How did people survive castle sieges

During the medieval period, the castle was the ultimate defensive structure, designed to withstand an army no matter the size and act as a beacon of authority over the land. What most people recognize as “castles” didn’t start to be built until the 12th century onwards, with everything before this consisting of the motte and bailey castles or wooden palisade forts.

Some early defensive structures usually had a stone keep, but were walled with either wood or earthen banks, which did the trick to an extent, but with enough men, you could simply burn them down or climb over the top. The addition of a thick stone wall surrounding the entire keep changed everything for the attackers and the tactics of charging with ladders and grappling hooks didn’t work as well anymore.

If the attackers couldn’t fight their way into the castle, then the only other option was to lay siege. This involved surrounding the entire castle to stop any supplies from getting to the defenders, with food being the most important. Castles were always equipped with a clean drinking well inside the walls, so thirst wasn’t usually a problem, but food didn’t last very long fresh and anyone under siege shouldn’t expect to eat anything other than dried grain.

How long would a siege last?

The majority of castle sieges in medieval Britain rarely lasted more than two months. The longest siege in England’s medieval period was the siege of Kenilworth Castle in 1266, just southwest of modern-day Coventry. It began on June 25 and lasted for just under six months, or 172 days to be exact, and when the 1,200 defenders finally surrendered they only had two days worth of food left.

There are many reasons that sieges didn’t last a long time, and the problems didn’t only affect the people in the castle who were being attacked. The biggest problem for anyone laying siege to a castle was the cost, which involved paying thousands of soldiers to just sit there for weeks, and also the cost of the food. During the longest siege in medieval England, the attacking force had to be sent food from over 20 counties just to feed the troops.

(A trebuchet was powerful enough to throw a rock with enough force to smash down a stone wall, but not everyone knew how to build them)

How could an army get into a castle under siege

Despite what catapults are capable of in the movies, they aren’t powerful enough to destroy castle walls. Instead, they were used to throw things over the walls, such as clay pots filled with flammable oil or rotting corpses to spread disease within the walls. The only way to break into a castle is to destroy the walls or the main gate, with the latter often not being possible due to the iron portcullis which would stop any attempts for the attackers to burn their way through the gates.

To break down a castle wall the attackers would have to build something called a trebuchet, a huge stone-throwing device that was powerful enough to throw a rock with enough force to break stone walls, but not everyone had the money or know how to build them. There were a few known methods of ending a castle siege, the most common of which are listed below:

Tunneling

A tunnel would be dug starting at a safe range, which would then travel underground until it reached below one of the walls or towers. A room would then be dug out supported by wooden beams, and then when the room was big enough a fire would be lit and the wooden beams would burn, with the goal being that part of the castle wall would collapse into the hole. The main problem with this was that they weren’t very accurate with their tunnel distance and would often miss or build the collapse room too small, but this method was often not an option if the castle had a moat or was surrounded by water-logged ground.

Starvation

When a castle would cost too many lives to take, but you had the money and food to keep your troops there, the best thing to do would be to wait. The defenders were extremely limited when it came to their choice of foods, and the only thing they had that would last more than a couple of weeks would be dried grain. When hunger started to set in nothing would be spared, with the first thing often eaten being the horses, followed by the dogs and other pets, and then any insects and birds that could be caught. Sieges never lasted long because of the lack of food that could be stored by the defenders, and it wasn’t uncommon for hungry troops to surrender their lord under the promise of their own safety after a few weeks of starving.

Disease

Catapulting rotting corpses and clay pots of human waste into the walls would be the fastest way to kill everyone inside without sending your troops to attack. With everyone inside only having limited space, the chances of the disease spreading amongst everyone were extremely high. The biggest risk of doing this was accidentally infecting your own, tightly packed troops waiting outside the walls, who would also at some point have to go inside the disease-filled castle to secure it.

(Star forts became popular from the 16oos onwards and their guns could outrange any catapult or diggable distance for a tunnel, making previous siege tactics useless)

Threats and promises

If you are defending a castle and someone attacks it, there’s a pretty good chance they’re going to try and kill you. But as time goes by and the defenders start to starve and the attacking army runs out of money, compromises start to be made. After a month of being under siege, it’s very tempting to accept the promise of your safety, as well as keeping your lands and position, so long as you surrender whoever you’re protecting in the castle. Neither side wants to be part of a siege, and if you’re serving one lord it won’t make much difference to your life to start serving the other. Many sieges throughout history have ended with a threat or promise because starvation often makes people do things they never thought they would.

Attack

The most obvious siege-ending tactic is simply to storm the castle, but the whole reason a siege will begin in the first place is that this isn’t possible, at least not at first. At the siege of Masada in 73 AD, the Romans tried to attack the impregnable fortress held by the Israelites but found it impossible, so they spent the next few months building a giant earth ramp all the way to the top of the walls. The longer a siege goes on, the more capabilities the attackers could gain, but it also works both ways. Sieges only work if there isn’t another army belonging to the defending force out there because an army spread out thinly around a castle would be an easy target to the defender’s allies.

(The fortress of Masada, complete with the earth ramp built by the Romans close to 2,000 years ago)

Do armies still lay siege?

Modern-day international law makes it illegal for an army to cut off all supplies to a civilian population in an area, and combined with the capabilities of modern-day weapons, sieges can’t really happen. They started to become less common throughout the colonial era which saw the invention of gunpowder make the standard castle become useless. Star forts were built throughout this period, but towards the middle of the 1800s, artillery had become so advanced that a defensive structure could simply be fired upon with mortars from the other side of a hill, or the defender’s cannons out-ranged by the attackers, which meant the sieges that did happen through this period rarely lasted longer than a couple of weeks.