Brunette Girl Reveals In The Old Castle

As a static structure, castles could often be avoided, as their immediate area of influence was about 400 metres (1,300 ft) and their weapons had a short range even early in the age of artillery. However, leaving an enemy behind the army would allow them to interfere with communications and to make raids in the landscape to harry the army. Garrisons were expensive and as a result often small unless the castle was important. In peace time garrisons were smaller due to the cost of upkeep, and small castles were manned by perhaps a couple of watchmen and gate-guards. Even in war garrisons were not necessarily large as too many people making up a defending force would strain supplies and impair the castle's ability to withstand a long siege. In 1403 a force of 37 archers successfully defended Caernarfon Castle against two assaults by Owain Glyndŵr's allies during a long siege, demonstrating that a small force could be effective. Early on, manning a castle was a feudal duty of vassals to their magnates, and magnates to their kings, however this was later replaced with paid forces. A garrison was usually commanded by a constable whose peace-time role would have been looking after the castle in the owner's absence. Under his command would have been knights, who by benefit of their military training, would have acted as a type of officer class. Below them were archers and bowmen, whose role was to prevent the enemy reaching the walls as can be seen by the positioning of arrowslits.
If it was necessary to control the castle for strategic reasons, an army could either assault a castle, or lay siege to it. For the most heavily fortified sites, it was more efficient to starve the garrison out than to assault it. Without relief from an outside source, the defending army would eventually submit; but sieges could last weeks, months, and in rare cases years if the supplies of food and water were plentiful. A long siege could slow down the army, allowing help to come or for the enemy to prepare a larger force for later. Such an approach was not confined to castles, but was also applied to the fortified towns of the day. On occasion, siege castles would be built to defend the besiegers from a sudden sally and would have been abandoned after the siege ended one way or another.
If forced to assault a castle, there were many options available to the attackers. For wooden structures, such as early motte-and-baileys, fire was a real threat and attempts would be made to set them alight as can be seen in the Bayeux Tapestry. Projectile weapons had been used since antiquity and the mangonel and petraria – from Roman and Eastern origins respectively – were the main two that were used into the Middle Ages. The trebuchet, which probably evolved from the petraria in the 13th century, was the most effective siege weapon before the development of cannons. These weapons were vulnerable to fire from the castle as they had a short range and were large machines. Conversely, weapons such as trebuchets could be fired from within the castle due to the high trajectory of its projectile, and would be protected from direct fire by the curtain walls. Ballistas or springalds were siege engines that worked on the same principles as crossbows. With their origins in Ancient Greece, tension was used to project a bolt or javelin. Missiles fired from these engines had a lower trajectory than trebuchets or mangonels and were more accurate. They were more commonly used against the garrison rather than the buildings of a castle. Eventually cannons developed to the point where they were more powerful and had a greater range than the trebuchet, and became the main weapon in siege warfare.
Walls could be undermined by the creation of a sap; a mine would be dug to conceal the attackers' approach to the wall, with wooden supports to prevent the tunnel from collapsing. When the target had been reached, the supports would be burned, caving in the tunnel and bringing down the structure above. The best defence against this form of attack was to built a castle on a rock outcrop or to surround it with a wide, deep moat. A counter-mine could be dug towards the mine of the besiegers; assuming the two converged, this would result in underground hand-to-hand combat in the pitch black. Mining was an effective method of breaching walls and may have had a negative effect on the morale of the defending garrison. At the siege of Margat in 1285, Sultan Al Mansur Qalawun created a mine extending underneath the castle's keep. When the Knights Hospitaller were informed of the mine they surrendered the castle. Battering rams were also used, usually in the form of a tree trunk given an iron cap. They were used to batter down the castle gates, although they were sometimes used against walls with less effect. Those manning rams and entering mines required protection from a castle's defenders; small movable wooden structures called "penthouses" would cover the entrance or the ram. They were often covered in raw hides to offer some protection against fire.