The Dark Ages - by Zeke

In the Dark Ages if you were a Lord or a King and someone annoyed you, or you needed more land, you would raise an army and attack your neighbor. These constant battles and sieges led to heavily fortified towns! This blog-piece shall look at who and why you have an enemy, and what you need to do to stop them killing you.

Your Enemy
To start this section I am going to pick on the Pope.  Not the new one but one from awhile back, who laid siege on a town near Carcasone in France and killed six thousand women and children. Why, you might ask, he did this? Well the Pope simply wanted to punish them for not being faithful.

A hill top town, The remains of a wall can still just be seen.

In Italy, in Tuscany there are famous hill-top towns which are surrounded by walls with turrets placed at strategic places. These walls were to keep your neighbors from stealing your grain or pillaging your home.

Arguments between Lords such as, “Who is the richest?” or “Who has the most land?” often resulted in conflict. The place of modern day lawyers was filled by knights who lopped off the heads of who ever they thought wrong. So hopefully you understand medieval politics and have not been inspired to hire a knight as your lawyer.

A mediaeval lawyer.

Fortifications
Walls of around three meters thick and ten meters high are normal. Wall height is often enhanced by large, sheer sided ditches or cliffs. The weak point in a wall is the gate, so gates were placed in a gate-house in sets, one behind the other and often iron clad. The gates always have a gap between them so they could trap people and drop rocks on them through murder holes in the ceiling of the gate-house. Arrows would also be fired through slits in the walls of the gate-house.

The enhanced height of walls by cliffs.

This set of gates is preceded by a draw bridge.  This is clever because when the draw-bridge is up and you want to batter in the gate it is difficult because effectively the gate is suspended in mid air. After the draw bridge there was a portcullis (an iron grill that slides up and down in a groove in the stone) and then two sets of thick wooden doors. The gates are about five meters apart.  Gates might be a weak point but they are heavily defended!

Arrow slits in wall. The arrow slits are not for decoration!

If a town was rich it would have more towers and better armed men. In small villages every man would become a warrior if necessary. In large wealthy trading towns there would be a fully trained well armed garrison. Besancon, a famous fortress that looks like a film set for a fairy tale, has an ideal garrison of three thousand men to guard two walls and a keep.

London Tower’s amoury.

An ideal fortress has three defenses with at least one of those surrounding the town and a keep (a place of last retreat) that houses the riches and rations of the town. The wall is thick and tall and has a moat or ditch at its base. The Crenellations over hang the wall slightly and are made of brick instead of stone. Why brick instead of stone? Well, if shot from a catapult hits the stone it shatters sending shards every which way. Brick, if it receives a shot, crumbles absorbing the impact of the projectile. An ideal place for castle is to have the keep on a hill and the town on the bend in the river so as to be able to use the river as a moat. If the town is in a valley they would have good access to fertile soil, improving their crop.

Double outer wall.

The Keep, the Castle within the Castle.

Over hanging crenellations.

If any of the information is wrong pleas tell me and no one else, thanks. In this report I have told you about what started sieges and who might attack you if you’re not faithful. In my third paragraph I told you what makes for the best fort. Having done what I set out to do I say good bye.

I observe my empire.

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