By Sword and Fire

by Sean McGlynn

  By February 1204, with the garrison of nearly two hundred men not having succumbed to hunger, Philip made ready to storm the castle. Moat-filling, siege engines and sappers were all brought into action as intense fighting resumed. When a tower on the curtain wall was brought down, Lacy ordered his men to torch the outer ward before retreating across a drawbridge to the castle’s middle ward. The French poured into the outer ward and some sergeants immediately investigated for any weak spot the new line of defence might expose. They soon found one. A new building had recently been added here, comprising an upper storey of a chapel and a lower one of latrines. (William the Breton condemns this arrangement for being ‘against religion’; it is possible that the upper level was in fact a storehouse).

  There are two versions of what happened next. The most likely is that a Frenchman by the name of Peter Bogis stood on the shoulders of a comrade and was able to make an entrance through an unguarded window of the chapel; the understandably more popular rendering is that he gained access by crawling up a latrine chute. From here a rope was lowered and troops were pulled up. Panicking in the noise and confusion that followed, the garrison withdrew one last time to the strongest part of the castle: the keep in the inner bailey. The heart of the castle was enclosed by a wall of seventeen D-shaped towers, convex buttresses eight feet thick. But even these could not withstand for ever the single-minded and unrelenting assault of Philip’s war machine. A combination of further mining and bombardment from a huge stonethrower finally brought a section of the wall down. French soldiers scrambled up the tumbled masonry and stormed the breach in force. The English still fought desperately and bravely on, but were quickly overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. Philip Augustus had taken Richard’s beautiful and powerful castle. Normandy fell soon afterwards.

  Roger of Wendover’s account has Lacy and his men ride out from the keep in a gallant last sortie, only to be overcome after having inflicted great losses on the French. However, it is hard to imagine that the garrison’s horses would have survived the dinner plate for six months; and the anonymous chronicler of Béthune states that the mounts were indeed eaten and that the garrison still had to surrender through starvation.

  What of the garrison? The laws of siege warfare allowed for them to be struck down where they stood. Instead, they were led off in chains. Roger of Lacy met with a different fate. According to Anonymous of Béthune, throughout the siege Lacy had declared that he would never surrender the castle, even if he were to be dragged out by his feet. His heroic defence did indeed end in this dishonourable manner. He, too, was put in shackles, but was then detained honourably as prisoner on parole before being freed when his ransom was paid. The siege of Château Gaillard was a hard-fought contest with many soldiers dying or wounded in combat. Yet the bloodbath that could have ensued with the storming of the castle never occurred. From the soldiers’ point of view, the whole engagement seems to subscribe pretty much to the chivalric ideals of medieval warfare. But it was not the soldiers who endured the worst of the siege; it was some of the non-combatants who had fled to the castle for safety who suffered most. In the town hall of Petit-Andely today, there hangs a huge canvas by the nineteenth-century artist Tattegrain. Entitled Les Bouches Inutiles (The Useless Mouths), it depicts the terrible suffering undergone by these non-combatants. What happened is a grim tale that has received only scant attention from historians.

  Roger of Lacy came to regret his decision to allow refugees from the town into his castle. The town’s numbers had already been swollen with an influx of people fleeing from the surrounding countryside. The castle was well stocked with provisions for his garrison, but it was woefully inadequate for the needs of somewhere between 1,400 and 2,200 extra people. He reckoned that his supplies would enable him to withstand a siege for a year. His garrison was large enough to defend the relatively small perimeter of the castle so he did not need the encumbrance of non-combatants getting in the way and rapidly depleting his stores. In military terms, they were indeed ‘useless mouths’. With the relief army failing to lift the siege, and with a letter from King John that did not offer any fresh help, Lacy had to prepare for a lengthy blockade.

  At some point in November, Lacy evicted some five hundred of the oldest and weakest non-combatants from the castle. The French took pity on the feeble and shabby group and opened up their lines to let them through. A few days later the scene was repeated with a similar number, with the French once again allowing the pathetic non-combatants safe passage. The townspeople had already seen their homes occupied by French settlers and a French mercenary garrison; they had nothing left to defend and were now reduced to frightened refugees. King Philip was not present at the siege when this was taking place as he was conducting his campaign elsewhere and attending to matters of state. When he heard what was happening at Château Gaillard he angrily issued orders immediately and categorically forbidding any further egress from the castle. No one, regardless of age, sex or condition, was to be spared the rigours of the siege. No more non-combatants were to be allowed through French lines; they were instead to be driven back into the fortress. Philip wanted the useless mouths in the castle, whittling down the garrison’s supplies. The last tranche of non-combatants cast out by Lacy consisted of at least four hundred people, perhaps as many as over a thousand. As they emerged from the castle they thought they were going to rejoin their families and fellow townsfolk away from the dangers of the siege. They could not have been more wrong. William the Breton claims that Lacy knew he was sending these people to their certain death.

