Changes: Fall of Harrenhal

Revision as of 18:18, 5 April 2013

Template:Conjecture Template:Battle

The Liberation of Harrenhal is a military engagement in the War of the Five Kings.

Prelude

After the Battle of Golden Tooth, Lannister armies quickly conquered all of the Riverlands south of the Red Fork of the Trident. Lady Shella Whent of Harrenhal possessed too few troops to adequately defend the castle, so she simply surrendered to the Lannisters.

However, when Jaime Lannister's army-group was destroyed at the Battle of the Whispering Wood, his father Lord Tywin Lannister decided to retreat the remaining Lannister army-group under his command back to Harrenhal to regroup, while Ser Gregor Clegane led out 500 riders to burn out all of the villages in the Riverlands between the Red Fork and Gods Eye lake, to deprive the Starks of resources if they attempted to follow Tywin's army. For the next year, Tywin used Harrenhal as the main Lannister forward base in the Riverlands, discouraging Robb Stark from attempting to march southeast against the capital city of King's Landing, while at the same time located close enough to King's Landing that Tywin could move to protect the city if the Baratheon brothers (Stannis and Renly) moved against the city first.

Ser Gregor Clegane continued to serve as the castellan of Harrenhal under Tywin, where he and his men needlessly brutalized the smallfolk from the surrounding countryside. Harrenhal became the site of numerous wartime atrocities as Clegane's men rounded up and tortured peasants, sometimes to make them reveal where they'd hidden what few valuables they possessed, but often just torturing and killing them anyway, apparently for the sheer enjoyment of it. One of Clegane's chief torturers, known as "The Tickler", systematically killed entire families, "interrogating" them by sticking a rat in a bucket strapped to a person's abdomen, then heating the bucket with fire to make the rat chew through their guts to escape.

The Crowning of Kings

House Tully held the line of the Red Fork, and managed to liberate some other castes further south such as Stone Hedge, while the rest of the Riverlands between Riverrun on the Red Fork and Harrenhal at Gods Eye become a warzone, with fluid battle lines and raiding parties moving about as minor territories frequently changed hands. Meanwhile, Robb Stark mounted an invasion of the Westerlands, in an attempt to lure Tywin Lannister away from King's Landing. Robb's army won a great victory at the Battle of Oxcross, destroying the hastily assembled new Lanister army-group of raw conscripts, and leaving him free to pillage the northern Westerlands. Unfortunately, despite the fact that his vassals' own lands were suffering, Tywin was smart enough not to take the bait. Instead, Tywin's army marched east just in time to arrive at King's Landing to triumph over Stannis Barathon's attempted invasion in the Battle of the Blackwater. Robb's invasion of the Westerlands had resulted in no long-term strategic gains, and worse, the Lannisters had gained massive reinforcements in their new alliance with House Tyrell.

The Starks recover Harrenhal

Meanwhile, since Oxcross, the Lannisters made no significant attempts to counter Robb Stark's army at all, instead withdrawing ahead of his advances and denying him resources through scorched-earth tactics, trying to wait him out and sap the strength of Robb's army.

With the morale of his army starting to wan, in frustration Robb Stark decided to withdraw from the Westerlands, and challenge the Lannisters head-on, in the hope that another victory would regain lost morale.

However, Robb does not find the decisive victory he was hoping for: Tywin withdrew his garrison to King's Landing to counter the attack by Stannis, and didn't even bother wasting any men on a token defense of the castle. Robb and his forces are further demoralized to find that the Lannisters massacred two hundred Northern and Riverlands prisoners of war before they left, and the courtyards are choked with piles of bodies.

In the books

In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels,

References

@@ Line 41: / Line 41: @@
 ==The Starks recover Harrenhal==
-Meanwhile, since Oxcross, the Lannisters made no significant attempts to counter Robb Stark's army at all, instead withdrawing ahead of his advances and denying him resources through scorched-earth tactics, trying to wait him out and sap the strength of Robb's army. With the morale of his army starting to wan, Robb Stark decided to withdraw from the Westerlands, and challenge the Lannisters head-on, in the hope that another victory would regain lost morale.
+Meanwhile, since Oxcross, the Lannisters made no significant attempts to counter Robb Stark's army at all, instead withdrawing ahead of his advances and denying him resources through scorched-earth tactics, trying to wait him out and sap the strength of Robb's army.
+With the morale of his army starting to wan, in frustration Robb Stark decided to withdraw from the Westerlands, and challenge the Lannisters head-on, in the hope that another victory would regain lost morale.
-In the Riverlands, the morale of King Robb Stark's army was starting to wane. They have not had a significant victory since the Battle of Oxcross months ago, and the news of the Lannisters' victory over Stannis and new alliance with the Tyrells piles bad news upon bad news. Robb has won every battle he has ever fought, but the Lannisters finally realized it was too difficult to try to attack him head-on, so they have shifted to the new strategy of simply fleeing ahead of Robb's army. Robb's forces have won many small but also insignificant minor victories, as the Lannisters are now determined to simply wait Robb out and exhaust his army far from home while they slowly rebuild their own numbers and gain new allies. In frustration, Robb launches a new offensive to the east which takes the great castle of Harrenhal, which Tywin had been using it as the main Lannister forward base in the Riverlands during the first year of the war. However, Robb does not find the decisive victory he was hoping for: Tywin withdrew his garrison to King's Landing to counter the attack by Stannis, and didn't even bother wasting any men on a token defense of the castle. Robb and his forces are further demoralized to find that the Lannisters massacred two hundred Northern and Riverlands prisoners of war before they left, and the courtyards are choked with piles of bodies. They do find one survivor, a maester named Qyburn.
+However, Robb does not find the decisive victory he was hoping for: Tywin withdrew his garrison to King's Landing to counter the attack by Stannis, and didn't even bother wasting any men on a token defense of the castle. Robb and his forces are further demoralized to find that the Lannisters massacred two hundred Northern and Riverlands prisoners of war before they left, and the courtyards are choked with piles of bodies.
 ==In the books==

Wiki of Westeros