ROCHESTER, 1215
Rochester saw one of the few military successes of
King John. Rochester 1215, illustration by John Cann.
King John uses mining to win this famous siege
Known to history as `Bad’ King John, the infamous English
monarch has gained a reputation for military incompetence, but during the Siege
of Rochester Castle he demonstrated a little-known talent for siege warfare.
Rebel barons defended the fortress and the siege lasted for two months before
surrendering to John. The fighting was fierce and without letup, with the
Barnswell Chronicler recording, “Our age has not known a siege so
hard-pressed nor so strongly resisted.”
John committed himself totally to retaking the castle and
set up his command post on Boley Hill. When his siege engines failed to make an
impact on the strong walls, he ordered mining tools to be delivered. On 25
November 1215, he sent an urgent writ to his justiciar to, “Send us with
all speed by day and night, forty of the fattest pigs of the sort least good
for eating, to bring re beneath the tower.” This meant a mining
operation. Pig fat was used to re the mine props that John had positioned
beneath the southeast corner of Rochester’s keep, which in turn kept up the
undermined foundations. The king’s mine was successful and a whole section of
the keep came down, but despite this achievement the rebels retreated further
inside the keep and the siege continued. After they were reduced to a diet of
horse-flesh and water, the garrison eventually surrendered to John.
Rebel Scum
Throughout this period of conflict in England, the barons
looked across the Channel to the powerful and stable royal line in France. In
marked contrast to the discontent, conflict and usurpations which had
characterised the Anglo-Norman monarchy since 1066 (Gerald of Wales notes that
the Plantagenets were `princes who did not succeed one another in regular
hereditary order but rather acquired violent domination through an inversion of
order by killing and slaughtering their own’), the French had experienced over
two hundred years of smooth successions from father to son. Philip Augustus had
been on the throne for thirty-five years, and his five immediate predecessors
had enjoyed reigns of between twenty-nine and forty-eight years each. He had an
adult son, a younger son and two grandsons. The barons might be understandably
wary of offering the throne to Philip himself (and besides, he was now fifty
years old so possibly not a long-term prospect), but Louis was a younger man, a
proven warrior, a prince with a reputation for being moral and just; he came
from a dynasty which had a tradition of involving a council of nobles in its
decision-making process; he had a claim via the blood of his wife, John’s
niece. And on a more practical level, with the might and resources of the
French crown behind him, he was likely to be successful. This tipped the
balance in his favour against other possible candidates such as King Alexander
of Scotland (who was descended from the old Anglo-Saxon kings of England) who
did not have the military might to back up a potential claim. And Louis being
French had an additional advantage: many of John’s mercenaries were from
various regions of France, so having Louis at the head of the campaign might
mean that John would be deprived of their services, as he had been in Poitou in
1214. Of further comfort to the barons was the fact that Louis, if and when he
became king, would probably not reside in England permanently, thus giving them
more scope for their own activities. This was not unusual as Henry II and his
predecessors had spent much of their time on the Continent, so there was
precedent for a cross-Channel king. All in all, he was the perfect choice. A
party of barons headed by Saer de Quincy, the earl of Winchester, Henry de
Bohun, the earl of Hereford, and Robert Fitzwalter sailed for France in September
1215.
September was the month in which John was expecting the
arrival of the new mercenaries he had engaged from Aquitaine and Flanders; he
headed to the Kent coast in anticipation. However, there were storms and heavy
seas during that month and instead of the expected ships, waves of drowned
corpses washed up on the shores along Kent and Suffolk.
While John was bemoaning his losses on the coast the barons
decided to take advantage of his situation by capturing Rochester Castle, which
would bar his route back to London. The castellan there had been loyal to John
for many years but, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, he opened the gates
to the rebels. This irritated John, who moved to assault it; there would now be
actual armed conflict on English soil between the king and his subjects. A line
had been crossed.
The barons had garrisoned Rochester well: ninety-five
knights and forty-five sergeants held it under the leadership of William
d’Albini, an able commander. However, as they expected Rochester to hold until
the delegation returned from France they had made no back-up plans for
reinforcing it and had no second force ready to relieve a siege. John, on the
other hand, was prepared for the long haul. He had siege machinery built and
remained at Rochester for seven weeks, conducting the operations personally –
the longest he had ever spent in one place since his accession to the throne
sixteen years earlier. Roger of Wendover tells us: `The siege was prolonged
many days owing to the great bravery and boldness of the besieged, who hurled
stone for stone, weapon for weapon, from the walls and ramparts on the enemy.’
The keep resisted all attempts at assault so John turned to mining: a tunnel
was dug under the wall, held up by wooden posts, then filled with flammable
material including the fat of forty pigs which John sent for specially, and set
alight. As the timbers burned and collapsed the roof of the mine caved in,
bringing one of the four towers of the keep crashing down. The garrison, by
this point starving and forced to eat their horses, retreated to the other half
of the keep and resisted a little longer but eventually realised it could not
hold out and surrendered on 30 November 1215. John’s first inclination was to
execute them all, but he was persuaded not to on the basis that similar
treatment would then be meted out to royal garrisons by the barons. In the end
only one man was hanged, a crossbowman who had previously been in John’s
service.
