Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

with tongue only slightly in cheek that 'lite will be good, when one takes from the
usurers their wealth, and no pack horse goes on the roads even by day in safely, nor
townsmen without fear, nor any merchant coming from France; rather will he be rich
who is ready to plunder.'
It was perhaps in sieges that the civilian suffered the greatest direct hardship.
In siege warfare the line between the non-combatant and the soldier was blurred.
Civilians were often actively involved in the defence itself, and thus they became
combatants. In many cases the defence of a town fell upon its own citizens through
the 'watch' who would defend sections of wall. But even when there was a military
garrison it was expected that the civilian population would assist. At any rate the
citizens of a town might expect to share in the hardships and dangers suffered by
the garrison. Medieval siege engines were hardly smart, precision-guided munitions,
and a stone lobbed by a trebuchet was as likely to kill a civilian as it was a soldier.
The suburbs of a town, the houses and workshops that lay beyond the walls and
defences, might be pulled down to prevent them from being used by the besiegers as
protection as they either undermined the walls or launched an assault.
A close siege would see disease and starvation rife amongst both the citizens and
the armed garrison. On very many occasions the town's commander would be forced
to eject all of those not able to participate in the defence — theyoung, the old and infirm
— to try to stretch food and water supplies further. Whilst the hope might be that the
defenders would let these refugees through their lines, all too often they refused and,
as happened at the siege of Chateau Gaillard in 1204 or Rouen between July 1418 and
January 1419, the civ ilians might find themselves trapped between the two armies
who watched as they starved to death.
No wonder there was often conflict between civic leaders and the commanders
of the garrisons established to protect them. There could be extreme tensions between
the requirements of a good military vassal and the town's willingness to hold out.
At Bridgnorth in 1102 the captains and burgesses of the town, held for the rebel earl
Robert de Belleme against Henry I of England, agreed to surrender to the king in
spite of the protests of the paid knights, the miLited dtipendarii, and locked the
mercenaries in the keep whilst they negotiated the handover.
One of the main reasons why towns were more willing to seek terms was that the
penalty for resisting too long was that the besieging troops would be allowed free rein
to ravage the town, looting what they wanted. The sack of Limoges by the forces of
the Black Prince in 1370, in which his army 'burst into the city ... all in a mood to
wreak havoc and do murder, killing indiscriminately' was ordered by the prince as a
punishment for its revolt and swift defection to the cause of France. After Edward Ill's
siege of Calais in 1347, which had taken a year to fall, the king had to be dissuaded