Defending and Capturing a Castle

When a king or a noble built a castle in the Middle Ages, he expected that it would be attacked by his enemies, perhaps many times. A castle, in the true sense, was both a home for a feudal lord and a private fortress. As a fortress, it had two purposes : it could be used by the lord and his soldiers and retainers to rule the surrounding countryside; and it was a stronghold in which the lord, his family, and his followers could defend themselves against another lord who came to attack them.

It is not surprising, then, that much time and thought and effort were given to the two problems of defense and offense. How could castles be made stronger so that they would be more difficult to capture? How could those attacking castles devise more powerful weapons that would enable them to overcome the defenders? Whatever one side did, the other tried to think up an answer that would put it back in lead.

Basically, there were three ways to take a castle : by a surprise attack; by treachery; or by a siege. A siege might be successful in one of two ways. The besiegers could break down the castle's walls so that an assault by their forces would gain access to the castle; or, the siege could simply go on until the defenders surrendered because they were starving or because disease had broken out in the castle.

Surprise attacks were most successful in the early days of castles when walls were not so high, when ditches were not so deep, and when the garrison in the castle was not well disciplined and on the alert. As castles came to be built of stone, with higher walls, great watchtowers, strongly defended gates, and other devices, it became increasingly difficult to catch the castle by surprise and to burst into its courtyard before the garrison was aware of what was going on. Treachery, on the other hand, might take place any time and in any knid of castle if there were some of the garrison who could be bribed, or decided they favored the other side of the fight. They might turn on the commander of the castle and those who remained faithful to him, or they might leave the gate unguarded, or allow the enemy to climb up over a certain part of the wall. The always present possibility of treachery is one reason why the lord, or the commander of the garrison, began to have his quarters in a stronger gatehouse, or a keep, where he was cut off from the soldiers and could defend himself against them if necessary.

The art of defending and of capturing is best seen in an account of what is known as siegecraft. This simply means the methods and equipment used by an army to try to capture a strongly defended site, such as a castle. On the defenders' side, a number of things were learned and used that made it more difficult to besiege a castle successfully. First of all, the thicker and higher the stone walls the better-until the fourteenth century when gunpowder began to be used to fire cannons. Two rings of walls around the castle were better than one, and round towers were somewhat stronger than square ones, whose corners gave way more easily when undermined.

The tops of walls and towers were improved to aid in fighting off the enemy. The battlement, an indented parapet at the top of a castle wall, had raised parts called merlons, and indentations, through which the defenders could fire on the attackers, called embrasures or crenelles. When the top of a wall or tower was constructed in this way it was said to be crenelated. As both construction and military ideas advanced, the battlements were built so that they extended out over the top of the wall or tower on the outside. The people of Europe got this idea from the Moslems during the Crusades. The projections that supported these battlements were called corbels. Between the corbels were openings known as machicolations. The purpose of these was to enable the defenders to fire almost straight down on any enemy and to drop rocks, molten lead, boiling water, or anything else available on the heads of the attackers.

The siege of a castle began when a strong attacking force of many soldiers with special equipment surrounded a castle with its defenders inside. Usually, this meant that the attacking force outnumbered the soldiers inside the castle. From the point of view of the attacking force, there were three ways for them to capture the castle : they had eother to get over, or under, or through the walls. And by around the year 1300, when castle building was at its best but when artillary had not yet appeared, a blockade and siege of a castle was about the only way to capture it.

The defenders, on their part, might even make sorties : they might rush suddenly out of a gate and attack some of the besieging force, perhaps to destroy some of their siege equipment. On the other hand, the defenders were encircled and shut in, even if they made a few sorties, and this could be discouraging and boring, and lead to a loss of morale.. Sometimes the besiegers, on their part, had to break down the walls within a certain lenght of time before the king, or some other ally of the castle's lord, could send a relief force to attack the attackers of the castle.

The first defense of the castle was the moat, the water-filled ditch around it, and this was the first obstacle the besiegers had to overcome. They would try to fill it in with whatever material was handy. The men who had this job would be protected to some extent by their comrades who would fire arrows and larger missiles at the defenders. The people in the castle would try to shoot the men filling in the moat. Until the moat was filled in, the siege force could not try to capture the castle by putting ladders up against the walls (called escalading), nor could they get near enough the walls to use battering rams. An unfilled moat hindered mining, since the water might break through and flood the tunnel being dug underneath it.

Mining was an effective, but long and dangerous, way of breaking down a castle's defenses. Men would start digging, first down and then under the ground toward the castle. A mine could be used in one of two ways. It could create a passageway so that attacking soldiers could rush through it when it was finished and come up inside the castle. More likely though, the object of the mine would be to cause a tower or part of a wall to collapse. As the mine was dug, its sides and roof would be supported by timbers. When it was under the right spot the timbers, and other combustible material placed in the mine, would be set on fire. Then, the besiegers hoped, the fire would cause the timbers to collapse and that in turn would bring down the roof of the mine and the wall above it. This would create a gap, or breach, and the attackers would attempt to rush through it and overwhelm the garrison.

