Christmas Siege

Copyright Oggbashan October 2019

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.

[The war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda was during the period 1135 to 1143. This story is set in those years.]

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Should I marry a Welsh nobleman who might be a coward? Or will I have no choice of husband except someone who is my father's enemy?

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My father and most of his soldiers are campaigning with King Stephen's army against the supporters of the Empress Matilda. Most of my father's' baronial lands are now occupied by Matilda's supporters but we have this newly built small castle close to the Welsh border. It was built at the order of, and with the help of King Stephen, to protect a navigable tributary of the Severn from invasion by Matilda's reinforcements but also to watch for any incursion by the Welsh while English forces are fighting each other elsewhere.

My father has been very careful to develop good relations with the Welsh prince who rules the part of Wales near our castle. If that prince exerted his military might our castle couldn't survive against a Welsh army for long. It was never intended to. It was built to delay, harass and hinder Matilda's forces for long enough for King Stephen to move his army to oppose them. The castle had been built on the side of the river nearer to Wales. My father's lands extended to the Welsh border about three miles away and for several miles on the English side of the river.

For its small size it is strong and well positioned with the keep on a rocky hill by a bend in the river. The outer bailey is partly on level ground by the river. But the garrison is smaller than it should be. Most of our effective troops are with King Stephen's army. We have the older soldiers and those recovering from injuries, like Sir John who has sword cuts on both legs and is hobbling around on crutches. Nominally he is in charge, but in practice, my mother, Lady Joan, is the current commander, until Sir John has recovered.

We weren't expecting to be attacked. It was too late in the year for any serious campaigning and Matilda's troops ought to be in contact with King Stephen's not hundreds of miles away near the Welsh border. But Lady Joan was worried because our garrison was so weak.

She and my father, Baron Alfred, had been negotiating a marriage for me with the eldest son, Emrys, of the local Welsh prince. I am the Lady Isobel, only child and heir of my parents. I had met Emyrs several times and he seemed an acceptable potential husband, not that I had much choice. I would be married to the person my parents, and ultimately King Stephen, approved as a suitable match. Whoever married me would eventually become an English Baron and claimant to the lands currently lost to us, and to this castle.

I could do much worse than Emyrs, who was tall for a Welshman, well-built and a proven war leader. The disadvantage? He didn't speak much English and my spoken Welsh was only slightly better. But we could and did converse in French and Latin which we both knew. We could read and write in both languages even if our vocabulary was very restricted for love-making. If the words weren't in Ovid's Ars Amatoria or in the songs of French troubadours, we couldn't express our feelings.

What we could do, but shouldn't, is express our feelings with hands and lips. We did. I knew that Emyrs was well-endowed as my hands had wandered lower than they should. He knew that I have larger breasts than my height would normally carry because his hands and lips had explored them. What was possible with a potential husband was much more than with another man, even if my parents might have disapproved of such intimacies -- if they knew.

In mid-November Emyrs came for a courting visit. He was only accompanied by five men at arms which was a serious compliment to my mother, Lady Joan. So few attendants indicated that he trusted that he would be a welcome guest. Normally no Welsh nobleman would dare to visit an English castle with less than fifty armed retainers.

A couple of weeks after Emyrs had arrived, a part of Empress Matilda's army came to assault our castle. They wanted to bring reinforcements from Normandy and outflank King Stephen. While we held the castle they were blocked. My mother sent several messengers to King Stephen to make him aware that we were being attacked. Over the summer Lady Joan had stockpiled supplies in case we were attacked. Normally those supplies would be enough to survive a siege lasting three months but because our current garrison was so few, they would be enough for six months if we could prevent the opposing forces from forcing an entry.

The attack was a surprise. Not only did they arrive in early December, far later than the normal campaigning season, but to prepare the way for a seaborne invasion force which would have to face the winter storms. Both enterprises were very risky for Matilda's forces and an indication of how desperate they were. If we could repel them for a month or so, the besiegers would face ice and snow and would probably have to suspend their attack or lose many troops to the cold and could not get enough food to their lines to prevent starvation.

What was dubious was whether we had enough effective men to repel a frontal assault with siege engines which we could see being built. While our walls stood to their full height we could probably defend them. If the walls of the outer bailey were to be breached by trebuchets, or overtopped by a siege tower, we were outnumbered seven or eight to one and would have to surrender even if we could hold the keep for a few days longer. Mining under our keep's walls would be impossible because they were built on solid rock which was very hard even to chip.

