SUM OF THE EVIDENCE

79

wooden defences have one important advantage over stone ones, their greater cohesion, which enabled them to resist the blows of the battering-ram better than rubble masonry.' Their great disadvantage was their liability to fire; but this was obviated, as in the time of the Romans, by spreading wet hides over the outsides. Stone castles were still built, where money and means were available, as we see from Fulk Nerra's keep at Langeais; but the devastations of the Northmen had decimated the population of Gaul; labour must have been dear, and skilled masons hard to find. In these social and economic reasons we have sufficient cause for the rapid spread of wooden castles in France.

The sum of the evidence which we have been reviewing is this: the earliest mottes which we know of were probably built by Thibault-le-Tricheur about the middle of the 10th century. But in the present state of our knowledge we must leave the question of the time and place of their first origin open. The only thing about which we can be certain is that they were the product of feudalism, and cannot have arisen till it had taken root; that is to say, not earlier than the 10th century.

1 Manuel d'Archæologie Française, p. 457.

CHAPTER VI

DISTRIBUTION AND CHARACTERISTICS OF MOTTE-CASTLES

THE motte-and-bailey type of castle is to be found throughout feudal Europe, but is probably more prevalent in France and the British Isles than anywhere else. We say probably, because there are as yet no statistics prepared on which to base a comparison.1 How recent the inquiry into this subject is may be learned from the fact that Krieg von Krieg von Hochfelden, writing in 1859, denied the existence of mottes in Germany; and even Cohausen in 1898 threw doubt

1 This want will be supplied, as regards England, by the completion of the Victoria County Histories, and as regards France, by the Societé Préhistorique, which is now undertaking a catalogue of all the earthworks of France. The late M. Mortillet, in an article in the Revue Mensuelle de PÉcole d'Anthropologie, viii., 1895, published two lists, one of actual mottes in France, the other of place-names in which the word motte is incorporated. Unfortunately the first list is extremely defective, and the second, as it only relates to the name, is not a safe guide to the proportional numbers of the thing. All that the lists prove is that mottes are to be found in all parts of France, and that place-names into which the word motte enters seem to be more abundant in Central France than anywhere else. It is possible that a careful examination of local chroniclers may lead to the discovery of some earlier motte-builder than Thibault-le-Tricheur. We should probably know more about Thibault's castles were it not that the Pays Chartrain, as Palgrave says, is almost destitute of chroniclers.

2 Cited at length by De Caumont, Bulletin Monumental, ix., 246. Von Hochfelden considered that the origin of feudal fortresses in Germany hardly goes back to the 10th century; only great dukes and counts then thought of fortifying their manors; those of the small nobility date at earliest from the end of the 12th century.

upon them,' although General Köhler in 1887 had already declared that "the researches of recent years have shown that the motte was spread over the whole of Germany, and was in use even in the 13th and 14th centuries.' "2 The greater number of the castles described by Piper in his work on Austrian castles are on the motte-and-bailey plan, though the motte in those mountainous provinces is generally of natural rock, isolated either by nature or art. Mottes were not uncommon in Italy, according to Muratori, and are especially frequent in Calabria, where we may strongly suspect that they were introduced by the Norman. conqueror, Robert Guiscard. It is not improbable that the Franks of the first crusade planted in Palestine the type of castle to which they were accustomed at home, for several of the excellent plans in Rey's Architecture des Croisés show clearly enough the motte-and-bailey plan. In most of these cases the motte was a natural rock.

On the other hand, we are told by Köhler that motte-castles are not found among the Slavonic nations, because they never adopted the feudal system. are there any in Norway or Sweden.

1 Die Befestigungen der Vorzeit, p. 28.

2 Entwickelung des Kriegswesens, iii., 370.

Nor

Denmark has

3 Antiquitates Italica, ii., 504. He says they are many times mentioned both in charters and chronicles in Italy.

We hear of Robert Guiscard building a wooden castle on a hill at Rocca di St Martino in 1047. Amari, Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia, i., 43. Several place-names in Italy and Sicily are compounded with motta, as the Motta Sant' Anastasia in Sicily. See Amari, ibid., p. 220.

Especially Montfort and Blanchegarde. But there is a wide field for further research both in Palestine and Sicily.

"Bei den Sclaven haben die Chateaux-à-motte keinen Eingang gefunden, weil ihnen das Lehnswesen fremd geblieben ist." iii., 338.

' Professor Montelius informed the writer that they are quite unknown in Norway or Sweden; and Dr Christison obtained an assurance to the same effect from Herr Hildebrand.

SIEGE CASTLES

requent to find a motte very near a stone castle.

85

In

case it is either the abandoned site of the original den castle, or it is a siege castle raised to blockade other one. We constantly hear of these siege les being built in the Middle Ages; their purpose not for actual attack, but to watch the besieged fort prevent supplies from being carried in.1 Hillocks also thrown up for the purpose of placing balista other siege engines upon them; but these would be 1 smaller than mottes, and would be placed much er the walls than blockade castles.

The mottes of France are in all probability much

decidedly military than those of England. ce was a land of private war, after the dissolution empire of Charlemagne; and no doubt one of the ns for the rapid spread of the motte-castle, after its tion, was due to the facilities which it offered for errible game. In England the reasons for the on of mottes seem to have been manorial rather nilitary; that is, the Norman landholder desired a esidence for himself amidst a hostile peasantry, than a strong military position which could hold ainst skilful and well-armed foes.

tached to the castle, both in England and abroad, quently find an additional enclosure, much larger he comparatively small area of the bailey proper. vas the burgus or borough, which inevitably up round every castle which had a lengthened Our older antiquaries, finding that the word es was commonly used in Domesday in connection

ce.

Henry I. erected a siege castle to watch Bridgenorth (probably g Hill), and then went off to besiege another castle. Mr Orpen rms me that the camp from which Philip Augustus besieged illard contains a motte. Outside Pickering, Corfe, and Exeter rthworks which have probably been siege castles.