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It is politics that makes architecture, and it is architecture that makes history – a structural engineer
In fairy tales, princes and princesses end up always living happily and beautifully inside a beautiful castle. This also makes many people have many fantasies about the ancient castle, after all, it carries a good memory of childhood.
In this memory, there are nobles, there are knights, there are glorious faiths, and there are also pastoral songs. But it was this period of gentle elegance that Europeans called the "Dark Middle Ages."
Neuschwanstein Castle in the snow
The castle was the most important way of building in the Middle Ages, which arose as Europe entered the Middle Ages and disintegrated with the demise of the Middle Ages; it adapted to the special social operation of the Middle Ages and maintained the basis of power rule throughout Europe. The castle and the Middle Ages can be called lips and teeth.
Next, we broaden our horizons and look at the changes in European social structure and the rise and fall of castle architecture from a macro perspective, to see whether castles are the glory and dream of idyllic pastoralism, or the basis of violent rule in the Dark Ages.
Greece, a small country with few people
Ancient Greece was regarded as the source of European civilization and practiced a city-state system. On the Greek peninsula from the 9th to the 2nd century BC, small cities were centered on and combined with the surrounding countryside to form a small city state with widows. In ancient Greek times, hundreds of city-states stood side by side, the most famous of which were Athens and Sparta.
Athens was a democracy in which the exercise of power over the entire city-state was determined by the votes of the Citizens' Assembly, the People's Court, and the Council of Five Hundred. Sparta was an oligarchy, dominated by two co-ruling kings and a 28-member senate, with occasional citizens' assemblies.
Citizens regularly come to the city for meetings
▲Intention map of the city of Athens
For most of the city-states of ancient Greece, the status of citizens was relatively high. In peacetime, citizens regularly go to the city to vote and elect leaders to decide on the country's major policies.
In times of war, citizens must take up arms to defend their common homeland. At this time, citizens' sense of identity with the country is still quite high, and they have a relatively strong sense of ownership. That's why there were 300 warriors in the spa Guansparta, and only then did the "Scud" Fidipitz run more than 40 kilometers to report the victory in the Battle of Athens.
Socrates who died in democratic politics The neoclassical painter Davit
So ancient Greek architecture existed by attaching itself to a small, concentrated city-state, mainly public buildings and popular dwellings that were not particularly large. Ancient Greek cities were both places of peacetime public events and the last line of defense for wartime nations.
The buildings preserved in ancient Greece are mainly mountain theaters that serve most citizens, the Patnon Temple, which worships the patron saint of the city, and the Acropolis of Athens, which defends its homeland. At this time, I didn't even see the shadow of the castle.
▲ Parthenon
▲ Athens Mountain Theater
Ancient Rome dominated Europe
Rome was the successor of ancient Greece, and at first it was just a small ordinary country on the banks of the Tiber River in northern Greece, but it underwent several "genetic mutations" and eventually evolved into the behemoth we know.
The form of administration of the Republic
The "first genetic mutation" was in 510 BC, when the Roman people expelled their own king and was ruled by the people's elected consuls, the senate and tribal councils, thus ending the Roman monarchical era and entering the republican period.
Efficient rule of law
The "second genetic mutation" was 16 years after Rome entered the Republic. In 494 BC, the "plebeian movement" broke out in Rome, establishing a system of conservators to protect the interests of civilians from infringement, and in the following decades, a general assembly of civilians and a legislative committee of ten people were established.
Among them, the influence of this ten-member legislative committee is the most far-reaching. The Legislative Council introduced the Twelve Bronze Watches Act, which contained a series of measures to ensure the interests of the commoners, such as the abolition of the debt slavery system of the nobles exploiting the commoners, the abolition of the restrictions on the intermarriage between the commoners and the nobles, and so on.
Thus Rome entered the era of statutory law, from "rule of man" to "rule of law", "there is a law to follow" and "lawbreakers must be prosecuted". Although the "rule of law" of ancient society has its extremely cruel side, it is also a thing ahead of the times.
It gave birth to order, reduced management costs, expanded the radius of management, established a channel for the upward development of the low-level civilians, and each "screw" became part of the operation of the entire state apparatus in an orderly manner. Like the Qin state after the "Shang Martingale Transformation Law", Rome embarked on a path of rapid expansion, breaking the limitations of the small city-states of ancient Greece.
