In the winter of 1203, more than four hundred people lived in the open between two armies below Château Gaillard, in Normandy. The castle above them had put them out; the King of France below would not let them through. They ate grass. They ate the dogs thrown down from the walls. When Philip Augustus finally ordered them fed, almost all of them died.

This is the story of Château Gaillard at Les Andelys — the castle Richard the Lionheart raised between 1196 and 1198 on a chalk spur above the Seine, on land that belonged to the archbishop of Rouen, and paid for with the seaport of Dieppe after an interdict left the dead unburied in the streets of Normandy. A wall of seventeen joined half-cylinders, a great tower with its beak turned inward on a solid foot, ditches cut from the living chalk: scholars still call it a turning point in fortification. It stood for six years. In March 1204, after six months of siege, it fell — and not to the window everyone remembers. A French squire did climb in through a chapel window with the latrines beside it, but that opened one enclosure of three; the last was mined, and the English chroniclers who describe the fall never mention a window. They say hunger. Roger de Lacy and his garrison rode out to die by the sword rather than starve.

Then four centuries nobody tells: Saint Louis, a boy king of Scotland in exile, Marguerite of Burgundy becoming Queen of France inside her cell — and the friars of Les Andelys, who took the castle apart cartload by cartload under a licence from Henri IV. The siege did not make the ruin. Quarrying did.

Château Gaillard: the bold castle — and the first man to write that name down was the man who starved it.

Watch the documentary version: https://youtu.be/Pz9Tt3J-1nI

Full written guide, with every source and visitor information:

https://stonekeepatlas.com/castles/chateau-gaillard/

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold open — the ditch

1:38 A rock that was not his

3:04 One obsession, one bill

5:25 What he built

7:47 Richard dies, John inherits

8:45 The useless mouths

10:56 Three weeks

14:15 Four centuries nobody talks about

15:28 The friars took it

17:13 What is left

KEY SOURCES

• F. M. Powicke, The Loss of Normandy 1189–1204 (1913) — the Exchequer account and the six-month siege

• Achille Deville, Histoire du Château-Gaillard (1829) — the demolition documents

• Guillaume le Breton, Philippide and Gesta Philippi Augusti, ed. Delaborde (1882–85) — the eyewitness

• William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum (Stevenson trans., 1856); Roger of Howden, Annals (Riley trans., 1853); Roger of Wendover, Flowers of History (Giles trans., 1849); Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum

• Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française (1854–68); Sidney Toy, A History of Fortification (1955)

• France Poulain, Château Gaillard: historique complet (STAP de l'Eure, 2012); DRAC Normandie; Base Mérimée PA00099304

• Full bibliography in the article linked above.

ABOUT THE SHOW

StoneKeep Atlas tells the real stories of Europe's great castles, palaces and fortresses — one definitive episode at a time. New episodes alongside the documentaries at youtube.com/StoneKeepAtlas.

Website: https://stonekeepatlas.com

CREDITS

Music: Envato Elements. Narration produced with synthetic voice.