This Celtic Fortress Was So Terrifying That Even the Romans Feared Attacking It
Throughout the turbulent millennia of human warfare, defensive sites—citadels, forts, and walls—evolved to counter and defeat new tactics and techniques. Dan Jones examines seven outstanding structures, each defining a new era or the end of one.
This Dorset hill was one of the marvels of Iron Age engineering
In AD 43, Roman legions landed in Britain to push the boundaries of their empire to the edge of the known world. They did not want to go. Britain was an unknown land inhabited by tribesmen known for their ferocity in battle. Roman writers described how these "barbarians" grew their hair and mustaches, dyed their skin blue, and were skilled in guerrilla warfare, setting up rapid-fire ambushes and then retreating to fortified hills that resisted attack. Today we know these high hills as hills.
Thousands of Iron Age mounds were in use when the Romans arrived. One of the largest hills in Britain – indeed, in all of Europe – is known as Maiden's Castle, a vast site in Dorset where the brutal reality of war can still be felt today.
Here, archaeologists have found evidence that, on top of a hill about 130 meters above sea level, the people of the Durotriges tribe built round houses, baked bread and made jewelry. To protect themselves, the Durotriges built massive terraced earthworks that began around 600 BC and were expanded 200 years later, preventing invaders from climbing the hillside. They also designed intricate and narrow paths and installed gates to protect their vast compound. and dug storage pits to hold the standard ammunition of the day: the slingshot.
A slingshot, a simple weapon made of rope or woven leather, was used to hurl pebbles or pieces of river. Clay Against Enemies At least 30,000 of these flat stones are buried in Maiden Castle, indicating a time when an approaching enemy had to brave a vicious hailstorm to reach the walled summit of the hill. The Roman historian Tacitus described how the great general Agricola had to march in front of his men "to inspire [them] to march with equal courage" when attacking tribesmen dug in on high ground.
If slingshots and ground operations failed to stop the attackers and the fighting ended, it could have been terrible. During the 1930s, the first major archaeological dig at Maiden Castle uncovered a "war cemetery" containing dozens of skeletons from two centuries before the Roman conquest. Many had been hastily buried and suffered horrific injuries: cracked skulls, broken noses, broken arms.
The hills were therefore not impregnable, but the Romans considered them sufficiently impressive that they appropriated several to convert them into barracks. In Tudor times, the sheer size of these hills and folk memories of the battles that took place around them gave rise to the legend that it was on such a hill that King Arthur held his Camelot court.
How a brilliant plan of Norman domination became a powerful symbol of the power of the new regime
When William the Conqueror defeated Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastinson in 1066, the land was said to be "drenched in blood". That conflict marked the beginning of a brutal Norman colonial campaign in which the castle was a key piece of military technology.
Just a few weeks after Hastings, when William marched on London and accepted the surrender of the panic-stricken citizens, one of his first acts was to erect a wooden fort in the south-east corner of the city to guard his new men and the traffic of the Thames. Over time, this wooden guardhouse became the Tower of London: the most famous castle in the world.
The Normans were expert castle builders whose most famous fortification style was motte and bailey castle. It consisted of a hill topped by a wooden or stone tower, surrounded by a fence or wall, an area of protected land covered with outbuildings. The Bayeux Tapestry provides a vivid picture of such a castle in action, showing the defenders of the castle at Dinan throwing spears from their tower at the attackers, while the attackers tried to set the castle on fire.
Due to the threat that fire posed to wooden structures, stone was considered the best material for building durable castles. So, starting in 1078, William rebuilt the Tower of London, the new walls of which were made of creamy, shiny stone quarried near the Norman town of Caen. The central building, now known as the White Tower, towered over the city. It was equipped with advanced facilities: a prayer hall, a water well, and of course toilets that emptied through the walls.
This tower was designed for the garrison of knights and armed forces, and with its expansion over the centuries, it maintained its military function. However, like many castles established by the Normans in England and Wales, it quickly became little more than a base for soldiers who could go out to enforce discipline in the local area.
