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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
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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.”
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