How and why CASTLES were invented

this episode of shadow versity is brought to you by the castle shirt because castles are awesome and you want to let your friends know that not only are they awesome but you know that they are some as evidenced by his awesome shirt with an awesome castle on it but not just any castle I'm talking about a historically accurate properly designed high detail castle with all the bells and whistles available through teespring link in the description [Music] greatings I'm Chad and in this video I'm going to tell you how and why castles were invented but to begin you have to understand that fortifications existed before castles and the medieval period but why are these fortifications not considered castles and what changed in the time of these earlier fortifications compared to the medieval period that caused the invention of castles really great questions and we are going to get into them it is widely understood in the historical community that the first design of castle that can be rightly called a castle it is what is known as the Motte and Bailey this castle is comprised out of two primary parts and one of them is called the Motte a Motte is a raised earth work with a fortified structure a top of it that we would call a keep the other half is the Bailey now a Bailey simply is an enclosed defensive courtyard and the name is carried on even through the evolutions of castles to refer to the inner courtyard of a fully walled off stone castle of a later period that is called a Bailey another name for it is also a ward what's really interesting when we look at the Motte and Bailey castle is that the two halves are catering specifically to the main functions in which a castle was meant to fulfill matters as someone's residence but also a military fortress those two things were quite exclusive before the medieval period and always thanks to the unique conditions of the medieval period giving rise to the need of unifying those two separate things and I'll speak more specifically on what those conditions are bit later on in the video what I want to touch on now two different types of fortifications that would join together to give rise to the first type of Castle the modern Bailey because if you were to separate the two halves of a modern Bailey castle you would essentially have two types of fortifications that did exist before and you can actually clearly identify them separate the Bailey from a Motte and Bailey you would have what is called a ring fort something that again existed well before the medieval period now a ring fort is usually always a fortified farmstead okay if you're getting anything bigger than an individual farmstead you're getting into what would you you would generally call a hill fort okay so these are fortifications before a medieval period before castles a hill fort is generally a fortified community while a ring fort is generally a fortified farmstead and fortified can probably imply two grand a scale because when we say are fortified in this sense we really are considering it basically it has a basic wall around its perimeter both for a hill fort and a ring fort now I can get more elaborate on top of this and the wall can be either just a raised earth portion surrounding it or and usually it can have a ditch in front of it and then it can also have a wooden railing on top of the ditch which is called a palisade now in contrast to this if you were to separate the Motte from a Motte and Bailey castle you would essentially have a watchtower of some kind or just a very very small military fort it's important to note that both a ring fort and a military fort would not qualify as legitimate castles the reason being that each type of structure is primarily built to cater to only 1/2 of the functions that a castle was to fulfill one being to fortify and protect someone's home but not necessarily function as a military base or thoughts nor having the more extensive fortifications that better enable the people who live within that fort to repel attackers so that's what a ring fort is lacking in regards to being compared to a real castle and in addition to that no building within a ring fort need to have any fortifications on it to be used to defend the overall structure whereas in contrast to this a military fort will at least have one watchtower if not multiple towers all around its walls but a military fort is rarely someone's primary residence nor centers of local government by identifying the two types of fortifications that were combined to give us the first castles this also of course informs us as to why the first type of castle the motte-and-bailey castle was designed the way it was I could actually speak a lot more to the design of motte-and-bailey castles and regards to the ditches the Palisades the separation of the Motte and keep to the Bailey but I'm actually going to make a separate dedicated video on the subject because as history tells us this design was superseded there is actually some significant problems that were fixed with later evolutions in castle design so please do keep an eye out for that video but for now let's move on to the next portion of the invention of the castle which is a question of what caused the combination of these two different yet earlier period types of fortifications into what we would classically understand as a castle we can never definitively know the answer that question but I think we can speculate with a certain level of accuracy based on some of the things we know of this time and I think one of there are more important elements out that caused this was the unique style or a structure of the government that had to be made during this time period you have to understand that this is after the fall of not only Rome but in terms of the massive great large empires state power became far less centralized yet Charlemagne who was able to unify most of Europe which was basically the only time after the fall of Rome where a very significant kind of area geographical area I fell under one actual ruler talking about Europe specifically and he claimed himself to be the next Roman Empire but it didn't take long for that Empire to be fractured into well to begin with just three major distinct areas but even with this initial fracturing you have to understand there doesn't seem to have been nearly enough state authority to rule and govern not only the landmass but the population that was underneath them so the answer was empowering local communities to be more autonomous in a sense or at least empowering the leaders of these local areas to not only have more power but have far more responsibilities in protecting that area in the time of Rome you had a massive state military where every single citizen was required while male citizen was required to serve in the military and there was this big massive military machine but after the fall of Rome and when we're getting into metal bit medieval period no not at all the Kings did not have the resources to be out of field such a large army so it fell on to the local communities are the leaders of the local communities to fulfill the military needs of a community so this is in law enforcement but also protection and as soon as you have more localized military units well they need a base essentially they need a place to train but also