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Medieval warfare is a fantasizing period in which many role players like to act out. (I consider myself a freak). Now I can go on and on about every detail, but I am sure I could turn this into a book…and you don’t want to read THAT much… if you do Go to the LIBRARY! That’s where I learned it… also by historical movies and all that junk but that’s a different story.

Warning: This is a long article, that I turned into small sections for easier reading.

The Castle: The Medieval age was a very dangerous time. Castles were created to protect the ruler, the land, and the common folk, though some were also just meant to be military outpost. The defenders of the castles had many ways to defend it, while attacking forces had many different methods to destroy the defenses.
The castle had simple and complex ways for the garrison to defend it. Castles tended to use natural defenses to make their defenses stronger, faster and with less work. Sometimes they would build their castle nears a river, or on a hill or cliff to gain the advantage of height. It would be the first ring of defense that proved to be very effective.

The Curtain: The castles main line of resistance was the large stone wall, known as a Curtain. It had projecting towers at intervals of 100 or so meters. The ground in front of the Curtain was kept free of all cover, and if there was a moat, the ground would be cleared well beyond it. Castles usually had two lines of Curtains, the outer curtain and inner curtain. The inner curtain was always taller than the outer curtain. Most of the time, the outer j could have been 300 feet long on all four sides, twenty feet high and eight feet thick. The towers on this wall would be of the same thickness, but ten feet higher to provide a good view of the curtain on the other side. The inner curtain measured about 200 feet to a side, twenty-five feet high and twelve feet thick, and its towers would be fifty feet high. The height of the inner curtain made it possible to reinforce the soldiers on the outer curtain.

The towers were perfectly vertical, except along the bottom of the outer face, where they spread out at a sharp angle. The sloping base, which is called a batter, had two functions. It strengthened the wall and it created a surface, which stones and other missiles could bounce off towards the enemy if dropped from the wall.

The Battlements: When a section of the wall reached walking level (Its maximum height) its battlement or crenellation was constructed. This was a wall consisting of alternating high and low segments called Merlons. In some castles, three vertical some spikes called finials capped every merlon, and immediately below each arrow loop was a square putlog hole. If the castle was preparing for battle, beams or logs were extended through these holes to support a temporary wooden balcony or hording from which missiles and arrows could be dropped and fired more accurately toward the base of the walls from the murder holes made with the balcony.

Drawbridges: There were many different types of drawbridges, some as a simple flat piece of timber, others with complex mechanisms. The earlier kind was a flat timber platform that was designed to pivot on an axle, like a seesaw. The inner end of the bridge was weighted and when the supports were removed, it swung down into a specially pit cut into the rock between the towers. As the same time, the other end would swing upward, thus breaking the connection across the moat and blocking the entrance.

Another style is one that is most known. The good old fashion one with the chains that pulled it up? It is pretty simple to figure out how that is done. There is a wheel that two or more men would man to slowly crank the bridge up, then placing a large wooden spike through one of the holes to stop it from falling.

The Gatehouse: The Gatehouse was one of the weakest points in a wall, defenders created many advantage points make it one of the worse places to attack. It was made up of two large towers on either side of the entrance. In between the two towers of each gate house; a row of parallel stone arches supported a room above the road.

From this room a heavy timber grille called a portcullis could be lowered to block the opening. The portcullis slid up and down in the groves cut into the walls on both sides. The bottom of each vertical piece of portcullis was pointed and capped with Iron. The face of the portcullis was also clad with Iron for additional strength. Beyond the portcullis, a set of heavy wooden doors were also reinforced with iron straps. Immediately behind the doors were two holes, across the roadway, and set into the other hole to further secure the doors.

From the same room that the portcullis came from, there were large holes called Murder holes. These were used to drop rocks, shoot arrows or pour boiling oil/water onto the attackers. There were also arrow loops on the ground level of the gatehouse, which gave the defenders complete control of the entry area.

Arrow loops or windows had recess cut into the thickness of the wall. The recess behind an arrow loop was a vertical wedge shaped space-designed o give the archer more flexibility in aiming his bow.

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The Garrison of the Castle: some castles kept a year’s supply of food or even more on hand. The relatively small size of the thirteenth-century garrison often meant that in a prolonged siege, the assailants rather than the besieged were confronted with a supply problem. A garrison of sixty men could hold out against an attacking force ten times its number, 60 vs. 6000, talk about the three hundred Spartans! Feeding sixty men from a well-stocked granary supplemented by cattle, pigs and chickens brought in at the enemy’s approach might be far easier than feeding 600 men from a war ravaged country side.

