Now throwing heads is a real thing.
It's definitely an intimidation tactic.
When the First Crusade reached Nicaea in 1097,
both the attackers and defenders threw heads at each other.
Hi, I'm Dr. Michael Fulton.
I am an expert at siege warfare and medieval fortifications.
Today, we're going to be looking at castle battle scenes
in movies and TV and judging how real they are.
There's nothing far-fetched
about sneaking into a castle or town.
There are ways to do that,
whether you're disguised as somebody
or you're hiding in something.
Kind of runs to the edge and says,
"Hey you, stop that."
There's a traditional phenomenon called castle watch.
You're really just watching,
making sure that nobody sneaks up on your castle.
What you're trying to defend your castle against
is a large army,
because it's very hard to take a castle
unless you have a large army.
It's hard to sneak up on a castle.
If you're coming with an army,
people know that army is coming.
I think this is supposed to be Kildrummy Castle,
which, by this point, had a very elaborate gate system.
So just opening that gate
would have been quite a challenge.
Everybody's going to go to that gate.
A gate like that would have been a whole structure.
So each gate to that structure
would presumably have been locked by someone on the inside.
The idea of this small party trying to rush
against this small group that are in the Great Hall,
I kind of don't understand, because a castle of this scale
is going to have a lot more defenders,
and you're going to have to overcome them all.
So your priority is really seizing
the strategic parts of the castle.
The Great Hall is not really one of them.
Sleeping in the, or on the floor of the Great Hall
was a traditional thing to do.
It's starting to go out of fashion by this point in history.
But if you were to look back at say the 11th, 12th century,
the king's retainers, or the lord's retainers,
his kind of high-ranking guys
would have a lot of drinking parties
and then just kind of pass out on the floor around.
There would be weapons around.
You wouldn't need to necessarily don your armor
in order to defend a castle like this.
That's much more helpful in an open battle.
Maybe a 2 if I'm being generous.
Hey, archer, stay alive.
The little screens there,
those were very important, because they stopped arrows.
The moat or the ditch,
this is the most basic fortification element,
other than some kind of a basic wall.
This was supposed to be the castle at Chalus.
It's up on a hill,
so I'm not sure if it would have needed a ditch.
But if it looked at all like this,
where the ground is kind of nice and approachable
leading up, you're absolutely going to have a ditch,
because it's so easy.
They put a lot of effort in hanging these incendiaries
on the gate.
Why don't you just put it at the bottom of the gate?
Setting gates on fire is a legitimate tactic here.
It largely predates this period, though.
If you have incendiaries during this period,
they are more likely to look like tar than,
well, presumably like gasoline,
because you have to refine it.
Men: Heave!
(ram banging)
The portcullis has disappeared for some reason.
So the portcullis designed like that,
with that lattice structure,
that was coming into fashion around this time.
Whether it is wood that has been kind of coated with metal,
or plated, or whether it's entirely metal,
you see both variations.
The whole point of it, though, is that it is open
so you can stick stuff through it if you want.
And if it's metal,
presumably it means you can't set it on fire,
which is critical here, right?
Traditionally, the gate is the weakest part
of a fortified enclosure, because it's a hole, right?
So you need to strengthen that hole to make sure
that it's not a point of weakness or vulnerability.
So through the 13th century,
gates actually become the strongest part of a castle
instead of the weakest part,
just because of the level of development that goes into it.
Kind of walking up to a gate, trying to set it on fire,
trying to use a ram against it.
They've had a long time to think about
these kind of siege tactics
and to develop fortifications accordingly.
So it's kind of anachronistic order.
The siege tactics are already a little bit outdated
in this representation.
These guys are trying.
They haven't pulled it all together as best as they could.
I'd give them somewhere, 5, 6.
These are terrible catapults.
The stones seem to somehow speed up
as they leave the basket.
It should slow down from that point.
If you look at how big this chunk of stone is,
it's significantly larger than the engine
that's supposed to be throwing it.
Now, throwing heads is a real thing.
This is an element of psychological warfare.
It's definitely an intimidation tactic.
When the First Crusade reached Nicaea in 1097,
both the attackers and defenders threw heads at each other.
It took place more often when you had groups facing off
from different cultures.
