This episode of The History Guy brought to
you by Magellan TV and their new documentary, “WW 1: Tunnels Of Death.” Americans seem to know little about John of
England except that he was the bad guy in the Robin Hood legend, but contrary to what you might
have seen in the movies, not only did his brother Richard not exile John from England, he in fact
named him as his heir and within five years John was King of England. But during his reign he
faced a significant challenge to his authority which resulted in a siege that not
only included some of the most powerful siege engines of the day, but also the
ancient practice of tunnel warfare, assisted by 40 fat pigs. The 1215 Siege of
Rochester Castle deserves to be remembered. Tunnel warfare has a long history with notable
use during the Great War that is the subject of the new Magellan TV documentary, “WW 1: Tunnels
Of Death.” The documentary details some of the astounding mega tunnels used in the trench
warfare of the Great War. This fascinating documentary is another great reason to subscribe
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of a one month free trial if you sign up using the link in the description, and when you do,
be sure to check out “WW 1: Tunnels Of Death.” Anyone who has visited a medieval castle has
to wonder at the difficulty of trying to attack these massive structures and their mighty
stone walls. One of the most notable sieges of the medieval period was the 1215 Great Siege of
Rochester Castle. The siege is notable because the events were recorded, although with many gaps by
multiple chroniclers, and the method to finally breach the castle walls was well…dramatic. But
maybe more, the Siege of Rochester Castle is a good example of the methods and limitations of
siege technology prior to the Age of Gunpowder. The siege occurred as part of the First Barons
War, while there were many causes of the war the war was a civil war between King John the
same King John from the Robin Hood legends, and several major land holders. Crowned in 1199,
John the son of Henry II and brother of Richard the First had inherited the Angevin Empire, an
Empire that between the 12th and 13th centuries ruled not just England, but much of Ireland and
France. The last of the Angevin kings, John had a difficult personality and a tendency to alienate
fellow nobles, a trait that had contributed to his loss to Philip of France of most of the French
parts of the Empire. The cost of the loss, as well as his failed attempts to reclaim
the lands had fallen on English landholders, and with many complaints several of those
landholders moved into open rebellion. Initially the dispute was resolved by a treaty
called the Great Charter signed along the banks of the River Thames on June 10 1215, and
today popularly known as the Magna Carta. While today considered a foundation of the
English constitutional system, the Charter which offered protections to the church and barons
in exchange for fealty to the king was initially a failure with neither side abiding by its terms.
Pope Innocent III, encouraged by a promise from John to engage in a crusade in the holy land,
declared the Charter illegal and unjust, and excommunicated the rebel barons and several
clerics who had supported them. Open warfare broke out between the king and his supporters
and the rebel barons by the end of summer. The First Barons War would eventually turn into a
dynastic war over the throat of England with the barons throwing their support behind Louis, the
heir to the throne of France who was married to Henry II's granddaughter. The Baron's War
would include sieges of many important castles but none nearly as dramatic as
the great Siege of Rochester Castle. Standing along the River Medway the strategic
importance of the location of Rochester Castle was recognized early, and a battle was fought at the
crossing of the Medway between the Romans and the Cantiaci tribe during the Claudian invasion in
42 AD. It was the site of a Roman fortification, or walled city, built as early as the third
century along a Roman road between East Kent and London. According to the British National
Archives, “After their conquest in 1066, the Normans constructed castles all over the country
in order to control their newly won territory and to pacify the Anglo-Saxon population.” The
original castles were timber and earth structures called a motte and bailey, and one of the first
constructed was at Rochester and is listed in the 1086 Doomsday book. The castle was taken by siege
by William's heir, William II from his uncle Odo, Bishop of Bayeux in 1088. It had been assumed that
the original castle was on an outcrop called Boley Hill near the still standing stone castle, but
more recent archaeology has ruled out that site, and it's now generally asserted that the original
castle was at the same location as the existing castle. According to English Heritage, William II
asked Gundolf Bishop of Rochester to strengthen the site with a stone fortification, described
as one of the earliest such buildings in England. The castle consisted of a curtain wall some 22
feet high, four and a half feet thick at the base with a tower on its eastern side. Sections
of that original wall have been reconstructed and can be viewed today. The fortification was
surrounded by a ditch, a significant obstacle to anyone trying to attack the walls. Gundolf
was skilled at overseeing construction and is considered to have been England's first chief
engineer and the father of the Royal Corps of Engineers. In addition to Rochester, Gundolf
also oversaw the construction of the White Tower, the central keep of the Tower of London as
well as Colchester Castle. The castle sat next to the Rochester Cathedral and the two together
would have dominated the landscape around them. In 1127, under King Henry the First, William
de Corbet, Archbishop of Canterbury was given responsibility for the castle. For much of its
time the upkeep of Rochester Castle was the responsibility of the Archbishop and it was under
Corbet that the Great Keep was constructed. Built inside the southern corner of Gundolf's curtain
wall, it was an extraordinary fortification. At 125 feet it is the tallest keep in all of
England and among the tallest in Western Europe. Built largely of kentish ragstone faced with
limestone imported from Normandy, the keep is 70 foot by 70 foot square with towers on each corner.
