What Not to Do in a Medieval Siege: A Discussion of Game of Thrones, “The Long Night”

By: Katlyn MW Rozovics, Doctoral Student, University of Arkansas

Featured image: Screen shot from HBO’s Game of Thrones¹

“Militarily speaking, their poor planning should have spelled defeat for the living in the Seven Kingdoms”

The television series Game of Thrones was one of the hottest shows in recent memory. The show followed George R.R. Martin’s popular fantasy book series, A Song of Fire and Ice. For most viewers, the final season was tremendously disappointing. As a historian, one of the hardest episodes to watch was “The Long Night,”  which featured the climax of the battle between the Night King and his army of the dead, and the humans of the Seven Kingdoms. The previous seven seasons built up to this potentially apocalyptic moment. The Night King can cause an eternal night and ultimately add all of humanity into his army of zombies. The Battle of Winterfell was a battle for the survival of all of Westeros, making it rather crucial for the living to come out victorious. The odds were not in favor of the living, as the Night King’s army was a limitless hoard, and the army of the living was indeed quite limited. The living did not help their odds either, failing to formulate a winning strategy. Militarily speaking, their poor planning should have spelled defeat for the living in the Seven Kingdoms.² 

The ragtag army of the living had leaders with impressive resumes. Daenerys Targaryen took Slaver’s Bay in previous seasons, which included three heavily fortified cities with considerably more soldiers than she had under her command. Jamie Lannister, the Kingslayer, led the Lannister Army in their ultimately victorious assaults on Riverrun and Highgarden, which entailed winning sieges from their disadvantaged offensive standpoint. Tyrion Lannister orchestrated the defense of King’s Landing during the Battle of the Blackwater with minimal time and a lack of soldiers. Tyrion’s participation in the Battle of the Blackwater made him one of the few leaders who defended a city, rather than attacked it. Jon Snow and (mostly) Sansa Stark won back Winterfell during the Battle of the Bastards, with fewer soldiers (at least at the beginning). 

Despite the combined military experience and victories of these leaders, the choices they made in the Battle of Winterfell were tactically incorrect for a medieval siege. The most egregious mistakes these commanders made included abandoning the castle walls to fight in the field and placing the Dothraki light cavalry in the vanguard (front line). This article analyzes these unorthodox and nonsensical choices and how they stack up to medieval European military tactics that probably should have been employed instead.

“There are no medieval battles I can think of, no sieges in which the defenders willingly stepped out and fought a battle on the grounds before their walls.”

michael Livingston

The first mistake the supposed dream team of Westerosi combat heroes and commanders made was for the defenders of Winterfell to leave the walls of the castle and fight in the field. Michael Livingston, a professor of medieval history at the Citadel Military College was asked about this battle and responded, “There are no medieval battles I can think of, no sieges in which the defenders willingly stepped out and fought a battle on the grounds before their walls.”³ While Livingston acknowledged the problematic nature of the siege, he did not explain what was tactically standard for a medieval siege like the one featured in “The Long Night” episode of Game of Thrones. 

Castles up until the 18^th century were defensive fortresses, not the romantic, luxurious palaces frequently seen in Disney princess films. Castles were meant to be defensive structures that gave defenders a protective barrier from the enemy’s siege engines, melee attacks, and cavalry charges. Defenders could strike enemies without being hit themselves, primarily through the use of bows. Ramparts, a common feature of medieval European castles, had high walls that gave defending archers cover to shoot from, whereas attackers were left unprotected from incoming arrows, rocks, and spears in the open. Castle walls were a great advantage for defenders in medieval Europe, but the defenders of Winterfell did not capitalize on that advantage. For example, the dead were always seen with melee weapons like swords and axes, but never range weapons like bows. Therefore, they could not kill defenders until they were within sword reach. If the defenders had kept to the castle, which was a standard practice in medieval sieges, they could have thinned the ranks of the Army of the Dead without any losses on their side. This defensive approach could have been achieved with bows, as well as other defenses like ballistae, or hot oil. Oil and other heated substances like animal fat were common castle defenses in the Middle Ages.⁴ Oil was reportedly used at the Siege of Orléans in 1428-1429, where French defenders repelled various English assaults, and ultimately won the siege.⁵ The various hot liquids defenders had available were poured through “murder holes” onto attackers.⁶ These were small holes built into the ceiling of cramped areas, such as near the castle gate.⁷ If the defenders of Winterfell used oil, they could have easily lit it on fire to take advantage of one of the major weaknesses of the dead: their corpses could not handle flames. 

