WEAPONS. A Pictorial history

Early Norman castle

William divided England among his leaders and told each man to hang on to what he was given. The Saxons showed a distaste for Normans which suggested to each Norman knight the wisdom of building a stronghold where a night's sleep could be had safely. For the building of it the Saxons were "persuaded" to contribute their labor gratis.

These first Norman structures had but slight resemblance to anything you think of when you see the word "castle." Most of their defenses were earthworks, and such buildings as were put on them were entirely of wood. Partly, of course, this was through haste to get something up (one of them was built in eight days); also, wooden castles were quite usual in Normandy at the time. The Millennium, the year 1000 A.D., was not long past, and since all Christendom had fully expected the world to end then, they hadn't bothered to build permanent structures and soon they had forgotten how to do it. Only a few of the earliest Norman buildings in England were stone, but the conquerors were terrible masons: Winchester Cathedral tower actually collapsed fifteen years after they built it! In trying to make up with sheer bulk for their lack of skill, they built the walls of the keep of the Tower of London fifteen feet thick.

There seem to have been no Saxon castles, because they had never been needed; the Saxons fortified towns. A castle is a private fort. It was invented in France in the Dark Ages and brought over to England. The Norman began his castle by digging a deep and wide ditch around a circle perhaps two hundred feet in diameter. The dirt from the ditch was thrown toward the center to form a flat-topped mound ringed with an earthen rampart. On the top of the bank a strong wooden stockade was built, and in the center of the ring there was a well-constructed but nearly windowless wooden house. Here the knight, his family, his servants and his men-at-arms, surrounded by their horses and dogs, lived a crude and pungent existence. The entrance to the mound, or motte as it was called, was through a single gate reached by a wooden bridge which sloped upward across the ditch. This was literally a "draw bridge" because the planks of one section could be drawn back towards the castle at night, leaving a gap difficult to pass. All other movable bridges were afterwards called drawbridges, no matter how they worked.

The need of more space, especially for the animals, soon led the knight to enclose another and larger ditch-and-stockade area next to his stronghold and surrounding the approach to his bridge. This forecourt was called the bailey; its stockade crossed the main ditch and marched up the mound to join the motte stockade on both sides of the gate. The outer entrance to the castle was now across another bridge leading into the bailey.

The bailey could be defended for a while and then abandoned if necessary, for a last stand on the motte when the knight "burnt his bridges behind him." As time went on the ditches were made deeper and more dirt was added to the motte which made it higher; a few still stand which are as high as a hundred feet. This added height, sloping always towards the center, had the further effect of making the flat top much smaller. Then the wooden house was replaced by a stone stronghold which could itself be defended by a few men. This was the donjon or keep, and for a while it was still surrounded by the old wooden fence. In time of siege it was necessary to hang wet hides on the timbers to protect them from fire.

Stone keep with cutaway (showing interior)

The first stone donjons were nearly square and weren't as narrow or tall as they later became. The whole structure was above ground and the first floor, which was used for storage, had no outside door. The entrance to the keep was on the second floor through a small projecting structure, to which an outside stair led upward along one wall. Sometimes the stairs had a gate at the bottom and a drawbridge at the top.

On the inside, the second floor of the donjon was divided into two rooms. One of these was used as living-and-sleeping quarters for the retainers. Here all cooking was done in a corner near the well, the smoke of the kitchen fire finding its way out through a hole in the roof if the wind was right; the other room was smaller and served as a private chamber for the lord and his lady. And the only access to the storeroom was from this room, by a little stair built within the thickness of the wall. Thus his lordship could guard his provisions personally. A similar stair gave access to the top of the donjon wall, which was built higher than the roof of the place and where watch was kept at all times.

Tower keep

In the course of time the wooden fence around the motte was replaced with stone and soon the one around the bailey was also, but the main defense of the castle was still the keep. Its windows were small and very high as a defense against projectiles. New ones were made higher and narrower, like a tower, by the device of putting the knight's chamber above the great hall, on the third floor. Sometimes there was an entry floor below the hall, making the whole tower four stories high.

