Winter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Moon of Long Nights<\/p>\n
As any docent or academic knows, you learn strange things when you wander around in a new subject or when returning to an old one.\u00a0 Castles, an ongoing fascination for me since I was a boy, have come up in this new book I’m writing.\u00a0 As I launched myself into the names of things, e.g. machicolations (holes in a parapet through which rocks and boiling oil could be dropped on attackers), barbicans, portcullis and curtain wall, I came across the old familiar moat.<\/p>\n
As in the picture, a moat is a water-filled trench around the outside of a castle.\u00a0 Like you, I thought the moat offered an additional circle of protection for the outside of the castle, a wet barrier.\u00a0 Not primarily.\u00a0 Turns out that siege techniques grew very sophisticated and common protocol including tunneling under a castle’s curtain wall or one of its square sided towers (if such existed) and digging a deeper hole, then blowing it out with explosives or just letting it collapse under its own weight.\u00a0\u00a0 This effected an entry to the castle through its most imposing feature, the sheer rock sides.<\/p>\n
The moat put a stop to that because any tunnel underneath it would collapse and fill in with water.\u00a0 A definite deterrent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Winter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Moon of Long Nights As any docent or academic knows, you learn strange things when you wander around in a new subject or when returning to an old one.\u00a0 Castles, an ongoing fascination for me since I was a boy, have come up in this new book I’m writing.\u00a0 As I launched myself … Continue reading A Moat and the Tunnel<\/span>