Murder holes were built above gates because they were one of two places mainly attacked in a siege, the other being the walls. This can be seen in the episode when the Night King’s army swarms the walls in a style that is reminiscent of World War Z. For human forces, breaching the walls of a castle required siege towers, ladders, or prolonged attacks with siege engines, like catapults.⁸ When enemies attacked the wall, castle defenders shot approaching soldiers with arrows or stabbed them with polearms (spears, halberds, or poleaxes), dropped rocks on those who reached the wall’s base, or shoved ladders over.⁹ Winterfell’s defenders could have defended their walls by using these tactics, but they did not. Upon the defender’s disastrous retreat into the castle, a few men defended the rampart with melee weapons while the rest of the soldiers defended the courtyard without any clear sense of purpose or organization. In a real medieval European battle, the siege would have been lost at that point due to the fact defenders, who are typically outnumbered by attacking forces, would have been trapped inside their own walls without the numbers to withstand a battle.

Due to all of the major tactical errors in the Battle of Winterfell, the only counterattack the living could have hoped to launch would have been a cavalry strike, and the esteemed leadership of the living had already spent that trump card in a baffling manner. Historically, a light cavalry, comparable to the Dothraki, mainly focused on scouting or fighting in support of the infantry.¹¹ Instead, the Dothraki cavalry were placed on the front line and used in an offensive charge, which never should have been done due to the fact they were not a heavily armored shock cavalry. The Dothraki riders did not have steel armor and neither did their horses, which made them unfit for prolonged front-line fighting. Their offensive charge was about as effective as a WWI cavalry charge into machine-gun fire and based on the handful of Dothraki that seemed to survive the charge, equally as deadly. 

A castle such as Winterfell would have a sally port, which is a hidden entrance in the walls that allows entrenched defenders to launch offensives without opening the main gates. The Dothraki could have charged from a sally port to help the infantry in the field, and perhaps save the living once the gates fell. When Roman emperor Julius Caesar was besieged at Alesia in Gaul in 52BC, he used his cavalry to charge from the sally port and crashed into the Germans and scattered them. This tactical usage of the light cavalry ultimately allowed the Roman infantry to defeat the Germans.¹²

The charge the Dothraki made in the Battle of Winterfell was much closer to the heavy cavalry charges of the Templar Knights, a maneuver that was far beyond their means. The Templar Knights were famous for their crushing cavalry attacks in the Crusades, at the Battles of Arsuf and Montgisard, which inflicted heavy losses on Saladin’s army.¹⁴ The charge was organized so that tightly packed horses and their riders would crash into the enemy front line at the same time, break through the ranks, and then regroup outside of the enemy ranks for another charge. This tactic was used sparingly because while devastatingly effective, it was tremendously difficult to sync a whole army of men and horses.¹⁵ The Dothraki were not heavy cavalry and did not have the military discipline and training of the Templar Knights because they were not professional soldiers. Additionally, their opponent, the Army of the Dead, was a boundless horde of murder zombies, which meant that the Dothraki would not have had a chance to escape their ranks to regroup after each charge. Even if their initial charge worked and broke through the front lines of the Army of the Dead, the Dothraki ranks would have been broken and individual riders would become surrounded by their foes.