Emyrs' response to the attack disappointed and worried me. The banner of my father showing three foxes' heads flew from our keep and along the outer walls. Since his arrival, Emyrs' banner had been flying alongside but as soon as Matilda's troops arrived his men removed them. Emrys covered the blazon on his shield as he stood alongside his men on the walls. His five men were all expert archers that outranged any of our own archers but they showed no sign of being part of Emyrs' entourage. Emyrs spent many hours in discussions with my mother.

One morning, when it was very foggy, I woke up to find that Emyrs and his men had gone. I rushed to my mother for an explanation.

"Emyrs has gone," I shouted. "Doesn't he know that if this castle falls I will be married to one of Matilda's followers?"

"He knows, Isobel, he knows," my mother said calmly, too calmly for my mood. "His father, the Prince, ordered him to leave. The Prince cannot afford to involve the Welsh on one side or the other in an English conflict. He will have to deal with whoever is the eventual winner. While Emyrs was here, even if incognito and without his banners or blazon, the Welsh were compromised. The fog last night gave Emyrs an opportunity to withdraw that he could not ignore. He couldn't wait to say farewell to you but he left this letter and a book for you."

She held out the letter and book. I made a dismissive gesture.

"Emyrs is a coward!" I shouted. "He could have defied his father or at least taken me with him."

My mother was shocked.

"No. He is not a coward, Isobel. He and his men have fought well for us. He had to obey his father's orders. He couldn't have taken you with him without compromising you, Isobel. You aren't even engaged yet. You can't be without your father's permission and King Stephen's agreement. That is likely. Emyrs' father has been in contact with King Stephen and they are proposing a solution to the problem of this castle, Matilda's troops and your attachment to Emyrs. That will take a few days yet. We have to hold out until then."

"Hold out? The two siege towers are nearly complete. When they are ready we have a few hours, that's all!"

My mother held out the letter and book again.

"Emyrs suggested that this might be helpful. I don't know what is in them because I can't read Latin as well as you, but he seemed to think this might help. Take them, read them, and see, please. We could do with help from anywhere, including a suggestion from Emyrs. Read them, now before it is too late!"

Reluctantly I took them and went to my chamber to read, still hurting because Emyrs had gone.

The letter started with Emrys' expressions of regret at leaving me. I ignored them. I was too angry to take them in.

He went on to say that we had a massive stock of unused crossbows and bolts in the keep. Unlike archers who needed years of training, almost anyone, including women and older children, could learn to use a crossbow in a couple of hours. Each person could have a pile of cocked crossbows and loose several bolts before the crossbows needed to be retensioned. Our ineffectives could deter an assault with several volleys of crossbow bolts.

That made sense. We had twice as many women as effective soldiers, and even the wounded soldiers could handle a ready cocked crossbow. I ran to Sir John and told him what Emyrs had said. Within hours our outer bailey walls had three times the number of defenders who learned how to loose a crossbow bolt by using enemy soldiers as practice targets.

As the outer bailey was being built, the masons had built a very small wall, about six inches high at the limit of effective range of a small crossbow. Any enemy crossing that wall was a target. There was another marker wall further away to indicate the range of a windlass cocked crossbow and a skilled longbowman, but now Emyrs' men had gone we didn't have enough archers to deny our enemy that area. As the new crossbow users became more proficient, anyone crossing the nearer wall died with multiple bolts hitting them.

The partially constructed siege towers were closer than the range of the small crossbows but protected by stretched hides. We could aim for anyone approaching the towers but could not see anyone working on the towers. Any crossbow bolt penetrating the hides would only hit someone by luck.

I went back to my chamber to read the rest of Emyrs' letter. Already his suggestion of crossbows had bought us time and made the task of Matilda's troops much more difficult. I was still upset as his departure but felt better about him because his suggestion has improved our effective defence so much.

He asked me to read the book he had left.

"Guard it carefully, Isobel. It is my most precious possession and must not be allowed to fall into the hands of your, or my, enemies. If that is a danger -- burn it!"

He went on to explain that one of his father's agents in Rome had found it in the suppressed book section of the Vatican library and had bribed a few monks to copy it. They had included a few blank pages on which his father's engineers had illustrated how the instructions in the book could be constructed with modifications made since the book was written.

I opened the book carefully. At first sight I was disappointed. It was a manual, written by a Roman military engineer, on how to conduct a siege of a fortification using siege engines. It had been written with experience of Roman civil war, when Romans were besieging Roman fortifications. But we weren't conducting a siege, we were besieged. We hadn't got time to construct some of the longer range Roman onagers, ballistas or catapults. What use was a book about how to run a siege when we needed to defend against one?

But I continued reading. If Emyrs thought it would help he was probably right. The siege towers outside looked very similar to the ones described and illustrated but there was an aside by the author.

