Dan Snow - Battle Castles

COPYRIGHT CONTENTS TITLE PAGE COPYRIGHT DEDICATION INTRODUCTION: THE RISE & FALL OF THE MEDIEVAL CASTLE THE CONTROL OF ENGLAND: 1: DOVER CASTLE THE BATTLE FOR NORMANDY: 2: CHÂTEAU GAILLARD CRUSADER CASTLES: 3: KRAK DES CHEVALIERS THE CONQUEST OF WALES: 4: CONWY CASTLE CASTLES OF THE TEUTONIC KNIGHTS: 5: MALBORK CASTLE THE RECONQUEST OF SPAIN: 6: GIBRALFARO CASTLE CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES FURTHER READING ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS BY THE SAME AUTHOR ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

Published in Great Britain by Harper Press in 2012

Copyright © Ballista Media Ltd 2012

Maps: mediahouse

CGI: The Sequence Group/Nicole Hogan

Photographs by Tom Clifford, except where otherwise indicated

Dan Snow asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Note that although the spelling of ‘Krak des Chevaliers’ has been adopted for the book, the spelling ‘Crac des Chevaliers’ is also commonly used.

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Source ISBN: 9780007455584

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007457489

Version: 2019-10-07

DEDICATION CONTENTS TITLE PAGE COPYRIGHT DEDICATION INTRODUCTION: THE RISE & FALL OF THE MEDIEVAL CASTLE THE CONTROL OF ENGLAND: 1: DOVER CASTLE THE BATTLE FOR NORMANDY: 2: CHÂTEAU GAILLARD CRUSADER CASTLES: 3: KRAK DES CHEVALIERS THE CONQUEST OF WALES: 4: CONWY CASTLE CASTLES OF THE TEUTONIC KNIGHTS: 5: MALBORK CASTLE THE RECONQUEST OF SPAIN: 6: GIBRALFARO CASTLE CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES FURTHER READING ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS BY THE SAME AUTHOR ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

To Zia,

There is no castle you cannot take

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

INTRODUCTION:

THE RISE & FALL OF THE MEDIEVAL CASTLE

THE CONTROL OF ENGLAND:

1: DOVER CASTLE

THE BATTLE FOR NORMANDY:

2: CHÂTEAU GAILLARD

CRUSADER CASTLES:

3: KRAK DES CHEVALIERS

THE CONQUEST OF WALES:

4: CONWY CASTLE

CASTLES OF THE TEUTONIC KNIGHTS:

5: MALBORK CASTLE

THE RECONQUEST OF SPAIN:

6: GIBRALFARO CASTLE

CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES

FURTHER READING

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

Two magnificent gatehouses at Caerphilly – one of the largest castles in Britain

INTRODUCTION: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MEDIEVAL CASTLE

I grew up in a landscape marked by violence. We all did. I spent my childhood in Britain where, even before the bombs which fell during the Second World War, hilltop after hilltop and every town in between bore the scars of war. The memories of these older wars have long been fading. It has been centuries since hostile armies criss-crossed the English landscape, since villages were torched, and since desperate men, women and children sought refuge behind strong walls. Nevertheless, the country’s towns, cities and wider landscape were shaped – are still shaped – by a brutal past.

Family car journeys when I was a boy took us past the jagged outlines of ancient buildings. They were mostly ruins, but even in a dilapidated state, with uneven walls and collapsed towers, they captured the imagination of everyone who saw them, especially children like me. They were castles: a type of fortification so widespread and so iconic that they have come to symbolize an entire period in our history.

This is not only true of England: thousands of castles remain in every corner of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and beyond. From the mouth of Lough Foyle in the north of Ireland, to the Alborz Mountains of Iran, castles or their ruins still dominate the landscape and our imaginations. Their massive walls have survived the assaults of both the human and natural worlds, from trebuchets to earthquakes. They are a constant reminder to us today of a time when violence, or the threat of it, was the norm.

As an adult I have continued to be enthralled by these massive skeletons, or ghosts, which stand in our landscape, speaking of very different times. What are they? And what do they tell us? I recently made a television series about some of the greatest surviving castles. I travelled across Europe and the Middle East to walk their battlements, crawl through tunnels, and climb the hills on which they often stand. Built during a period of over two hundred years, from the late twelfth to the early fifteenth centuries, they have helped me to understand how the medieval castle developed during its period of greatest dominance. In different fields of conflict – from the English struggles to subdue the rebellious Welsh to the efforts by Christian kingdoms in Spain to conquer territory held by Muslims; from the Crusades by European knights in the Holy Land to the lesser-known Northern Crusade of the Teutonic Knights in Poland – an arms race took place between the builders of fortifications and the designers of attack weaponry. It oscillated one way then the other, at times evenly poised, until finally it favoured the well-equipped besieging army whose arsenal was too powerful for even the strongest castle. The age of the castle was over; but their influence continued long after in the ways we built. Many of these castles still stand, demanding to be understood.

Maiden Castle in Dorset, England, is one of Europe’s biggest Iron Age hill forts

Ira Block / Getty Images

Hadrian’s Wall was built by the Romans across a 70-mile stretch of northern Britain in the second century AD

What, then, is a castle? And how did this type of building come to exist and to play such an important role for centuries? To some extent, of course, castles speak of a universal human desire for security. Like other animals, humans have always sought to protect themselves. Even today we use bricks and mortar, wood, metal and stone to give ourselves some measure of protection from both the elements and other people. The earliest humans used the natural defences of the landscape: caves, mountain passes, rivers and swamps. Nearly 12,000 years ago Neolithic man built a massive stone wall to protect Jericho. Iron Age defensive structures – ramparts and ditches – remain clearly visible, particularly from the air. The Romans built walls, forts and camps right across their vast domain: an attempt to secure themselves against the incursions of barbarian tribes like the Saxons and the Franks.