Young Red Haired Girl Reveals On Stairs At The Old Castle Entrance

Warfare
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.