It was a place of residence, prison and place of execution. It housed a mint and a zoo. It was a storehouse for weapons and treasure, including the crown jewels. Above all, it was a symbol of the new regime's authority. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle summarizes this in a bleak line describing the first stage of the conquest: "And they [the Normans] built castles widely throughout this nation, and oppressed the wretched people, and afterwards it was always much worse."
A towering Crusader castle defined castles for ages
As Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade at Clermont in 1095, he could hardly have been aware of the events as he passed the train. For more than half a millennium, the Crusades transformed medieval Christianity and created new geopolitics throughout Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. It also ushered in a new era in fort building.
The best castles of the Crusader states established in the Near East were built by the military orders: the Knights Templar and the Hospitallers. In the 13th century, when they took responsibility for the protection of the Holy Land after the Third Crusade, they built castles on a large scale with advanced designs.
Structures such as the Krak des Chevaliers (literally "Castle of the Knights"), built by the Hospitallers on a 650-meter-high plateau about 25 miles west of Homs in Syria, were major improvements on the old Norman Mott and Bailey design.
Inspired by Byzantine castles, they consisted of circuits of inner vaulted walls connecting large stone towers. These towers had arrow slits and were topped with jagged defenses called crenellations, which made it easier for the defenders to throw arrows. Another ingenious development was the machinist—a structure projecting from the outer wall, with a hole at the bottom through which stones or boiling liquids could be thrown at the attackers.
Krak des Chevaliers was massive - as it needed to be. Its 2.4 hectares housed 60 Knights Hospitallers and a support staff of 2,000 men who controlled the trade road that connected Homs to the coastal city of Tripoli. The facilities of the castle included brick kilns in industrial dimensions, stable blocks and water management system. It was effectively an independent military town - but its inhabitants never forgot their Christian mission. A Latin inscription on the wall of the hospital's central hall can be translated as: "You may have wealth, wisdom and beauty, but beware of pride, which destroys everything."
When the Holy Land fell to the Mamluks in the late 13th century, the Hospitallers gave up the Krak des Chevaliers. But it was as impressive as ever in 1909, when Lawrence of Arabia visited it at the age of 21. “The best castle in the world, certainly the most beautiful,” he wrote. He thought it summed up the elegance of European architecture with the military performance of the Crusader states.
The fort has been considered a useful fortress in recent conflicts: during the Syrian civil war, anti-government forces used it as a defensive position.
This Normandy landmark was an expression of the prudishness of an English king
When Richard the Lionheart visited Châsteau Gaillard's construction site in Normandy one day in the late 1190s, it began to rain. There were cries of disgust and horror - for the liquid falling from the clouds was not water but blood.
This story of a strange natural phenomenon, recounted by the chronicler William Newburgh, was meant to illustrate Richard's obsessive attempt to build a castle that matched his personal infamy and fame. This fortress was built in the border areas between the territories of Richard and his great rival, the French king Philip II Augustus. Such was Lionheart's desire to deliver one to Philip that he set his workmen in motion with an almost diabolical urgency. William wrote, "Even if an angel from heaven had told him to leave [the castle], he would have cursed that angel."
Richard imported the latest fortification thinking from the East, where he had led the war against Saladin in the Third Crusade. Round Gillard turrets that connect directly to each other like petals, creating no weak points for enemy catapults. The castle was also the first in Europe to have a mycolation.
But it was more than a military building: it was an expression of chivalry, the common martial culture of the age. Chivalry required military skill and courtesy, but it also valued bravery. In building Château Gillard, Richard was making a statement about his self-appointed status as the leading prince in Europe. Gillard meant "happy" - and Castle was a cheeky thumbs-up in the French's direction. When Philip Augustus came to spy on the building site and saw what a great fortress was being built, he said he wished it would be made of iron, so that when he finally conquered it, he would be more satisfied.
When this was brought up to Richard, he uttered his famous line: "By God, if that castle were built all of butter, never mind iron or stone, I have no doubt I could defend it mightily against him [Philip] and all his forces."
