Roger de Lacy, defied the utmost efforts of
Philip for six successive months.--So great was its size; that more than
two thousand two hundred persons, who did not form a part of the
garrison, were known to quit the fortress in the course of the siege,
compelled to throw themselves upon the mercy of the besiegers. But they
found none; and the greater part of these unfortunate wretches,
alternately suppliants to either host, perished from hunger, or from the
weapons of the contending parties. At length the fortress yielded to a
sudden assault. Of the warriors, to whose valor it had been entrusted,
only thirty-six remained alive. John, ill requiting their fidelity, had
already abandoned them to their fate.

Margaret of Burgundy, the queen of Louis Xth, and Blanche, the consort
of his brother, Charles le Bel, were both immured in Chateau Gaillard,
in 1314. The scandalous chronicle of those times will explain the causes
of their imprisonment. Margaret was strangled by order of her husband.
Blanche, after seven years' captivity, was transferred to the convent of
Maubuisson, near Pontoise, where she continued a recluse till her
death--In 1331, David Bruce, compelled to flee from the superior power
of the third Edward, found an asylum in Chateau Gaillard; and here, for
a time, maintained the pageantry of a court.--Twenty-four years
subsequently, when Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, was sent as a
captive from Rouen to Paris, he was confined here, during one night, by
order of the dauphin, who had made him his prisoner by treachery, whilst
partaking of a banquet.--In the following century Chateau Gaillard
braved the victorious arms of Henry Vth; nor was it taken till after a
siege of sixteen months. The garrison only consisted of one hundred and
twenty men; yet this scanty troop would not have yielded, had not the
ropes, by which they drew up their water-buckets[31], been worn out and
destroyed.--During the same reign, it was again taken and lost by the
French, into whose hands it finally fell in 1449, when Charles VIIth
commanded the siege in person. Even then, however it stood a long siege;
and it was almost the last of the strong-holds of Normandy, which held
out for the successors of the ancient dukes. After the re-union of the
duchy, it was not destroyed, or suffered to fall into decay, like the
greater number of the Norman fortresses: during the religious wars, it
still continued to be a formidable military post, as well