Marked by a thunderous hum and a sky suddenly littered with arrows as valiant knights on horseback scream their battle cries, the opening scene of a great castle siege is among the most fantasized events of the middle ages. The romanticized monolithic fortress planted picturesquely inside a deep moat is certainly breathtaking, but few understand the centuries-long process that was the evolution of castles. Medieval castles were invaluable methods of defence; if built well, a castle enabled a small garrison of soldiers to withstand assault from a large army, an attribute which was important in the rapid influx of castles into medieval society (Braun, 60). The history of castles predates the word castle and, as did many of mankind's remarkable achievements, arose from the necessity of war.
The dawning of the age of castles has no distinct beginning. Fortifications were commonplace since well before the middle ages; in fact, the ruins of many Roman forts became the bases for future constructions. The earliest related Anglo-Saxon castle theories date to the early tenth century, when King Alfred developed his burgh system. Under Alfred, a series of fortified towns were created in Wessex. These towns, called 'burhs,' were all less than 20 miles apart and had a similar design. The burhs, some of which were re-used Iron Age or Roman forts, served as a refuge for people and property of Alfred and other Anglo-Saxons during the 10th century (Campbell, 153-153). Though burhs were by no means castles or even their clear-cut predecessors, the burgh system evidenced early thought of territorial defence in Europe.
The innovation of the castle as it was come to be known is credited to western France of the ninth and tenth centuries. The dangerous and unorganized territories provided two preconditions for the development of a castle society. The first was a lack of prominent authority and public rule, resulting in many smaller, private wars. The second condition is the recognition of the castle as symbolic of the power and prestige of its primary resident or creator (Platt, 4). The idea of imperial palaces was certainly not new, however, and Germanic and Celtic mead-halls had long been used to entertain guests and express authority (Thompson, 3). When these conditions came together, private fortifications began springing up in western France as a means of defence and status.
The introduction of the castle system to England came in 1066, with William the Conqueror bringing Norman ideals across the channel. Born around this time was a new Norman strategy of war, one the Anglo-Saxons had yet to fully capitalize on. Men of war realized that before conquering new lands, the protection of one's own territory was paramount to a successful empire. This concept served as the basis for siege warfare (Contamine, 101). During William's invasion, the Normans began making makeshift fortifications along their route and, under William's command, further fortifying these structures when they had captured a territory. These early fortresses and castles served as military bases and defensive refuges for the Normans and began spreading around the country. Within a year of William's conquest, three castles, including the elaborate stone White Tower of London, were erected in London for ‘protection against the populace’ (Braun, 32). As Norman monk and historian Orderic Vitalis said, "The English, though brave and warlike, had very few of those fortifications which the French call 'castles' in their land. It was this that made their resistance to their conquerors so feeble (Platt, 1-5)."
The premise of the medieval castle draws upon one of the most basic concepts of war, the idea of fighting from the higher ground. As Braun writes, “the ditch is the fundamental factor in all fortifications” (6). The advantages are fairly clear: struggling uphill slows an assault and makes the attacker an easy target for projectile weapons. The earliest castles were not stone towers but simple, strategically placed earthworks and timber. Fortifications consisting of ditches and banks had been in practice since the second half of the ninth century, but had become increasingly larger. In the mid to late tenth century, these hilltop ditch and mound defences became stronger and more permanent. Two types of earthworks-based castles came into use around this time. The first was a defensive bank and ditch, known as a ‘ring-work’. The second was a raised mound, known as a 'motte.' The motte was the centre of the early castle. Generally the most important building was placed atop the motte. In addition to the motte, builders began defending the raised courtyard of the castle, known as the bailey. Usually bailey defence was a 'palisade' or 'brattice' made of tightly bound timbers. Baileys were also often raised up inside the ditch, and some early innovators surrounded the ditch with 'zareba's', or quickset thorn bushes. The motte-and-bailey castle became the prototype for medieval European castles. Their importance is implied in the Bayeux Tapestry, which contains images of fortifications on exaggerated raised mounds (Grape, 103, 109, 111-114). This emphasis on the raised characteristic of castles demonstrates the increasing value of such constructions.