You don't put a trebuchet,
a big, counterweight-style trebuchet,
on top of a tower for a few reasons.
It is heavy.
So the tower actually has to be able to support the weight
of the engine.
You get a little bit more range,
but that horizontal range is actually less
than the vertical height that you've elevated the engine.
If you put it on the ground behind the tower,
all of a sudden you don't have to worry about
supporting this engine and all it stresses.
And you actually get the shielding of the wall in front
to protect it from the enemy's machines,
who are presumably trying to break it up.
There is this desire or need to make them really big
and really impressive.
So these were important weapons,
but nowhere near as exciting
as Hollywood loves to make them out to be.
To attack a big, curved wall
is just like attacking any other wall.
Rounded towers are designed purposely
to deflect incoming artillery and such.
Cohesively, a rounded tower is stronger
because it doesn't have corners.
So you don't have the same kind of points of stress.
So if you're trying to undermine a tower,
a round tower is slightly stronger than a square one.
Cities built on cliffs that you'd attack.
Why don't you just build on top of the cliff?
As real as an orc siege of a make-believe city can be,
I'm still going to have to give this 1 out of 10.
Night attacks can take place.
There's nothing to say that they didn't
or that they shouldn't.
Are they trying to go through a gate?
There are three ways to overcome a wall.
You can go over it, in which case you use ladders,
siege towers, stuff like that.
You can go under it, which is not a great strategy
because then you're kind of emerging on the other side
one by one if you tunnel under.
Or you can go through, and the best way to go through
is actually to undermine the wall.
Dig a big cavity underneath the wall.
You prop up the wall above with wooden posts.
You throw a bunch of combustibles in.
All that support gets burnt out.
The wall above falls down.
Lighting arrows on fire like this, Hollywood loves to do it.
It serves no practical value
unless you're trying to set a thatched roof cottage on fire.
So they kind of got up to the base of the wall here.
This is a safe spot, in so much as it's hard for archers
to shoot arrows at them from here.
But you can just drop some stones over on them.
It's economical.
If you consider that every arrow has to be made by hand,
that's not a short process to make an arrow.
So when they're throwing off all these volleys of arrows
and shooting them off as fast as they can,
that's not very efficient.
You drop a bowling ball on somebody,
and it stops them in their tracks.
The Hound: Any man dies with a clean sword, I'll --- corpse!
Defenders exit a gate and try and attack the besiegers --
that's reasonably common.
The issue here is why.
You would only do this if you needed to.
Those attackers didn't have the numbers they probably needed
to overcome these defenses to begin with.
In the medieval period, leadership is directly tied
to military performance and prowess.
So for a commander,
they have to be aware of what's going on
if they are kind of a warrior figure,
which the most effective military kings usually were.
So having someone on top of the wall organizing things,
definitely not beyond the realm of possibility.
I don't quite see what they're going to accomplish
once they reach the base of this wall.
So I'm going to give this one maybe a 3 out of 10.
This is the siege of Rochester, 1215.
Do whatever you can to help your side get through,
because if you're then left alone on that wall,
you're going to be killed yourself.
So the very worst thing you can do
is get to the top of the wall and then be left alone.
Priest: This way.
Rarely you find women actually taking a direct role
in the fighting.
But you do find relatively frequent examples
of women will bring weapons and supplies
to people fighting.
They bring particularly water and food.
So there's absolutely a role
for these kinds of people to play.
The church is a very logical place for them to be
if they're not taking part in the fighting.
At this time, the importance or the centrality of God
in a conflict like this would have been huge.
Narrator: They were too cold to fight
and too hungry.
Sieges would last anywhere from kind of weeks to months.
When an army moves into enemy territory, if there are crops,
they will destroy them.
For those inside the defensive perimeter,
they're forced to make do with the food that they have.
Very rarely did strongholds actually fall by force.
The outer line of defenses might fall,
but then those that are still in the innermost part
will surrender.
If the attackers are not able to impose a complete blockade,
there might be actually supplies
coming in to support the defenders throughout the siege.
You get this particularly when you're talking about
bigger cities being attacked.
I've got to give them a 4 or 5 out of 10.
This is not what Paris looked like at the time.
The big church in the background, this is High Gothic.
