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| Most castles, by the time of concentric castles, had what were called "murder holes" above their main entrance.
Defending soldiers above the murder holes would throw down boiling water and boiling pitch onto the enemy underneath.
The attackers had to get close to the castle to get in, so they had to get under the murder holes to attack the main entrance.
We do know that parts of dead bodies were thrown through these gaps to put off the enemy !!
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| Stone castles could have very thick walls as this photo shows. Battering rams would have had a difficult time against such thick walls.
The picture also shows battlements. These gave defenders something solid to hide behind when they were not firing out from the gaps in between the stone battlements. In time of war, these gaps would have wooden shutters in between to give the defenders even more protection.
Sometimes, very few soldiers were needed to defend a well built castle.
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| Again, the thickness of castle walls can be seen even if this castle, like so many others, is falling into ruin. This also shows the wall walk (parapet) along which defending soldiers would patrol. What is left of the crenellations can also be made out. |
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| To aid defence, the keep was always built above any castle wall (called curtain walls) so that the heart of a castle could see what was going on around it.
Some castles were so well built, that attackers could only get to a castle through what was charmingly called the "killing field" - because the attackers had no-where to hide. |
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| Round towers on a keep or on a curtain wall assisted defence as it was believed that any form of missile thrown or catapulted at the castle would deflect off of a rounded surface.
Also if the enemy tried to dig under a castle to undermine a weak corner, they would not find a corner on a round tower ! So this form of attack was useless against a castle with rounded towers such as Beaumaris in Anglesey in Wales. |
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But castles were doomed....
The earliest cannons and mortars were all capable of inflicting some damage on castle walls. The smaller cannons were barely effective, but they grew into much larger weapons that could knock down a castle wall with sustained gun fire. Though they were far from reliable, these weapons could knock down walls and they made castle building an irrelevance. Gunpowder outdid stone. Why spend a fortune on building a castle which could be blown apart, when you could spend the money on developing your artillery (as cannon became known as) ?
Mortars were used to fire cannonballs over walls into a courtyard to kill soldiers and cause general damage. Cannon were used to shoot cannonballs directly into castle walls.
Castle defences were of little help against continuous cannon fire. The use of rounded walls could deflect a cannon ball but this would only be by luck. If a cannon ball hit a rounded tower face on, it would still do much damage.
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