Ancient Greece, where city-states were abundant
Ancient Rome across Eurasia
A professional army with strong fighting power
The "third genetic mutation" occurred in 107-103 BC, when Rome underwent a military reform that changed the citizen military system to a mercenary system. Before this reform, Western society regarded it as the duty of citizens to fight as soldiers, and these citizen conscripts were often strong in fighting when defending their homeland, but they were not so enthusiastic in the face of external wars of expansion and aggression.
▲ The Colosseum was built in the 1st century
▲ St. Peter's Church in Rome, rebuilt in the 16th century
The mercenary system, on the other hand, recruits poor low-level citizens as soldiers, and the service period of soldiers is 16 years, and the state provides weapons and salaries for unified planning. At the end of the 16-year period of service, the State distributes land on the basis of military merit.
The previous citizen military system was like a unified establishment of public institutions, which lacked internal driving force. The current mercenary system is more like the partnership system of start-up companies, giving low-level citizens the opportunity to turn around and providing a channel for upward mobility.
The Oath of the Horace Brothers, french neoclassical painter David
Citizens who choose to join the army are very enthusiastic about the aggressive war of the country's external expansion, coupled with the army's cruel "eleven-draw killing law", the roman individual combat ability under the double "buff" is exploded.
The advent of mercenarism also led to the professionalization and systematization of the Roman army. The state can plan the army from a macro perspective, not only with strong vanguard troops to open up territory for the country, but also with a unified front defense system to protect the homeland.
▲Roman city ruins
▲ Roman Battle Fortress of San Angelo
After the above three genetic mutations, the Roman Republic broke through the territorial limitations of the small states of the Greek city-states, and Rome rapidly expanded to become the absolute hegemon of the entire Western society. Although Rome changed from a republic to an imperial system, the underlying logic of the state's operation did not change much. Even now, Rome is still the ceiling of Western social domination.
Unprecedented architectural scale
At this time, Rome had the strength and the money to build a series of large-scale cities, in which there were a series of large public buildings, such as the Colosseum and roman theater that could accommodate 100,000 people, and the system of canals and fountains built to ensure the city's water supply.
▲ Ancient Colosseum
But the giants also eventually declined, because of the invasion of the Huns and a series of riots in the Roman Empire itself, not only the military strength declined badly, but even the country was divided into two parts, East and West Rome. In the 6th century, the weakening Western Roman Empire was finally divided under the constant attack of nomadic peoples from all directions.
The Reverse of History: Feudalism + The Barbaric Way of Ruling castles
Dividing up the Western Roman Empire were Slavs, Goths, Germans, Kates, etc., to be honest, these people were less civilized, many of them were still in the tribal era, so they were called barbarians. Barbarians, it is okay to fight for life and death on the battlefield, but when they occupy the land and establish the kingdom, they do not know how to rule.
▲ "The Robbery of Sabine Women" French classicist painter Poussin
The cottage king under the feudal system
The city-state system of the small Greek state and the early Roman republic and legal system were a little too complicated for the barbarians. Barbarians are more like bandit thieves who gather in the mountains and forests: drink in large bowls, eat large pieces of meat, and weigh gold and silver.
In line with the principle that brothers share the blessings and difficulties, according to the size of the merits at the time of the invasion and the estrangement of their own blood relations, the land is divided layer by layer, and this way of dividing the land layer by layer and establishing their own rule is called the feudal system.
How did the barbarians, who were divided into lands, establish their way of ruling? The feudal lord came to the land with his knights and waved a big hand at the local people: "These lands have now been divided among me, and you all belong to me now, and the harvested grain, cattle, sheep and horses will be given to me first." ”
▲Tugang - Chengguo-style castle
The cottage was the earliest castle
After swearing their sovereignty, they had to choose a place to build their cottage. This cottage should be built on an earthen mound, and the surrounding area is built with easy to defend and difficult to attack and moat.
The tallest building served as the residence of the feudal lord, observing the enemy situation around it, and the wide square in the middle was used to build supporting facilities such as warehouses, horse farms and mills for storing grain. This cottage is the prototype of the earliest castle, known as: Tugang-Chengguo-style wooden castle.
If these flat-headed people came to pay the grain and cattle, sheep and horses on time, they would not be enough, and once they dared to resist, the feudal lord led the knights to rush out of the cottage to snatch back the supplies, saying that they would have to kill a few people to establish a will. If the knight is the cell of the feudal society in Europe, then the castle is the neuron in it, which supports the operation of the entire feudal system.