Since it was almost impossible to keep secret the fact that a mine was being dug, the defenders could take action early. Naturally, they would fire on the miners and attempt to keep them from their labor. So the besiegers built a penthouse, which was a shelter over the men where they were working. It was built of heavy logs or timber, covered with clay and hides, and with sloping roofs so that missiles would glance off. Sometimes the whole thing, especially the hides, would be soaked with water to prevent fires being set by torches, pitch, or whatever might be hurled down from the walls. The defenders also might start a countermine, heading it toward where they thought the besiegers' mine was coming. If they could break in, they could cause the mine to collapse on top of the miners or they could attack them and drive them out.

Another common way of attempting to take a castle was to use a battering ram. This is a very old method and basically consists simply of driving the end of a beam against a wall or gate until it is broken down. Later, a metal cap was put on the battering ram to strengthen it, and it was suspended by ropes so it could be swung back and forth. Still later it was laid on rollers and impelled by ropes. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, the battering ram had become a very large contraption, mounted on wheels, with a roof over it to protect the men. It might be from 60 to 120 feet long and it took as many as 100 men to operate it. To speed up the attack and to give the defenders no rest, a ram might be operated by two or more shifts of soldiers.

Somewhat like the battering ram was the bore. It was smaller, lighter, and took fewer people to operate. It had an armoured but sharper head because it was used to attempt to drill a hole near the base of a wall as a starting point for undermining the foundations by further digging. When attackers used either the ram or the bore, the defenders tried to stop them by catching hold of the end of it with a forked beam or a hook.

Another piece of equipment used in the attack was a tower, or belfry. This was built very high, because its purpose was to provide the attackers with means of reaching the same height as the defenders on top of the walls. It was erected on wheels and rolled up to the wall after the moat was filled in. Like the penthouses protecting the ram, the bore, and the miners, these towers had to be covered with wood, hides, and anything else that would hold off the arrows fired from the castle. The towers sometimes had drawbridges that could be let down on to the top of the castle wall, so that the attackers could rush across and attempt to capture the castle by hand-to-hand combat. Another use of the tower was to keep a rain of missiles on the defenders so that they in turn could not do much to fire on men starting such operations as mining.

Soldiers wore some kind of armor as they attacked or defended a castle. Just what they wore depended on two things. One was the era in which they lived, because armor got more and more complete-and also heavier-as the Middle Ages went on. The other was a matter of who they were : lords and knights wore better and heavier armor; the lower-class foot soldiers, or infantry, had less armor. This was not, however, as important in besieging castles as in battles fought in the open between two armies. A knight in full armor and mounted on his horse was a powerful force in the open battle, but he couldn't charge a castle wall. Attackers did need protection, but it had to be such that they could move around on foot as they worked their machinery or fired their weapons. The soldiers in the castle were less in need of armor because they had the walls to protect them.

Both sides were armed with hand weapons as well as larger instruments of war. The bow and arrow in the age of the castle was the equivalent of the rifle and revolver today. Attackers and besiegers used the bow and arrow for two purposes. One was to kill or wound as many of the enemy as possible, so that the besiegers would be discouraged by their losses and go away; or so that defenders would become so few they would have to surrender. The other purpose was more defensive. If the besiegers were about to try to fill in the moat, for example, the bowmen would keep up a steady fire on the defenders on the walls and towers so that thye, in turn, would be prevented from firing their arrows down upon the men filling in the moat.

There were two kinds of bows. One was the crossbow, which was a bow set on a stock so that the bow was parallel with the ground rather than standing up from it. It was stronger than an ordinary bow and it could fire stone and metal as well as arrows, but it was slow and hard to work. The other was the longbow, which came into its own around the end of the thirteenth century. The skill of the English longbowmen became such that they were the most terrifying and powerful soldiers of Europe for many years. The longbow, standing about the same height as a man, had a range of up to 250 yards, and an expert bowman could fire six to eight arrows a minute. Only a few of these famous weapons survive today. One was dug up at Berkhampstead Castle and may date from the siege of 1217 in which 1,000 Sussex bowmen are said to have taken part.

The most impressive weapons used in the siege of a castle were the implements of war that were in those days the equivalent of the artillery-the cannons and rockets-of today. The history of big siege weapons goes back to the fifth century B.C. Alexander the Great developed enormous slings and catapults, and the Romans were most successful and efficient in using them against their enemies. As in castle building, the people of Europe who succeeded the Romans did not for some time improve upon these weapons. They were used and gradually improved for well over 300 years, from the start of castle building until they were replaced by artillery. Chief among these siege weapons, and good examples of the main types, were the balista, the catapult, and the trebuchet.

