The garrison that fired on London and paid for it

A garrison fired cannon into London's own streets

Cannon fire came out of the Tower and into the city that surrounded it. This was June 1460, and the Tower of London was held for the Lancastrian king, Henry VI, by a nobleman named Lord Scales. London itself had turned against the king. A group of Yorkist lords, who had failed in an earlier rebellion and fled abroad, landed at Sandwich and marched on the capital with growing crowds behind them. When they reached London on 2 July, the city let them in.

Scales would not yield the fortress. His garrison began firing indiscriminately into the streets around the walls, cannon and wildfire landing among houses and passersby who had no part in the quarrel. People died in their own streets. It was a siege weapon turned on a city, not an enemy army, and Londoners did not forget it.

Hunger broke the Tower, and a crowd killed its commander

Most of the Yorkist army marched north to face the king directly. The Earl of Salisbury stayed behind with 2,000 men and orders to take the Tower. He had help from London's own aldermen and armed militia, who dragged bombards out of a royal store and used them to smash a hole in the curtain wall. The blockade closed tight. No food came in and no one left.

On 10 July, word reached the siege lines that the Yorkists had won at Northampton and taken King Henry prisoner. The garrison inside the Tower held out a little longer, cut off and running out of everything, until 19 July, when hunger finally broke them and they surrendered.

Scales tried to get out ahead of what was coming. He put on a disguise and slipped onto the river by boat, aiming to escape downstream before anyone recognized him. A crowd near the bank spotted him anyway. They dragged him out and killed him where they caught him, within a short walk of the walls he had just surrendered. The man who ordered cannon fired into London's streets did not leave the city alive.

Three queens died within a hundred feet of the gates

Three queens died within a hundred feet of the Tower's gates, and the fortress that once fired outward turned its power inward on them. On Tower Green, Anne Boleyn was beheaded in 1536, accused of adultery and treason against Henry VIII. Catherine Howard followed in 1542, condemned on similar charges. Lady Jane Grey, queen for nine days, was executed here in 1554 after a failed bid to keep the crown from Mary I. All three were buried at the Church of St Peter ad Vincula, the chapel that still stands beside the green. Queen Victoria later had granite paving laid to mark where she believed the block had stood, though the exact spot remains disputed.

A German spy became the Tower's last execution

A German spy named Josef Jakobs was tied to a chair inside the Tower and shot by firing squad. It was August 1941, and Jakobs was the last person ever executed there. He had parachuted into England the year before as a Nazi agent and was caught almost immediately, his radio and forged papers found beside him. Nearly five centuries after Lord Scales was torn apart for turning the Tower's guns on London, the fortress was still the place where the state settled its most dangerous enemies, quietly and for good.

A queen took London while her husband fled the Tower

More than a century before Scales held these walls for a king, a queen took the city instead of the fortress. In 1326, Isabella of France moved against her own husband, Edward II, during the invasion that would end his reign. Edward abandoned the Tower and fled west. Isabella took London without a fight, because the city had already turned on him. Where Scales's garrison fired outward and lost, Isabella let the city do her work for her and won.

Coldharbour Gate guarded the innermost approach to the White Tower

Standing near the Coldharbour Gate, you are close to the innermost gate of the fortress, the gate that guarded the White Tower itself. Its ruins are what is left after centuries of sieges, rebuilding, and reinforcement, each generation answering for what had happened at the walls before.