The End of the Age of Castles

For about 400 years-from the eleventh century into the fifteenth century-castles played an important part of life of the people of Europe, from kings to peasants. Then, for several reasons, the day of the castle was over.

One reason was the introduction of weapons using gunpowder, but other reasons could be found in events which had been going on slowly almost from the time castles were first built. For many years in most countries of Europe, the king's central government had been becoming more powerful and ruling the land more directly, instead of through the feudal nobles in their castles. Also, the increase in population, the growth of towns, and the expansion of commerce over larger areas brought into importance a new class of business people who did not want to be bothered by a great number of petty nobles scattered all over the country.

As a factor in warfare, the castle was affected in two ways by these changes. In the first place, the great castle with its high walls and towers was no longer almost impossible to capture. Instead, artillery could blast the walls apart. In the second place, with the system of feudalism dying out, and with all the national states such as England, France, and Spain growing powerful, there was no need for a great number of castles scattered all over the country. Instead, fortifications were needed on coast lines, at the mouths of rivers, and at boundaries between countries. War now was between nations rather than between individual feudal nobles.

As a result, some castles were rebuilt to make them useful under the new conditions. In other places, new forts were built. These were somewhat like the old castles, but differed both in the way they were constructed and in the fact that they were purely military posts of a strong national government instead of combination homes and fortresses of nobles. Walls were built lower, and it was found that great mounds of earth were better protection against artillery fire than were high stone walls. The walls could be blown apart by guns, and the pieces flew all over the place like hundreds of small bullets. An earth wall, on the other hand, let artillery missiles penetrate a short way, but then tended to absorb and smother the blast.

There are a number of interesting examples in England of castles that were changed to meet the new conditions, or that were built too late to be true castles even though they bear that name. Bodiam Castle in Sussex was built in 1386 and looks more like the great Edwardian castles of a century earlier. Actually, it differs in several ways. It was built for coastal defense against possible French invasion. It is much more comfortable inside than earlier castles. And Bodiam has openings in its walls that were the new style for artillery guns. Instead of the usual arrow-slit, these openings are circular at the bottom, so that they look like a keyhole and allow cannon to be fired from inside the castle. In the other respects, Bodiam is like its powerful predecessors. It was approached by a causeway over a large moat, and there were no less than three portcullises on the way.

Dartmouth, a port in Devonshire from which Richard the Lion-Hearted set out on his Crusade to the Holy Land in 1190, is the site of an interesting structure that deserves the name castle in some respects. Although there are some remains of a medieval castle nearby, the present fort dates from 1481. It was not built then by a feudal lord but rather by King Edward IV and the officials of the town of Dartmouth. From the beginning Dartmouth Castle was a fortress to defend the coast and the port from foreign invaders, and so its strong walls and towers face the sea without going all the way around to make the older and true style of castles. The gun ports (the openings through which those in the castle could fire the new artillery) were the most advanced in style in all of England at the time they were built. They were, as a matter of fact, the first to show a real change from the adaptations of the arrow-slit kind of opening in castle walls.

Pendennis Castle on the Cornwall coast is on the site of a prehistoric fortification, but the castle was not built until about 1545 by King Hnery VIII when there was again danger that the French would invade England. In plan, King Henry's castle looks like an older, round keep, surrounded by a curtain wall. But there is a very important difference. The gun ports are "splayed", that is they are wider on the outside than on the inside so that the guns could be swung back and forth to cover a wider area. Then, in 1598 when there were rumors of a second Spanish Armada attacking England, King Henry's daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, had a modern style, low, thick wall with openings for cannon built in a rectangle on the high ground around the older castle. The guns used in this era at Pendennis Castle were iron or brass, mounted on wooden carriages. They fired stone or cast-iron balls. There were accommodations in the castle for the soldiers of the garrison who were armed with muskets and calivers (heavy guns that had to be fired from a rest). Normally there were from 100 to 400 soldiers, reinforced in times of danger by men from the neighboring countryside. In World War I this castle was part of the coast defenses of England and at the start of World War II the British Army once again took it over.

Finally, there is Dover Castle in Kent. An important port for almost 2,000 years, Dover can still show on the site of its castle what is left of a lighthouse the Romans built before A.D. 100. The first castle here, an oval enclosure surrounded by a ditch and an earth bank, was constructed by King Harold just a few years before he was defeated by William the Conqueror at Hastings in 1066. King Henry II in the twelfth century used masonry to improve the castle. Dover became one of the strongest castles in England and, although improved from time to time, remained essentially the same for over 500 years. Then came the great transformation of the late eighteenth century when the threat of an invasion by Napoleon's French forces caused the castle to be adapted to the needs of the times. Here is a good example of the return to earthworks as a better defense than masonry walls. A bank of earth was piled against the outer curtain of the castle all the way around. The towers were filled up solid and levelled as platforms on which to put cannons. A century and a half later, in Worls War II, the castle again contained important military installations. Although Dover was under continual bombardment from the air and from the French coast, it escaped any serious damage.

