The Daunting Fortress of Richard the Lionheart

In the heart of Normandy, the imposing silhouette of the Chateau Gaillard dominates the River Seine. In the Middle Ages, this mythical fortress was the scene of a confrontation between two enemy kingdoms, France and England. Chateau Gaillard is the most splendid castle in Western Europe, without any question. There's no other chateau to equal it in the whole area. Chateau Gaillard was more than a fortress, it was the emblem of the might of Richard the Lionheart, the powerful king of England. Gaillard means sturdy, strong. That word is very potent, it means strong or tough. Chateau Gaillard is saying, just try to get me. In record time, Richard the Lionheart's men would build a gigantic military enclosure whose architecture was revolutionary and which had incredible defense mechanisms. Chateau Gaillard is like an onion, it has all these layers of fortification. It's very advanced and hugely costly because it's the most modern technology applied to castle building at the time. There it was, the most perfect castle that had ever been built, how on earth could it ever be taken? If Philip Auguste, king of France, wanted to conquer Normandy, he had to confront this stone monster. And he and his men took up the challenge. Richard the Lionheart explained to him that the fortress was impregnable, but Philip Auguste said that even if it was made of steel, he'd take it. To which Richard replied that even if it was made of butter, he could defend it. And there you have the whole spirit of this simply amazing castle. For seven long months, Chateau Gaillard lived through one of the longest and most tragic sieges of the Middle Ages. Chateau Gaillard, of course, has these additional brutalities of the population being forced to starve between the army lines. They had nothing to eat, they could pick a few bits of vegetation from the rocks, there wasn't much of that, and they were very quickly starving or dying of exposure. How was this incredible castle built? How did one of the longest sieges of the Middle Ages unfold? And who won the battle of Chateau Gaillard, the French or the English? This is the story of a pitiless war, the history of a fortress they said was impregnable. In the heart of Normandy, 65 miles west of Paris, the ruins of Chateau Gaillard look out majestically from over 300 feet above the meandering River Seine. For more than 800 years, from atop its rocky spur, it has watched over the town of Les Andalus. The ruins of Chateau Gaillard still bear the scars of its troubled history. A story that began in the 12th century in a divided Europe. At that time, France was the scene of a pitiless territorial struggle. There were two opposing camps, the French and the English. Richard I, or Richard the Lionheart, had ruled England since 1189. As the Duke of Normandy, as well as of other principal duchies of France, he controlled a large part of the country. He was a very impressive individual, he was handsome and charming and intelligent and a wonderful soldier. He was a great strategist and a great commander in battle. When he asked his soldiers to take risks which might lead to them being wounded or being killed, these were risks he took himself. A man who certainly made a name for himself and of course for contemporaries, he was the model of what a good king should be. As the head of the most powerful dukedom in France, Richard the Lionheart represented a permanent menace to the territories of the man to whom he was both a vassal and a sworn enemy, Philippe Auguste. Philippe Auguste had been king of France for over 10 years. This was the man who really created a French empire, rather like the Roman emperor Augustus. He's not an inspirational leader of men, but nonetheless he is an outstanding general, one of the most successful commanders of the middle ages. At the time he came to power, Philippe Auguste governed only a modest principality consisting of Paris and its surrounding area and a zone that reached as far as Bourges. But although the king of the Franks feared Richard the Lionheart's strength, he was determined not to give up an inch of his territory to his enemy. He was a French David standing up to the English Goliath. Richard would deliberately provoke Philippe Augustus, challenging him to a duel, a one-man-to-man, one-to-one duel, knowing that Philippe would decline because he couldn't match Richard's martial ability, so it was designed to humiliate Philippe. So they didn't like each other, they were enemies. Philippe Auguste dreamed of crushing his enemy and he dreamed of a French kingdom that reached as far as the Normandy coast. A showdown was inevitable and Richard was ready and waiting. Battle commenced, but very quickly the two men were forced to bring their hostilities to an end by a higher authority, the Pope. In 1190, Pope Clement III demanded that Richard the