'The main threat to all siege towers, particularly when close to the defenders' walls, is fire. Except for some essential woodwork, green wood should be used as it is less likely to burn. A large supply of water should be positioned at the top of a tower to extinguish any flames and a resupply should be close to the tower and men ready to replace water at the tower's top.'

As the towers were being made I hadn't seen any signs of water provision. Although one tower was only fifty yards from the river, the river banks were steep. It would be difficult to get water from there and the nearest place was about two hundred yards away, most of it within range of our crossbows.

I hurriedly flipped through the book. As I thought there had been instructions on how to make Greek fire. That was useless to us. We didn't have the ingredients to make it. But there were also instructions on how to make a range of less effective substitutes using materials we had.

I went back to see Sir John and gave him the recommendations on how to make inflammable materials and that the enemy's siege towers were unprotected against fire. I was anxious as it took two long days to make the flaming bolts and while we were waiting the siege towers were being finished.

On the morning of the third day the siege towers were fully manned for an assault but our crossbow bolts were ready. As the towers started to move slowly towards our walls they were met by hundreds of flaming bolts and each bolt's flames were impossible to put out with water alone.

By lunchtime the siege towers were reduced to heaps of burning wood and those who had been on them had died by the hundred, pierced by flaming or ordinary crossbow bolts.

We had delayed the assault by a week or more. Although the enemy started to rebuild more siege towers, they looked as vulnerable to fire as the ones we had destroyed. Their trebuchets continued to hurl boulders against our walls as they had done for weeks, but with little effect. They were using limestone balls which just shattered against the hard stones of our walls, leaving nothing but a white mark.

I was concerned that we had had no message that King Stephen's forces were on the move to relieve us, but it looked as if, thanks to Emyrs' letter and book, as if we could hold out much longer than we had originally thought. Christmas was approaching and with it the weather would probably get worse, impeding the attackers.

On the morning of Christmas Eve I was woken early by unaccustomed noise of activity before dawn. My personal maid came rushing in.

"Get dressed quickly, Lady Isobel! She said. "Your mother wants to see you now!"

I was surprised that my maid had produced a formal white dress for me to wear. A quarter of an hour later I walked into my mother's chamber and straight into a fierce hug from Emyrs' arms. He kissed me passionately. My mother seemed to approve.

"Tell her, Prince Emyrs," my mother said.

"Prince?" I queried.

"Yes, Prince," Emyrs replied. "My father has split his realm and I am now Prince of the part nearest England. He and King Stephen have reached an agreement. Will you marry me? I have their permission."

"Marry you? Yes, Emyrs. When?"

"Now."

"Now?"

"Yes, now. Within the hour. When we are married the agreement between my father, your father and King Stephen becomes effective once I am your husband."

"What agreement?"

"Later, Isobel. I'll explain when we are married."

I went through the marriage ceremony in a daze. I didn't really believe it was happening but I made the right responses.

Afterwards Prince Emyrs issued a few commands to his followers who seemed everywhere in the castle. Within minutes the Welsh Dragon and Prince Emyrs' personal standard were flying alongside my father's three foxes heads on the castle keep and outer bailey walls. Prince Emrys sat me down in the chapel with my mother. No, he didn't sit me down. He sat me on his lap and rested my head against his shoulder.

"Princess Isobel," he started.

"Princess?" I asked.

"Yes, Princess. You have married a Welsh Prince and you are now a Welsh Princess, Isobel."

"Who doesn't speak much Welsh," I objected.

"You can learn. What is more important is that the agreement between my father, your father and King Stephen has made this castle part of Wales as soon as we married. All your father's lands up to the river are now part of my principality. For that part of your father's lands I am now his overlord, and son-in-law. Queen Matilda's forces that were besieging you are now in Wales and surrounded by an overwhelming Welsh army. I am also your father's deputy for all his English lands here and an English Baron too. I have told the commander of Queen Matilda's forces to leave our lands, Welsh and English, or face destruction by my forces. He has agreed and has stopped his attack now the Welsh flag is flying. He will start withdrawing tomorrow, Christmas Day, and will be completely gone by New Year's Day."

"Does that mean you are now on King Stephen's side, Emyrs?"

"No. We, you and I, are Welsh and neutral. We would stop any of Empress Matilda's forces from coming on to our lands, and King Stephen's as well. King Stephen is happy with that because this access route for Empress Matilda's forces will be blocked. Whenever your father comes here he will be able to rest his forces away from any fighting. If anyone tries to invade here they would face a Welsh army."

That night I enjoyed the undivided attention of a well-endowed Welsh Prince and English Baron. He enjoyed kissing and nibbling the large breasts of a Welsh Princess and English Baroness before going to sleep resting against those breasts.

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