The walls were built to resist stone missiles and are 12 feet thick at the base tapering to 10 feet
at the top. While most Norman keeps included a basement and two floors, Rochester Castle included
an additional floor, and the walls rose to 113 feet with the corner towers rising an additional
12 feet. Notably the keep was divided by what the World History Encyclopedia describes as “A massive
internal cross wall.” Thus even if the gate or one tower was breached, defenders could seal off and
defend the other half of the castle. In building the massive keep that was contemporarily described
as, “Outstanding and noble.” de Corbet spent the princely sum of a hundred pounds. “Realizing the
strategic importance of the castle,” the World History Encyclopedia notes, “that John himself
spent 115 pounds to upgrade the castle in 1206.” In June 1215 Stephen Langton was the Archbishop
of Canterbury and responsible for the castle. “Sometime,” The Chronicler Anonymous of Bethune
suggests, “around the 20th of September, the rebels took the castle.” The exact
circumstances of how are unclear. John later complained that Langdon was a traitor for
not handing the castle over to his supporters but it's unclear whether Langdon, who had fled to
the continent, had actively supported handing the castle over to the rebels. Chroniclers wrote that
the castle's constable, Reginald de Cornhill had taken the rebel side and handed the castle over.
While Chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall says that the castle was handed over to Robert Fitzwater, one of
the leaders of the Barons, by the time that John arrived the command of the castle been handed over
to William d’Albini a large landholder who held the titles of High Sheriff of Warwickshire,
Lester, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. d’Albini had come late to the Baron's cause
after they had succeeded in taking London. While the exact numbers are uncertain the rebels
included from 60 to as many as 140 knights and retainers in addition to an unknown number
of crossbowmen. It was a substantial garrison of well-led and competent troops. At the time
John was at Dover gathering an army composed mostly of mercenaries from the continent. It
is telling in terms of his relationship with the nobility of England that, Dr Peter Pertin,
an expert on medieval fortifications notes, “That apart from his household knights, and not
even all of them, John could not, or did not, rely on the loyalty of knights from his English lands.”
The importance of the position of Rochester was obvious, the rebels were in London, the king
in Dover and Rochester was between the two. If taken by John, Rochester Castle would threaten
the rebels' base in the capital and secure his control of Kent. Whereas if the rebels held
the castle it would not only defend their base, but also threaten John's control over Kent. John took his royal army to besiege
the castle, by the time they arrived in mid-October the Royal Army numbered likely
in the thousands. Arriving on October 11th, it appears that there was no attempt to defend
the city. There's no clear record as to why but some historians have suggested that the defenders
were surprised by the arrival of the Royal Army. In any case taking the city made a substantial
difference for the besiegers because they were able to use the city as a base and as a
shelter, as well as to forge for supplies. There, the size of the king's army could
have been a disadvantage as besiegers were subject to hunger as those besieged. The army even
housed horses in the cathedral, to its detriment. The Chronicle of Ralph the Coggeshall,
sympathetic to the rebels said of the occupation, “The drinking and whoring amongst the Royalist
force were the subject of grave scandal, carried out only a few paces from the
cathedral's high altar and the shrines of Saint Paulinas and Saint Ithamar.” The besiegers
were also able to destroy the timber causeway of the Rochester Bridge making it much more difficult
for the defenders to be reinforced from London. The King's Army was substantial in size
including many experienced captains; many of their names are still listed on a
still surviving muster roll. While the Baron's capture of London had cut the king off from his
Royal Treasury, he was still adequately funded. Among the Royal Army's resources, chroniclers note
five great siege engines, pertinent notes that the army's payroll included siege engineers.
These were not counterweight trebuchets which had not yet arrived in England but
mangonellen powered by men pulling on cords attached to a lever and sling. Invented in China
as early as the 5th century BC they were commonly used in Europe into the 13th century when they
were largely replaced by counterweight trebuchet, although they continued to be used as they were
lighter and more portable. Still, the mangonellen represented a fact of siege warfare prior to
the Age of Gunpowder. In general walls were stronger than the machines used to attack them.
The stones thrown by the mangonellen could only throw weights up to about 50 pounds and notably
did little damage to the walls. Rather they were a threat to the defenders making it deadly to
defend the castle's walls. Burton notes however, that the stones could eventually cause damage to
the wall's crenellations, thus making defending the wall more dangerous. Possibly more important
was the psychological effect on the defenders, especially as the King's Army was large enough
to work in shifts and continue the bombardment with both the siege engines and crossbows
day and night. “Still,” Pertinent points out, “That John and his engineers would have been
aware that the bombardment alone could not be expected to breach even the curtain wall and
would do little damage to the thick walled keep.” The Barons made an attempt with some 700 knights
to march from London to raise the siege on October 26th but the attempt was abandoned for unknown
reasons. In any case the river would have been an obstacle with the bridge disabled, but the
attempt did mean that John knew that time would be limited. This was both a risk of attack by
the Barons and of an attempt to invade by Louis. One chronicler wrote that lack of supplies forced
the defenders to expel from the castle everyone who could not participate in its defense.