Lionheart and Philippe Auguste call a truce and leave together hand in hand on a crusade to the Holy Land. For the sake of Christianity, they put aside their differences temporarily to put on a unified face to go and try and recover Jerusalem. But their partnership only lasted for a while. While Richard the Lionheart kept on fighting battles, his rival Philippe Auguste suddenly hurried back to France, claiming a mysterious illness. In a spectacularly treacherous move, he took advantage of his rival's absence to launch an offensive to capture Normandy. Once back from his crusade, Richard the Lionheart sought vengeance. The war started again. But after four years of fierce combat, pressure from the church forced them to make a new truce. On the 15th of January 1196, they signed a peace agreement, the Treaty of Gaillon. Philippe Auguste held on to a part of his Norman conquests, the strongholds of Nant-en-Cours, Ivry, Neu-Marché, Passy, Vernon, and Gaillon. In exchange, Richard the Lionheart was given the Berry-Aquitaine region and other fortified sites. At first sight, it was Philippe Auguste who emerged the winner from this compromise. He'd managed to extend his realm to the west. But the King of England backed off. This semblance of peace enabled him to gain some time. Time he needed to build his most redoubtable weapon, Chateau Gaillon. For if he wished to protect his territory, he had imperatively to bar to the French the route to the Seine and to the sea. The site of Les Andelits seemed the perfect place to build his new fortress. We know of one instance where he clearly directs that a castle be built in a particular place because he understood that it was very strong. And I think we can certainly imagine Richard I going along and saying, I want a castle there. It overlooks a bend in the Seine that's dominated by cliffs. And there are little islands in the middle of the river. So it's a site that's easy to fortify. There are valleys enclosing it, and it commands the whole landscape for miles around. You can see for miles around there's the river directly below you. So much of the riches of the world at that time are transported by water, water transport, river and sea transport. It does mean that there are focal points, the ports at which he can collect customs and control movable wealth. This bend in the Seine was the perfect place to block Philippe Auguste and his armies. But the exceptional site belonged to the church, and the Treaty of Gaillon stipulated clearly that Les Andelits must remain neutral. For Les Andelits, it shall be thus. Neither Monsignor King of France nor we the English shall reclaim it either fief or property. Les Andelits may not be fortified. But nothing, least of all a treaty, would prevent Richard the Lionheart from building his castle right there. He therefore came to a financial compromise with the church and obtained authorization to build his castle. The trap was closing on the French. At Chateau Gaillard, the English king could build a defense system on a scale never before seen that extended far beyond the confines of the future castle. Near to Clary, to Tony and on the Ile-aux-Beu, there were outposts to look out for the approaching enemy, slow him down, and above all alert the men stationed at Chateau Gaillard. On the riverbed at the approach to Les Andelits, Richard erected a stockade, three rows of wooden posts joined together by heavy chain. Across the river there was a stockade built across to stop the ships coming down, so it's to regulate ships coming down the Seine. The real fortification work began on the island. Richard the Lionheart made his residence there, the Chateau de l'Ile. He built a bridge over the Seine that linked on one side the peninsula of Bernières and on the other a small fortified agglomeration called La Culture. Still to be built was the centerpiece of this impressive defense system, Chateau Gaillard itself. All eyes were now turned to the limestone cliff that loomed over the Seine. It looked like the ideal place to build the most redoubtable fortress of its day. It was probably totally virgin land that they prepared to build the castle on. First they leveled it, then they dug ditches all around it. There was also work done to make the cliff even steeper by removing any outcrops of fallen rocks. And they would build a castle of absolutely astonishing proportions. Richard the Lionheart envisaged a powerful looking fortress of enormous dimensions. Well, these buildings are vastly expensive to construct. Such vast military work swallowed up much of the Kingdom of England's wealth. Richard the Lionheart needed his people's support if he was to finance his gigantic enterprise, so he increased both customs duties and taxes. You need to get together huge workforces. There are skilled laborers and there are rough laborers. You can get your rough laborers anywhere, but