a place to retreat to for safety that they can also resupply and launch any type of military action the next part that would have helped cause this was the increased danger of the time and this is really interesting you see it would in the time of Rome the per say it would be very rare for an attack to happen right in the heart of Roman territory past all the Border Patrol's were all the armies a station like that except for like in the latter period where Rome was actually sacked but if you look at Rome in its height and in its power the people who are living well within the Roman borders could be quite confident that they were safe but take away that large military force okay the state-run military force where a large geographical like area was being protected now suddenly there's no centralized safe area every area is vulnerable to attacks from bandits to attacks from rivals because there was nowhere near as much unity under one rule or state authority indeed you could have two Lords who had sworn loyalty to their king and still go to war with one another and the king would have little power to stop them because he had far less military power and authority over his whole domain than what we have seen in past empires and so for this sheer fact that you have to actually protect yourself against other people of your own Kingdom and people and then with the added rise of yes the VAR times an increased frequency of Raiders from these you know Scandinavian lands makes the general landscape and climate of this early medieval period very dangerous far more dangerous than other times so you need local military protection of some kind a means to protect them and enhance their effectiveness if you can't train or equip more soldiers you simply need to do more heavy lifting with the soldiers you have and the way to do this is by employing effective fortifications indeed for all the roles that the local military and local Lord needed to fulfill proper protective fortifications you can really see how essential they would be but because these soldiers were going to be trained and equipped by a local governing official it simply made sense to keep his soldiers near him to protect him but also that he could train them and command them more directly and to increase the effect of these soldiers give them fortifications logic just says I'll make it my home or I'll fortify my home or I'll live in this fortification all the above the thing is though their local community fortifications like ring forts and hill forts they're not really up to scratch in the type of force multiplication you will want to give your own soldiers just having a wall around your farmstead or community doesn't do the job you still need to protect your resources and your home especially if you're the lord but at the same time enable your soldiers to repel attackers and most ring and hill forts at that time we're clearly lacking but if you know these people that were to have taken inspiration from any source I think they would have taken inspiration from the fortifications of Rome especially because we see crenellations being employed in castle defenses even as early as motte-and-bailey castles made out of wood they also had crenellations hmm I wonder who they learned that from and they clearly learnt some other things as well I already kind of understood the advantages of elevation regards to digging ditches and stuff like that but the profound advantage of higher elevations and defensive towers sorry the simple conclusion is add a tower and why not raise the tower up as high as possible will dig a ditch and make a Motte and put the tower on that and by adding a Motte and Tower to a ring fort or Bailey guess what we have we have the Motte and Bailey Castle it was the unification of a defensive and offensive military structure with a residential structure which arose out of the specific conditions and needs of their society in this time and this is really interesting because we can see that some of the mots which would have keeps above them I know any big enough to have anything but a tower atop them they would have been too small and inadequate to function as a residence but by it being on such a prominent position and looking imposing because of his fortified nature it has a level of prestige and impressiveness about it that would simply appeal to really anyone's like gee own mind living there and again we can see the logic in the evolution that this fortified you know military structure quickly became the primary residence of the Lord who built it and in terms of the timeframe that I'm kind of speaking here the actual genesis of the castle we're actually looking at mainland Europe around France at about the 10th century as we can kind of identify that these motte-and-bailey castles actually being built in France before they ever came to say Britain and other parts of Europe because we know that I there was a very large motte-and-bailey castle building enterprise that was launched by William and Conqueror after he conquered Britain because castles not only are they really effective at protect local resources and also enabling a local authority to field and you know run smaller military units and protect local area really well they are also quite effective at controlling a local area on top of that especially if the commoners under your authority are rebellious well a castle is a type of force multiplier for a military unit and a small military unit is actually capable of suppressing and controlling a much larger populace in respect to the military unit size but one of the key things to be successful in this is to not let the populace build their own fortifications and I think this gives clear insight as to why individual farmstead ring thoughts possessed by the local commoner kind of disappeared after castles arrives ring forts for individual farmsteads also became far less needed because these commoners could rely on their lords and his castle to protect them vilest of a need to secure your farm with a ring fort when the area you live in is far more safer and secure thanks to the presence of a castle and a local well-equipped military force now if you want more detail onto the actual function of how castles are able to achieve this force multiplying effect I've made a whole video called why were castles built and that video specifically to address what use castles are gave in the medieval period in terms of military action and there we go this is how the castle was invented thank you very much for watching I hope you've enjoyed all that something and I hope to see you again until that time farewell [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 251,196

Keywords: castle, castles, medieval, middle ages, dark ages, fantasy, fortress, palace, ring fort, roman fort, hill fort, fort, knight's, stronghold, crenelations, motte, bailey, keep, donjon, machicolations, portcullis, pampart, ramparts, tower, fortification, battlements, seige, game of thrones, lord of the rings, skyrim, dungeons and dragons, dnd, d&d, video game, game, ropleplaying, rpg, wizard, hogwarts, casterly rock, winterfell, throne, history, military, sword, swords, europe, european, brittan, english, frank, carolingian

Id: Li33U-0vdw8

Length: 15min 17sec (917 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 21 2017