Castle-talk
From the mailbag: "Dear Ryan, I know you're looking for work and stuff but really...what do you do in your spare time when you're not doing that?" I planted that of course but it's more relevant since I put myself on a WoW-Diet this past half-week so far. Well it's not really a diet, unless you call starving yourself and not eating anything a diet, but don't take the comparison too far, man.
Besides copious amounts of reading, current trifecta:
* "Henry II"
* "Plantagenet England: 1225-1360"
* "Medieval Towns"
I would recommend the middle one as it's by a guy named Michael Prestwich who was recently (this book clinched him, actually) added to my fairly exclusive list of "authors of history who I would pick up anything they wrote on any subject just because of their name being associated with it". He joins two women, Alison Weir and Barbara Tuchman...and I think that's all for that list at the moment though I may be forgetting somebody. Realm of specialisation: this guy can describe Edward I's fiscal policies and innovations re: customs duties on the wool export market...and keep my interest. Keeping me reading history is one thing; economics, that's something else entirely, lol.
Anyway besides reading I've been burying myself in worldbuilding because I'm cool like that and it's a way to pretend I'm working on my novel when I'm actually not except in the most extremely tangential way. Having finally finished my exhaustive geographical study of County Kehra (the only FIB area for which maps currently remain extant, *sob*) I have established that it comprises an area of approximately 820 square miles with a population density of 51.14 pop/sq.mi. Yes I know, you are fascinated. For perspective I've been working off and on on that project since, according to my notes, the middle of November. I'm actually organising my creative work now by a) putting it into a tabbed binder, and b) dating my pages at the top. Which is a huge innovation because before I started this I had all these scattered pages and stuff that were not dated at all and it's sometimes a monstrous headache, given my somewhat unfortunate penchant for changing some things but not paying attention to what other ripple-down changes that causes and therefore creating contradictions, to figure out which stuff came first.
Today's project, apparently defying Dan's First Rule of the Internet because I can't seem to find any data concisely in one place, entails relating the standard garrison size for a castle to either its wall length, or the area said castle encloses. I'm doing a lot of calculations by hand but besides coming up with some interesting ideas, not really finding a standard measure like I was hoping for. I mean how do you decide that kind of stuff anyway? It's not like people randomly build(/t) castles and then said...ehhhh...I think we can stuff...500 men in there. So.
I've done three castles so far: Gisors, an 11-12th century construction in Normandy; Caernarfon, a 13th-14th century construction in Wales; and Krak des Chevaliers, a crusader castle in Syria maybe 12-14th century. This is what I've got so far for data:
Gisors -- 1000 man garrison, 934,619 sq.ft, 800-1000m. wall (the former, a "official" stat, the latter, what I measured off a scaled plan view).
Caernarfon -- 200 man garrison, 55,860 sq.ft, 346.5m wall
Krak des Chevaliers -- 2000 man garrison, 322,917 sq.ft, unknown wall length b/c I can't seem to find any plans that have a scale on them for me to calculate.
So per area that comes to:
Gisors -- 934.6 sq.ft / defender
Krak -- 160 sq.ft / defender
Caernarfon -- 279.3 sq. ft / defender
and per length of wall:
Gisors -- (using 800m) 2.62 ft / defender
Caernarfon -- 5.69 ft / man
What does this say? Well so far it doesn't really say anything to me, which is unfortunate, b/c I was looking for some kind of rule of thumb I could apply to Simera's castle when I went and designed it tomorrow (but I guess I'm probably postponing that until I have better data). My guess is to say that Caernarfon falls in the "eh" district maybe based on the fact that they were fighting the welsh who tended to be disorganised and not very good with the whole siege engine concept. Similarly Krak I think has the lowest coverage (or if you prefer to read it as "highest soldier density") because they were fighting the Muslims under Saladin and the Babars who tended to be pretty formidable opponents. Gisors...I don't understand really, except to say that it was a border castle between the norman dukes who usually controlled it and the royal demesne of the kings of France and it was fairly small as such things go. Or maybe that's something to be said about it's efficiency of design (it's the closest to circular of the 3) that you can defend the space with fewer men? I don't know...more research is needed.
