Tumbleton Treasons

The Tumbleton Treasons were the disputed defections and acts of covert support for Aegon II that helped transform the gathering of a large Black army at Tumbleton into a catastrophic defeat. The town’s defenders had numbers, walls, and two dragons, yet divided loyalties inside their ranks and the sudden reversal of two dragonriders made those advantages perilous. The treasons are remembered not as a single clearly documented conspiracy, but as a contested chain of betrayals whose full design the surviving accounts cannot establish.

Tumbleton and the Gathering of Forces

Tumbleton stood at the headwaters of the Mander and served as a thriving market town and the seat of House Footly. Its castle was small but stout, with a garrison of only about forty men. The forces assembled around it were far larger: thousands had come upriver from Bitterbridge, Longtable, and farther south, while more Riverlords strengthened the host and its resolve. Among the newly arrived were veterans of the Butcher’s Ball, including Ser Garibald Grey, Red Robb Rivers and his archers, and the last of the Winter Wolves. They were joined by landed knights and lesser lords from along the Blackwater, among them Lord Owain Bourney and Ser Roger Corne.

The reported size of Rhaenyra’s army varies. The True Telling gives a figure of nearly nine thousand, while other chroniclers offer totals ranging from six thousand to twelve thousand. Despite the disagreement over numbers, the accounts agree that Lord Ormund Hightower’s army was substantially larger. The arrival of Vermithor and Silverwing, with their riders, seemed to compensate for that imbalance: the defenders had reason to welcome the dragons, but did not know that two of their own riders would soon turn against them.

The Betrayals and Their Uncertain Causes

The sources do not agree on the precise how, when, or why of the treasons. Some of the people who entered Tumbleton while fleeing Hightower’s advancing army may in fact have been agents sent ahead to infiltrate the defenders. The allegiance of two Blackwater men, Lord Owain Bourney and Ser Roger Corne, is less doubtful: both secretly supported Aegon II. Their treachery alone, however, would have had limited effect. The decisive reversal came when Ser Ulf White and Ser Hugh Hammer also changed sides.

Much of the surviving characterization of Ulf and Hugh comes from Mushroom, who portrays Ulf as a drunkard and Hugh as a brute, and describes both as cowards. In his account, they chose to join Lord Ormund’s army after seeing its long columns and massed spears. Other explanations remain possible. The two men had already faced danger in earlier fighting, and one suggestion is that they feared a confrontation with Tessarion. The text weighs this possibility against the fact that Vermithor and Silverwing were older and larger than Prince Daeron’s dragon; it does not settle the question.

A different explanation places ambition, rather than fear, at the center of their decision. After the Gullet and the fall of King’s Landing, Ulf and Hugh had received knighthoods, but apparently regarded the lands granted by Rhaenyra as too modest. When Lords Rosby and Stokeworth were executed, the possibility of granting their lands and castles to the dragonriders through marriages to the lords’ daughters was raised, but Rhaenyra instead allowed the executed men’s sons to inherit. Storm’s End and Casterly Rock were later dangled as possible rewards, only for the queen to refuse them as well. It is therefore possible that Ulf and Hugh hoped Aegon II would offer greater wealth or power in return for helping restore him to the Iron Throne. Promises may have been conveyed through Lord Larys Strong or one of his agents, but the account presents this only as speculation. Because neither man could read or write, their own explanation was never recorded. History’s name for them, the Two Betrayers, preserves the act while leaving its motive unresolved.

The Battle Turns Against the Defenders

Before the betrayal’s consequences became fully apparent, the Black host fought Lord Ormund in the field. About six thousand of Rhaenyra’s men formed up under Ser Garibald Grey. They resisted for a time, but sustained archery reduced their ranks, and a heavy cavalry charge broke their formation and drove survivors back toward Tumbleton’s walls. Red Robb Rivers and his bowmen covered the retreat. The defenders then saw Roderick Dustin and the Winter Wolves emerge from a postern gate and attack the enemy’s flank. The Northmen fought through a force said to be ten times their number, reaching Lord Ormund beneath Aegon’s golden dragon and the banners of Oldtown and House Hightower.

Roderick Dustin’s attack ended with the deaths of both Ser Bryndon Hightower and Lord Ormund, and Dustin himself died in the fighting. For a moment, the fall of the Hightower banners led people in the town to believe the battle had turned in their favor. Tessarion’s appearance did not immediately extinguish that hope, because Tumbleton’s defenders still had two dragons of their own. But when Vermithor and Silverwing rose and attacked the town with fire, the apparent advantage of possessing dragons became part of the disaster. The account compares the ensuing destruction to a smaller Field of Fire.

Destruction and Aftermath

As the town burned, the battle and the treasons converged. Pate of Longleaf was unhorsed and trampled; Ser Garibald Grey was struck by a crossbow bolt and then killed by dragonfire. Ulf White and Hugh Hammer attacked Tumbleton with their dragons. At the gates, Ser Roger Corne and his men revealed their allegiance by cutting down defenders and opening the way for the attackers. Within the castle, Lord Owain Bourney likewise turned on the defenders, killing Ser Merrell the Bold and helping expose the stronghold from within.

The sack that followed destroyed the prosperous market town. Many people died in the fires, and others drowned while trying to escape by river. The surrender of Lord Footly’s men did not spare them: they were bound and executed, while civilians who survived the flames faced further abuses and killings. Tumbleton’s defeat was therefore not simply a lost engagement. It brought the collapse of the town’s defenses, the ruin of its inhabitants, and the destruction of the place that had served as a base for Rhaenyra’s forces.

Later generations of House Footly tried to rebuild on the ruins, but the new settlement never reached a tenth of the old town’s size. Smallfolk said that the ground was haunted. The competing accounts leave the conspiracy’s full machinery uncertain, yet its central reversal is clear: secret loyalists inside the host and the defection of two dragonriders helped turn an army’s refuge into a trap. The episode’s lasting significance lies in that collision between military strength and political loyalty: even a large force backed by dragons could be undone when its allegiance fractured from within.