The balista was an enormous crossbow, mounted on a stand. Powerful models could fire a bolt weighing five or six pounds a distance of 500 yards. The balista could fire iron darts, or heavy arrows, or stones. Where the catapult and the trebuchet threw their shots in a high are so that they came down on the heads of the enemy, the balista fired its arrow faster and on more of a straight line. Thus it was more like a modern field-artillery piece, while the other two weapons were the equivalent of today's howitzers. The balista was not powerful enough to do much damage to castle walls but could be a strong weapon against enemy soldiers and their equipment.

The catapult was like a giant slingshot, which sometimes was mounted on wheels and other times was built at the spot where it was needed. It had a revolving arm with a skein of sinew which was twisted to the limit. The arm was then held down and the shot placed either in a cup-shaped depression at the end of the arm or in a sling fastened to the end. When the arm was suddenly released, the twisted sinews pulled the arm up and forward and the shot was discharged. Stones were used and a 50 pound one could be hurled 500 yards with considerable accuracy. The Arabs said that at the siege of Acre in 1191 the Crusaders used 300 catapults and balistae.

The trebuchet was simpler but larger than the catapult and eventually replaced it. It had a large, revolving arm. At the end of the long part of the arm was the place for the shot; at the short end was a heavy counterweight. The long part of the arm was held down and when it was suddenly released the force of gravity pulled it up fast and its misslies was discharged. Thus it was somewhat like a gigantic see-saw. It could hurl a 200 or 300 pound projectile about 600 yards, and some of the largest trebuchets had arms 50 feet long and counterweights of ten tons. Usually it hurled large stones, but on occasion it is reported to have thrown dead horses into a castle or town in the hope of causing disease. A spy of the defending forces might be caught, killed, and returned to the castle by firing him over the walls in the trebuchet.

Edward I of England designed a colossal trebuchet for the siege of Stirling Castle in Scotland and put 50 carpenters and five foremen to work on it. However, the castle surrendered before the trebuchet was ready. At another siege of Acre, this one in 1291, the Crusaders used a trebuchet that required 100 carts to haul all its parts and pieces. One of the last occasions on which a trebuchet was used-and this was long after they had gone out of general use-was in 1480 at the siege of Rhodes. The Turks, attacking the town, had cannons, but not very good ones. The defenders built a trebuchet and it did more damage to the attackers than they could do with their newer-style weapon. The final appearance of the trebuchet may have been at the siege of Mexico City by Cortez in 1521. When the Spaniards ran out of ammunition for their guns, one of the soldiers thought he could design a trebuchet that would take the place of the artillery. Unfortunately for him, there was something wrong with his design. When it was fired the missile went up in the air but came back down on top of the machine instead of the city.

While the weapons just described were necessary in besieging a castle, they could also be used by the defenders to keep the attackers away from the castle walls and to destroy the machines and weapons they were using. These weapons, and almost any other, that being simply any missile that was burning. Rags or other material were soaked in pitch and fired into a castle by tying the burning rags around an arrow or other projectile.

The builders of castles developed various little tricks to make it more difficult for the enemy. Entrance ways, leading up to the main gate, might be quite long, with several right-angle turns in them. This meant that as any attacker turned a corner, the defenders could be waiting to fire on him down the passage way. Even the building of staircases had its tricks. The spiral stairs in castle towers were constructed so that anyone going down them was always turning to the left. This kept the person's right arm, or sword arm, free and clear, while anyone attempting to fight his way up the stairs would have his sword arm cramped against the inside wall of the staircase.

With huge and powerful walls, together with tricks and strategies, the builders and defenders of castles had the upper hand most of the time for about 400 years. It became almost impossible to capture a castle except by starving the inhabitants, and the best weapons devised could do little to break down the defenses of a well-commanded castle. Then all of this ended about the middle of the fourteenth century when the introduction of gunpowder into Europe caused a radical change in all forms of warfare.

The first gun may have been that devised by Berthold Schwarz, a German monk, in 1313. Certainly guns were used at the battle of Crecy in 1346. These early artillery pieces were not very efficient or powerful. No one yet knew how to make good gun barrels, and stones were still used as the missile fired by the gun. However, within 100 years the making and using of guns had been improved to such an extent that castles were almost worse than useless. Before the higher the wall the more difficult it was to capture the castle; now, the higher the wall the better the target it made. Cannons became much more powerful than any of the old weapons such as the trebuchet. Guns could blow the defenders off the battlements and punch big holes in walls and gates.

In 1415 King Henry V of England besieged Harfleur in Normandy and with the aid of artillery guns captured it in a little more than a month, thus establishing the supremacy of the new artillery over medieval fortifications. King Henry had 75 artillerymen, the first organized British artillery. His guns even had names, such as "London", "Messenger", and "King's Daughter". By 1450 King Charles VII of France had so powerful a siege train of guns that he captured all the castles in Normandy held by the English in one year. However, artillery had become so expensive and required such skilled men to operate it that only a king could afford to have it in his army.

The castle, while as interesting and romantic as ever, was losing its important place in the world, partly because of these new artillery weapons, but also for other reasons.