That might be true, but Richard didn't have a chance to prove it. He died of gangrene in 1199 when he was shot by a crossbow arrow while besieging another fort. His brother and successor, King John, succeeded in losing Castle Gillard within five years, thus revealing an eternal truth about castles: however thick their walls may be, they are always as strong as those who defend them.
China's vast but vulnerable barrier proves that size isn't everything
Throughout the ages, when empires were threatened by outsiders, their leaders often built border walls to keep out potential invaders. In the 2nd century AD, the Romans built Hadrian's Wall to keep out the Caledonian tribes of northern Britain. In the 5th and 6th centuries AD, the Persians built the Great Wall of Gorgan to protect their lands from nomadic tribes known as the White Huns. In the 20th century, the French built the Maginot Line to protect themselves from the German army. In a sense, we can see the great walls of history as attempts to build a fortress out of an entire territory.
At many times during China's long history, emperors decided to build or expand a network of fortifications and barriers that ran north through the borderlands between China and the steppe tribes.
The styles and materials used in the Great Wall of China have varied greatly over time. In the 3rd century BC, the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, sent hundreds of thousands of laborers, mostly peasants and convicts, to build a 3,000-mile long "high wall" of dirt and rubble, using existing land barriers such as mountain ranges. The scale was so vast that later observers thought that a great dragon had fallen from the sky and turned into the wall where it slept.
However, that wall was very porous. The most famous defeat occurred in the 13th century AD, when northern China – then ruled by Jurchen Jin – was attacked by the Mongols under Genghis Khan, whose lightning horse charges were likened by one chronicler to "the sound of thunder and the rushing of the wind". The Mongols sent raiding parties around the wall and through mountain passes. By the end of the same century, they had taken control of all of China.
The most iconic section of the Great Wall was built by the Ming Dynasty in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was a brick and stone fence but also a path that allowed horses and troops to move quickly along it. However, that too failed, when the Ming were overthrown in a revolution in 1644. The gates of the wall opened, allowing the Manchus from the northern steppe to rush through and take control of the empire. "The Great Wall of China is a monument to fear," Voltaire wrote in a low voice. For enemies not daunted by its sheer size, it was never as strong a line of defense as it seemed.
Renaissance ideas inspired a new age of castle art in the heart of Rome
In May 1481, miraculous news reached Rome: the Ottoman Sultan, Muhammad II, the scourge of Christendom, was dead. To celebrate, nightly parties were held around the city with bonfires, blowing of trumpets and firing of guns. Some of these events took place on the terrace of the papal castle known as Castel Sant'Angelo.
A later legend reimagined the explosion of guns as a colorful fireworks display designed by Michelangelo Buonarroti. In fact, Michelangelo was only six years old at the time, but the legend had the ring of truth – because during the Italian Renaissance, castles underwent massive transformations inside and out. Vast changes in military technology and artistic techniques spread throughout Europe. Castle defenses were redesigned to respond to the advent of gunpowder weapons that appeared in Europe in the 14th century. Their rooms were decorated by the new art masters of the revolutionary era.
Castel Sant'Angelo captured the spirit of this age. The mausoleum was originally built as Hadrian's Tomb, a large burial tomb for dead Roman emperors. During the Renaissance, when the classical world was revived for modern enjoyment, it was equipped with bastions - angled, projecting towers from which artillery could be fired in any direction, including fire along the length of the wall. A passage called Pasto was built so that popes could escape directly from the Vatican to the castle if the city was besieged or bombarded. (As was often done amid the turbulent politics of the Reformation.) Meanwhile, the papal apartments were restored and lavishly decorated inside by artists including the famous painter Pintorichio.
As the Renaissance unfolded and cannon began to make the classic medieval castle obsolete, great artists turned their minds to military design. In 1482, Leonardo da Vinci wrote to the Duke of Milan, offering his services as a maker of siege weapons and boasting of his "plans to destroy any fortress or other fortification even if built on stone". He was hired to survey the defenses of the Duke's Sforza castle. Meanwhile, Michelangelo was hired to redesign the walls of Florence, and he drew up plans for rough cannon platforms, with dozens of sharp corners for the gunners to use, though these plans were never realized.