The best assault against a keep was mining. usually under one corner. The thick walls were actually two walls with loose rubble between them, so when the mine caved in, the whole corner of the donjon came rumbling down. The wreckage made a ramp for the invader and the place became indefensible. To make mining as difficult as possible the later keeps were built with an extended base, called a plinth. Tower keeps had gaps, called crenels, in the tops of their walls, from which an archer could shoot with some protection from the "merlons" which were left between them. Vertical slots were cut in the walls at lower points, where a man with a crossbow might be stationed. Such a tower, well provisioned and with a few stuffed dummies for show, could be defended by twenty men unless they got dysentery, which they usually did get because sanitation wasn't part of the plan for defending a castle.

At the time of the Conquest the Norman bow was probably about five feet long, and to discharge an arrow, it was drawn to the archer's chest. At some time around 1100 the bow was lengthened to six feet or more, and the draw was then to the "ear" (actually to the angle of the jawbone); the shooting range was increased greatly. Three-foot arrows began arriving through the keep's high windows and disturbing his lordship at meals. To hold the bowmen out of range, the low walls of the bailey were extended and strengthened and more vigorously defended.

Crossbowman at loophole

Then, towards the end of the twelfth century, stone-throwing siege weapons began to get better; not only could they clear the outer walls with ease but, worse, the stones hit the tops of the walls and fractured into murderous fragments. The obvious cure was to make the walls higher. This was done and the castle began to take on a proper romantic look.

Archer shooting through a crenel

The main defense of the place was now the outer walls. The keep lost its importance and no new mottes were built. As the years passed (we're covering a lot of time now), the keep was replaced by a strong, square gatehouse with towers at its corners and living quarters were built against the inner face of the high "curtain" walls. These high walls were a good defense against projectiles, but it was hard to keep miners away from their bases, so something more had to be added. The first addition was flanking towers. These were usually round and projected outward so that the defenders could shoot along the face of the adjacent wall. It was soon discovered that the old curved shape of the bailey required too many towers, so castles were then built square.

Next hoardings were applied. These were wooden balconies projecting from the tops of the walk, allowing the defenders to drop discouraging substances on the heads of storming parties. Much later the overhangs were built of stone as part of the walls and rejoiced in the thumping name of machicolations.

Hoardings

Machicolations

Still more defense was needed. Sappers could start work at some distance and run their galleries underground to the bases of the walls undetected, or at least undeterred. Water was the answer to that; and the wet-ditch, or moat, came into existence. Any tunnel that could be built in those days would be flooded if it were dug under a moat.

Water was kept in the shallow moat around the castle by damming a natural stream. The dam was often separately fortified and guarded to prevent the draining of the moat. The gate on the enemy's side of the moat was called the barbican. The drawbridge was lowered from the list gate. It admitted to the list, which was the grassy strip between the walls. Here tournaments and spear practice were held, and, in time, any ground laid out for a tournament came to be called a list.

A privately owned, moated castle c. 1300

When the old keep was abandoned, the main gatehouse became the place for a last stand, and the lord and his family lived there in times of emergency. The small turrets on the inner corners of the gatehouse and on the larger round towers covered narrow spiral stairs.

Porticullis, closed

With the castle completely surrounded by water (some of them sat in the middle of artificial lakes), the approach was by a bridge so built that a section nearest the castle could be up-ended by chains and windlasses, leaving an impassable gap. The gate defenses were elaborated. Little subforts called barbicans were built on the shore side of the bridge for preliminary defense. On the castle side, beyond the drawbridge, the narrow passage through the gate tower was defended by means of loopholes in its sides and round holes in its ceiling, through which boiling oil and hot pitch could be poured down on an uninvited guest. Exit from the passage to the inner court was barred by a stout oaken gate which could be reached only by passing one or two portcullises. A portcullis was a heavy wood or iron grating spiked along its lower edge. It could be dropped suddenly across the passage from the ceiling.

The foregoing improvements were developed gradually and some of them were added to the older castles, but not until the end of the thirteenth century was a castle built which had all of the defenses and which was for that time, practically impregnable. Almost the only way to capture such a castle was to make a deal beforehand with a pal on the inside to come down at midnight and open the little back gate for you. There was always this little postern gate for sneaking couriers in and out. This was one of the few periods in warfare when the defense had the advantage of the offence.