your skilled workforce needs to be brought in in numbers from other places. Estimates reckon it costs something like £12,000, whereas for the whole of Richard's reign, on all the castles under his rule, he spent a total of £7,000. So that opposed to £12,000 on one castle. It's proof that he has power, because that doesn't happen if you don't have money and the authority to force people to work for you. Constructing an enclosure like this wasn't easy, especially since Richard was determined it should be built with lightning speed. So thousands of craftsmen, volunteers or pressed into service, flooded in from all over the Kingdom. An army of engineers, stonemasons, carpenters, smiths, hot carriers, water carriers, all these craftsmen and laborers. A small town was needed of laborers to build it in such a short time of two years, so it had to be a concentrated force. I think about 6,000 people were involved in the construction, and of course it needed that many people to achieve this work so quickly. The castle was built so quickly that there wasn't time for the mortar to dry. So as they raised all the masonry, the walls all collapsed slightly in on themselves, and that gave them their characteristic bulges. Nothing actually fell down, but it shows how quickly they were working. A normal castle of that size would take decades to build, I'm talking about 20 or 30 years, and he really drove his men very hard, I think. At Château Gaillard, they were achieving the impossible. Day and night, shifts of workers were extracting the chalk and dressing it into blocks. In just a few months, they shifted almost 5,000 tons of stone. People were almost worked to death, one gets the impression. There's a wonderful account by an English chronicler. He said that they were worked so hard that one day there was a shower of blood descending on them, and the whole thing seemed diabolical. It was unnatural that they should be worked so hard. The site was a veritable anthill. There were thousands of workers involved in building Château Gaillard, constructing more and more obstacles and ramparts to render the fortress impenetrable. To supply water to the garrison, each area of the fortress had its own well. Water would be essential if there were to be a siege, so each well had to be at least 400 feet deep to reach the water table. On site were several cranes or squirrel cages. With their very strong legs, the workers could drag around loads of up to a ton. An ingenious scaffolding system covered the ramparts, and up its ramps, the blocks of stone were all pushed by hand. In the middle of the fortress, the 25-foot-in-diameter and 60-foot-high keep was the structure's centerpiece, and the last rampart against invaders. At 650 feet long, 260 feet wide, and more than 300 feet above the Seine, it was a work of pharaonic proportions. As the workers and craftsmen redoubled their efforts to complete the construction of Château de Gaillon, Richard the Lionheart and Philippe Auguste continued to invade and pillage each other's territory. In the middle of this endless conflict, Philippe Auguste came several times to inspect his troops at the Château de Gaillon, just some 10 kilometers from Les Andelies. He watched from there as his enemy's fortress rose up from the landscape. It was quite a provocation. From the Château de Gaillon, Philippe Auguste could see the site at Les Andelies starting to be fortified. All of this is being done within a few kilometers of Philippe. It's a massive challenge, and as a challenge, it is saying, I am coming to get you. Possibly even more important than its military or its domestic function is its symbolic function. It stands above the river on that magnificent outcrop of rock, and it tells everybody that this is a possession of Richard I, and he's grand enough to build it. So I think it's an emblematic building before it's anything else at all. This outstanding creation might well imperil all the King of France's plans of conquest, especially since it was rumored to be impregnable. To anyone who approached it, it wasn't just impressive, it was a challenge. Even its name would make the enemy shudder. Richard the Builder called it his fair castle of the rock, but we read in contemporary chronicles people referring to it as Château de Gaillon, and of course that word is very potent. It means strong or tough, but also saucy. The word Gaillon can mean exuberant, but in Latin it means proud in the sense of insolent. It's a word you'd use about an animal that growls at you when you approach it, one that bristles and let you know that you shouldn't get any nearer. You get the impression that Château Gaillon is saying, come and get me, just try. Philippe Auguste had been warned. He had to reckon with a stone monster that was equipped with all the latest architectural innovations. Château Gaillon was conceived as a means of military