▲ Fernice Castle, Italy
▲ Monteglio Gione Castle, Italy
In the early Middle Ages, taxes, laws, politics, and culture were all not needed for barbarians, or the feudal system + castle building method of rule, more efficient. This set of "successful experiences" was also carried forward by the barbarians.
Carry forward the successful experience
In 1066, William I, Duke of Normandy, a French feudal lord, led a large group of horses and occupied England. William I built 23 castles in England, and granted them the right to build castles by 177 barons, and through feudalism + castle building, twenty-five thousand Normans ruled over millions of Anglo-Saxons in England.
▲ Windsor Castle, England, built during the time of William I
▲ The Tower castle built during the time of William I
The Middle Ages, of course, are the Dark Middle Ages
In the early Middle Ages, there was also a very powerful Carolingian dynasty, but the power structure of the feudal system only weakened the power of the state step by step. The local rule of feudalism + castles also forced productivity to revolve only around inefficient manor economies, with land becoming the only source of income.
Loose national frameworks
With no standing army, no tax system, or even no bureaucracy, the medieval Continent of Europe continued to shift its power downwards, experiencing a transition from empire to kingdom and from kingdom to territory. Although the castles formed the skeleton of their power, with the gradual loss of the state's control over the feudal lords, the state eventually became a fragment of the war.
▲ Medieval castle manor economy
The darkest hour for civilians
"Chickens and dogs smell each other, and the people do not interact with each other until they are old and dead", ordinary people under feudal rule are private products that are deeply bound to feudal estates. The people's sense of homeland is not strong, it is just a production machine, and there is no upward channel and hope.
Even the right of the newlywed wife to the first night is the right of the feudal lord, and the feudal lord even enjoys the right to lie horizontally, which is not for you ordinary people to "lie flat", but the feudal lord cut open the stomach of the serf to warm his feet. The real enforcement of these powers may not be particularly common, but they already reflect the feudal lords' killing of civilians.
▲ Rafiel Castle, Haiti
▲ Eilean Donan Castle, Scotland
The rights of ancient Greece and Rome belonged to some extent to the commoners, and their buildings were also a series of public facilities, but in the Middle Ages, the rights belonged only to the feudal lords of the barbarians (who called themselves nobles). The Middle Ages left us with only castles and magnificent Christian churches that the common people were daunting.
▲ Bodiam Castle, England
For the nobility, the Middle Ages may have the idyllic romance of princes and princesses, but for the common people "only the dark Middle Ages". Christianity, on the one hand, says that "the poor are blessed" and turns around and sells "indulgences" to people, perhaps believing in the soul is the only light of the Dark Middle Ages.
▲ Mont Saint-Michel Castle, France
Romanesque castle, an unbreakable military fortress
Medieval Europe was not like Rome, with a large standing army and a complete strategic defense system. The earthen gang-castles are full of momentum for the common people, but they are scattered for the invading forces outside.
The Vikings who turned plunder into a regular
The Vikings living in northern Europe invaded Britain, France, Eastern Europe, the Duchy of Normandy and other regions from the 9th century to the 11th century AD, and swept across the entire devastated European continent like a devastated and decaying country along the way'.
For the robbery of the Vikings, the feudal kingdoms in Europe were again bribes and land-cutting in an attempt to break the wealth and avoid disaster, but all of them were not easy to use. The Vikings still felt that the robbery came more crisply, and the robbery was done with a straight face, and in these hundreds of years, the Viking plunder became a normal thing.
The earthen castle was not very resistant to the Viking invasion, so the medieval feudal lords remembered the Roman construction techniques. Feudalism mainly built a huge, strong, unbreakable stone castle, which was built with Roman techniques and was called a "Romanesque castle".
Stimulated by the Vikings, strong Romanesque castles sprung up, taking the Poitoir region of France as an example, there were only three castles in the 9th century before the Viking invasion, and by the 11th century, there were 39 decent castles in the Poidu region.
Marlborough, Poland
When the Vikings came, the medieval feudal lords could very quickly transfer grain, cattle, sheep, civilians and other materials to the castle for defense, and when the Vikings withdrew, the feudal lords could release the commoners to graze and grow crops and other production activities.
Easy to defend and difficult to attack site selection
First of all, in terms of site selection, Romanesque castles are not like earthen mounds-castles that can be found casually and a small mound. Romanesque castles were chosen near the mountains and the great rivers. These two places have two advantages, first, it is convenient to mine and transport the stone used to build castles, and second, in terms of terrain, both places are easy to defend and difficult to attack.