The anonymously written Barnwell Chronicle says that John punished those expelled
by cutting off their hands and feet. Exactly how the curtain wall was breached is
unclear. While the chronicles say that the walls were breached by miners and there is record both
of paying miners and requesting mining equipment such as picks, Pertant obvious issue is that to do
so the miners would have had to cross the ditch. Although it's unknown exactly how large the
protective ditch was at the time, filling the ditch to allow the miners to access the walls
while under fire would have been a slow and deadly task, and Britain speculates that this is what
occupied the attackers for the first 40 days of the siege. Between the bombardment and reaching
the walls chroniclers suggested that the king's army took significant casualties. While tunnel
warfare implies a mine that is fully underground that was actually uncommon, in the case of
the Rochester Castle unlikely given the ditch. Rather, John's miners likely simply dug a trench
under parts of the walls causing them to collapse, although archaeology on the site has
been unable to determine exactly where. While some chronicles assert that the breaches
resulted in significant hand-to-hand fighting, they list few casualties among the defenders,
suggesting that they were aware of the engineer's efforts and simply retreated to the Keep, which
would be a significantly different challenge. The front entrance to the Keep was protected
by a gatehouse behind which was a removable wooden ramp, and then another tower protected
by both strong wooden doors and a portcullis. It was a gate both designed to impress
and to defend, and Pertant notes “The fact that it played no role
in the attack suggests that John's men preferred the risk of mining rather
than trying to get in by the front door.” It was the attack on the main Keep however that
led John on November 25th to send the famous and peculiar order to Hugh de Burgh, the Sheriff of
Kent, “Send to us with all speed by day and night, 40 of the fattest pigs, of the sort least good
for eating. To bring fire beneath the tower. No, the process did not include
attacking the castle with burning pigs. Rather, the pigs were slaughtered and
rendered for their highly flammable fat. The miners undermined the tower on the southeast
corner of the Keep using wooden logs as props to keep the stone from falling in on them. The pig's
fat was then applied to the props, burning them quickly and causing the tower to collapse. While
the general conception is that the miners would have dug a tunnel under the walls, pertinent notes
that this is almost certainly not the case. The Keep was given a very deep foundation to prevent
exactly such mining, and the foundation itself sat upon the previous Roman wall. Such an excavation
would have been extremely difficult and too slow given the time frame. Moreover, it's obvious still
today that the plinth under the tower is still intact. Rather, Pertinent argues, the attackers
would have built a wooden defensive structure around the base of the tower to protect themselves
from missile attacks from the defenders, and the tower would have been undermined at ground
level. When the timbers were fired the collapse of the tower took down the Keep walls halfway down
both sides. But the work would have been obvious and the defenders had time to move supplies to
the other side of the Keep's strong crosswall, thus even as the tower collapsed, the defenders
were able to defend the other side of the Keep. But by then supplies were running low, and the
defending knights had even been forced to eat their own horses. On November 30th the defenders
surrendered. The Barnwell Chronicler wrote of the Siege, “No one alive can remember a siege so
fiercely pressed, and so manfully resisted.” Despite anger over his losses with just one
exception, John decided to spare the defenders' lives. While he might have liked to have hanged
them all that offered a particular risk because his own troops then would have been reluctant
to serve as they could have expected the same treatment had they been captured. Moreover,
captives could be exchanged for ransom. Despite the importance of the castle the siege
ended up having little effect on the larger war. Louis invaded and took the castle the following
year with no chronicle explaining how. John died of dysentery while on campaign in 1216, and with
him died much of the reason for the fighting. Most of the barons shifted their support
behind John's nine-year-old son Henry and Louis was forced to give up his claim to
the English throne the following year. The castle was returned to royal control in 1217
and repaired. The destroyed tower was replaced with a circular tower so obvious today. The
Keep resisted a siege during another baronial uprising in 1264, although now in a state of ruin
it remains significantly intact and is considered one of the most important surviving 12th
century Keeps in England and France. The 2011 film Ironclad was loosely based on
the Siege of Rochester Castle although it was largely panned for its almost completely
historically inaccurate representation of the Siege of Rochester Castle. The siege of Rochester
Castle was the largest that had ever occurred in England to that point and it represented,
really, the limitations of siege warfare. Despite being outnumbered between 10, and 20
to 1, the defenders of Rochester Castle held out for nearly two months. Caused significant
casualties among the attackers, and in the end, despite the effort of 40 fat pigs, it
was starvation and not the attacks on the castle that forced the castles surrender. Still,
after the siege the Barnwell Chronicler writes “There were few who would
put their faith in castles.” I hope you enjoyed this episode of the
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