The instances of the Norman castle in its more perfect shape, still existing, are very interesting in a historical view. It may be observed, that in the settled districts of England there are specimens of the older and ruder style of Norman work; but that, in the Edwardian conquests, the fully developed form is the oldest of which vestiges are to be found.
Aberconway, or Snowdon Castle in Carnarvonshire, must have been one of the most formidable specimens, from the great extent of its curtain walls, and its numerous round towers. It was built, say authorities on which we place no reliance, except in so far as they correspond with the character of the edifice, in 1284; it served the purpose for which the strongest fortresses are required—that of a frontier defence. In Flintshire there are Hawarden and Rhudland. Beaumaris, in Anglesea, has some fine diminishing towers. Carew, in Pembrokeshire, has a sort of angular buttresses, instead of the graceful increment towards the base, in the round towers; but it is a luxuriant and noble specimen; and though Welsh tradition says it belonged to the princes of South Wales—no man can tell how many hundreds of years before William or Rollo either—and was given by Rhys ap Theodore, with his daughter, Nest, as a marriage portion to Gerrald de Carrio, yet we take the liberty of holding that it as clearly bears the mark of the invader of Wales, as any government-house in Canada or New Zealand bears evidence that it is not the work of the natives. We take Cilgarron, Haverford-west, and Mannorbeer castles, in the same county, to belong to the same category.
The same characteristics do not so frequently occur in the southern English counties, though there is Pevensey in Sussex, Goodrich in Herefordshire, and Cowling in Kent, and there may be several other instances. They reappear on the Border, where they were connected with the Scottish wars; the forms may be seen in Prudho, Twizel, the outworks of Bamborough, and in a modernised shape at Alnwick.
Ireland is rich in these quadrilateral flanked edifices. There is Enniscorthy guarding the bridge of the Slaney in Wexford, and Dunmore in Meath, one of the most entire and regular specimens, if we may judge by the representation of Grose, who, to do him justice, never idealises. It is one of the many castles attributed to De Lacey, the governor of Meath. Another of them, Kilkea, continued long to raise its flanking round towers after it had laughed at the ferocious raids of the O’Moors and O’Dempsies in the English pale. Two of the best specimens, Lea, in Queen’s county, and Ferns in Wexford, were attacked and taken in the romantic inroad of Edward Bruce, who thought that, as his brother had, by one gallant achievement, wrested a crown in Scotland from the encroaching Norman, he might as well endeavour to take one in Ireland. Grandison Castle, with two beautiful specimens of the bell-shaped round tower, is attributed to the reign of James I.; but, though it is not the peculiar defect of Irish antiquities to be post-dated, this portion must, we think, belong to the Norman period. There are fine specimens of the round tower at Ballylachan and Ballynafad, whence the M‘Donoughs were driven forth, and the utterly un-Norman names of these buildings do not exclude them from identification as the work of the courtly invaders. In Ireland, however, this sort of work never ceased. There were ever O’Shauchnessies, O’Donahues, O’Rourkes, or O’Dempsies, keeping the Norman or the Saxon at work in making fortresses; and perhaps the latest specimen of it is a relic of the ’48, which we saw the other day in an antiquarian rummage in ancient and ruiniferous Cashel, being a large iron box with loopholes projecting out from the barrack where it was placed, to rake the street into which it projected with musketry from the loopholes.
In Scotland, the Anglo-Norman origin of the earliest true baronial fortresses is attested with remarkable precision. In the first place, there is not a vestige in Scotland of the earlier kind of square keep, such as might have been raised in the days of the Conqueror, or of William Rufus, with its semicircular arches and dog-toothed decorations. The pointed architecture and the Edwardian baronial had come into use ere any of the fortresses of which we possess remains were erected. Hence, the oldest of the Scottish castles were evidently built by Edward to secure his conquest. They may be enumerated as those of Caerlaverock, Bothwell, Dirleton, Kildrummie, and Lochindorb. These names at once excite recollections of the war of independence, when these castles were taken and retaken, and were surrounded by the most interesting and enduring associations of that majestic conflict.
The architectural progeny which this style of building left in Scotland, is very different from its growth into the bastioned fortifications of other countries. The Scottish laird, or chief, when he made his house a fortress, as he had imminent necessity for doing, could not afford to erect the great flanking towers of the Normans; but he stuck little turrets on the corners of his block-house, which served his purpose admirably; and there are no better flanked fortresses, considered with a view to the form of attack to which they were subjected, than our peel-houses.
On the other hand, in the Continental castles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as Heidelberg, Perronne, and Plessis la Tour, as the old representations give it, we see the flanking system extending itself laterally, until it forms something between the Norman keep and the modern fortress. It was on Plessis that Philip de Comines moralises, as a large prison into which the great King Louis had virtually immured himself, becoming, by his own exertions for the enlargement of his power, and his protection from secret enemies, nothing better than the hapless immured prisoner, whose lot he forced upon so many others.
The one great leading step which modern fortification took beyond the mere flanking system, is the discovery of the glacis for covering the stone-work, and protecting it from the attacks of cannon. The whole system, it appears, is now on trial. The charge against it is, that every addition made to it in the way of protecting works, only renders a fort the more certain of ultimate capture, since these protecting works are themselves easily taken. It is said that they save the main work from a general escalade which is never likely to be attempted, but facilitate a deliberate siege, which is the proper method of taking fortified places. It is said that in fortification we must, as in other matters of war, recur to the first principle, that the best way to protect ourselves is to kill our enemy. Of old, the main defences of a vessel were to protect the deck by castles stem and stern from a boarding enemy; now the arrangement is directed to the destruction of the enemy before he can board. Our old knights in armour were a sort of moving fortresses made more for protection than destruction. In Italy, the steel encasement was brought to such perfection, that at the battle of Tornoue, under Charles VIII., we are told by Father Daniel that a number of Italian knights were overthrown, but could not be killed until the country people brought huge stones and sledge-hammers and broke their shells, like those of so many lobsters. It sounds like an odd accompaniment of civilisation that she should make the external form of warfare more destructive and less defensive—but so it is; and a reform in fortification is proposed, which, by the abandonment of the flanking system, and something like a restoration of the primitive form, is to make the fort more terrible to the invader, as a means of making it a more effective defence.
We profess not to enter on so great a question. Mere theories we have herein offered to our reader; and as they are given in all innocence and good-humour, all we pray is, that he will not, if they differ from his own, condemn us to some dire mysterious fate. Let him, if we displease him, simply content himself with the old established remedy, and mutter to himself, “Pooh! humbug!” And we on our part engage that we shall live in all charity with all men who accept not our theory; and will by no means endeavour to prove that they are sensual, lewd, dishonourable people, deserving of some dire punishment.