Top 10 Strangest Medieval War Tactics

Battle of Fimreite (June 15th, 1184)
The Norwegian crown was perpetually up for grabs in the 1100s. Multiple men claimed the throne with constant infighting and war. In 1184, King Magnus Erlingsson - who himself took power in a coup - was slain at the Battle of Fimreite. Magnus had a fleet of 26 ships outnumbering his rival Sverre Sigurdsson two-to-one. That advantage was meaningless, though, since Magnus lashed most of his ships together. Sigurdsson attacked the small outlying vessels first. With them out of the way, he attacked the far end of the connected fleet. As one ship fell, the survivors moved to the next. By the time they reached the king’s ship, the combined weight of all the crews sank it and drowned the king.

Battle of Brémule (August 20th, 1119)
One common misconception about medieval warfare is the volume of killing. Usually, the goal was actually to capture as many enemy nobles as possible. The ransom of a wealthy noble could set up the captor’s family for life. That was taken to the extreme at the Battle of Brémule. Louis the Fat of France invaded Normandy to take the holdings of Henry I of England. Each side had a large contingent of knights. Blinded by greed and the prospect of large ransoms, nobody tried to land any killing blows. At the end of the battle, only three Englishmen were reported killed and 140 Frenchmen were captured. Brémule was as much a LARP as it was a battle.

Battle of Lake Peipus (April 5th, 1242)
Tales about 800-year-old battles can differ depending on who tells them. There are multiple versions of the Battle of Lake Peipus. Some say it ended in mass drownings, though most historians disagree. Everyone agrees on one thing: they call it the Battle on the Ice. A large force of Teutonic Knights was sent by the Pope against the Novgorod Republic. Prince Alexander of Novgorod was a crafty foe. Faking a retreat, he lured the overconfident Crusader Knights onto the surface of a frozen lake. In their heavy armor, the Crusaders and their Estonian allies were quickly exhausted trying to fight on the slippery surface. After an hour or two of fighting, Alexander’s reserve forces charged and routed them.

Siege of Weinsberg (1140)
The Siege of Weinsberg was part of an internal dispute between two noble houses in the Holy Roman Empire. Determined not to repeat the errors of an earlier battle, King Conrad III dealt brutally with the city of Weinsberg. After nearly starving out the inhabitants, the city was forced to surrender. Conrad wished to make an example of Weinsberg and kill everyone who stood against him. The men of the city begged him to allow their wives and the women to escape. Conrad agreed to allow the women to walk away with whatever they could carry. To his shock, the women emerged from the gates carrying the men! Amused by their cunning, he allowed them all to walk free.

Battle of the Helgeå (c. 1025-1026)
No century in the Middle Ages would be complete without a war in Northern Europe. This battle pitted England and Denmark against Sweden and Norway. Given the geography involved, the conflict would be settled by naval warfare. With their navies outnumbered, the kings of Sweden and Norway relied on their wits. First, they dammed up the Helgeå river. When the combined navies of Cnut the Great entered, Sweden destroyed the dam. Every ship caught in the deluge that followed was sunk. The Swedes used the opportunity to retreat. Unfortunately, Cnut’s navy was so large, the battle barely registered. He went on to conquer Norway and form the North Sea Empire.

Siege of Castle Eger (1552)
The Ottoman Empire fought many wars against the kingdoms of Eastern Europe. In the mid-16th century, they turned their ire upon Hungary. Fewer than 3,000 Hungarians defended Castle Eger against an army of 40,000 Turks. Over 12,000 cannonballs struck the fortress, but the walls held. The defenders used primitive grenades to hold back the enemy. Eventually, they turned to a new tactic: the Hungarians filled massive barrels with gunpowder and sulfur. After lighting the fuses, they rolled the barrels downhill. The explosions caused significant damage to the attacking army. When they ran out of barrels, the Hungarians filled a giant mill wheel with explosives and shrapnel. After 39 days, the siege was broken and the defenders were victorious.

Siege of Château Gaillard (1203-1204)
King Richard the Lionheart of England needed to defend Normandy. To that end, he built an impregnable fortress at Château Gaillard. The forces of Richard’s successor, John, defended it against the siege of Prince Philip II of France. For months the two forces clashed bitterly. Philip took the outer walls with sappers and siege engines. The inner castle wouldn’t be so easy. But, like the Death Star, the fortress had one small overlooked weakness. Philip sent men to crawl through the castle’s garderobe - also known as the toilet chute. From there, they penetrated the inner bailey and took the castle. The embarrassment at Gaillard helped convince the English barons to rebel against John. This, ultimately, led to the signing of the Magna Carta.

Siege of Rochester (1215)
In the First Barons' War, various nobles rebelled against King John I of England. Their forces captured the castle at Rochester, but didn’t hold it for long. John himself arrived soon after and laid siege. For most of the two months, both sides battled viciously. John bombarded the defenders with siege weapons and assaulted the walls. He also sent a team of sappers to dig under the foundations of the tower. When the tunnel was ready, his men selected forty pigs deemed “too fat to eat.” They forced the pigs into the tunnel and set fire to them. The conflagration undermined the masonry and brought down part of the keep. Eventually, the defenders had to surrender.

Siege of Caffa (1346)
The Black Death began to surge and spread through central Asia in 1331. Carried by fleas and rats, the plague took hold in any and every large settlement it reached. In 1346, it found its first foothold in Europe. After an initial siege of Caffa was broken in 1343, Mongol forces returned to the Crimean city three years later. The Mongol army had a huge problem: they’d brought the plague with them. The troops were quickly decimated by disease. Trying to kill two birds with one stone, the Mongol general engaged in the first known use of biological warfare. He launched plague-ridden corpses into the city. The residents took the plague with them when they escaped by ship, spreading the Black Death to the rest of Europe.

Siege of Chester (c. 907)
You don’t mess around when you’re fighting Vikings. If they attack, you throw everything you have. That’s why the lord and lady of Chester used every trick when the Danes and Norwegians attacked in 907. The Danes were dealt with quickly; they were lured into a trap and killed with hurled stones and wooden beams. The Norwegians wouldn’t be so easily tricked. Instead, when the Vikings attacked the wall, the defenders boiled all the beer in town. They then tipped the cauldrons over the walls and burned the attackers with boiling beer. Though brutal, that didn’t end the attack. What did? The defenders tossed every beehive in the city onto the Viking horde. The bee stings were so severe, the army had to retreat.