The Castle Builders: Siege & Storm - How Castles Were Attacked & Defended | Free Documentary Histroy

[Music] castles citadels of world heritage [Music] all over europe millions flock to see these masterpieces in stone they are drawn by the astonishing scale of construction [Music] and by a sense of a lost world of heroism and chivalry [Applause] but castles are more than magnificent monument to a past that's dead and gone [Music] they hold the key to understanding a crucial period in the growth of our civilization in this series we're on a journey to discover how castles were built and why they were constructed the way they were how that changed over centuries and why they still have a grip on our imagination today we'll meet the castle builders the labourers and masons who did the hard work the geniuses of design who imagined these medieval megastructures the structural engineers who turned them into reality and the kings and barons who commissioned them and lived in them [Music] we'll show how the big history of the middle ages the wars of france and england shape the castle and how in a thousand bloody sieges and battles the castle changed the course of that history [Music] [Applause] if you want to understand how the modern world was constructed you need to understand the castle [Music] [Music] builders how do you capture a castle and how do you best defend one it's a matter of mind as well as of might centuries ago warfare was conducted on a human scale but even without today's weapons of mass destruction a military onslaught could be a frightening experience [Music] [Applause] this is the story of how the castle stood up to attack how those attacks became increasingly destructive and how the castle builders worked tirelessly to strengthen and update their designs to counteract the force of arms [Music] sometimes they seem to come close to building the perfect impregnable castle only for yet more powerful weapons to be unleashed against it [Music] so you have your great stone throwing machines your catapults your trebuchets and you try and smash your way in and bring the castle crashing down in this war of escalating threats the castle is surprisingly resilient cromwell doesn't have the firepower that he needs to break through these huge medieval defenses but will there come a time when surrender becomes inevitable stone walls will splinter and crack because they can't absorb the energy of a fast-moving cannonball um we often imagine the middle ages as an era dominated by violence [Music] it's a rather unbalanced picture for long periods right across europe people experienced peace and stability [Music] even those who had to work the land saw their health improve and their living standards rise but in the end they were ruled by coercion [Music] their overlords asserted their right through might and the castle was the crucial instrument and symbol of aristocratic authority a castle's primary to defend a lord or a noble or a king his family and his household and also to command the territory of which he's the owner from the 10th century onwards thousands of castles sprang up all over western europe [Music] but most of these castles have long since disappeared that's because they shared one crucial disadvantage they were made of wood [Music] no wonder that those who could afford to built in stone by building defenses in stone you were able to keep your attacker away he would be attacking you with siege engines he'd be trying to undermine your defenses he'd be trying to set fire to your timber structures masonry gave you much greater security and provided a much more permanent answer to the problem of defense masonry made the castle much more resilient a properly constructed and defended stone keep was more than a match for the armory of individual weapons which an attacking force might deploy against it [Music] most of these weapons are familiar to us in their imaginations and in their play children still love to get to grips with them [Music] but back in medieval times weapons were a deadly serious matter [Music] sword technology left forward in the middle ages with the use of properly quenched hardened and tempered steel in the hands of specialized bladesmiths the sword became a fearsome weapon [Music] swords were forged in a great variety of forms [Music] there were broadswords and claymores two-handed swords and sabres tucks and falchions and scimitars [Music] then there were clubs and maces pikes and lances crossbows and longbows against an individual opponent these weapons could be deadly and on the open battlefield an armed knight could wreak havoc but against a castle wall none of this was of much avail so military strategists began to turn to heavier armaments to try to force their way in if you wanted to break down castle walls you needed the heavy artillery of the middle ages which was the trebuchet which could throw missiles up to a hundred pounds in weight and you would try to form a breach in the wall by constant bombardment by these devices with swinging arms that would sling these very heavy stones there was a great skill in their construction and a great skill in their operation so you have your great stone throwing machines your catapults your trebuchets and you try and smash your way in and bring the castle crashing down that can work um though one struggles to think of examples where it actually brings a castle down you know you can weaken the walls you could certainly terrify the garrison but you need several consecutive good hits in the same place to weaken the walls the trebuchet packed a decent punch but it was no guarantee that the walls would come tumbling down so when