Siege of Storm's End (299)

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Siege of Storm's End
Conflict War of the Five Kings
Date 299 AL
Place Storm's End, the Stormlands
Result Stannis Baratheon victory
Combatants
House Baratheon of Storm's End House Baratheon of Dragonstone
Commanders
King Renly Baratheon+
Ser Cortnay Penrose+
Ser Loras Tyrell
Lord Randyll Tarly
Lord Mathis Rowan
King Stannis Baratheon
Ser Davos Seaworth
Strength
20,000 mounted troops
Storm's End garrison
5,000
Shadow assassin
Casualties
Cortnay Penrose+
Renly Baratheon+
Robar Royce+
Emmon Cuy+
none

The Siege of Storm's End was a short engagement featuring a regicide during the War of the Five Kings. This siege led directly to the largest battle of the conflict, the Battle of the Blackwater.

Intro

Dragonstone

Stannis Baratheon was one of the first members of his brother King Robert's small council to harbor suspicions of the parentage of the king's children, and to discover that they were born of incest between Queen Cersei Lannister and her brother Ser Jaime. Taking his suspicions and what proof he could muster, in the form of Robert's numerous bastard children, to Lord Jon Arryn, he hoped to convince the Hand of the King, one of Robert's oldest and most trusted friends, of the Lannisters' treason. When Arryn died under suspicious circumstances shortly thereafter, Stannis fled to Dragonstone, his seat of power. Rallying what strength he could, with but few houses sworn to Dragonstone, he closed the port and its surrounding waters, hiring sellsails and pirates of the Free Cities to augment his forces. As the lord of an island domain and the sitting Master of Ships, Stannis's naval power was considerable, but the sparse population of the rocky, volcanic islands surrounding Dragonstone left him without the strength to risk openly contesting the Lannisters.[1][2]

After Robert died, Stannis presented his claims through letters distributed throughout the Seven Kingdoms, proclaiming Prince Joffrey and his siblings the fruit of incest, and claiming the crown as Robert's eldest surviving brother and rightful heir. With neither proof, nor the support or love of nobles and commons alike, his proclamation ended as little more than tavern gossip.[3]

Battling Renly

Even before Stannis' ravens had taken wing with his claim, his younger brother Renly had ridden from King's Landing to Highgarden, where he wed the daughter of Lord Tyrell and claimed the crown for himself. For Stannis, this was blatant treason. Moreover, Stannis was infuriated with the knowledge that the the Stormlands had thrown in with Renly, despite the fact that Stannis, as the elder son of House Baratheon, should have held claim to the loyalty of his House's ancestral seat. Unwilling to let such treachery pass, when Stannis at last set out from Dragonstone to war, he made not for King's Landing, but Storm's End.[4]

Siege

Regicide

Stannis sailed for Storm's End, encircling it with his meager land host and blockading it from the sea with his superior naval force.[5][6] Renly could not let an army take him in the rear, so he rode to Storm's End with all his knights and lords, leaving his infantry encamped at Bitterbridge. During the parley Stannis and Renly threatened each other but agreed that battle would take place at dawn the next day. However before the battle could take place, Melisandre called forth a shadow being and slew Renly in his tent. Brienne of Tarth was blamed for the murder.[7]

The Garrison

Upon Renly's death, four fifths of the mounted force that had accompanied him to Storm's End went over to Stannis. First among them was Lord Alester Florent, the uncle of Stannis's queen. In the end, nearly all of the stormlords and several Reach lords joined Stannis's cause. However, Ser Cortnay Penrose, Renly's castellan inside Storm's End, continued to hold out, refusing to hand over the castle. During a parley beneath the walls, Ser Cortnay offered single combat with a champion of Stannis's choosing, but was rebuffed by the king. Stannis wanted Robert's bastard Edric Storm but Cortnay refused to surrender him.

In order to coerce Ser Cortnay, several ideas were proposed, among them storming the castle, leaving a force to mount a protracted siege, or threatening to kill Ser Cortnay's father, Lord Penrose. Stannis refused all of these options. Instead he turned to Davos Seaworth to smuggle Melisandre beneath the walls of Storm's End to unleash yet another shadow being (the walls being proof against magic).[8] Ser Cortnay soon fell from a wall and Lord Elwood Meadows, who was Ser Cortnay's second, surrendered the castle.[9] Stannis leaves Ser Gilbert Farring as his castellan, with Meadows as his second and 200 men at his command. After burning the godswood as an offering to R'hllor, Stannis marches north towards King's Landing as his fleet prepares to join him in an amphibious assault.

Casualties

Aftermath

After the fall of Storm's End, Stannis had now collected enough men to mount an attack on King's Landing. Meanwhile at Bitterbridge, fights broke out among the men when news arrived of Renly's death, between those who wanted to support Stannis and those who wished to follow House Tyrell once Lord Mace had decided his next move. The two knights Stannis dispatched to recruit Renly's infantry (Ser Erren Florent and Ser Parmen Crane) are captured by Ser Loras Tyrell. Lord Randyll Tarly seized Renly's stores and put many men-at-arms to death rather than see them go over to Stannis's cause, many of them Florents. Mace Tyrell plans his next move with his sons and bannermen, the greatest of whom have stayed on his side. Meanwhile the Reachmen receive a visit from Petyr Baelish, who makes an offer of alliance with House Lannister. The Tyrells join with Tywin Lannister on his march to King's Landing, arriving in time to meet Stannis's own forces in the Battle of the Blackwater.


References and Notes