Castles dominated the medieval landscape.
And Britain has some of the finest in the world.
Today, most are decaying relics, many of their secrets buried in time.
- Now, historian Ruth Goodman... - Whoa!
...and archaeologists Tom Pinfold and Peter Ginn
are turning the clock back to relearn the secrets of the medieval castle builders.
This is the ultimate in medieval technology.
The origin of our castles is distinctly French,
introduced to Britain at the time of the Norman Conquest of 1066.
Trois, deux, un, tirez!
Here in the Burgundy region of France is Guédelon Castle,
the world's biggest archaeological experiment...
...a 25-year project to build a castle from scratch,
using the same tools, techniques and materials available in the 13th century.
It's a lot of hard work at the coal face because this is industry.
For the next six months, Ruth, Peter and Tom
will experience the daily rigours of medieval construction...
Drop down. Yeah, there.
...and everyday life.
How workers dressed and ate...
You can really smell your food, Ruth!
...and the art of combat.
Aww!
This is the story of how to build a medieval castle.
Ripped By mstoll
It's April,
and since their arrival a month ago,
the team have been learning ancient skills from the Guédelon masons.
- Perfect! - Oh, good!
They've also set up a base for themselves in the shadow of the castle.
Building a castle involves such a lot of people and they've all got to live somewhere.
The 13th century was part of the golden age of castle building,
when ever-evolving tactics and fortifications
were driven by the legacy of bloody crusades and vicious dynastic struggles.
Medieval dynasties sought to expand their influence and protect their gains.
They built imposing stone castles,
not only to assert power,
but, more fundamentally, to withstand attack.
Now the team learn about building the castle's defensive structures.
They look at the ingenious features medieval castle builders devised...
Trois, deux, un, tirez!
...and explore the craft behind the weapons they had to resist.
Defence, for me, really is the raison d'être of a castle.
It's not just the battles, the attacking, the defending,
it's the structural input that you have to think about -
your defences, your curtain walls, your towers.
They are defensive structures, I suppose.
They're much more than that, though.
They are about defending yourself psychologically,
they're about telling everybody, "Don't even try it."
And what about the weapons?
What could they actually do against a castle?
- How effective were they? - Yeah.
I guess, how many men do you need to defend a castle?
And you'd need some ruddy great big stores of food.
And castles, people sometimes... "knights and princesses"...
but it isn't, it's mostly about the likes of us, about everybody else.
How do we survive?
A castle like this at Guédelon would have been built for a prosperous lord
who wanted to display his wealth and power,
and also needed his home to be strong enough to withstand potential attack.
And this dictates much of its design,
with 36-feet-high curtain walls protecting the courtyard and residential spaces.
Entry is via a twin-towered gatehouse.
And at each corner above the crenulated walls, there will be four round towers...
...the highest of which will be the Great Tower,
a superb vantage point at nearly 100 feet high.
In charge of the defensive structure of the castle is Master Mason Florian Renucci.
He's travelled the world, studying the ancient secrets behind medieval stonework.
There are a lot more stones to come out the quarry now.
Guédelon's walls are over 12 feet thick in places.
Today, the masons are placing a special long stone called a boutisse
into a section of castle wall,
designed specifically to reinforce it against attack.
The boutisse is to connect the front of the wall...
front part, to the stone inside the wall.
The boutisse, for instance, you have one here.
This stone here is very long, it's here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We have to have a wall really um... strong.
This wall has to resist an enemy.
And a better way to fight a castle...
is to throw stone to the wall.
If we don't boutisse, the front part of the wall will go down.
You can really see from this wall that you've got the external face,
the internal face and the bit in the middle, the infill.
We are going to put one boutisse.
- Can you help us to... - Yeah, definitely.
- Are you feeling strong, Peter? - I don't need to.
That's the beauty of this.
- Try to be always in the middle of the stone. - Right.
It's a heavy stone to have a strong castle.
Boutisse stones are not just placed at random.
They're fixed into the wall at three-feet intervals to give maximum strength.
The boutisse goes in the middle of the joint.
It's just linking in, but it's so clever, because the pressure is now spread between two stones.
Yes, we have to think everything.
It's like um... a game.
It's like medieval Tetris.
At Guédelon, they're using a medieval formula to make mortar,
mixing water with quarry sand and lime putty.
Unlike lime produced industrially, it will take many centuries to set completely.
We were afraid about it.
Cos thousands of tons of stone being held together is a bit of a risk at the start, then?
Exactly.
It's perhaps the first time in Guédelon that we use this old way of making mortar.
Through experimentation,
they've discovered that clay impurities in the quarry sand give this mortar great strength.