the strength of the castle's defenses nullified the ferocity of the opening onslaught the offensive forces had to settle down for the long game if the storm came to nothing the siege might win the prize if all else fails you have to just sit and wait the word siege itself means seat you're sitting down with your army waiting for the other side to run out of resources but of course if they're well provisioned if they've got six to 12 months of resources you might wait a very long time through the winter perhaps under canvas and your troops might start to mutiny you've got to keep your men healthy as well and they're the ones without shelter so it's a war of attrition a castle siege could be long and brutal these walls were built long before humanitarian treaties and international law offered some protection to the competence starvation was a tool of siege warfare and warlords might have scant regard for the welfare of the pawns in their game but this wasn't an age of total war negotiations and rules of engagement were observed as a matter of honor you could agree an honorable surrender in which the defenders were allowed to leave the castle or the town and they would leave unmolested but the attacker would take possession and that was part of of a sort of unwritten rules of war that you often would agree a timetable in which this took place so if you're a defender you would try to agree a timetable that allowed a relieving force to come and drive away the procedures if the defenders failed to honor a negotiated date of surrender they gave up their right to safe passage and they could only pray that the castle didn't fall into enemy hands if you broke these unwritten rules of siege the rules of engagement were abandoned the attackers could loot and pillage what they found and and the town or castle would be devastated one of the most famous sieges of the middle ages happened at rochester in kent [Music] in the period after the signing of magna carta in 1215 king john had broken many of the promises he'd made it provoked a widespread rebellion in england and a battle for control of the country between king and barons [Music] as today rochester castle stood guard over one of the few bridges across a crucial waterway the river medway when rebel baron seized the castle king john knew he had to act the king's men soon managed to regain control of the bridge and they laid siege to the castle the siege of 1215 was one of the bloodiest in english history john was in no mood to be merciful the king's archers sent volley after volley over the walls of the castle but safe inside their stone ramparts the defenders were hardly troubled that may have been enough to enrage king john he brought up no less than five siege engines to pound the defenses rochester was going to be tested by trebuchet [Music] foreign the outer walls were shaken but it still wasn't enough eventually the king's men hit upon a different tactic they managed to get into the bailey the castle grounds by undermining the castle wall [Music] the rebels retreated to the heart of the castle the keep and that had been designed to withstand any onslaught [Music] rochester castle had been built a century before the siege for william of corbae a norman prince bishop as archbishop of canterbury william had overseen the completion of the cathedral there he knew how to build robust structures williams keep at rochester was an imposing structure 35 meters high it was one of the tallest in england dominating the surrounding countryside but its design had one crucial weakness and one hidden strength [Music] king john may not have known either of those things but he had a secret plan of his own send to us he ordered his men with all speed by day and night 40 of the fattest pigs it was not such a crazy idea in an age before gunpowder pig fat could set a fire blazing with almost incendiary force inside the keep the defenders must have been wondering what was happening king john's men had dug a tunnel under the southeast corner of the keep they'd shored up the foundations with wooden pit props then with the fat from the pigs they ignited a fire the props the tunnel and the tower above came crashing down the tower's weakness was now evident its square shape had left it susceptible to collapse if undermined but now the inner strength of the keep showed itself william of corbei had designed it with a sturdy cross wall that still splits it in half the defenders were able to barricade themselves inside the surviving half of the keep there they held out until eventually hunger forced them to surrender the king's supporters fearing reprisals against royal garrisons elsewhere persuaded john to show mercy [Applause] there was only one execution a bowman who'd switched sides having been in the king's service since childhood [Applause] [Music] later the breach in the keep was rebuilt this time as a stronger round tower with an outer barbican to protect it centuries later the trained eye can still spot the evidence of collapse in the reformed window arches of the retaining wall [Music] [Applause] [Music] and the chroniclers said of rochester that our age has not known a siege so hard-pressed nor so strongly resisted afterwards few cared to put their trust in castles but the truth is that the castle was trusted to do its job with continual improvements and refinements like round towers moats and drawbridges the original modern bailey design had been transformed into an ever more formidable fortress [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] two decades before the rochester siege king john's brother richard the lionheart had found a way to combine numerous round towers