This time, I would like to bring to your attention two similar battles that took place in the 13th century, both of which teach us lessons about the inevitability of change and the danger of putting our trust totally in the hands of physical fortifications. It may seem that the defenses are impenetrable but eventually somehow their effectivness tends to crumble and vanish before the advance of progress and technology.
The first took place in England in the year 1215 at a place called Rochester Castle. King John of England – remember him as the nemesis of legendary Robin Hood and the delinquent brother of Richard the Lionhearted – had just signed the Magna Charta after the rebellion of his Barons. The British proudly look back on this document as the beginning of their nascent democracy mainly because it placed limitations on the powers of the King and regulated his commitments to his people. After involuntarily placing his signature on this document, King John promptly reneged on this agreement and hired a mercenary army of Danes that he used to try to re-establish himself as the absolute and unencumbered monarch of that young country. Rochester castle stood in his way. The castle stood next to the main crossing of a river that cut King John off from attacking London and the center of power. A movie called "Ironside" appeared a few months ago and more or less accurately depicted this very story.
Rochester castle itself was thought to be impregnable. It had never been successfully attacked. It was defended by a small force of loyalists but its immense walls and its fortress within a fortress architecture gave it its reputation as a castle that was impossible to capture. King John and his mercenaries did just that and accomplished the impossible but not before a long and merciless siege. The walls of the inner fortress finally fell when a tunnel was dug underneath the wall and supported by wooden beams. About 40 fat pigs were herded into the tunnel that was also full of fire wood and kindling and the tunnel was set on fire in order to undermine the fortress wall. As the pigs and the supporting beams burned the wall of the fortress caved in leaving the defenders open to attack and capture. As the movie so graphically portrays, King John promptly tortured many of the defenders and manages to rule on and enjoy some short lived success until his death about a year later. I leave it to the reader to investigate what happened to the Magna Carta and subsequent English Kings.
Meanwhile, in The Holy Land, the Teutonic knights (an order of German fighting priests established in the Holy Land to assist pilgrims) were in the process of buying up an agricultural estate in the Northern Galil in Eretz Yisrael. They completed the purchase in about 1220 from the De Mille family and taking advantage of the unusual promontory and cliff on the proerty built a state of the art castle that they considered impregnable and impervious to attack. Sound familiar. It was built down the side of a mountain and near the top of a steep cliff. It contained a keep or fortress within a fortress just like Rochester Castle. They called it Montfort, or Shtarkenberg in German, meaning the Mighty Mountain. Shtarkenberg was completed in 1229 approximately a decade after the fall of Rochester castle.
Unfortunately for the Teutonic knights, the Moslem leadership in Egypt and Damascus were becoming more and more powerful. Gradually they sought out new tactics and strategies that allowed them to deal more effectively with the powerful crusader armies. One particularly powerful General by the name of Bybars (one of the first Mamluke Sultans) made it his mission in life to ride the Holy Land of the Christian invaders and subdue the other enemy armies of the surrounding countries. He set siege to Shtarkenberg in 1266 but became frustrated by its massive fortifications. He was forced to give up the siege in order to deal with other enemies. Bybars returned in 1271 but at this point his army was equipped with military engineers and he had learned a a trick or two about penetrating European castles. He dug under the outer wall of Shtarkenberg and supported the walls of the tunnel with wooden beams. The wooden supports in the tunnel were then set on fire and low and behold the outer wall of the impenetrable castle, the mighty Mountain, was breached. Had this happened during the first siege in 1266 the Teutonic knights may have remained determined to fight it out to the last man. A violent and costly siege might have ensued as the knights retired to the Keep in order to fight off the Muslim armies of Bybars from there. However in the interim, Bybars had already captured and destroyed the crusader castles at Arsuf (1265), Haifa (1265), Safad (1266), Jaffa, Ashkalon, Caesarea (1265) and Antioch. In Antioch the city surrendered to Bybars with the promise of clemency, but Bybars did not keep his word. He tortured and slaughtered the citizens of the city and bragged about the details in a now infamous letter to the absent King of Antioch. The Teutonic Knights feared the consequencs of a long siege and similarly Bybars knew that he would suffer many casualties in an extended siege of the castle. Without hope of any extended future in Eretz Yisrael the knights surrendered in return for safe passage to the last crusader outpost at Akko. Bybars proceeded to destroy most of the castle from within. Only a few sections of wall remain for those hikers who are interested in investigating the fascinating ruins and attempting to recreate the battle in their imaginations.
From the 13th century on,fortresses and castles were to play a diminishing role in the military strategies of the the armies of Europe and the Middle East.
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