The building of fortifications revived in France during the 9th century, particularly in northern and western areas exposed to Viking attack. By the end of the 10th century the homes of most local lords were fortified. The towers seen in such defended homesteads would evolve into those characteristic donjon castles of the 11th and 12th centuries. Beyond the deep south of France, however, most fortifications were still built of wood. One example was the earliest known structure on the site of the Castle of the Counts of Flanders at Gent, dating from around 960. On the other hand large areas of southern France seem to have had no fortifications whatsoever, except for some old Roman walls which the Carolingians repaired.
In the south the old legal concept that all fortified walls had to be licensed by the king survived, whereas in the centre and north of France every lord felt able to erect his own defences or to take over existing fortifications. In an attempt to stop this practice in the mid-11th century French rulers invented a 'Carolingian tradition' which stated that kings had a right to enter anybody's castle whenever they wished. Within the Royal Domain around Paris all city walls certainly became the legal property of the king and a century later Royal permission was needed before a house could be erected near a citadel, let alone one resting against a defensive wall. Even the Knights Templar had to petition King Louis VII before they could put a small private gate through the defences of Beauvais.
A new form of fortification, the famous motte and bailey castle popularly associated with the Normans, appeared in western France in the late 10th and 11th centuries. Based upon a small artificial hillock within a wooden stockade, motte and bailey castles were more suited to the flat or gently rolling countryside of the north. Castles perched upon rocky crags and peaks remained more common in the mountainous centre and south of France. The word donjon itself came from the Low Latin domnionem meaning 'house.' The reasons why a castle was sited in a particular spot varied. Some of the earliest stone donjons were sited for strategic reasons to divide the often fragmented feudal territories of a rival; this was what the Count of Anjou attempted to do against his neighbour, the Count of Blois. In the deep south most castles were intended to control trade routes rather than to dominate agricultural land, as was the case in the north, while the greatest castles of the late 12th and 13th centuries were bases for aggression rather than for purely defensive purposes. All castles were important status symbols and thus had a political as well as military function.
Stone fortifications
It was in the small central French region of Berry, whose rulers felt themselves surrounded by feudal threats, that stone donjons first appeared. The Church also played a leading role in encouraging such stone-built fortifications in Berry while in neighbouring regions even monks built donjons. Some scholars believe that the mention of a domus lapidae or 'stone house' at St. Benoit du Sault in 1001 AD may actually be the earliest reference to the kind of stone donjon which gradually replaced wooden defensive palisades in the Berry region. By the late 12th century circular stone donjons in turn started replacing the rectangular kind.
Stone defences reached Flanders rather later, for here most building stone had to be brought in from outside. The first domus lapidae in the Count's castle at Gent dated from between 1075 and 1100, but even this was still surrounded by wooden buildings. The magnificent, though much restored, Castle of the Counts of Flanders which now stands in Gent dates from a major rebuilding programme in the 12th century. A continued use of wooden fortifications in other parts of France was different in that it generally reflected a lack of skilled stone-masons rather than a lack of stone. The stone donjons which still dot the countryside of much of France can similarly be misleading, for the now lost wooden fortifications remained much more common until the 13th century.
Defence was mainly passive well into the 13th century, and relied on the strength or inaccessibility of a castle. Only later were serious efforts made to shoot back at an attacker. Early donjons had very few tiny windows - sometimes none at all. Other castles, such as the beautiful example at Angers, remained remarkably old-fashioned in design. Though built between 1228 and 1238, Angers still consisted of a large walled space or enceinte without a main tower or donjon. As such it had much in common with the great walled citadels of the Middle East. Some specialists assert that this is the influence of the Crusades on the development of French military architecture after 1200. Others deny such influence and point to the evolution of a distinctly French style of castle building, first seen under Philip II Augustus (1180-1223). This consisted of a main tower or donjon standing at one side of a walled enceinte. During the 13th century leading members of the French nobility were growing extremely rich and powerful; their castles often rivalling those of the King himself. Their pride in such fortification was apparent in the motto of the lord of Coucy in north-eastern France: 'Roi ne suis, ne prince aussi. Je sui le Sire de Coucy' (King I am not, nor Prince. I am the Lord of Coucy).