in one unbroken defensive line this is his magnificent chateau gaia in normandy standing proudly against the forces of the kings of france guyard's walls would not easily be brought down [Music] foreign [Music] building a castle on this scale required a monumental effort in time and money [Music] but the end result was a statement of [Music] dominance [Music] stamped richard's authority across a wide swathe of normandy back across the channel his brother john was still battling to keep his grip on power dover castle known as the key to england shows him struggling to keep up in this period of transformation in defensive construction [Music] i think dover castle is a great example of way that castle building technology changes around the turn of the 12th and 13th century so around the year 1200 because the castle that we see today that in the middle the great tower and the surrounding curtain walls were built by henry ii from 1180 and they are built in a particular style where the tower is square and the surrounding towers on the curtain wall are also square but dover is besieged a generation later in the reign of king john and these walls on the outside of the castle are built in john's reign and you can see that there's been a shift from the square towers built by his father to round towers which was more the fashion after the year 1200. they were preferring round towers because they thought they were stronger because they thought they were better at deflecting missiles or they were more difficult to undermine this was the original entrance built by john and it proved too vulnerable this was attacked in 1216 and the french came very close to getting in they collapsed one of these towers and they were sort of fought off in the breach so when they came to rebuild the castle in the 1220s they just blocked off that entrance there and they built this new gate house here constables gate which you can see is all round towers and it's built on this side of the castle where the ground falls away very steeply so you can see how vital dover was as a fortress and you can also see how much thought went into the military technology of these castles half a century later gilbert declare took defensive strategy to a whole new [Music] level cairo philly was the first castle in britain designed to be defended by walls within walls to strengthen his grip on territory taken from the native welsh declare laid out a new form of elaborate castle in which there were multiple layers of defense every time an attacker overcame an obstacle he would be faced by a new one penetrating one gatehouse led only to another crossing a drawbridge meant facing a portcullis and a further set of doors and at every turn the attacker would be exposed to crossfire from the adjacent towers and curtain walls finally around all of this there were water defenses preventing undermining and keeping siege engines at a distance thanks to the efforts of the castle builders defensive technology was advancing rapidly but the opposing strength of the onslaught was escalating too in the welsh borderlands and many other theatres of conflict history tells us that despite their durability castles could be conquered changing hands from one side to another time after time a single castle might be welsh ruled then english then welsh again turn and turn about a dozen times across the course of a century and these transfers of control were rarely peaceful [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] faced with such devastating onslaughts the search began all over europe for the perfect castle the one that could not be taken the one that could stand against any [Music] storm [Applause] [Music] the perfect castle might have been an impossible dream but if any citadel anywhere in europe came close to being impregnable it was surely this one [Music] carcassonne carcassonne lies in the south west of france within striking distance of the pyrenees it's a strategic location standing guard over the borderlands between france and the ancient kingdom of aragon in northern spain the fortified city is concentric in design with two outer walls complete with turrets crenellations and 53 towers and barbicans a main gate the port nabanese forms the only entry into the city it's guarded by two flanking towers and a double barbican the settlement inside has been fortified since roman times but it's the restoration of its medieval splendor that attracts five million visitors every year its defensive system is what makes carcassonne special it has its origins in the 13th century when a crusading army freed carcassonne from the kathar heresy which had shaken christian europe the new ruler of carcassonne was simon de montfort an ultra-orthodox catholic he brutally suppressed the cathars thousands died as he harried them all over longer dock [Music] de montfort was killed whilst besieging the heretics at toulouse and he was buried here in carcassonne in the cathedral of san nazaire within the city walls [Music] after de montfort's death a series of french kings strengthened the defenses further turning carcassonne into one of the greatest fortresses in christendom at the center of it all is the count's castle the seat of feudal power the massive east gate is protected by a barbican and a series of formidable towers beyond the castle the whole of the fortified town is enclosed by the inner and outer walls built to exploit carcassonne's natural topography this is a defensive system on a grand scale [Music] it's also a system that works because of a thousand fine details there are the irregular embossed walls with uneven surfaces which make it practically impossible to use