As castles become more commonplace, so to did methods of attacking them. A key element in the history of castles is the idea that castle technology never stopped. Siege warfare was a constant series of innovations, reactions, predictions and anticipation. When a new method of assault was discovered, castle builders soon developed their own new methods of countering it. The process resulted in a steady stream of innovations on both sides. This applied not only to new castles, but to existing ones as well. No castle was ever complete, as they had to evolve with the technology of the day’s military to remain relevant. One of the first major drawbacks to early wooden castles was fairly obvious: they were susceptible to the weapon of fire. The response was equally simple, as many castles began building with stone instead of wood. Castles used rocks, stones and rubble, with lime mortar as the binding material (Thompson, 99). Those that already had wooden motte-and-bailey structures often fortified with stone.
A significant development occurred in 1068, when Baldwin de Meules constructed Exeter, a stone castle utilizing a ring-work defence. Exeter was unique in that it was among the first castle to build a stone gatehouse marking the entrance to the castle (Platt, 11). This gatehouse would be adopted by both stone and wooden castles as a method of preventing fires and generally slowing intruders. The practice of guarded gate-towers soon became common, and gates were used to funnel attackers into one well-defended area of the castle. Shortly after Exeter, Alan the Red constructed Richmond Castle in North Yorkshire. While many early castles were designed as displays of wealth moreso than defence, Richmond was specifically designed to protect settlers and demonstrate possession of the territory. The castle was triangular, using the lie of the land for a natural defence on one side. It included stone walls with four towers and a great gate-tower at its northern end. While gates became popular rather quickly, these castles were exceptions rather than the rule, as stone castles did come into general acceptance until around 1100.
From the first stages of motte-and-bailey castles, focus was put on the central building. This main tower, called the tower or ‘donjon’ at the time, is now commonly known as the ‘keep.’ The keep often housed the main hall, the cathedral, the kitchen, the well and residences (Braun, 28-30). The ground floor was typically windowless, to keep intruders out, and was used as storage. Keeps were originally just two-stories, but eventually became defensive stone towers. These tower-keeps were square, stone buildings, usually two to four stories tall. Keeps usually had thick walls with arrow slits throughout. As they developed, keeps began to house the lord of the castle and serve as the primary defence (Braun, 39-42). Stone keeps, no longer endangered by fire, soon faced new military opposition.
With fire losing its effectiveness as a primary siege technique, technology had to find a way to counter the stone castle. By the end of the twelfth century, castles would face several new advances in siege warfare. One of the most revolutionary of these was the trebuchet, a devastating siege weapon. The trebuchet was the result of Henry II sending 500 carpenters to Syleham in 1174. The catapult, which functioned essentially like a giant see-saw, could launch stone, rock, horses and severed heads over the walls of the castle. Combined with mangonels, which were smaller wound catapults, the prospect of damage by these missiles prompted more adaptations to the castle structure. The addition of projectile damage, combined with the constant threat of mining and possibly the result of Arab influence during the Crusades, caused the square keeps to evolve into polygonal or cylindrical shapes (Braun, 64-69). The shape decreased the surface area of the tower, making it less susceptible to collapse from mining and serving to deflect missiles. An example is the tower built by Henry II at Orford, a sophisticated cylindrical tower with three turrets (Platt, 39). Henry’s reign would see the last great square keep at Scarborough (Braun, 45).
Trebuchets created a danger not just to the structure of the keep, but to the inhabitants of the castle as well. In a stone castle, a stone thrown with such force would explode into deadly shrapnel if it made contact with a stone part of the castle. The preventative measure developed by the castle was to increase the height of the castle walls, which in turn made mining a prime offensive strategy.
Stone castles were large and heavy, with walls up to 10 feet thick and seemingly impervious. The answer to this design was the technique of mining. Castle mining involved teams of workers digging underneath the castle, supporting the mine with wood, then setting it aflame and watching a keep collapse under its own weight (de Pizan, 59; Braun, 45). In response, castles made several structural adaptations. Some keeps featured enlarged bases, called ‘batters’ increasing the area miners had to dig. These bases also caused objects dropped by defenders from the top of the keep to ricochet at attackers. Another development was that of ‘machicolations’, or galleries which projected out from the edge of the castle. Machicolations had holes in the floor, which could be used to drop missiles onto defenceless miners (Braun, 68-69; Johnson).
