Mont-St-Michel; Tour Gabriel
With these modern developments we have no concern in this book; and in these two concluding chapters we can trace merely the later history, from a defensive point of view, of that type of fortification whose advance we have hitherto pursued, and of the gradual amalgamation of the medieval castle with the medieval dwelling-house. The old distinction between the castle and the burh still asserted itself. During the greater part of the middle ages, from the Norman conquest to the fourteenth century, the castle, the stronghold of the individual lord, was the highest type of fortification, and the town, as at Berwick in the reign of Edward I., or at Conway or Carnarvon, was, when walled, little more than an appendage or outer ward to the castle. With the introduction of fire-arms, the town began once more to take its place in the van of the defence. Warfare, from the time of the wars of Edward III. in France, and even earlier, ceased to be an affair of sieges of castles. Battles were fought more and more in the open field, and the reduction of the fortified town, not of strongholds of individuals, became the chief object of campaigns. The castle, relegated to a secondary place, developed more and more on the lines of the dwelling-house; and, finally, as the castle disappeared, the town with its citadel became all-important as the object of attack and the base of operations. In brief, the steps in the history of fortification after the Conquest are these. The timber defences of the Saxon burh became of secondary importance to the timber defences of the Norman castle. These were subordinated to the keep, the symbol of the dominion of the feudal lord. The keep reached its climax in the stone tower. At this point the revulsion began. The strengthening of the stone curtain made the keep obsolete; and, finally, the perfection of the curtain of the castle once attained, military science applied itself to the strengthening of the wall of the town, until, aided by social changes and scientific improvements, the castle itself became altogether unnecessary.
newcastle: town wall
southampton: town wall
The principles of defence of the walled town are those of the castle; and hitherto we have drawn illustrations from both with little discrimination. In both cases the same methods of attack are provided against by the use of the same means. But it must be remembered that the area of the town is larger than that of the castle, and that while, in the castle, the bailey is the common muster-ground from which every part of the curtain can be easily reached, there can be no such open space enclosed by the walls of a large inhabited town or city. Thus, while the market-place, in or near the centre of the town, would serve as a general rallying-ground,[301] it was necessary also to keep a clear space at the foot of the inner side of the walls, so that free communication between every part might be preserved. From the continuous lane which was thus formed between the wall and the houses of the town, and was crossed at intervals by the main thoroughfares leading to the gates, access was gained to the rear of the flanking towers, and to the stairs by which, from time to time, the rampart-walk was reached. Most towns which have been walled retain traces of this arrangement. At Southampton the pomerium,[302] as this clear space is called in medieval documents, survives on the east side of the town in the lane still known as “Back of the Walls.” At Carnarvon it is nearly entire, except on the west side of the town. At Newcastle ([293]) it remains in a very perfect state on the north-west side of the enclosure, where the walls and their intermediate turrets are also fairly perfect; and it can be traced in a paved lane on the west side, where the walls are gone.[303] Nearly the whole extent of the inner city walls of Bristol, of which little remains, can be easily traced by the survival of the pomerium in a series of curved lanes. The line of the east wall of Northampton can be recovered in the same way; and although, as at York, modern encroachments have in many places removed the pomerium, it usually survived to mark the site of town walls, even long after those walls had been destroyed.