siege ladders against them there are the urd wooden shelters to protect the defending bowman and the protest or bratises balconies with magical asians murder holes offering deadly line of sight to the attackers below there's genius too in the way the ancient roman fortifications are integrated into the medieval circuit of double walls towers and [Music] barbicans city this active defensive system allowed the garrison to carry the fight to anyone who threatened carcassonne carcassonne was bombarded by trebuchet but the citadel was said to be untakeable it was certainly a match for one of england's most gifted military leaders the black prince the black prince earned his spurs during the century-long struggle for control of france which pitted the plantagenet kings of england against the house of valois in 1355 his campaigning raids brought him as far as carcassonne's outer walls so far [Music] foreign the sympathetic restoration of carcassonne by the 19th century architect violet leduc allows us to appreciate this medieval masterpiece many regarded as europe's finest example of active defense [Music] a powerful citadel could underpin the authority of its lord or establish the rule of a king over a new territory but when a castle built by an invading king fell into the hands of a conquered people it became a weapon turned against its own makers a highly potent symbol of revolt that's what happened here in wales in 1404 [Applause] harlech castle had been built for the english king edward the first part of his so-called ring of iron designed to crush welsh resistance edward had chosen the site well [Music] landlocked today back then it stood directly on the ocean supplies and troops could be brought here by ship as well as overland and in building it edward's master mason james of saint george had deployed the most formidable military engineering of its day [Music] but a century later none of that was enough to keep harlick from falling into welsh hands in 1400 wales had risen up under its rebel leader owain glendur [Music] the welsh saw glindur as the promised son who would deliver them from english rule over the next two or three years he slowly recaptured most of wales and was able to call himself the prince of wales and he chose harlock as this most important seat it's the ancient site of of the welsh king brahm a mythological king so it became the most significant sight associated with glindua and here he held court glendur summoned to harlick a powerful cabinet together they drew up a vision of an independent wales with its own church and parliament its own laws and universities envoys from europe paid tribute for the rest of the decade this was the court of a king king owen but not everything in this game of siege and storm went the way of the welsh glindur had to reclaim a whole country and it was a land full of english castles carrick cannon held out for months against glendor and a force of 800 men kerenavan stood against him and other castles began to fall back into english hands the tide was turning against the welsh and then there was prince hal harry of monmouth the future king henry v led the english fight back in the end glendore and his chief allies were surrounded in harlich once more this english castle was under threat but this time it was the english themselves of the gates and they came armed with an unfamiliar weapon holler castle is besieged in 1408 and it was besieged by canon so here we've got you know a new form of attack there's a cannon called the king's daughter that that leveled many of the stone walls of harleq castle and ultimately allowed the english attackers to take the castle so here we see canon used one of the first times in an important english or welsh siege replacing the trebuchet as the principal form of attack the revolt had passed its high-water mark but glendor himself managed to slip away though history records little more of him english rule had been restored but harlech was soon to see yet more action and now it would be the english fighting the english by the 1460s two rival factions were engaged in a long struggle for the english crown york against lancaster the wars of the roses the lancastrians had established harlick as one of their main strongholds in the fight against the yorkist king edward iv [Applause] once again thanks to its stout defenses and the supply route by sea harlich proved difficult to take as other fortresses fell the castle became the last major lancastrian stronghold the tudor family made it their center of operations french reinforcements sailed in to lend them support in the end the king had to mobilize an army ten thousand strong to seize the castle but it was the tudors who had the last laugh less than 20 years later their favorite son henry judah born in a welsh castle would be sailing back from france to end the wars of the roses by resting the english crown from the house of york on the field of bosworth the tudors brought stability to england for the best part of two centuries the british castle was left in peace more a decorative symbol than a military tool but in the 1640s that all changed again the english civil war was a bloody struggle between crown and parliament on the one side king charles the first on the other oliver cromwell and even at this relatively late date the castle was to play its part in determining the outcome with the development of artillery power it might have seemed that the castle had had its day stone walls will splinter and crack and eventually fall because they can't absorb the energy of a fast-moving cannonball elsewhere in europe they reverted back to earth defenses which will absorb the impact