posted 05-29-2002 09:33 PM            

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A Knight ther was, and that a worthy man, That fro the tyme that he first bigan, To ryden out, he loved chivalrye,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye.
--- The Canterbury Tales

posted 05-31-2002 05:14 AM            

For the answer to your first question, look here; http://www.castlesontheweb.com/quest/Forum9/HTML/000234.html

Weapons.
The primary weapon of defence for a castle was the crossbow, but bows were also commonly used.
The garrison of a castle would have all the usual weapons such as swords, spears, maces, axes, polearms and, later, small hand cannon(gons). Long poles were used to push scaling ladders away from the walls, and stones, boiling water and the like were thrown down on the enemy below the walls.
Counter-siege engines were also used, such as ballista and stone throwing engines such as catapults and trebuches, which were often depicted as being mounted on top of towers.

Tricks and strategies of defence are a complex matter and you will want to see if you can find a book which can give you more thorough coverage of the subject.

Below is a list of important characteristics castles often had to their advantage;
-internal water supply(well).
-a difficult to access site(hill or swamp).
-a series of obstacles(ditches, stakes, moat and wall).
-surroundings devoid of areas to hide(no cover from arrows).
-flanking VERY IMPORTANT(no areas for enemy to hide from defending arrow fire against walls or inside castle eg. horseshoe towers).
-walls and towers built to resist mining and sapping(building on bedrock or in swamp, building round towers or incorporating arches into walls to prevent collapse).
-secret passages for escape, surprise attack or resupply.
-sections of curtain walls between towers could be seperated if taken by closing wallwalk passage through tower.
-towers independantly defesible.
-counter work(Building extra defences where the enemy was building siege towers or filling the moat, or counter mining the enemy's mines).
-building consecutive defences, so if one falls, there is another defensive barrier. The keep is often placed at the most difficult to reach point and is the place of last defence).
-building the strongest defence where the most likely point of attack is.

I'm sure there are more.
I'm afraid I can't elaborate on such a vast topic, but the list should help you research the topic.
If you are not sure about something I mentioned, just ask.