Now there have been battles where the garrison was an entire army (Jerusalem during the crusades, Troy during the war between Greece and Troy) Some cities were large enough to have farming inside the city walls to support an army of two thousand or so. Of course, the outer curtain was around the entire city, not just the castle.

Methods of attacking a castle: Sure you can be ruthless and continue to pummel them with your trebuchets all you want, but you might want to be ready to make camp for a couple of years. Sometimes artillery just won’t cut it.

When an army attacked a castle, they had to make sure what they could or could not do. Depending on how well the castle was defended, it would lead them to different ideas that would help them break through the walls. The first thing that could be done was to cut off their water supply to the castle. Everyone knows that a human could last only three days with out water, so doing this made the defenders try to find other means to have fluid. Either drinking their own urine or the blood of their horses… they usually didn’t last too long.

It was common for the besiegers to build a wall (circumvallation) around their objective to prevent sorties (Attack from the defenders) and a second wall (Contravallation) around their own army as a security measure against revealing forces.

A frequent structural weakness was the soil the castle was built upon. Attacking forces would sometimes tunnel under the wall, preferably under a corner or tower. The would support the mine with heavy timbers as they progressed and when they were directly under their target, they would set the tunnel on fire and that would cause the wall or tower to collapse. The castle defenders could only prevent this by building on stone or other hard surfaces, or to tunnel them selves to meet up with the attacking forces then fight under the ground to gain control of the tunnel.

If that was not a possibility or they lost control of the tunnel, they would revert back to siege weapons, in which I will explain the different kinds of siege weapons in the next section.

Sometimes tricks would be the best way to gain entrance to the castle. A popular trick was the nocturnal “Escalade” a silent scaling of the wall at an inadequately guarded point.

Another was a diversion to draw defenders away from a secondary gate or weak point that might then been suddenly overwhelmed. Thus causing chaos and confusion among the defenders and the castle was quickly taken.

Sometimes an army might start a siege and after a while act like they gave up and retreated until they were out of sight. Then, some of the attacking soldiers would disguise themselves as peasants or merchants. If they were lucky they could gain entrance tot the provision hungry castle and siege the Gatehouse and hold it till the army returned. Some of you might instantly think of the “Trojan horse” which is what it basically is.

Siege weapons: One of the well known and still used today (MUCH smaller of course) is the Battering ram. Contrary to popular belief, ramming the castles gates was rare, unless they were attacking a large castle. Rams would usually made by a heavy beam or tree trunk fronted with an iron or copper head either grasped directly by its crew or swung by leather thongs. Some literally had a ram head (Not the real ones of course.) they were also made out of copper or iron.

Before any form of direct assault, the moat defenses had to be dealt with first, usually by filling it with brush and earth. The attackers would then attack with a mobile assault tower (which would be built at the battle site.) to defend it from the castle’s archers who would flame their arrows to burn the assault towers, they would be plated with armor, so the arrows would bounce off. A gate on the top level of the tower would swing down and crush the merlons. Then foot soldiers would storm the wall.

If they didn’t want to make assault towers, they would revert to Catapults or Mangonels were created to hurl stones or boulders at the stone wall. They didn’t just throw stones, clay pots that held oil, which they would light before hurling it over the wall to burn their wooden buildings. They would also send any dead over the wall to spread disease.

The Trebuchet (Tray-bush-A) helped the attackers greatly due to superior accuracy and power over the original catapults. The Largest Trebuchet found was large enough to send a small Volkswagen flying, that’s at least a Ton! Because of this huge threat, castle walls became much thicker, up to twenty four feet thick!

Then to top that off, defenders would use this new thickness to set up their own trebuchets and use them for counter battery fire. This would increase their deadliness due to their advantage of height.


Course there are different styles of castles, the Asian castles looked more like a three or four story tower. But one thing is similar. Attacking and defending a castle was not easy, there was much planning on both sides. There were some castles that never fell, there were many that did. Any one of these examples above could have been the factor to one’s survival and another’s destruction.

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*Soon to come the different buildings inside the castle*

What is a Chape what is a Chappe what is a Fuller?

If you want to read another helpful Article, then check out this one.

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