Development of the castle in the south
The evolution of fortifications in southern France was rather different. Stone defences were known in the Charente area north of Bordeaux in the early 11th century, many apparently using materials taken from old Roman-style Carolingian castrum fortresses. Among the earliest is that at Montignac. It lacks a tower or donjon but consists of a circular walled enceinte with two gates, surrounded by a ditch and embankment. Further south there was a great increase in the number of castles during the turbulent first half of the 12th century while another upsurge of building followed the northern French conquest of the Midi during the Albigensian Crusade. It was then that the famous walls and citadel of Carcassone were largely rebuilt in the form they are seen today. Many have criticised the restoration work carried out under the direction of Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century, but the fact remains that he not only saved the uniquely complete walls of this city from destruction but was remarkably accurate, given the knowledge then available. Carcassone still stands within its double walled defences, the inner wall still incorporating the late Roman so-called 'Visigothic towers' of the city which faced the Crusaders. A massive citadel also stands against one side.
A few decades after the Albigensian Crusade crushed the distinctive civilization of Occitan, southern France, King Louis IX built numerous castles along the kingdom's Pyrennean frontier with Spain, many set on precipitous crags. The use of natural features to strengthen a fortification against new forms of siege engine became more common in the 13th century throughout France, having long been normal in the south. This led to some very irregular plans, but they enabled flanking fire to be achieved even from plain walls as well as from projecting towers.
Life in a castle
In the 12th century the dank and dark donjon of a lord's castle was his place of refuge rather than being his home. This was likely to have been in a more comfortable wooden structure nearby. Meanwhile the less privileged knights often lived in fortified houses which could not really rate as castles. In the 13th century, however, the grand salle or largest room within a castle became more important and more pleasant to inhabit. The donjon itself had become merely the most important in a number of towers in the surrounding wall while the living quarters were now placed within the courtyard of the enceinte.
This soon became the setting for an elaborate and highly structured way of life which was idealized in 13th and 14th century Chansons de Guette, (roughly 'songs of the watchtower') most of which dealt with Courtly Love rather than the glorification of war. Such Chansons often described a main gate, decorated with helmets and shields, guarded by men-at-arms while at the highest point, where only a nobleman might stand, was the castle's weathercock. The summons to various duties, meals, hunting and bed-time were announced from another watch-tower known as the guette. Apart from the lowliest serving men and women, the primary role of the men in such castles was, of course, military. Meanwhile the ladies would weave fine clothes and make the leather parts of armour, helmets or harness.
The castle's Grand Salle was used for ceremonies, feasting and the dispensing of justice while the Chamber formed a relatively private area for the Lord and his Lady. By the late 13th century the Grand Salle or Hall and Chamber might have skins or carpets across their floors, replacing the old scattered rushes, while their walls might have 'flowery' paintings. Indeed the entire room could be sprinkled with enormously expensive imported oriental perfumes if the owner of the castle was a great lord. Vital stores such as grain and wine would be kept in the cooler lower parts of the castle. Meanwhile the castle's inhabitants were strictly graded by ranks, from the lord and lady down through the knights, squires and pages to the sergeants and humblest servants.
Warlike entertainment in the courtyard could include fights with wild beasts and jousting. More peaceful pastimes for the castle elite included bathing, which the French aristocracy learned from the Muslims of Spain, while singing, music and dancing were also central to a castle way of life. Huge feasts were relatively rare events but they could involve enormous quantities of meat, fruit and wine, and went on for a considerable time. A perhaps slightly exaggerated meal described in one poetic source listed ten courses. First came venison cooked in a pepper sauce, second a shoulder of wild boar for most of the guests while the favoured few had roast bear. The third and fourth courses consisted of roasted pheasant, peacock and swans. Fifth and sixth courses were fried chickens and roast capons. Seventh came hare, eighth marsh or river birds such as herons, cranes and plover. The ninth course was a paté of stag, pheasants and kid. The final course was another huge paté to be nibbled at leisure by those who had any room left!