of a cannonball but in england and wales we held on to our castles and the last time they played any serious part in warfare was in the english civil war raglan castle had been built in the 1460s by sir william herbert an astute politician and an enthusiast for the profitable french wine trade his wealth had remodeled his family's castle on a much grander scale the result has been called one of the last formidable displays of medieval defensive architecture it's the most important castle built in the middle of the 15th century not only that it's the most important castle ever built by welshman started by sir william thomas one of the heroes of the battle of agincourt and completed by his son sir william herbert later earl of pembroke william herbert's hospitality was legendary it inspired hymns of praise from scores of welsh baths raglan castle was the most hospitable place anywhere in wales many of the poems celebrate the wines that were in the cellars of raglan castle one lists up to 24 different types of wine and others talk about the river road and the river rhine flowing through the cellars of the castle at raglan but two centuries later what kind of a welcome would raglan give the roundheads of the 1640s by the time the parliamentary army pressed its siege on raglan the first phase of the english civil war was effectively over the castle was held for the king by henry somerset marquis of worcester but raglan was one of the very last outposts of royal resistance and its defiance was little more than a symbolic gesture it's one of the last places that held for the king and i think it's the last gasp of what we've been seeing in the middle ages this pattern of allegiance and homage henry marcus of worcester i think holds out because he cannot imagine not maintaining his allegiance to king charles events were completely against him and the social system in which he operated had changed what he was demonstrating i think was a almost a memory of the system that led to castles being built in the past but memory was scarcely enough the parliamentary army brought up its artillery a gun known as roaring meg raglan's resistance crumbled as the royalist defenders cowered in the cellars roaring meg put the great tower beyond any use as a defensive stronghold [Applause] but the fall of raglan wasn't quite the end of the civil war or of the castle as a fortress [Applause] king charles is taken prisoner but the peace doesn't last for long in the summer of 1648 royalist supporters take up arms again cromwell's reaction is furious his new model army cuts a swathe across the country they triumph at the battle of some faggons leaving hundreds of royalists dead and taking thousands prisoner [Applause] now cromwell makes a beeline for pembroke a former supporter john poyer has switched sides and is holding the castle for the king in front of the walls we have cromwell at the head of pop six thousand men but this is such a well fortified and defended place that poyer is in a very strong position he holds out here for six seven weeks there are sally's of troops coming out and engaging the forces of the new model army and pulse is coming back against there's some serious bloodshed here but primarily this is a case of a siege the thing is cromwell doesn't have the firepower that he needs to break through these huge medieval defenses so there's no decisive action eventually however cromwell does get the big guns literally that he requires and he tells poyer no uncertain terms that if he doesn't stop this madness there is no uh relief coming he is going to unleash hell in this town he's going to unleash a holocaust hoya recognizes now that the king's cause is lost throughout england there are no reinforcements coming to help him he recognizes that he has to look his fate in the eye and he surrenders this time it was end game for king charles and the end of an era for the castle [Music] the finessing of castle defenses was a process that had taken hundreds of years from the stone keeps of the normans to the concentric walls of the later middle ages and the active defense and architectural sophistication of citadels like carcassonne castle builders were always battling to keep the castle strong [Applause] as they faced siege and storm they devised structures which confronted the enemy with layer after layer of defense and exposed them to deadly peril at every turn [Music] and even if in the end the castle had to bow to the inevitable in a new age of shock and all the work of the castle builders had proved itself amazingly resilient always formidable and sometimes close to impregnable in the next episode of the castle builders we'll explore the castle as a place of dreams and decoration [Music] we'll see how from its very beginning it was constructed as a home as well as a fortress how the great castles of europe magnified the power and glory of kings and queens [Music] and how the castle still retains a grip on our imagination today [Music] so you

Channel: Free Documentary - History

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Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full Documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), History, History Documentaries, Free Documentary History, Castles, Castle Builders, Medieval History, Medieval Castles, Medieval Documentary, Castle Documentary, Middle Ages, Castles of Europe, Middle Ages Documentary, Castle Siege, medieval warfare, Siege Weapons, trebuchet, Battering Ram, Siege Engines, Catapult, Knight, murder hole, Fortification, Siege, The Castle Builders

Id: xMizFQljO2E

Length: 48min 22sec (2902 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020