  They were not met by the opening of the besiegers’ lines, but by a hail of arrows and javelins. The French were executing their new orders. The terrified refugees fled back to the castle to find the gates locked and bolted against them. According to William the Breton, their desperate entreaties to be allowed back in were met with the words from the guard in charge of the gate: ‘I do not know you; go and search for shelter elsewhere; it is forbidden to open the gates to you.’24 The garrison then hurled down stones and shot arrows at the people they had previously been protecting to drive them away from the gates. No doubt confused and racked with fear at this brutal turn of events, the wretched crowd had little choice but to seek equidistance from their two forces of assailants. They moved into the no-man’s-land between castle and besiegers, finding what little protection they could from the elements and the overhead exchanges of missiles among the shallow fissures and clefts on the steep and barren rock face. Neither the French nor the English relented, leaving the civilians exposed to the wet and cold of three long winter months, to survive, if they were able, as best they could. It was here the real horror of the siege of Château Gaillard was to unfold.

  William the Breton expresses revulsion at how the English could condemn their own people to such ‘a wretched and miserable existence’.25 Weakened by cold and hunger, the outcasts had nothing but a few wild herbs (rare in winter) and the waters of the river with which to attempt to sustain themselves. William catalogues their suffering over the twelve weeks of their ordeal. A chicken that wandered onto the slopes was fought over by the strongest and was consumed bones, feathers and all. They feasted on some dogs Lacy sent out to them which they skinned with their bare hands (it is unknown whether this action was prompted by belated pity or by Lacy denying precious scraps to the dogs, which were in all likelihood emaciated anyway). When the meat was gone, they ate the hides. A baby that was delivered was snatched by men who ripped it up and devoured the parts. William wrote that all feelings of shame were suppressed in the fight to survive in a nether-world where many ‘neither lived nor died; being unable to hold on to life, they could not quite lose it’.26 In fact, over half of those in no-man’s-land died from exposure and hunger; those that survived only did so because they had water from the Seine to draw on.

  Philip returned to Château Gaillard in February 1204. The skeletal survivors, on seeing the corpulent French king, called out for mercy. Philip shows clemency and
sees that the wretches are released and fed, much to William the Breton’s praise. One among the number was seen still clutching a dog’s tail which he refused to discard, saying, ‘I shall only part with this tail that has kept me alive for so long when I am full of bread.’27 However, the suffering was not over even yet. Over half of those who gorged themselves on the food now provided did so with fatal consequences, probably succumbing to acute peptic ulceration and gastro-intestinal bleeding. These terrible scenes were not unique in medieval warfare. At the siege of Calais in 1346–7, Edward III, that most chivalrous and ‘perfect’ king, allowed one group of refugees to leave the city, but left a further five hundred to die between the town walls and the siege lines. A letter describing the plight of those still left in the city spoke darkly of cannibalism. The siege of Rouen in Normandy during the early fifteenth century was, as will be seen, a copy of that at Château Gaillard. All the commanders involved in besieging these places were using hunger as a weapon, something William recognized when he wrote ‘it is cruel hunger that alone conquers the invincible’.28 Rigord, William’s predecessor as royal biographer, disingenuously commentated that Philip intended to take the Château Gaillard by hunger and want in order to spare the blood of men, a distinction lost on the useless mouths. For the English chroniclers Roger of Wendover and Ralph of Coggeshall, it was starvation and not poliorcetics that defeated the castle.

  Philip was a master of castle-breaking and never flinched from making the ruthless decisions needed for success. His actions at Château Gaillard were all rational military measures. Obviously, he wanted the non-combatants in the castle to exhaust the garrison’s victuals as quickly as possible. With these evicted from the castle, any display of leniency might be perceived by others as a serious weakness; future strongholds resisting Philip would be more ready to send out their useless mouths, too, thereby reinforcing their ability to extend the siege. The longer an investiture took, the greater was the chance of a relief army lifting the siege, counter-attack, and manpower lost to disease and desertion. The plight of the sufferings of their own people in sight of the castle walls would also have applied acute psychological pressure on the garrison, serving to demoralize them, not least because many of them would be related to the local civilians. This pressure was all one way: the laws of war imposed few restraints on a besieging commander in these situations. It was effective, too: events at Château Gaillard frightened the inhabitants of Falaise into persuading their mercenary garrison commander to go over to the French; and when Philip issued the Normandy capital of Rouen with a dire ultimatum, they capitulated, knowing that he was not bluffing.

  William the Breton, naturally exploiting the situation, and some modern French historians have condemned Lacy for his callous evictions. After all, these were the people he was obligated to protect under the feudal compact (an unfashionable term these days, but still a potent one). However, most other contemporaries praised Lacy for his stout and loyal defence of the castle, understanding the practical reasoning behind it. Apart from the overarching problem of provisioning, Lacy also carried the enormous responsibility of holding the castle for his lord, King John; we have discussed above the Duke of Norfolk’s warning about the possibility of beheading for castle commanders failing in their duty. There was also the very real danger that the non-combatants could turn into belligerents. With the relief attempt having failed, and John’s letter suggesting there would be no more help forthcoming, how would Lacy keep up to two thousand hungry people crammed within his walls quiescent? Could the garrison really preserve the food for themselves and not expect trouble?