defense capable of countering any assault and resisting for long months any invader. For if he wished to protect his territory he had imperatively, the triangular forward section has five towers and is surrounded by an impressive moat that's almost 40 feet deep. This end of the castle faces out over the plateau behind and provides surveillance over it. The ward was guarded by a gatehouse and a drawbridge. It was home to the stables and the storerooms. The third or inner ward houses the keep. This was the ultimate refuge in the event of an attack. It was also the residence of the castle's commander. The castle's three wards are one inside the other like a Russian door. Château Gaillon is like an onion. It has all these layers of fortification and everything closes down on the tower itself. Each one is independently fortified but they're also integrated so the one can defend the one in front of it. So it's very advanced and hugely costly because it's the most modern technology applied to castle building at the time. Richard the Lionheart's chosen site presented a considerable advantage. The plateau behind it is the only possible access. The enemy could come from nowhere else. It's turned in an obsessional way towards the plateau and what shows that obsession is that right on top of the forward section there's a tower that astonished people at the time with how tall and strong it was. It was enormous. We can get an idea of it now but it would have been even bigger at the time and it looked out over the plateau. This impressively dimensioned tower considerably reinforced this part of the castle and inside the ward itself were many innovations. Back in the 12th century the 19 rounded walls all around the keep were something totally new. They made it harder for enemy projectiles to harm it and from the arrow slits these scalloped walls left the archers with absolutely no blind spots. Behind that wall stands a keep with buttresses in the shape of inverted pyramids called machicolations. Previously castles in order to defend them used to have wooden galleries built at the top of the walls from which you could conceal yourself and shoot off your arrows and throw missiles. In the holy land they were starting to build these out of stone so they were an integral part of the structure and at Gaia we see the first machicolations in Europe and Western Europe. But at the time castle design was advancing very rapidly because the artillery designed to attack castles was also advancing very rapidly so as the weapons got better castle design got better. They had to use the very latest techniques to build these scalloped ramparts and stone machicolations. The resolutely modern Chateau Gaia was unlike any other fortress of its day. It was a masterpiece of medieval military architecture that drew on many different inspirations and it's definitely to Richard the Lionheart that we owe it all. He was present on the construction site several times and the theory is that he was actually the main architect of his own fortress. We have very detailed accounts of the building of the castle, every penny that was spent on it and all the people who employed the masons, the hod carriers, the diggers, the soldiers to guard the work and so forth. Great detail it's all recorded in but there's no mention of a master mason and it's given rise to the theory that actually Richard himself was the architect of this building and I think that's a very credible view. After two years of building work, Chateau Gaia was finally finished. It was the pride of both England and its king. Philip Auguste had better watch out. So Richard the Lionheart was saying that it was impregnable. Philip Auguste was saying that even if it was made of iron he'd take it. So Richard replied that even if it was made of butter he could still defend it and all that makes sense when you see how amazing this castle really was. Richard was delighted with the result. He wanted to be nowhere else. He wanted to live there as he did for most of the rest of his life, short life, and he used to sign his letters there proudly and he would say behold this fair year old daughter of mine. He treated it almost as a child and for a childless man you can see how he'd thrown all his passion into this building. But Richard the Lionheart would never see his masterpiece in all its glory. Richard of course was addicted to fighting and he'd gone down to the limousine to to deal with some recalcitrant nobles of his and he'd come up to the Chateau of which was just a little tower, a pathetic little castle really by his standards. And a crossbow bolt hit him in the shoulder and then gangrene set in and from that he died. But great news for the French and the French chronicler says God has visited us in our kingdom today because Richard is dead and there was general rejoicing. Richard the Lionheart's death was a disaster for Chateau Gaillard. For Philippe Auguste, it was a major obstacle out of his way. On the 27th of May 1199, King John, known as John Lackland, was crowned King of England. As the younger of the brothers, John was not expected to take the throne. Unlike his brothers, he inherited no lands at birth, hence his name John Lackland. John was a really despicable figure. He was made himself very unpopular, very carelessly. John didn't have the the mind or the tenacity of a medieval general. He behaved very very badly without any sense of the chivalry and the principle that his brother displayed. The new King of England took possession of the fortress at Les Andelies. Contrary to his late brother, for whom Chateau Gaillard was a military installation, John Lackland saw it as the potential royal residence. A fervent and practicing man of faith, he had constructed within the inner ward an imposing chapel. It was quite normal in a castle of this dimension to have a chapel. It's just that it looks like an external element brought into the castle to act as a chapel. It might appear to be just an embellishment, but this place of worship was to play a determining role in the fortress's fate. On the French side, Philippe Auguste took advantage of the change of king to press ahead with his conquest of Normandy. He assembled his best knights and thousands of soldiers, and he set off to attack Chateau Gaillard. He took up the challenge, and it was quite a challenge. He started by taking the forts at Muray de Clary, Mortemer, Blanchon, and Lyon-la-Forêt, all of which could back up Chateau Gaillard in resisting his forces. He cleared some space around the castle to leave it a kind of no-man's-land before attacking the symbol of the castle itself. The French troops advanced towards Chateau Gaillard was rapid. They broke through the line of defense between Bernières-sur-Seine and Tourny and attempted a first attack by the island. In response, the English burned the bridge. This left the French no choice but to attack from the river. They can't get too far down because of the blockade across, so they're approaching from land, but there are some very, very dramatic and heroic events that take place in the river. It's like a blockbuster movie. They had combat swimmers with axes sent out to destroy the boom. Then they sent burning coals or some inflammable liquid in a sealed cauldron that they swam out to the fortifications and palisades around the castle on the island and set fire to them. And that started a general panic. The English, caught between the flames and the water, fled the island. The panicked inhabitants of the village sought refuge in the castle. So the people of Les Andelies came to hide in the castle, which was strange because the castle wasn't built to shelter the villagers. If this was supposed to be a defense built to block the enemy, a purely military installation, then the villagers had no place there. The more people there were inside, the quicker the food and supplies would run out. In the space of a few days, Philippe Auguste and his men had brought down the first defenses Richard the Lionheart had set up. The French were now in possession of the Seine, the island and the village. Then the invading forces will then put their own people in the towns, basically colonizing them. So the Normans are kicked out and the French take over their homes. It's one of the spoils of war. Within months, and with very little difficulty, the French troops had taken the whole area of Les Andelies. Now in the fortress, there were 1,500 villagers and 500 soldiers, left polishing their arms and with no intention of surrendering. All around the fortress, Philippe Auguste and his army set up encampments. Their lines of attack and defense were like a whole small town. In addition to the 3,000 French troops, carpenters, blacksmiths, cooks and various administrative staff all settled in around the castle, all of them under the command of the king's army. Knights, squires, pages, infantry and of course military strategists all shared a common objective, to wear down the defenders of Château Gaillard. The siege could now begin. Would Richard the Lionheart's fortress prove as impregnable as they all said? There were only a few ways of taking a castle. You could take them by storm, and when a castle was as well designed and well built and as strong as Château Gaillard, that was an option you wanted to reserve for when you absolutely had to. But much the easiest way of taking a castle is by starving it, or by somehow demoralizing the garrison. To weaken the garrison and the population hiding away inside, the French king decided to set up a proper blockade. He encircled the castle to stop anyone getting either in or out. The idea is that it's impossible for any food to get in, for anyone to get out with messages and so forth, so the people inside will be completely isolated. When you get sieges on this scale, they are very unusual and they're quite different from the kinds of sieges that you normally read about. All around the fortress, Philippe-Auguste set up two lines of defense made up of palisades, ditches, and wooden towers called ratèches. One of these lines was a kind of barricade, a contra-vallation, that faced the castle, thus preventing anyone from getting out. On the other side, another barricade, or circumvallation, blocked any reinforcements coming over the plateau. These two unbreachable lines cut off all communication with the outside. As soon as they were installed, soldiers and craftsmen started building between them siege engines, such as the famous belfries, movable wooden tower. They had the idea of building towers on the walkway, to be higher than the defenders on the walls, so they could fire down at them. A belfry was a veritable rolling fortress. At the top was a shooting platform with 10 archers. The lower stories were to fight off any foot soldiers who dared to attack it. Animal skins stretched over its sides, protecting the structure from flaming arrows. For both those under siege and those besieging them, the archers were an essential element of an army. They could shoot up to 10 arrows a minute. But to attack a fortress, you needed more than just arrows. High up on the plateau, another weapon was already in place, the mangonel. There's a whole category of machines built on the idea of a pole of two unequal lengths, with at one end a sling that launches the shot, and at the other, shorter end, the launching mechanism. This siege aimed to exhaust the castle's garrison not only physically, but psychologically as well. The majority of the attacking forces had to remain immobile behind their lines, but small groups of soldiers were regularly sent out to harass the enemy. Up on their fortifications, though, the English had a weapon that could drive them back, the bricole. Towed by the strongest men, it could fire off very heavy stones over 50 yards, a weapon of redoubtable efficiency against those brave enough to get within its range. From within the fortress, the man calling the shots was its governor, Roger de Lacy. It was him that John Lackland put in command of navigation on the Seine, and then, in 1203, of the castle itself. And he did a good job. He was a steadfast captain, and very popular, and admired on both the French and English sides for his great bravery. Chateau Gaillard may have stood up well to the initial attacks, but Roger de Lacy knew full well that the coming siege would be a long and difficult one. Throughout the whole siege, the archers were at work both night and day. Rather than aiming at enemy troops in tight formation, they targeted areas of the enemy camp in order to set fire. But despite his efficient defense, by the end of a few weeks under siege, the governor was starting to get worried. In theory, they should have withstood the siege for at least a year. They had plenty of supplies. But the first mistake that Roger made, and I'm sure he would have come to regret it very quickly, was to let in these civilians from Les Indes. And we're talking about over 2,000 people, so men, women, children, the elderly, all of whom were absolutely useless in the defense of the castle. And there they were, hungry mouths, rapidly devouring all the supplies that he'd so carefully laid in. Things were getting urgent, so Roger de Lacy started to ration the food. He also sent to his king, John Lackland, for help. We know that John sent a message to the commander, Roger de Lacy, at one point. And this message survives. It just says, thank you for all you've done, and please hold on as long as possible. Roger de Lacy knew now that no army would come to his aid. He had to act alone. So he took a terrible decision to expel some of the villagers, to, in effect, sacrifice them. It was the only way he could withstand the siege any longer. So a first group was sent out, and Philippe-Auguste's men let them pass. Then a second group, and they let them through as well. Meanwhile, word of this had been sent to Philippe, who'd gone off back to France to oversee some other matter, and he was furious. He said, it's ridiculous, you want to keep them in there because they are shortening the siege by eating up all the supplies, and you are not to let anyone out, whoever they are, men, women, elderly, I don't care. A few weeks later, a new wave of women, children, and the elderly was turned out of the castle. But this time, they were unceremoniously attacked by the French. French shoot arrows and javelins and the like at them, and force them back to the castle. But at the castle, they've closed the gates to the people, and they have to spend three months over winter on the rocky, scarp slope of the castle, exposed to the elements, the cold, and without food. Caught between the two camps, the unfortunate villagers soon died of hunger and cold. Acts of cannibalism even took place. This episode in the siege of Chateau Gaillard is one of the most tragic of the whole Middle Ages. There were just too many mouths to feed. Guillaume Le Breton wrote that the poor people were so starving that when a woman gave birth, the men immediately ate the baby. But when a chicken got out of the castle, they ate it all, feathers, guts, and all. Well, they've been abandoned. They thought they were to be protected by the castellan, and by their king, and they're not. Instead, they're cast out. But this wasn't uncommon in warfare, because the juggernaut of war overrides all other priorities. Down there in the ditches, the starving took weeks to die. When winter was over, Philippe Auguste went back out on the battlefield. He alone would assess the situation. He rode over the ditch and saw what was going on, and they saw him, and they were pleading and begging with him for pity and mercy. And of course he responded, and he took them in and fed them. Apparently many of them died on their first meal. It was rather like the starving from the concentration camps. They were so hungry, they poured food into them, and it killed them. And so very few people survived from all that. The siege of Chateau Gaillard was one of the longest of the Middle Ages. It lasted seven months. By March 1204, the English were fiercely protecting their fortress. Philippe Auguste's patience had run out. He attacked. The castle's unique defenses were going to have to prove their worth. From the overlooking plateau, Philippe Auguste himself directed the field. After seven months of siege, he reckoned the moment to attack had come. The English were weakened. They shouldn't offer much resistance. Surrounded by his best knights, Philippe launched his assault on the supposedly impregnable fortress. The king of France was eager to get it over with. As expected, he launched his attack from the famous plateau that they'd tried so hard to seal off, probably in vain. That's where he set up his base to attack the castle. So here we are at the exact point where Philippe Auguste launched his first attack on the castle. He started on the high ground, on the edge of the plateau, where he'd installed his siege engines that rained down projectiles on the castle. And from the top of the plateau, his men had dug a very deep trench that sheltered them from the defenders' projectiles, and that ran right up to the side of the ditch. And they tried to fill the ditch with earth, with sticks, with anything that leveled it out, a bit so they wouldn't waste time getting to the foot of the tower up there on the forward keep. But then they had to get inside. And the French had prepared the ground for that. The encircling ditch had been filled in. Then a wooden structure built that would shelter them from arrows as they advanced. Then it was time for the sappers to take over. Their mission was to create breaches in the wall. They started by finding blocks of stone at the foot of the tower that they could remove to dig a tunnel, which they propped up as they went with wooden beams. Then they packed it with a mixture of hay, straw, and oil. They set fire to the beams and got out as quick as they could. When you undermine a wall like that, if you get it right, once the wall's no longer supported by beams, it caves in. And that's when you attack. Once they were into the forward keep, it was chaos. Ferocious hand-to-hand combat broke out between the two sides. The French had the upper hand, and most of the English troops were hiding back in the courtyard. It must have been a very demoralizing moment for the garrison. They realized they would have to retreat into the inner bailey. And apparently they set fire to all the buildings, lots of wooden buildings, stables, and so forth. They set fire to all of them and retreated. And as the smoke cleared, they could clearly see the enemy flag flying above the tower beyond. The English pulled up the drawbridge to keep the French out and sought refuge in the second ward. So the French now held the forward keep, but the main challenge still lay ahead. Having taken the outermost bailey, the French were faced with an even more daunting obstacle, because across this great chasm were these strong walls with their round towers of the inner bailey. And it was a great puzzle as to how they were going to breach this next obstacle. Attacking now became much more difficult. They didn't have the advantage of the plateau anymore. Now they were faced with fortifications that were a bit stronger, but which, one way or another, they still had to take. The Russian doll-style construction had proved its worth. Philippe-Auguste's troops were once more stuck in front of this second enclosure, defended by a deep, wide ditch. Now they had to