Pt4
The defences of cities were often strengthened by the incorporation of a citadel. In Europe and the Middle East, castles often gave birth to towns, which nestled around them and were walled. At Ghent, the comital castle dominated the town. Montgomery was laid out as a town when the new castle was built there in the 1220s. Dryslwyn was a small castle-town of the later thirteenth century.
But as cities grew, citadels became quite distinct entities within the defence. In Laon a “new tower”, built by Heribert II in the 920s, held out after the city had fallen in 931 and 949, but fell to mining. During the siege of 985, the commercial quarter of Verdun seems to have served as an inner core for the defence. At Antioch, the citadel stood on the walls and at Jerusalem the famous Tower of David was on the west perimeter. In 1243, the citadel of Viterbo resisted when the city fell. An old Roman fort, the Château de Narbonne, was the citadel of Toulouse, but the demolitions of 1215–16 removed it from the circuit of the walls, and it served as headquarters of the Albigensian Crusade in the great siege of 1217–18. Thirteenth century Acre was defended by double walls with a deep ditch between, and a similar arrangement cut off the suburb of Montmusard from the port proper, where the Templar castle served as a citadel. Citadels on the perimeter sometimes strengthened the defences of a city, although Antioch was an exception. The citadel there was so remote that during the crusader siege it had no influence whatsoever. When the crusaders seized the city, the citadel on its remote mountain-peak held out against them and admitted the forces of Kerbogah when he besieged them in Antioch shortly after.
Citadels, like keeps in castles, must have given confidence to those of the defenders who might find an ultimate refuge in them. However, they often represented the menace of some outside ruling power and were intended to hold down the city rather than defend it, notably in early Norman England.
In the end it was the garrison, not the walls, that mattered. Surprise was by far the best means of seizing a fortified place, and dissension within a city or garrison could be fatal. In 1236, an allied army of the eastern Lombard cities of Vicenza, Trevio, Padua and Mantua was being held off by Ezzelino of Romano when Frederick II suddenly marched from Cremona and seized Vicenza. This was possible because of the absence of many Vicenzan soldiers, and because Ezzelino had already enlisted sympathizers within the city. In the wake of this blow most of eastern Lombardy, notably Padua and Trevio, fell to the imperial cause. At Moissac in August 1212, as we have noted, the citizens lacked the will to fight off the crusader siege although the garrison was willing. Parma defected from the cause of Frederick II in 1247 when Parman exiles made a sally into the city and gained the upper hand.
If surprise was impossible, a determined assault well pressed home was often enough, as at Tonbridge castle in 1088, which Wiliam Rufus’s troops seized by storm on the second day of the siege. The army of the First Crusade tried to rush the formidable defences of Jerusalem equipped only with a single siege-ladder in June 1099. According to the Gesta Stephani, in 1144 Stephen captured Winchcombe by ordering his troops to rush at it under “a cloud of arrows”. The castle was newly built on a high mound, which suggests that it was of wood, and it had only a small garrison. The assault failed, but the garrison quickly decided to surrender on terms.
The fall of Winchcombe nicely illustrates the combination of psychological and physical factors which was called for in siege warfare. Stephen’s assault was a clear show of determination and the garrison, feeling isolated and outnumbered, decided on the better part of valour. In 1144, Baldwin III was unable to take Li Vaux Moise but devastated the countryside, and so persuaded the inhabitants to turn against the Turkish garrison. Before he besieged Taillebourg, Richard’s opening gambit was also destruction of the countryside, provoking the garrison to an ill-considered sally which enabled him to capture the place.
Besiegers and besieged sometimes resorted to cruder methods to depress enemy morale. At Nicaea in 1097, and again at Antioch, the crusaders demoralized the garrisons by impaling the heads of their dead colleagues. Saladin did the same during his siege of Tiberias in 1187, while in 1153 the defenders of Ascalon hung the bodies of those killed in a failed assault over the battlements. During the siege of Milan, Adam de Palatio was hanged at the order of Frederick Barbarossa after a successful Milanese sally. When Barbarossa captured Corno Vecchio, all of the garrison had their right hands cut off. In 1224, Henry III swore that he would hang the garrison of Bedford if it failed to surrender, and duly did when the castle had to be stormed. Edward I reluctantly spared the gallant garrison of Stirling. But if terror failed, specialized techniques and tactics were needed.