▲ Burg Hochosterwitz Castle
▲ Castle of Hornzollern, Germany
If it is a large river, you can divert the water in the river as a moat, and you are not afraid of the enemy to cut off the water source. At the top of the mountain, you can use the mountain road to set up a winding and winding travel route, layer by layer of card defense, and occupy the favorable terrain from above.
The only thing to worry about in the hilltop castle is the water source problem, so a lot of water is stored inside the castle in case of emergency. Some feudal lords would also be particularly arrogant to dig a deep well at the top of the mountain to solve the problem of water use. Some of these wells have a depth of nearly 200 meters.
▲ German Saxon castle well 152 meters
▲ The well of joux castle in France is 147 meters
Offensive and defensive towers and walls
The plan of the castle is not a regular rectangle and a square, but a cylindrical tower built around it. The protruding towers on the one hand expand the attack range of the castle guardians, and on the other hand, the cylindrical towers can increase the force area of the castle and the ground, making the castle more stable.
There are powerful feudal lords who will also build an extra layer of walls on the outskirts of the castle to form a coaxial castle layout. The distance between the first and second walls is called the "Outer Fort". Once the enemy has broken through the first gate, the outer fort area has formed a combat effect similar to the urn city, and the defending side can close the enemy on the two walls and close the door to fight the dog.
The party attacking the castle will often take the form of earthwork, concentrating on attacking and digging a corner of the castle, and once the corner collapses, the castle opens a gap, and the attack is convenient to pour in like a tide.
After adding cylindrical towers around the castle, not only is it convenient for defense, but also it can gather troops to focus on defending the corners, even if the corners collapse, there will be no gaps for the enemy to enter.
▲ Castle of Hohenzollen, Bisingen, Germany
Subject to the construction techniques of the time, the windows on the main building and towers of the Romanesque castle were very small, but the small windows on the towers could be converted into arrow towers in the event of an attack, and supplemented by raised arrow stacks on the walls, they could deal with invaders from all directions.
If there are too many enemies, you can also add a wooden battle platform to the arrow stack to focus on weak areas such as city gates.
The Lord's Room was the last line of defense of the war
Romanesque castles do not look at the windows are very small, but the interior space is very large, which is the feudal lord in the premise of not too much damage to the castle defense, as far as possible to make their own and family life more comfortable. The lowest floor is a storage room for daily necessities and strategic supplies. The middle floor is a hall for public events. The top floor was the residence of the feudal lord.
The feudal lord considered the top floor as a residence for two aspects, the first: the windows of the Romanesque castle were very small in winter, the sun was not enough in the winter, the room was very cold, and on the top floor, the chimney fireplace could be opened to keep warm. Second: Once the enemy has invaded the castle, the room on the top floor is the last line of defense.
The castle is mostly narrow, clockwise spiraling staircases. When the battle is fought inside the castle, the clockwise staircase is more conducive to the defender above the staircase wielding weapons with their right hands.
The roof of the castle and the floor of each floor are made of wooden planks, which are tough enough and very light in weight, so as to reduce the load on the walls as much as possible and keep the entire building in the strongest state.
▲ Castle of Saint Pierre, Italy
A Romanesque castle that is almost insoluble in the Age of Cold Weapons
After the advent of Romanesque castles, feudal lords could sit back and relax. For the internal rulers, the castle is the place where the soldiers are stationed, and the knights stationed in the castle can quickly send troops to every corner of the territory to suppress the resistance of the civilians. When encountering external invasion, they can use the usual material reserves to hold on, and when the enemy army retreats, they can continue to come out as a blessing.
In the history of the Middle Ages, there have been few cases of well-established Romanesque castles being broken through head-on. Castles can be called the divine weapons that maintain medieval feudal rule, so the number of castles in Europe is very large, and even now, there are more than 10,000 castles left in France alone. The impregnable castles also symbolized the deep sense of powerlessness of the medieval commoners.
▲ Grass Star Fort
Idyllic pastoral in a Gothic castle
After the 12th and 13th centuries, as feudal wars gradually faded away, Europe entered a relatively stable stage of development. Technological innovations arose in the field of architecture, and craftsmen tried to use columns and various arches as the skeleton of the building during the construction of the church, thus producing the architectural form of the Gothic church.
▲ Reims Cathedral, France
Gothic churches are lighter and more aesthetically pleasing, with columns and arches in the form of skeletons freeing up walls and opening large windows that make the building's ventilation and lighting performance better. Many feudal lords, after seeing the Gothic church, felt that their dark castle was like a prison. The lords began to think of using a new Gothic way of building to improve their living environment.
