16. Overcoming Castles’ Defenses
In addition to murder holes were machicolations: openings in the corbels, or the parts jutting out from the top of walls. As with murder holes, stones, boiling water, heated sand, quicklime, and other unpleasant things could be dropped from machicolations on enemies at the base of the wall. Machicolations originated in the Middle East, and their designs were brought back to Europe by Crusaders. By the thirteenth century, their use was widespread in the West, especially in France. While larger castles featured traditional machicolations all around the walls and towers, a variant known as the box machicolation became widespread in smaller fortresses, especially atop the castle’s gates.
Treachery aside, the quickest way to seize an enemy castle was to storm its walls by attackers using ladders and siege towers. However, that was often hazardous, and cost dearly in attackers’ lives. One alternative was to try and batter down the walls, either from a distance with catapults and trebuchets, or up close with battering rams. Catapults were deployed since ancient times against castles and city walls. They used tension or torsion to slowly build up and store energy in a device, before rapidly releasing the stored energy via an arm that flung a rock at a targeted wall. In the later medieval era, catapult technology took a leap forward with the development of trebuchets – the most effective weapon against castle and city walls until the arrival of gun powder.