  The sheer weight of their numbers coupled with desperation might have transformed the refugees into insurrectionists who would overwhelm the garrison in their want of food. The garrison might have fended off the French outside for the time being, but it would have been near impossible to quell a large internal rising at the same time. These were real fears, faced by Richard at Acre and by some Greek cities during the Second Crusade (1146–8) when they refused entrance to the French in anticipation of food riots if they were to do so. Once they were outside, it made tactical sense to drive the non-combatants away from the walls: if too close, they increased the threat of a surprise night escalade by the French (something similar happened at Tours in 1189) by providing them with cover. With these considerations, it is not surprising that Lacy’s military judgement has been questioned for admitting the refugees into the castle in the first instance. However, this ignores not only his obligation to defend them but, even more pertinently, that the admission took place before the expected relief operation which so nearly succeeded, and before John’s letter eventually arrived offering little to hope for in the way of future help. If Lacy can be taken to task for failing the people under his protection, so King John can be for failing to assist Lacy. King Philip used this very argument to persuade Rouen to capitulate: it should accept him as their new lord because their old one, John, was doing nothing to safeguard his people in the city.

  Given the efficacy of these ruthless tactics, why did Philip relent? William the Breton would have us believe it was all down to the King’s natural soft-heartedness and fellow-feeling: Philip was ‘always responsive to supplicants, because he was born to have compassion for unfortunates and to spare them always’.29 Magnanimous gesture had its place in medieval warfare and politics, but it is doubtful that this was one of those occasions. Much more likely – and more true to form – is that Philip’s thoughts were, as ever, taken up with military practicalities. For a start, the siege was taking too long. Success elsewhere had freed Philip to concentrate once more on Château Gaillard and he had returned to the castle to press home the siege more vigorously and decisively. Clearing the refugees out of the way was a necessary preliminary measure for the operations at hand. An even more convincing explanation is that, with the arrival of spring, Philip feared the spread of disease. In their severely enfeebled state and with their immune systems completely run down, the refugees in no-man’s-land were particularly susceptible to pestilence which, in turn, might easily spread to his siege camp.

  This prospect was a siege commander’s ever-present nightmare. Disease could decimate besieging forces. A contemporary account describes how a contagion affected the French entrenchments at the southern French city of Avignon in 1226: ‘There arose from the corpses of men and horses which were dying in all directions, a large number of large, black flies, which made their way inside the tents, pavilions and awnings, and affected the provisions and drink, and being unable to drive them away from their cups and plates, caused sudden death amongst them.’30 It was at this siege that Philip’s own son, Louis VIII, died from dysentery. The idea of medieval besieging forces launching rotten meat over the walls of an encircled town is a familiar one, but those outside had just as much reason to dread pestilence. In 1250 at Brescia in Lombardy, a highly infectious epidemic was spreading between the city’s animals; these were driven out of the gates so that they would mix with the animals in the besieger’s camp.

  For some historians, William’s account of the useless mouths at Château Gaillard smacks of gratuitous sensationalism. The same offence has been levelled at monks writing about medieval warfare and is easily refuted here. Many medieval chronicles were prone to exaggeration, especially when it came to gruesome details; but this by itself does not negate the essence of what is being related. How could the experience of hundreds of people trapped on a barren rock through winter with no food or shelter be anything but utterly horrific? The most lurid and distressing episode at Château Gaillard reported by William has to be the eating of the newborn baby. This may or may not be a literary device, rich in symbolism; but there was more to cannibalism than mere literary allegory in such situations. The impoverished Tafurs of the First Crusade had a reputation for it, and human flesh was reported as being consumed at Marrat in 1098. Tales of cannibalism emerged from the sieges at Calais and Rouen in the Hundred Years War; worse still, Froissart and other
s tell of forced cannibalism, inflicted for sadistic reasons, during the fourteenth-century Jacquerie in France. Daniel Baraz has demonstrated how the charge of cannibalism was often made as a way of demonizing an enemy. At Château Gaillard, however, William’s attitude was one of deep sympathy to the non-combatants: the real enemy were safe behind the castle’s walls; furthermore, he is quite open that it was with the implementation of Philip’s direct orders that their ordeal had begun.

  Finally, there are touches of realism in William’s account that are striking for their modern parallels. The survivors who died after devouring too much food on their release by Philip shared the fate of many starving prisoners liberated from the Nazi concentration camp at Belsen, where food provided by the British troops induced gastrointestinal bleeding. The man who refused to relinquish his grip on the dog’s tail brings to mind the case of the shipwrecked survivors of the whaleship Essex in 1820. When rescued from their drifting lifeboat, the two remaining sailors were reluctant to surrender the bones on which they had been gnawing and relying for sustenance. The bones were those of other crewmen.