“Without plot armor, defeat would have been imminent”

 The Battle of Winterfell was ultimately a victory for the Army of the Living, despite the considerable number of tactical disasters. Without plot armor, defeat would have been imminent. As seen in the episode, the living struggled to retreat inside and once they did, the gate fell rather quickly. They took heavy losses and were unable to mount any sort of counterattack. Surrender was not an option for the Army of the Living, as the Night King did not take prisoners. The superior numbers of the dead would have slaughtered the remaining survivors and the Night King would have won the battle. In that case, luckily for most viewers, military historians did not write the episode.

Katlyn Rozovics is a second-year History PhD student at the University of Arkansas. Katlyn studies modern Germany, with interests in art restitution and national identity. Outside of academia, Katlyn enjoys TV shows, book series, and games such as Game of Thrones, Castlevania, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Harry Potter, Assassin’s Creed, and Hades.

Read More About Game of Thrones Here

1. Game of Thrones, season 8, episode 3, “The Long Night,” Directed by Miguel Sapochnik, aired April 28, 2019, on HBO. (HBO Entertainment, 2019), https://play.hbomax.com/page/urn:hbo:page:GXI_5Mg893qUKwgEAAABM:type:episode.
2. For those not familiar with the cast, the living army consists of Daenerys Targaryen and her army of the Unsullied and Dothraki, Jon Snow and his friends among the Wildlings and the Night Watch, and friends of the Stark family. These include all the northern houses, along with stray knights Sandor Clegane, Brienne of Tarth, Jamie Lannister, Davos Seaworth, Jorah Mormont and Squire Podrick. Beric and his Brotherhood without Banners is also present.
3. Bailey Moreton, “‘Absolutely a Horrible, Tactical Siege’; Spoiler Alert: The Following Contains Season 8 Details,” Chronicle – Herald, May 1, 2019, https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/absolutely-horrible-tactical-siege-spoiler-alert/docview/2218343727/se-2?accountid=8361.
4. Konstantin Nossov, Ancient and Medieval Siege Weapons, (Spellmount, 2006), 79.
5. Matthew Bennet, Jim Bradbury, Kelly DeVries, Iain Dickie, Phyllis G Jestice, Fighting Techniques of the Medieval World: AD 500-AD 1500, (London: Amber Books, 2005), 248.
6. D. Berryman, “The defensibility of Irish Tower Houses,” The Castle Studies Group Journal, 24, (2011): 264.
7.  Peter Purton, A History of the Late Medieval Siege, 1200-1500, (Boydell Press, 2010), 17
8.  Leif Inge Ree Petersen, Siege Warfare and Military Organization in the Successor States (400-800 AD): Byzantium, the West and Islam, (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 127, 267.
9.  Leif Inge Ree Petersen, Siege Warfare and Military Organization in the Successor States (400-800 AD): Byzantium, the West and Islam, 270.
10. John Sadler and Rosie Serdiville, Caesar’s Greatest Victory: The Battle of Alesia, Gaul 52 BC, (Oxford: Casemate Publishers, 2016), 78.
11.  John Sadler and Rosie Serdiville, Caesar’s Greatest Victory: The Battle of Alesia, Gaul 52 BC, 81.
12. Screen shot from Game of Thrones, season 8, episode 3.
13. Helen Nicholson and David Nichole, God’s Warriors: Knights Templar, Saracens and the battle for Jerusalem, (Osprey Publishing, 2006).
14. Mamuka Tsurtsumia, “Couched Lance and Mounted Shock Combat in the East: The Georgian Experience,” Journal of Medieval Military History, 12, (2014): 7.
15. Game of Thrones, season 8, episode 3, “The Long Night,” Directed by Miguel Sapochnik, aired April 28, 2019, on HBO. (HBO Entertainment, 2019), https://play.hbomax.com/page/urn:hbo:page:GXI_5Mg893qUKwgEAAABM:type:episode.