Medieval warfare less often squared equivalent armies on the ground against each other, and more often entailed raiding and sieges. In a pre-gunpowder arena, a castle’s walls and well armed keep could withstand months of an invader’s armies. The offensive side used a variety of tactics to get their opponents to surrender, including throwing stones or dead animal carcasses with siege engines, constructing moveable towers to go over the city walls, and mining underneath the stone structures in hopes key places would collapse.
Here you see Rochester Castle, founded in the late 11th century, after the Norman Conquest of England. Some of the castle walls date to this time, but the high keep tower you see was built around 1130. Almost 100 years later, it came under attack by the English King John, who wanted to take it from some nobles rebelling against him. In addition to trying the usual techniques, he had his armies obtain 40 pigs that were “too fat to eat,” and put the animals’ fat along the timber supports underneath the keep’s walls. Setting the lard and thus the wood on fire, the King’s men were able to collapse a portion of the tower.
From October-December of 1215, the siege of Rochester wore on. But it was not the pig fat that saved King John’s cause: it was starvation. The rebels surrendered not out of weakness of their walls but of their stomachs.
The real history of warfare is not glorious.
Source(s): English-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/rochester-castle/history/ and TD Hardy, Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum in Turri Londinensi Asservati, vol 1 (London, 1887), 148-51.
