By Richard’s contemporaries the siege of Taillebourg was looked upon as “a most desperate enterprize, which none of his predecessors had ever ventured to attempt. Never before had a hostile force so much as looked upon the castle.” It seems indeed to have been not merely a castle but a strongly fortified, though small, town, the castle proper—perched on the summit of a rock of which three sides were inaccessible by nature and the fourth was defended by art—forming the citadel. “Girt with a triple ditch; defying from behind a triple wall every external authority; amply secured with weapons, bolts, and bars; crowned with towers placed at regular intervals; furnished with a handy stone laid ready for casting from every loop-hole; well stocked with victuals; filled with a thousand men ready for fight,” this virgin fortress “was in no wise affrighted” at the duke’s approach. Richard, however, had made up his mind to “subdue the pride of Geoffrey of Rancogne once for all.” He had collected auxiliaries from every quarter; and he set them all to work as soon as the host reached Geoffrey’s border. “He carried off the wealth of the farms; he cut down the vines; he fired the villages; whatever was left he pulled down and laid waste; and then he pitched his tents on the outskirts of the castle close to the walls, to the great alarm of the townsfolk, who had expected nothing of the kind.” At the end of a week (May 1-8), “deeming it a disgrace that so many high-spirited and well-proved knights should tamely submit to be shut up within the walls, they agreed to sally forth and fall upon the duke’s host at unawares. But the duke bade his men fly to arms, and forced the townsmen to retire. The mettle of horses, the worth of spears, swords, helmets, bows, arbalests, shields, mailcoats, stakes, clubs, were all put to proof in the stubborn fight that raged at the gates, till the townsmen could no longer withstand the fierce onslaught of the duke’s van headed by the duke himself. As they retired helter-skelter within the walls, he by a sudden dash made his way with them into the town. The citadel now became their only refuge from their assailants, who rushed about the streets plundering and burning at their will.” Two days later—on Ascension Day, May 10—the castle was surrendered, seemingly by Geoffrey in person; and in a few days more the whole of its walls were levelled with the ground.[104]