Town and city defences
Urban fortifications also played an important role from the 11th to 14th centuries, although towns were no longer the main defence centres of France as they had been in Carolingian times. The evolution of the fortifications of Provins, east of Paris, may have started in the second half of the 9th century with a simple castrum on the spur of a hill which had become the site of a market or fair. By the mid-11th century there were some defences in the town of Provins itself; probably consisting of a motte within the now enlarged castrum. The first complete walls and gates to surround the site were erected early the next century, perhaps with a strongpoint on the site of the present castle. Some strengthening was done in the mid-12th century, by which time houses had spread beyond the castrum into the valley below. The Counts of Champagne also built a magnificent donjon tower on top of the existing motte artificial mound. But the main work had to await the early years of the 13th century, after which no further work was done until the Hundred Years War.
In the south of France many cities retained their old Roman defences, which were generally referred to as 'Saracen' walls. Little improvement was made to these defences until the later 12th century, on the eve of the Albigensian Crusade. Even the famous walls and citadel of Carcassonne, which were once thought to date from between 1100 and 1130, now seem to have been built by the northern French who conquered the Albigensian south; most notably Simon de Montfort between 1209 and 1245.
Ports, Bastides, bridges and churches
A completely new fortified port was also built by King Louis IX and his successors at Aigues Mortes near the mouth of the river Rhône. Its plan was said to have been based upon that of the Egyptian port of Damietta, which the Crusading King Louis knew all too well, but its actual defences remained remarkably old fashioned. During the 13th century most town walls still depended on tall slender towers to provide flanking fire and focal points of defence. At Provins, which has been studied more closely than any other medieval fortified French town, the active elements of defence were based on horizontal fire provided by embrasures in the towers and walls, and by overhanging stone machicolations built into the wall itself.
Bastides were new foundations, mostly laid out to regular plans and sited near threatened frontiers in southern France. Here newly settled inhabitants had clearly defined military obligations although the actual defences could be quite simple. At Morlaàs in the Pyrenean Béarn region, for example, the backs of the outer houses were built close together to form a curtain wall and were not allowed to have doors or windows. The 'Customs' of Morlaàs, updated in 1220, stated that 'everyone must close the rear of his house with stones and wood and the seigneur (must likewise close) the gates, and the seigneur must guard the enclosures, and if anyone dares to take a stake planted or unplanted the seigneur must impose a fine of 60 sous.' Most later 13th century bastides had more normal fortifications consisting of a curtain wall with gates.
Older villages might also be fortified, sometimes by a local lord and at other times by the inhabitants themselves against a troublesome lord. Some strategically important bridges were fortified by the Crown; one of the earlier being at Saintes in 1244. They came in three different forms: the isolated fortified bridge which was first recorded in the mid-13th century, the castle erected on a bridge which was usually built of wood and had been known since the Viking raids of the 9th century, and finally the fortified bridge which served as the outwork of a castle sited on the river's bank. These had been recorded since the late 11th century.
Fortified churches tended to be more characteristic of southern and central France than the north because in these regions the Church had long taken a leading role in attempts to pacify the countryside. The earliest seem to date from late 10th century and they became quite common in the 11th century. Most surviving examples were built from the late 12th to early 14th centuries and they even include fortified Cathedrals, some of which seem to have been designed to face a feared revival of the Albigensian heresy. In the Rhône valley, which then formed a frontier between the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire, fortified churches and towns were even more important than local castles. Most such churches owed their origins to local bishops and abbots. Some were erected by secular lords, although the Lateran Council of 1123 tried to ban the building of fortified churches by local lords.
The influence of the crossbow
An increased use of embrasures in the walls and towers of all fortifications reflected the growing importance of crossbows in the defence of French castles, although this was seen much earlier in the lowlands than the mountains. Some might be mentioned in the 11th and 12th centuries but they only become clear in the 13th century. Various types soon developed and here an influence from Byzantium and the Islamic lands seems likely. The width of the triangular internal space where a crossbowman might stand varied from 20 to 50 degrees and as the years passed the steepness of the angle down which the defender could shoot similarly increased. More elaborate stirrup embrasures, which had an enlarged opening at the bottom of the slit in the wall, mostly date from the second half of the 13th century while the rarer cross shaped embrasures combining both vertical and horizontal slits were found in frontier areas from the late 13th century. A relative lack of embrasures in southern French fortifications probably reflects the rarity of Royal forces with their professional crossbowmen in this part of the country.