Besides copious amounts of reading, current trifecta:
* "Henry II"
* "Plantagenet England: 1225-1360"
* "Medieval Towns"
I would recommend the middle one as it's by a guy named Michael Prestwich who was recently (this book clinched him, actually) added to my fairly exclusive list of "authors of history who I would pick up anything they wrote on any subject just because of their name being associated with it". He joins two women, Alison Weir and Barbara Tuchman...and I think that's all for that list at the moment though I may be forgetting somebody. Realm of specialisation: this guy can describe Edward I's fiscal policies and innovations re: customs duties on the wool export market...and keep my interest. Keeping me reading history is one thing; economics, that's something else entirely, lol.
Anyway besides reading I've been burying myself in worldbuilding because I'm cool like that and it's a way to pretend I'm working on my novel when I'm actually not except in the most extremely tangential way. Having finally finished my exhaustive geographical study of County Kehra (the only FIB area for which maps currently remain extant, *sob*) I have established that it comprises an area of approximately 820 square miles with a population density of 51.14 pop/sq.mi. Yes I know, you are fascinated. For perspective I've been working off and on on that project since, according to my notes, the middle of November. I'm actually organising my creative work now by a) putting it into a tabbed binder, and b) dating my pages at the top. Which is a huge innovation because before I started this I had all these scattered pages and stuff that were not dated at all and it's sometimes a monstrous headache, given my somewhat unfortunate penchant for changing some things but not paying attention to what other ripple-down changes that causes and therefore creating contradictions, to figure out which stuff came first.
Today's project, apparently defying Dan's First Rule of the Internet because I can't seem to find any data concisely in one place, entails relating the standard garrison size for a castle to either its wall length, or the area said castle encloses. I'm doing a lot of calculations by hand but besides coming up with some interesting ideas, not really finding a standard measure like I was hoping for. I mean how do you decide that kind of stuff anyway? It's not like people randomly build(/t) castles and then said...ehhhh...I think we can stuff...500 men in there. So.
I've done three castles so far: Gisors, an 11-12th century construction in Normandy; Caernarfon, a 13th-14th century construction in Wales; and Krak des Chevaliers, a crusader castle in Syria maybe 12-14th century. This is what I've got so far for data:
Gisors -- 1000 man garrison, 934,619 sq.ft, 800-1000m. wall (the former, a "official" stat, the latter, what I measured off a scaled plan view).
Caernarfon -- 200 man garrison, 55,860 sq.ft, 346.5m wall
Krak des Chevaliers -- 2000 man garrison, 322,917 sq.ft, unknown wall length b/c I can't seem to find any plans that have a scale on them for me to calculate.
So per area that comes to:
Gisors -- 934.6 sq.ft / defender
Krak -- 160 sq.ft / defender
Caernarfon -- 279.3 sq. ft / defender
and per length of wall:
Gisors -- (using 800m) 2.62 ft / defender
Caernarfon -- 5.69 ft / man
What does this say? Well so far it doesn't really say anything to me, which is unfortunate, b/c I was looking for some kind of rule of thumb I could apply to Simera's castle when I went and designed it tomorrow (but I guess I'm probably postponing that until I have better data). My guess is to say that Caernarfon falls in the "eh" district maybe based on the fact that they were fighting the welsh who tended to be disorganised and not very good with the whole siege engine concept. Similarly Krak I think has the lowest coverage (or if you prefer to read it as "highest soldier density") because they were fighting the Muslims under Saladin and the Babars who tended to be pretty formidable opponents. Gisors...I don't understand really, except to say that it was a border castle between the norman dukes who usually controlled it and the royal demesne of the kings of France and it was fairly small as such things go. Or maybe that's something to be said about it's efficiency of design (it's the closest to circular of the 3) that you can defend the space with fewer men? I don't know...more research is needed.