Anglo-Saxon calendar. Feed was too scarce to keep most of the animals through the winter, and smoked and salted meat was essential for human survival. The month began with the ancient feast of All Hallows, originally for the propitiation of evil spirits from the dead, but adapted by the Church as All Saints, followed next day by All Souls. Martinmas, or St. Martin’s Day (November 11), marked another Christianized traditional holiday, the feast of the plowman—celebrated, at least in later days, with cakes, pasties, and frumenty, a pudding made of wheat boiled with milk, currants, raisins, and spices.

  The dreary fortnight from Christmas Eve to Epiphany, or Twelfth Day (January 6), when the fields were drowned with rain or bound with frost, was transformed into the longest holiday of the year, a fourteen- or fifteen-day vacation. Services required of villeins were suspended, and the manorial servants—the hayward, the lord’s plowman, the shepherd, swineherd, and oxherd—received their “per-quisites,” bonuses such as food, clothing, drink, and firewood, that were their traditional Christmas due.

  Besides conviviality, carol singing, and entertainment, the Christmas holidays brought a suspension of everyday standards of behavior and status. On the eve of St. Nicholas’ Day (December 6), the cathedrals chose “boy bishops” who presided over services on the Feast of the Holy Innocents (December 28), assisted by schoolboys and choirboys. On January 1, in the Feast of the Fools, priests and clerks wore masks at mass, sang “wanton songs,” censed with smoke from the soles of old shoes, and ate sausages before the altar. During the boisterous Christmas season the lord often appointed a special force of watchmen for the twelve nights in anticipation of rioting. Tenants on a manor belonging to St. Paul’s cathedral, London, were bound to watch at the manor house from Christmas to Twelfth Day, their pay “a good fire in the hall, one white loaf, one cooked dish, and a gallon of ale [per day].”

  During the Christmas season “every man’s house, as also their parish churches, was decked with holme [holly], ivy, bay, and whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be green,” wrote William Fitzstephen in his description of London in the twelfth century. On Christmas Eve the Yule log was brought in—a giant section of tree trunk which filled the hearth, and was kept burning throughout the twelve nights.

  Christmas brought celebration to the castle population from bottom to top. Tenants on the manors owed special rents but also enjoyed special privileges. Usually they owed the lord bread, hens, and ale, which they brew
ed themselves, while in return he gave them Christmas dinner, consisting mainly of the food they had provided; the lord thus organized Christmas dinner at little cost to himself, the tenants often even providing their own fuel, dishes, and napkins. A group of three prosperous villeins on a manor

  A puppet show. (Bodleian Library. MS. Bod. 264, f. 54v)

  belonging to Wells Cathedral in the early fourteenth century received “two white loaves, as much beer as they will drink in the day, a mess of beef and of bacon with mustard, one of browis [stew] of hen, and a cheese, fuel to cook their food…and to burn from dinner time till even and afterwards, and two candles.” Another villein who held less land was to have Christmas dinner, “but he must bring with him…his own cloth, cup and trencher, and take away all that is left on his cloth, and he shall have for himself and his neighbors one wastel [loaf] cut in three for the ancient Christmas game to be played with the said wastel.” The “ancient Christmas game” may have been a version of “king of the bean,” in which a bean was hidden in a cake or loaf, and the person who found it became king of the feast. Many of the manors of Glastonbury Abbey gave Christmas feasts in the manor hall to which the tenant brought firewood and his own dish, mug, and napkin “if he wanted to eat off a cloth.” Bread, broth, and beer were served, and two kinds of meat, and the villeins were entitled to sit drinking after dinner in the manor hall.

  At the upper end of the scale, baron and king entertained their knights and household with a feast and with gifts of “robes” (outfits comprising tunic, surcoat, and mantle) and jewels. In 1251 Matthew Paris complained that Henry III not only economized on his Christmas expenditures but exacted gifts from his subjects: