The most dramatic siege of the First Barons' War. King John besieged Rochester Castle — held by rebel barons under William d'Albini — for two months. When conventional assault failed, John's engineers mined under the south tower using the fat of forty pigs to fire the props. The tower collapsed, but the garrison retreated to the north tower and held on further until starvation forced surrender. The garrison was spared only because a mercenary commander convinced John that executing them would deter future surrenders.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in Britain — drawing on Domesday records, scheduled monuments, Victorian OS maps, geological data and archaeological archives to tell the full story of a place.
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