The Battle of the Blackwater

A chain, a river full of wildfire, and a dwarf who saved a city that never thanked him.

Why it came to this

By the second year of the war the five kings had sorted themselves into two problems and three sideshows. Robb Stark was winning battles in the riverlands without getting closer to the capital. Balon Greyjoy was raiding the North for his own reasons. And Stannis Baratheon, having absorbed the greater part of his dead brotherÔÇÖs enormous stormlands and Reach host, was sitting on Dragonstone with the largest fleet in Westeros and the only claim to the Iron Throne that was arguably legal.

StannisÔÇÖs reasoning was sound and, in the way of Stannis, entirely unsentimental. KingÔÇÖs Landing was the throne. It was also the softest target in the realm: Tywin Lannister was hundreds of miles west chasing Robb Stark around the riverlands, the cityÔÇÖs garrison was a corrupt watch of gold cloaks and a scattering of sellswords, and the boy on the throne was a child with no army of his own. A single fast strike up the Blackwater Rush would put Stannis inside the walls before Tywin could turn around. Every week he delayed made that less true.

What Stannis did not adequately account for was that the Hand left holding the city was Tyrion Lannister, who had spent the preceding months doing three quiet things: purging the small council of men who would open a gate, hoarding the pyromancersÔÇÖ output of wildfire in the thousands of jars, and having the smiths of the city forge an enormous iron chain. He had also, without telling his sister, sold the last politically valuable Baratheon-adjacent asset the crown possessed in exchange for the one thing that could actually save it ÔÇö the Tyrells of Highgarden, and the eighty thousand swords the Reach could raise. That bargain was struck in secret and was still riding hard for the city when the fleet came up the river.

The ground and the hosts

The Blackwater Rush enters the bay in a broad, deep, tidal mouth beneath the southern face of KingÔÇÖs Landing. It is navigable by war galleys all the way to the cityÔÇÖs river wall, which is why the capital sits there. It is also a bottleneck. A fleet that rows into that mouth has a stone city on one bank, open shore on the other, and only one way out ÔÇö back the way it came, into the tide.

Stannis came with a fleet that dwarfed anything the crown could put on the water, and an army swollen by the lords who had knelt to Renly and then, on his death, knelt to whoever was next. That armyÔÇÖs composition mattered enormously. A large part of it consisted of stormlanders and Reachmen who had loved Renly, had never particularly loved Stannis, and were following him because the alternative was losing their lands. It was a host held together by arithmetic rather than loyalty, which is a thing that fights well until the first bad half-hour.

Stannis gave the fleet to Ser Imry Florent, his good-brother by his queen ÔÇö a competent enough man of no naval genius, chosen partly for family reasons, which is how the Baratheon-Florent court did most things. ImryÔÇÖs orders were speed. He rowed straight into the river mouth in full strength without first sending light craft ahead to sound the water or scout the banks. In the novels that is explicitly the decisive error and it is named as such at the time.

The city could field a few thousand gold cloaks of doubtful quality, a handful of Kingsguard, some hundreds of Lannister household men and a mercenary company or two. Its real defences were engineering: hoardings on the walls, spitfires and catapults on the ramparts, and TyrionÔÇÖs two secrets. On the page, the chain was strung on winches in towers at the river mouth and lay slack beneath the water while the fleet went over it. On screen the chain is discussed and then quietly dropped, and the trap is the fire alone. The pageÔÇÖs version is the crueller one, and the difference is worth knowing.

How it was fought

The opening was almost gentle. StannisÔÇÖs van rowed into the mouth on the tide at night, brushed aside the token royal squadron that came out to meet it, and began putting men ashore on the near bank to work toward the Mud Gate. From the walls it looked exactly like what it was: a city about to fall in a few hours. Along the water came one more ship, a heavy hulk under a single sail, drifting badly and apparently abandoned, and the leading galleys let it come on because a derelict is not a threat.

It was full to the deckhead with wildfire. When it broke open in the middle of the packed fleet, the substance did what wildfire does ÔÇö it burned on water, it burned on stone, it burned on men in the river, and it could not be smothered or drowned. The fire spread ship to ship through a formation too tightly packed to disperse. Green flame stood up off the Blackwater high enough to be seen from the far shore. Hundreds of vessels were destroyed in the space of a few minutes without a single blow struck by a defender.

In the novels the chain then came up, and that is the tactical hinge. Raising it did not keep the fleet out; it kept the fleet in. Everything still afloat in the river mouth was locked inside a burning basin with a tide running against it and no exit. The result was less a naval battle than an incineration with a lid on it.