Mining created a great panic in 1215, when John successfully mined the keep of Rochester during a siege. Castle builders and owners panicked, and the developments of moats swept Europe. A great example of a castle built with miners in mind can be seen at Kenilworth. With a great keep complete with a batter and strategic arrow slits, Kenilworth was also surrounded by an enormous lake - too big to be classified as a moat, the massive water defence was called a ‘mere’ (Braun, 45-46).
During the transition to stone, castle designers struggled with how to fit as many people as possible into the defensive structures of the castle. They soon came up with a solution, exemplified by the massive castle Dover. Known as the ‘belt and braces solution,’ designers decided to focus on adequate outer defences which allowed for less compact living quarters inside those defences. This concept led to an innovation consisting of a stone wall, often called the ‘curtain wall’ with connecting ‘mural,’ or wall, towers. Such towers were placed 20-50 m apart – close enough so that the wall could always be defended by one of the towers (Thompson, 99). The walls at the tops of towers, known as ‘parapets,’ needed to protect defenders while still allowing them to see the battlefield and return fire. A practice which had been in use since palisades was applied to towers as the tops were ‘crenulated.’ Crenulated parapets had series of gaps or ‘crenels,’ in the wall to allow defenders to fire or look quickly, without rising above the wall, before returning to cover.
The thirteenth century was certainly the peak age for castles as military structures in Europe. An important event that spurred the further development of castles was Chateau-Gaillard, a fascinating castle built by Richard I upon his return from the Crusades in the late 1190s. This castle featured a tower keep as its strongpoint, but also included beaked towers, a splayed base and full-functioning machicolations. Richard’s enthusiasm and dedication to the castle signalled the transition of the castle from primarily a residence and display of wealth to a full-fledged military unit, a stronghold of defence and integral cog in medieval warfare. The greatest innovation of Chateau-Gaillard, however, was the three successive lines of defence it contained. The castle had an outer, middle and inner bailey protected by a cylindrical tower, as well as several curtain walls and a guarded bridge. The concept displayed by Richard’s castle is that of ‘concentric’ defence. This meant that attackers were forced to fight between two or more areas of defence, causing them to take fire from multiple angles (Platt, 99).
The late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries also saw the innovation of defences for the castle’s weakest point, the main gate. One such creation was that of the ‘barbican.’ Originally meaning any work outside the castle, the barbican came to be recognized as a structure of parallel walls in front of the main gate, which funnelled attackers and created flanking opportunities for the gate’s guard towers. Defence of the main gate was also enhanced by the portcullis, a sliding metal grill which had none of the weaknesses of a wooden door. Apertures in the vault of the gate passageway, known as murder holes, allowed defenders to rain missiles on attackers or douse fires from a safe distance. With these advances, the weak point of the castle had become the centre of defence. In addition to improvements in gate defence, coursed core walls were also developed to enforce stone walls against the danger of a metal-pointed bore, which could crack the walls with a solid blow (Thompson, 99-102).
The medieval castle period peaked with Edward I, who built six huge castles in Wales while encouraging and even subsidizing the construction of many others. Castles of the period had been refined to focus on three main features. They needed to have a square or rectangular shape, for maximum defensive range. They needed concentric defence, and they needed to utilize water as a defence whenever possible. The period of Edward’s reign, in the late thirteenth century, also saw the beginning of the decline of castles. Lords begin reverting to their earlier style of showcasing wealth rather than providing maximum defence. Gunpowder was beginning to be widely adopted, and gun turrets in towers would be one of the last major changes in castle warfare. While castles grew grander and more luxurious, technology for their defence slowed. For two centuries castles survived, but their military advancement had plateaued and the end was growing near as cannons became larger and more powerful. In 1511, the last old-style castle was constructed by the Duke of Buckingham in Gloucestershire (Johnson, 150). Castles built after this time were nothing more than glorified mansions. Once a symbol of pride and a stalwart of defence, the castle had become archaic, an obsolete fortress in an ever-developing military chess match.
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