▲ Prague Castle, Czech Republic
After the 12th and 13th centuries, many new castles no longer pursued dangerous hilltops, but built castles on relatively flat land. The cylindrical towers used as defenses also began to shrink rapidly, some even with simple decorative significance.
As for the additional protective measures such as the extra walls and suspension bridges in the outer fort area, they were simply deleted and reduced. In this way, the Gothic castle only retained the living and living functions of the main building, and no longer used the defensive function of war as the first driving force. The main building of the castle will also be thinned, and there are as many windows as possible on the surrounding and roof, so that life in the castle can also be transparent and full of sunlight.
▲ Neuschwanstein Castle
In terms of personnel placement, feudal lords no longer need so many knights to be stationed in it, ready to go out to quell the chaos at any time. The feudal lords began to recruit more commoners as servants and enjoy life. It was as if the smoke of war had passed away, and the barbarians of that year had evolved into polite aristocrats. But things often turn out unexpectedly, because a small rat, the castle that has dominated Europe for hundreds of years, has fallen apart.
The inducement of a rat, the apocalyptic twilight of the invincible castle
The 12th and 13th centuries were some of the happier times in medieval Europe. There was no major war, the population grew rapidly, and more wasteland was reclaimed. But the good times did not last long, and by the mid-to-late 14th century, as a rat arrived, it quickly dragged Europe into the dark abyss.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Black Death (plague) swept through Europe, and the death of people due to the Black Death accounted for at least one-third of the total population at that time, and the sharp decline in the population caused the land in the castle estates of the feudal lords to be abandoned in large quantities, and the threat of death and long-term unfree labor also deprived the peasants of their enthusiasm for work.
▲ "Death's Triumph" Old Jan Borugel
War is often the catalyst of the times
Some feudal lords simply leased land to the peasants and collected their own rents to protect themselves from drought and floods; and some feudal lords went to war in order to make up for their losses. In Europe, under the shroud of the death crisis, smoke was everywhere, not only the friction between lords and lords was increasing, but finally it rose to the level of war between countries.
The most famous of these is the Hundred Years' War between England and France, which has long been a feud between the two countries. In the early days of the Black Death, the two countries also fought for 10 years, but with the shortage of supplies caused by the Black Death, the two countries fought more fiercely.
In the protracted war, the kings began to increase their power, first relying on musket and artillery technology imported from China to build their own standing army, no longer relying solely on the knights of the feudal lords as the only tool of war. In order to maintain the expenditure of this army, it forced the state to establish a unified tax system and return financial power from the local to the central government.
A change in the economic base is fundamental
When the dust of the war settled and the Black Death dissipated, the social structure of Europe changed. After the peasants who rented the land were freed from the constraints of the castle manor economy, not only were they more motivated and their productivity developed rapidly, but some skilled peasants also gathered in the towns to carry out handicraft production. Due to the concentration of population in small towns, it has also slowly evolved into large cities. Land is no longer the only source of income.
▲ Prague Castle and the surrounding towns
The king, who had grown in power in the war, also tasted the benefits of centralization and began to use various measures to suppress the feudal lords, one of the important steps was to destroy the power base of the feudal lords, the castle.
With the development of the city's commercial economy, the feudal lords wanted to use money to buy various commercial goods in the city, while the castle manor economy could only bring their original crops and cattle, sheep and horses. Therefore, many feudal lords simply closed the gates of the castle, rented out the land to collect rent, and moved to the city to enjoy a comfortable and convenient life.
▲ Renaissance town, Florence, Italy
Revival of the Greco-Roman system
When more and more castles were abandoned, feudal lords who once mastered the machinery of violence were transformed into polite gentlemen and nobles in the cities, the Middle Ages came to an end. The power of the king was continuously strengthened, the standing army, taxation, bureaucracy, parliamentary system, etc., which had been abandoned for nearly a thousand years, were gradually restored, the people were no longer the private property of feudal lords, and the concept of the state in the modern sense was gradually formed, and the Renaissance began in all parts of Europe.
▲ Brown Coors Castle, Germany
▲ Dunvanie Castle, Scotland
After the Renaissance, many castles were still built, but at this time the castles were only the palaces of the princes and nobles, and the military, political and economic significance of the medieval period had been lost. The seemingly indestructible castle, under the tide of the times caused by a rat, was eventually submerged to silence.