The first phase of the Anarchy saw the extensive building of new castles and the enhancement of the defences of most of the existing castles in the country.  These castles were the bases of operations for all of the armies and were the key to controlling the land around them. From the land and the peasants came the food and taxes, so the loss of one castle could be a bad blow to a faction, the loss or gain of control of a major castle/city could be a turning point in the war.  The barons were not slow to exploit the lack of royal restraint on their activates and many pillaged the lands around them and amassed vast fortunes whilst cruelly oppressing the local people. 

The monks, who are the only historians of these dark days, left a grim picture of the ravages of war and famine, without parallel save for the days of the Black Death some 200 years later.  The Fens suffered form a particularly ruthless and cruel baronage, as is detailed in the writings of the Peterborough monks:

"For every powerful man built his castles…  And they filled the country with castles.  When the castles were built, they filled them with devils and wicked men.  Then, both by night and day, they took those people who they thought had and goods – men and women – and put them in prison and tortured them with indescribable tortures to extort gold and silver; for no martyrs were ever so tortured as they were.  They were hung by their thumbs or by the head, and corselets were hung from their feet.  Knotted ropes were put around their heads and twisted until they penetrated to the brains.  They put them in prisons where there were adders and snakes and toads and killed them like that.  Some they put in a torture chamber – that is in a chest that was short, narrow and shallow, and they put sharp stones in it and pressed the man in it so he had all his limbs broken.  In many of the castles was a ‘noose and trap’ – consisting of chains on such a kind that two or three men had enough to do to carry one.  It was so made that it was fastened to a beam, and they used to put a sharp iron around a mans throat and his neck, so that he could not in any direction either sit or lie or sleep, but had to carry all that iron.  Many thousands they killed by starvation…  When the wrenched people had no more to give, they robbed and burned all the villages, so that you could easily go a whole days journey and never find anyone occupying a village, nor land tilled.  Then corn was dear, and meat and butter and cheese, because there was none in the country.  Wrenched people died of starvation; some lived by begging for alms, who had once been rich men; some fled the country."   

As other chroniclers noted it was during this time that Christ and all the saints slept whilst England suffered…..

Castles, their siege and defence quickly became the major focus of the war, and open battles were a rarity as well as a huge gamble for both sides. Over 1000 new castles were constructed in the first half of the war and many other strongholds were significantly added to almost making them into castles in their own right. Taking a castle was no easy matter as the military architects who designed them chose well the sites that they were built on to ensure their strength and longevity during a siege.

The traditional methods for taking a castle in this time were; all out assault, undermining, starvation, or treachery.   All out assault was risky as you might take the castle but lose so many men doing it that you could not then defend the castle if you were attacked by a relieving force. Worse still you could be bloodily repulsed and then not be left with enough men to adequately lay siege to the castle. Undermining was a popular method of siege. This is where sappers dug out the bottom of a wall and placed tar soaked props under the wall as they went, when the mine was finished it was fired so as the props burned out the wall would collapse. The defenders were not idle in this time however. Bowls of water were placed on the walls and the garrison would watch them for signs of vibration that indicated that sappers were at work. Then they might counter sap and a bloody battle would then happen underground when both sides sappers met, or as at Dover in 1216 the garrison fell back and as the wall fell, the French charged the breach and the garrison counter charged and after a bloody fight the garrison managed the block the breach and keep control of the castle. Starvation was the default siege method but most castles were adequately provisioned to withstand long periods of siege and its was not always possible to leave a large army standing in their siege lines to wait months for a surrender. The last technique was treachery and a few castles fell this way to surprise attacks but very few in total.

The main aim of a besieging force who can't storm a castle is to make the life of the defending garrison as miserable as possible and to keep itself active so boredom does not let the besiegers slip something past you.  As such the Anarchy saw the first use of siege engines in England. These were not the massive rock hurling devices of the 13th/14th centuries but far more modest engines. Their use was not to batter walls as the rocks they used were too small to damage a stone wall rather their use was more to harass the garrison and to keep the besieging force occupied with some activity. The common missiles hurled into a castle were; quicklime to blind people, bees and hornets nests, pots of oil, followed by incendiaries (remember that all the roofs were thatch or wood shingles), and lastly sometimes the severed limbs and heads of any relatives of the garrison that the besiegers could get their hands on.  

Weight: 3/4 Ton Main base frame: 10" * 5" Main frame Height: 9' 6" Throwing arm: 14' 6" Construction Material: English Oak Crew: 5 - 7 or 9

Best shot with 2kg ammunition is about 170 meters down range and over a 30 meter raised wall at Dover castle. 
(1 Kilo = 2.2 pounds. Yard = 36 inches, 39 inches to the meter.)

Shortly we hope to start construction of our next siege weapon, a Trebuchet.  This will be about 20-35% larger that our Perrier and able to hurl a larger rock a lot further than the 140 yards currently possible with our Perrier.   Below are a couple of photographs of one that is based at Carephilly Castle in Wales, which we crew and fire on their artillery days.  This engine can fire a 15 kilo rock about 200 meters and it takes a crew of 12 to load.