come up with a fresh strategy if they wanted to get through quickly to the heart of the fortress, into the area Richard the Lionheart had once thought invulnerable. But they spotted that Richard's castle did in fact have a weak point alongside the curtain wall of the inner ward. That weak point was the chapel that John Lackland had added on. It wasn't part of the fortress Richard the Lionheart had envisaged. And to bring light into this chapel, John had pierced through the ramparts to create two rows of windows. A serious mistake. And a real boon for the French. The chronicle of Guillaume le Breton is very clear on this point. The French soldiers got to the foot of the wall, and by climbing on each other's shoulders, they reached the bottom of the little windows to the cellar. When the first one got up, he pulled the others up after him. They looked for a way out of the room and found a closed door, so they tried to break it down. But of course it created a terrible racket and noise, which had alerted the garrison inside, who thought, well, the French have got in somehow. And they'd done exactly what they'd done when the outer bailey was taken. They'd set fire to all the wooden buildings. And when the flames died down, they forced their way to the drawbridge and cut the ropes to let it down, so Philippe Auguste's army could get into the courtyard. The English took refuge in the keep. The French poured into the courtyard. Philippe Auguste was now in control of two-thirds of Château Gaillard. On either side of those scalloped walls, they were now preparing for the final assault. Roger de Lacy and a hundred of his men were caught in their own trap. And Philippe Auguste was delighted. But he still had to penetrate the last of the ward. At the time, the citadel was linked to the courtyard by a fixed bridge, carved into the rock, which of course is very unwise as a defense. Unwise because the English couldn't destroy the bridge to cut themselves off from the enemy, and above all because it offered protection to the French sappers as they dug a new tunnel to bring down the base of the wall. And at the same time, they brought a siege engine up in front of the door and bombarded it. And on I think it was the third shot, a section of the wall gave in. So they clambered over the shattered stones and got into the inner courtyard. And that was it. The French were in. And the hand-to-hand combat began. Roger de Lacy tried to regroup his men in the keep, but they were surrounded on all sides, and most likely too scattered. 36 knights, 117 sergeants, and Roger de Lacy himself, all surrendered to Philippe Auguste. The French had won. There wasn't too much loss of life in the final combat, but there was still this idea that you shouldn't kill a knight because he'd lose all his value. So there were a lot of prisoners taken, and it was a thoroughly honorable surrender. De Lacy was treated very well. It was all very courtly. French poured in, and the defenders fought with incredible courage and tenacity, and eventually were completely surrounded and disarmed. They'd served with the greatest honor and dignity, and were taken honorably prisoner. Chateau Gaillard had fallen. After seven months of siege, the French had accomplished the impossible and taken the most redoubtable fortress of its day. With the fall of Chateau Gaillard, Philippe Auguste was free to invade the whole of Normandy. Rouen fell to the King of France in 1204. The fall of Chateau Gaillard helps to make Philippe's new position immensely stronger than it had been ever before. During the reign of Philippe Auguste, the royal domain expanded considerably. At his death in 1224, France now stretched all the way to the Normandy coast. The lands of his English rival were greatly reduced. Throughout the coming century, Chateau Gaillard would again see armed combat in other major conflicts. These days, only remnants of the powerful fortress still stand. A few walls, a scalloped enclosure, and a keep that still dominates one of the most beautiful loops of Chateau Gaillard is the supreme example of Richard's work during his lifetime. It's very evocative. It still has the power and the grandeur to impress and one can imagine once one goes there, one needs to go there to see the dominance of the landscape. If we want to feel his effect on this world, then Chateau Gaillard is the place to visit today. For more than 800 years, two ghosts have haunted Chateau Gaillard. Its builder, Richard the Lionheart, and its conqueror, Philippe Auguste. The castle is a double symbol of both the wealth and power of the Kingdom of England and the emancipation of the Kingdom of France. Since the 19th century, the site of Chateau Gaillard has been listed as an historical monument. There, in the heart of Normandy, it continues to amaze and to remind all that come here of the great moments of the history we share.