While the use of the crossbow was tied to the development of such embrasures, the problem of shooting downwards with this weapon remained until a clip, holding the bolt to the stock of the crossbow, was invented or copied from the crossbowmen of Islamic world. This may account for the fact that most such crossbow embrasures are sited quite low down the side of a wall or tower. Contrary to a widespread belief it now seems likely that heavier frame-mounted great crossbows and espringals were not placed behind such embrasures, where they would clearly have had a very limited field of fire, but on top of towers. In fact an ordnance by Hughes de Cardaillac specifically stated that the large arbalètes à tour forms of crossbow went on the tops of such towers.
Siege and counter-siege
Apart from sniping at their attackers and resisting their assaults, the defenders of a castle or town could make sorties of their own. One major reason for such dangerous excursions was to destroy a besiegers' siege engines, usually by setting them on fire with animal fat and bales of straw or flax brought in baskets from inside the fortifications. For their part the attackers could take the patient approach, as King Philip Augustus did against Château Gaillard in 1203-4. First he surrounded the Anglo-Norman castle with his own ditch and 14 wooden towers. Then his pioneers filled the castle's outer ditch before rolling forward a great wooden tower to destroy the wooden hoardings atop the walls of Château Gaillard. Miners protected by a wooden cat or shed and large mantlet shields eventually undermined the castle's outer gate, whereupon the greatly outnumbered garrison surrendered. In southern France the habit of building a completely self-contained fortified camp for the besiegers, close to the enemy town or castle, mirrored Byzantine and Islamic practice from which it may well have been copied. Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, for example, attempted to besiege Simon de Montfort in Castelnaudary by building a hill-top encampment surrounded by a strong ditch and palisade.
The earliest European illustration of a beam-sling, stone-throwing mangonel siege engine is in a Spanish Mozarab (Arabized Christian) manuscript from the early 12th century. Written references from France are, however, much harder to interpret. In the late 11th century the word chaable or chadable referred to an as yet unidentified form of stone-throwing catapult. Somewhat later the term petraria probably applied to various kinds of stone throwing engine, from the old Roman torsion powered ballista or onager to newer beam-sling machines. The latter included those powered by a team of men pulling on ropes as well as those using a massive counterweight and more generally called mangonels.
One of the clearest of these early references is found in the memoires of Abbot Guibert de Nogent who witnessed the siege of Le Castillon around 1115. Here he described two catapults which, designed by a man named Aleran 'who was very skilled in such matters', were set up opposite wooden towers which had been rolled against the walls of Le Castillon by the besiegers. These catapults, clearly of the 'man-powered' beam-sling type, were operated by teams of almost 80 women who hurled the rocks which Aleran had piled up. Their efforts smashed the attackers' wooden towers. Weapons shooting shafts which pierced the mail hauberks of many attackers 'so that only one survived' also sound suspiciously like fully developed crossbows. By 1210 the large frame-mounted crossbow was so powerful and accurate that they could kill a member of a besieging army as he stood in the door of his own tent.
Man-powered mangonels were still in use early in the 14th century. According to the Italian author Colonna, who wrote a military treatise for the French King Philip the Fair, they were faster to erect and could shoot at a very rapid rate. Other sources indicate that they would be put up first so as to cover the erection of more complicated mangonels. The trebuchet was the general name for a fully developed counterweight mangonel of the type invented in the Middle East and which became common in France during the 13th century. Colonna again specifies the different types available by the early 14th century, of which the biffa had the greatest range but was less accurate than the ordinary trebuchet. A surviving document of 1293 lists the different weights of pre-cut trebuchet stones kept in the arsenal of Carcassonne. They ranged from 41 to 97 kilograms. This, plus a record of a certain engineer named Gerard who, serving the English King in 1244, had mangonel stones cut according to his own forms and moulds, suggests that mangonels and their missiles were made according to clearly standardized patterns.