And yet the fire did not win the day, because the fire was on the water and StannisÔÇÖs army was on the land. Stannis had already landed a substantial force on the near bank, and once he understood what had happened to his fleet he did the only thing left to him, which was to press the assault on the walls immediately and with everything he had. Ladders went up against the southern wall. Rams came at the KingÔÇÖs Gate and the Mud Gate. The gold cloaks, who had never been more than adequate, began to shred.

The critical hour came when the defenders on the wall lost their nerve. In the novels the man who broke was Sandor Clegane ÔÇö burned as a child, sent out again and again on sorties through the postern into a night that was on fire, and finally refusing to go back out. His departure left the Mud Gate sector without its most effective commander at the worst moment. On the page and on the screen alike it was Tyrion who took what men would follow him, went out through a sally port, came around behind the ram crews on the strand, and destroyed them. That sortie is what held the gate long enough for the field to change.

The field changed from the west. Tywin Lannister had broken off from the riverlands and force-marched his army south, and Mace Tyrell had brought the Reach up the roseroad to join him. They came into StannisÔÇÖs rear on the near bank at the last possible hour, an unbroken host of fresh horse hitting an army that had spent the night watching its own fleet burn. StannisÔÇÖs line, already brittle because so much of it was RenlyÔÇÖs men, did not so much break as evaporate. The killing stroke was psychological as well as physical: at the head of the Tyrell van rode a knight in Renly BaratheonÔÇÖs distinctive green armour, and the stormlanders who had followed Renly and had been told he was gone looked up and saw him coming at them. The novels give that armour to Ser Garlan Tyrell; the show gives it to Ser Loras. Either way it was a deliberate piece of theatre and it worked precisely as intended.

The pursuit was short and one-sided. StannisÔÇÖs landed force was cut apart against the river it could no longer cross. What could be dragged off the strand and rowed away was a fraction of what had come up the water at dusk.

What it cost

Stannis lost the great majority of his fleet and a very large part of his army in a single night, along with most of the lords of the stormlands and the Reach who had come to him after Renly. He never again commanded a force of that size. The financial and naval loss was the more permanent of the two: ships take years and a treasury to replace, and Stannis had neither.

The city paid in gold cloaks and in whole districts of the riverfront, which burned. The Lannister regime paid almost nothing in men it valued, which is exactly why the battle is remembered the way it is.

The Tyrells paid nothing at all and collected everything. They had arrived at the perfect moment with the whole strength of the Reach intact, had saved the throne in the eyes of the city, and had a granddaughter ready to marry it.

What it changed

The Blackwater ended the war as a five-sided contest. From that night on it was the Lannister-Tyrell alliance against everyone else, and that alliance had food, gold, numbers and the capital. Robb StarkÔÇÖs brilliant campaign in the riverlands became irrelevant in an afternoon because he could no longer win the war even by winning every battle in it.

It also fixed StannisÔÇÖs strategic position for the remainder of his story. Having lost the south he had to look for a war he could still join, and the only one available was in the North.

And it established the pattern the rest of the saga runs on: the person who solves the problem and the person who receives the credit are almost never the same person, and the gap between them is where most of the storyÔÇÖs bitterness comes from.

What became of it ÔÇö if an ending is written, it is here. Spoilers.

Tyrion led a sortie through the Mud Gate that held the wall at the critical moment and had his face opened by one of his own side. The city celebrated Tywin. It is the clearest single instance of the storyÔÇÖs rule that being useful and being rewarded have nothing to do with each other.

The blade was swung by Ser Mandon Moore of the Kingsguard, almost certainly on instruction from Cersei, and Tyrion survived only because his squire Podrick Payne put a spear through the man. He woke days later stripped of the Handship, disfigured, and formally thanked by nobody.

Davos SeaworthÔÇÖs ships were in the leading squadron when the wildfire went up. In the novels four of his sons died on the river that night; the screen keeps one of them, Matthos, and kills him there. Davos himself was thrown clear and washed up half-drowned on a spit in the bay.

Among the dead on StannisÔÇÖs side were Lord Bryce Caron and a long list of stormlanders, and the fleetÔÇÖs commander Ser Imry Florent, whose decision to row in blind had put them all there. Stannis withdrew to Dragonstone with a fraction of his host and spent the following season a broken king looking for a new war.

Sandor CleganeÔÇÖs refusal to return to the fire ended his service to House Lannister. He walked out of the city that night and out of the war.