While castles were changing in these various ways, other things were going on in the world that affected them and the people who built and owned them. The feudal manor had been based on agriculture. The lord of the manor had his castle, his vassals, and his serfs. The lord and his fighting men ruled and defended the manor, or attacked the enemy; the serfs grew the food, made the cloth, and produced pratically all the things everyone needed to live. Compared with the system of living we know today, almost no money was needed.

But all during the Middle Ages the population was growing, trade was increasing, and more people were dependent upon the towns and upon business rather than upon feudal nobles and their manors. There was an increase in communication as more people traveled to more places. Even the Crusades helped end the feudal system by spreading knowledge of the world and causing people to move around more. The people of the towns wanted stable governments over a large area. They wanted to be able to transport and sell their goods without danger of robbery or of excess and unexpected taxes forced on them by some baron in a castle built at a strategic crossroad. So the new and growing class of business people sided with the king and the strong central government that could give them what they needed to do business. At the same time, the king and his officials found that co-operating with the new merchant class had its advantages. They could collect taxes in money, and with that money hire soldiers, build warships, and construct castles. Then they were no longer dependent on the personal services of feudal knights, and with their superior power in soldiers and guns they could rule a whole nation without the once powerful lords.

Thus it was that feudalism gradually died out. It was gone by the end of the sixteenth century in England and France. In some other countries it lingered longer. The year 1492, in which Columbus discovered merica, is often used as a convenient date for the end of the Middle Ages. It was about this same time that printing was invented in Europe and that there was a Renaissance, or rebirth, of the fine arts. Many castles and many noble families remained, but with each passing year both the feudal system and its most formidable symbol, the castle, became of less and less importance in the actual running of the world.

What happened to the castles and the people who built and owned them? As already indicated, many of the castles still exist. Some became fortresses used for the military purposes of the king and his central government. Some were deliberately destroyed by the king to further reduce the power of the nobles. This was known as "slighting" and consisted of undermining a wall or tower enough so that the castle could not be defended. It would have been too expensive and taken too long to tear down to the ground a whole castle.

Kings and nobles and rich people went on building magnificent homes and many of them continued to look more or less like castles, but they could not be defended the way the old-time castles could. The kings of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries built palaces which were enormous homes, much more comfortable and luxurious than the medieval castles. The word palace, incidentally, comes from Palatine Hill, one of the seven hills on which Rome was built. The Emperor Augustus constructed there what became the palace of the Caesars. Buckingham Palace in London, erected in 1703 and purchased by King George III in 1761, is an excellent example of the kind of royal home.

Handsome country houses and elegant city mansions were built by, and became the homes of, men and women who in previous centuries would have lived in castles. The word chateau is often applied to the fine country homes, especially those in France. Castles stood on sites which dominated the area, but the chateaux, or country homes, were more likely to be set back in their own parks surrounded by gardens and trees. Beauty and comfort became as important as power and protection had once been.

It is a tribute to the skill of their construction and the strength of the materials that so many hundreds of castles still stand today. Some of them are in ruins, but many of them are being lived in right now. In countries boasting old castles, many are kept in good repair and are open to visitors. Often guides are provided to explain the history of the castle and the contents-interesting and valuable collections of the castle and of furniture, art, and other things. In Scotland, for example, the Duke of Argyll, who is head of the Clan Campbell among other honors, has opened his ancestral home, Inverary Castle, to visitors for a fee. In Germany and Austria, many of the famous and imposing castles have been turned into hotels and a visitor can "live like a nobleman". Anyone taking a trip to any of the countries boasting famous old castles will want to visit some of them. This can easily be arranged, and the tourist-information bureaus of the various countries are most co-operative in supplying information and attractive descriptive material.

Whether castles are in ruins, or are now being used as hotels for tourists, they still remind us of an age that seems more romantic than ours. The age of castles lacked many conveniences we know today and was full of many dangers. Yet castles represent an important and exciting stage in the development of our civilization. It is thus fitting, and not surprising, that tribute is still paid to castles in poetry and in stories.

Even postage stamps honor castles. In 1956 Great Britain issued a series of four handsome stamps of high value, ranging up to one pound, each showing Queen Elizabeth II and a castle from one of the four parts of her realm : Windsor Castle (England) ; Edinburgh Castle (Scotland) ; Caernarvon Castle (Wales) ; and Carrickfergus Castle (Northern Ireland).

This is merely one of the examples of the continuing interest in castles. They have long been used by storytellers and poets as symbols-gay, somber, impressive, magnificent-of things we all dream of. Without really thinking where the inspiration first came from, we all still use such expressions as "castles in the air", and "castles in Spain", and "a man's house is his castle". It will be a long time, if ever, before people forget all about castles.