The palace right next to it,
this looks suspiciously like the papal palace in Avignon,
which is 14th century, not 9th century.
We love using the crossbows.
There's anecdotal evidence here
that they were kind of introduced to the Franks
at this point.
So you've got guys kind of leaning through
the crenels like this,
which are the spaces between the merlons,
the teeth on the walls.
And at what point they came into use,
these would have been around at this point.
So penthouses like these that they're using for shelter
are very important.
This is a safe way to kind of get to the base of the walls
of the city.
Usually, what you'd use these for, particularly
in later periods, is undermining the city walls.
So it's a means of getting up to the city walls
and then trying to dig a hole under them.
How strong is this gate?
Because really these are just some planks.
Horses are important.
The significance of mounted warriors
is really growing throughout this period.
In a siege though, horses tend not to be terribly useful.
Eating, they need to be fed.
They produce waste, which needs to be dealt with.
So siege towers are an important siege weapon in warfare.
They are a great way to get people
into an elevated position.
The primary function of a siege tower
really is to elevate attackers,
as opposed to trying to get them to the top of a wall.
That might be a handy secondary purpose,
hiding behind their parapet.
So here, it's very helpful,
but a ladder would be a much cheaper
and cost-effective manner to get up to the top.
So I would rate this somewhere around, I don't know,
a 3 or a 4.
The siege technologies aren't exactly that accurate.
It wouldn't be uncommon to have castle gates open.
If you were just guarding this gate
against any kind of troublemakers,
it's very believable that the guards
would be down on the bottom floor.
It's a lot easier to chase somebody down
if you're already down there.
For him to go around killing people indiscriminately,
that actually makes sense.
Once someone gets into the fortified enclosure,
there's no protection for those within,
unless some kind of peace agreement is prearranged.
So the whole point of a castle
is you're having walls do the work of defenders.
The whole market kind of environment
would usually be outside the castle.
The environment inside the castle
is catering only to those really who live there
or might need to take refuge there.
It was a matter of protecting who was in charge.
Guard: Now, you're not allowed to enter.
Lancelot: O, fair one, behold your humble servant.
You don't often find cases where someone is lauded
for single-handedly capturing a castle
or some other fortification.
More often, you will find individuals praised
for their conduct.
The first person to set foot on a defender's wall.
So if you're the first one up on your ladder,
the first one up on your siege tower.
Usually, that person gets special mention.
To take a castle kind of like we associate them,
or we picture them,
you're going to need a force in at least the hundreds,
probably the thousands.
I have no idea what to offer this one.
I believe this is a real castle.
It's setting about a very kind of rose-colored glasses
day in the life of a castle.
It's trying. I don't know.
Just lobbing arrows at a distance
is not an effective siege tactic
or counter-siege tactic.
So when you see archers, they pull an arrow, they nock it,
they draw, and then they kind of hold,
then they shoot their arrows all at once.
Again, this is inspired by later musket tactics,
where you have lines of musketeers shooting off volleys,
for the same reason that you would wait
until the attackers got closer to shoot a musket at them.
Well, a ladder is just propped up against the wall.
They'd actually be quite sturdy
and you'd reuse them sometimes.
So this would have been a difficult tactic,
but a believable one.
So the easiest way to try and make sure
that ladder doesn't get used
is either to break the ladder somehow,
which is kind of hard given the angles involved,
or to take a long stick and just try and push the ladder
to the point where it goes past the vertical
and falls over backwards.
So that's very believable.
So you do have certain accounts of machines like these
that will, in some way, hold something not friendly
over the walls and then drop it on the attackers.
Usually, they're deployed against a siege tower
or something a little bit more impressive,
because if it's just guys coming up a ladder,
you just drop some stones on them.
You often find them in kind of,
or being associated with sailors.
You effectively have a mast
and then a yard of some description,
and it will then be swung out over the wall.
And using rigging that sailors would be accustomed to,
they can then drop something on the attackers.
The descriptions of these vary.
Sometimes it's kind of a ring that's on fire.
Other times, it's something really heavy.
Other times, you have just a log with spikes
kind of being hoisted or tossed over the wall.
I'm not an expert of East Asian warfare,
but there's some good elements to this.
There's also the obvious fantasy aspect to it.
So I don't know, maybe 4 out of 10.