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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.

A keep is a strong central tower which is used as a dungeon or a fortress. Often, the keep is the most defended area of a castle, and as such may form the main habitation area, or contain important stores such as the armory, food, and the main water well, which would ensure survival during a siege.

Concentric castle's (or multiple castle) is a castle within a castle with two or more concentric rings of curtains, he 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.

L-plan castle is a castle or towerhouse in the shape of an L, typically built in the 13th to the 17th century. This design is found quite frequently in Scotland, but is also seen in England, Ireland, Romania, Sardinia and other locations. The evolution of its design was an expansion of the blockhouse or simple square tower from the Early Middle ages. As building techniques improved, it became possible to construct a larger building footprint and a more complex shape than the simple blockhouse tower. A more compelling motivation for the L plan was the ability to defend the entrance door by providing covering fire from the adjacent walls.

A water castle is a castle with outside walls generally surrounded by moats. The surrounding water originally served as defense. Water castles were typically built on flat land where there are no steep hills or rocks to reinforce the stronghold.
They were usually developed from an early medieval motte-and-bailey. Originally water castles were constructed to make it difficult for enemies to attack. The surrounding ditches were also used as a source of water when under siege or during periods of drought, as sources of fish and as primitive sewage treatment plants. Typically, castles had only one entrance served by a drawbridge, which would be raised at night or when under siege. Some water castles were constructed more as a fortress..

Japanese castles (城 ,shiro) were fortresses composed primarily of wood and stone. They evolved from the wooden stockades of earlier centuries, and came into their most well-known form in the 16th century. Like European castles, the castles of Japan were built to guard important or strategic sites, such as ports, river crossings, or crossroads, and almost always incorporated the landscape into their defense.


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 had one or two lines of Curtains, a castle with two curtains is called a Concentric castle.
A bastion is a structure projecting outward from the main enclosure of a fortifications, situated in both corners of curtain, with the shape of a sharp point, facilitating active defense against assaulting troops. It allows the defenders of the fort to cover adjacent bastions and curtains with defensive fire.

The Different Towers: I will be adding building's that were not built within the castle's walls.

Peel towers (also spelt pele) are small fortified keeps or tower houses. They were mostly found in England or Scotland, they were intended to be watch towers where signal flares could be lit by the garrison to warn of approaching danger. By an Act of Parliament in 1455 each of these towers was required to have an iron basket on its summit and a smoke or fire signal, for day or night use, ready at hand. Apart from their primary purpose as a warning system, these towers were the homes of the Lairds and landlords of the area, who dwelt in them with their families and retainers, while their followers lived in simple huts outside the walls. The towers also provide a refuge so that, when cross-border raiding parties arrived, the whole population of a village could take to the tower and wait for the marauders to depart.

A watchtower is a type of fortification used in many parts of the world. It differs from a regular tower in that its primary use is military, and from a turret in that it is usually a freestanding structure. Its main purpose is to provide a high, safe place from which a sentinel or guard may observe the surrounding area. In some cases, non-military towers, such as religious pagodas, may also be used as watchtowers. Do not confuse Peel towers with a watch tower, a Peel tower could house a small family and villagers in a small village, while a watch tower could only house a few guards.

Guard tower serves as a general term for any military tower providing vigilance, and henceforth guarding a certain area.

A turret (from Italian: torretta, little tower; Latin: turris, tower) is a small tower that projects vertically from the wall of a building such as a medieval. Turrets were used to provide a projecting defensive position allowing covering fire to the adjacent wall in the days of military fortification. As their military use faded, turrets were adopted for decorative purposes.
A turret can have a circular top with crenellations as in the picture at right, a pointed roof, or other kind of apex. It might contain a staircase if it projects higher than the building; however, a turret is not necessarily higher than the rest of the building; in this case, it is typically part of a room, that can be simply walked into.

The Battlements: When a section of the wall reached walking level (Its maximum height) its battlement or crenelation 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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Kill count as a SeeD Cadet: 4

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. Gabions are cages, cylinders, or boxes filled with soil or sand that are used in military application. In a military context, earth or sand-filled gabions are used to protect artillery crews. Think of Sand bags, for modern bunkers, it's the same thing.

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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Kill count as a SeeD Cadet: 4

OK It's been a while since I touched this thread. I am going to update it little by little now. Sorry for the long delay.

*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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Kill count as a SeeD Cadet: 4

I would just like to add that they could also use animal hides (leather) to prevent the siege towers being set ablaze.

Also, oil was rather expensive and hard to get by, no? (I've been told, but a lot of people disagree, so I'm just as inclined to believe cauldrons of boiling oil were flung around for fun)

And a small note on the biological warfare: they'd also send rotting cow carcasses, but the attackers needed to be very careful, because if they sent a fresh carcass, then they just suppied the defender with a lovely barbecue.

With the trebuchets: should I think LOTR wasn't very off with Gondor sending those mine shafts flying?

They usually covered the tower with iron or as you said, animal skins, but they needed to be fresh.

Thank you for pointing that out, I meant to add other items to that subject. Yes Oil was VERY expensive and because it was expensive, its use was limited, both in frequency and quantity. It was more common to Boil Water or superheated Sand. Even dust on the ground could be used. There have been records of defenders boiling water and ale together.

Yes that is true about the cow. They would actually send ANY rotted carcass (Horse, dog, pig, chicken etc.)

With the trebuchets in the lord of the rings, that is very realistic. As I said before the largest ever FOUND was able to send a Volkswagen flying. I'm sure there were even more larger one's created.

During a siege of Stirling Castle in 1304, Edward Longshanks (King of England) ordered his engineers to make a giant trebuchet for the English army, named "Warwolf". With one blow, Warwolf leveled a section of wall, successfully concluding the siege of Stirling Castle.

Thank you for bringing up these points

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Kill count as a SeeD Cadet: 4

Are you going to post anything about field warfare? If you need any contributions of Asian field warfare, I'd be glad to give you a hand.

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jus cuz i cnt spell dusnt meen i dnt hv rites stop bein meen ppl

I'm workign something up for European Field Warfare...basically 1150 thru 1519.

Ying Go ahead if you wish. I would post field Warfare, but I don't have time to sit down and write it out lately, so thank you Gilbert for helping me there.

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Kill count as a SeeD Cadet: 4

Thanks for the article I might have to use this at one point.

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What would you attempt to do, If you knew you couldn't fail?