The list of siege and counter-siege material in the Carcassonne arsenal in 1293 also includes parts for springallis, turno balistae and mangonellis. The springallis or espringal was sometimes still referred to simply as a petraria or as a 'new' type of Turkish Petraria in the early 13th century. In reality it was a machine using the torsion power of twisted skeins of horsehair rather than the swinging of a beam as in the mangonel. It differed from the ancient Graeco-Roman torsion engines in having two arms which were powered by the skeins of hair (or mixed animal tendons and silk in the Middle East where this engine was invented). Its arms then acting rather like the two halves of a bow to pull a cord which in turn propelled the missile. Complicated as it sound, the espringal was a most effective device, replacing the weaker Graeco-Roman type of ballista in the mid 13th century and itself only falling from use when cannon became sufficiently reliable. The best espringal frames were made of beech wood imported from Germany, or of elm or oak. They were generally about two metres (6.5ft) long, 1.5 metres (4.9ft) high and wide, though later grandes espringals were up to 4 metres (13ft) long. The draw weight of such weapons was around 1,800 kg (3,960 lb) and needed two men using some kind of levered winch. The wooden tongues which were shot from an espringal must have been terrifying missiles, from 700 to 800mm (27.5 - 31ins) long, up to 50mm (2ins) across and weighting almost 1.5 kg (3.3lbs).
Among the other devices used in to protect 12th to 14th century French fortifications was a T-shaped wooden frame from which objects could be dropped directly upon a foe. This was first recorded being used by the Egyptian Fatimid forces defending Tyre against the Crusaders early in the 12th century. It may also be illustrated in the Maciejowski Bible which was made in Paris around 1250. The French also learned the use of pyrotechnics from Byzantines and Muslims during the Crusades. Towns, with their huddled and largely thatched wooden houses, were clearly much more vulnerable to fire weapons than were castles. A simple form of that most typically Byzantine weapon, Greek Fire, was apparently used against Montreuil-Bellay in 1151, while a manual of pyrotechnic knowledge, probably written by an emigré Greek, was available in France from around 1280. Other variations on the pyrotechnic theme almost fall into the category of chemical weapons, as when the defenders of Beaucaire in southern France used noxious fumes from a sack of slow-burning sulphur to drive enemy miners out of their tunnels.
Despite - or because of - this invasion of the aristocratic occupation of chivalric warfare by engineers and chemists, some authors continued to denigrate those who stooped to such ignoble ways of fighting in the 13th century. The moralist Guiot de Provins summed up their attitude when he asked: 'did Alexander have sappers or King Arthur use siege engineers?' King Philip II Augustus took a more practical view, ensuring that his castles were supplied with the ropes and timber needed for stone throwing engines. Similarly his great-great-grandson King Philip IV the Fair was happy to patronize the military scholar Colonna and his book De Regimine Principum III with its detailed analysis of practically every form of siege machine yet known.
by Dr. David Nicolle
About the author
Dr David Nicolle worked in the BBC Arabic Service, gained a MA from the school of Oriental Studies and a PhD from Edinburgh University. He taught world and Islamic art and architectural history at Yarmuk University, Jordan and is one of Osprey's most prolific and popular authors. He has contributed more than 20 titles to the various series and his latest book, Men-at-Arms 337 French Armies of the Hundred Years War is published in February.
Suggested reading
Gravett, Christopher, Medieval Siege Warfare, Elite 28, (Osprey Publishing Ltd., 1990)
Anderson, W., Castles of Europe from Charlemagne to the Renaissance, (1970)
Bradbury, J., The Medieval Siege, (The Boydell Press, 1992)
Fournier, G., Le Château dans la France médiévale: essai de sociologie monumentale, (1978)
Mesqui, J., Provins. La Fortification d'une Ville au Moyen Age, (1979)
Ritter, R., Châteaux, Donjons et Places Fortes: L'architecture militaire française, (Larousse, 1953)
Ritter, R., L'architecture militaire du Moyen Age, (1974)
Salch, C.L., L'Atlas des Châteaux Forts en France (1980)
Tuulse, A., Castles of the Western World, (Thames & Hudson, 1958)