The castle under siege: defence

The besieging of a castle was not a one-sided affair. The defenders had many ways of protecting their castle effectively and causing casualties to the opposing forces. A castle would often have advance warning of the attack and would equip itself ready to do battle.

The ditch surrounding the castle mound was one of the first and most important defensive mechanisms that a castle presented to its enemy. If the ditch was breached then the attackers had to fight their way up the steep sides of the motte. The idea was to prevent your enemy from coming into close quarters with your fortress. Often at this point sorties (fighting groups) were sent out from the castle to attack. As they were fighting downhill they had the advantage as the men coming up were tired from the climb and the defenders could rain blows down upon them.

The most effective ditches were those filled with water as they were harder and more tiring to cross and the attacker would then be forced to fight in wet and heavy clothes. Often the wet ditches were dug too deep to be crossed by men or horses.
 
The defenders would also position archers along the castle walls to pick off the men of the opposing side. These archers would fire from the battlements or through narrow openings in the castle wall, called arrow loops. Both of these allowed the defending archer a view of the enemy but also gave him protection from any return fire. They would fire flaming arrows onto the siege towers and siege engines of the enemy, burning them down and rendering them unusable.

The defenders also used the battlements to pour things onto the attackers. These included boiling water and tar which would burn and scald the skin. They also had meutriers or murder holes through which they could fire arrows or pour hot liquids down upon the enemy. At Goodrich Castle, near Ross-on-Wye, these murder holes are found in the vaulting between the portcullises in the gatehouse passage. This meant that if the enemy managed to gain access to the castle then the defenders could attack and hopefully prevent the enemy from getting any further. The meutriers also had another purpose; they could be used to pour water onto fires that the enemy might light in the gate passage, as fire was one of the most commonly used and most destructive forms of attack.

The defenders also used siege engines such as the ballista, mangonel and trebuchet, their targets being the siege towers and temporary bases of the enemy. Their aim was to do as much damage as possible before the tables were turned.

The inhabitants of a castle had one advantage: as the enemy had no walls to hide behind, the defenders had a better view of what they were up to. Often this advantage could be used to play tricks on the enemy. At one castle siege the inhabitants caused a scene on one side of the castle, drawing the enemy to this area to see what the commotion was about. While the enemy was occupied a band of men on horseback rode out from another side of the castle and attacked them from behind. So the defenders could also use cunning to get an advantage over their opponents.

During another siege the defenders, seeing that their supplies were quickly running out and that the enemy were beginning to believe that their surrender would now be imminent, filled a pig carcass with the last of their grain and threw it out over the wall. The carcass burst and the enemy seeing all the grain believed that the castle had so much that they were even feeding their pigs on it. Thinking that the siege would continue for a long time before it was over they gave in and rode away. 

However, if the enemy was successful in preventing food and supplies from reaching the castle then victory was likely to be theirs. A castle may have had advance warning of the impending siege and been able to stockpile supplies, bring in their livestock and fill up their water tanks, but these supplies would not have lasted forever and as the stockpile went down so too would the living conditions. The defenders needed both meat and fresh vegetables to provide a healthy diet and to keep them fit and strong. Once these were in short supply then the health of the inhabitants was the first thing to suffer, and they became more susceptible to disease. Without food to sustain them, the men soon became tired and could not fight with any strength.

Castles were heated by fires, so once the fuel to keep these alight had been used then the castle became a cold and damp place to live. This made the inhabitants more at risk from fever, pneumonia and hypothermia, especially at night when the temperature dropped. Water was usually stored within the castle in tanks, but stagnant water is a breeding ground for diseases such as typhoid and dysentery; coupled with the poor diet this could quickly cripple the defenders.

At this point morale inside the castle was low. The strong needed to continue fighting to save the castle but the weak and ill needed treatment. When food got extremely low and there was hardly enough to go round, the weak and ill would be sent outside the castle and into the mercy of the opposition. Sometimes they would be free to go but sometimes the enemy would refuse to allow the sick to pass through their lines. They could not return to the castle as supplies were too low so they were stuck outside the walls of the castle and often left to die a slow death.

It was usually the starvation and poor health of the besieged that ended the battle. When the defenders could fight no longer they would surrender themselves to the enemy and hope for lenient treatment. Often they would offer the enemy the more precious items from within the castle in the hope that this would spare their homes from the destructive sacking which was the right of the victors.

[Original author: Miranda Greene, 2002]