So the experimental archaeology
has actually given you a really good building substance to build your castle.
Exactly.
Tom's just putting the mortar down here and he's making it rough,
so when the stone goes down, that mortar will press into the cracks of the stone.
If it was smooth, then you'd just have gaps,
so if there's a bump in the stone and smooth mortar, it just wouldn't touch it.
Whereas, because he's making it all rough,
it'll squidge together and just keep that stone absolutely solidly fixed into place.
It's looking good, Tom.
Every stone has to be in line,
because this is gonna go up and up and up, potentially another four metres.
If these stones are slightly off, your build is slightly off
and eventually it'll collapse.
Now the stone will be...
- Solid. ...solid.
The biggest threat to castles was sieges.
These were far more common than pitched battles and could last for months, even years.
If they couldn't get through the gates,
invaders could try going over the walls with towers and ladders...
or mining under them.
But another, more sophisticated, means of attack developed.
From basic stone throwers to mangonels, couilllards and trebuchets,
a range of deadly medieval war machines evolved.
These came to dominate siege warfare for hundreds of years,
until they were ultimately superseded by the cannon.
The largest ever trebuchet, it is thought, was that commissioned by Edward Longshanks,
King of England, in the War of Scottish Independence.
And he was trying to bring down Stirling Castle.
It was a vast beast called Warwolf, as a nickname.
Disassembled, it took 30 wagons to move it.
Five master carpenters worked on it along with 49 other workers,
and it could hurl an object of 300-pounds weight with accuracy.
30 miles from Guédelon is Saint-Brisson Castle,
which houses a collection of replica siege engines.
The Romans introduced basic catapults to Britain.
But by the 13th century, the development of counterweight technology
saw the introduction of deadly high-powered stone-hurling war machines.
They were used in sieges to bombard defending troops and collapse castle walls.
The crew wear protective helmets in case the machine malfunctions.
How big do you think that counterweight is?
- How's it going, Tom? - It's good, mate.
It's amazing how only four people can manoeuvre such a heavy counterweight.
That's about 500 kilograms.
The energy you're putting into that to raise it up is gonna be stored as potential energy,
then when it's released, this, which is about ten kilograms,
this ball is gonna be swung out and flung into the distance.
They reckon it'll go about 100 metres.
Looking good. Right, he's just gonna lock this off.
There we go.
Tension's on the pin.
Now it's locked off, they can unwind this rope,
so that when it fires, or when it's loosed, the rope doesn't hold it back.
So here we go, unwinding the rope.
Whoa, watch those handles.
Well, this is a well-trained crew, they know what they're doing.
It's very different, isn't it, from doing it in peacetime as it would be in the heat of battle?
Thinking about the shouting, the noise.
These ropes could snap, the wood could snap.
Here we go.
The ball, the projectile, into the sling and it's ready to go.
- I think we'll leave. - So, standing back.
Standing back.
We're just moving back into the seclusion zone.
I imagine if it was in the heat of battle, you'd just be there.
You'd feel lonely if you were the guy about to pull the rope.
Right, we're gonna count down.
Cinq, quatre, trois,
deux, un, tirez!
I mean, still, look how much energy is still in that.
And you have to get the mathematics right.
The difference between the length of that arm and the length of the rope.
Because if you don't get that spot on, it can fly backwards instead of flying forwards.
If you deconstruct this, it's essentially scaffolding, it's a mason-shaped ball.
It's the ropes that we made on site.
And it's exactly the same mathematics the masons are using.
It's sort of simple but it's also really quite sophisticated.
If you can build a castle, you can fight a castle.
That's the arms race that's happening in our period.
The castles get more strong, more developed, more technical
and so the siege weapons become stronger, more powerful, more technical.
It's each driving each other further onwards.
It's not fast, though, is it?
No.
Despite being slow, these mighty war machines were greatly feared in the Middle Ages.
Some fortified towns surrendered at the very sight of them.
- Right. - Shall we go and have a look?
Projectiles ranged from carved stone or mortar balls like these,
to rotting animal carcasses intended to spread disease,
and even the heads of defeated soldiers to really lower morale.
It's funny, isn't it, looking at the damage, you know? Cos it is just a small hole.
But I suppose, when you think against a stone wall,
it's gonna keep going until it finds a weakness...
- This is the hammer, isn't it? ...one after another.
- A hammer doesn't crack with one blow. - It's not a great explosion, it's...
The persistent drip, drip, drip until you crack.
As well as being an archaeologist,
Tom is a Midshipman in the Royal Naval Reserve
with a special interest in military history.
He's been looking into what kind of armour an ordinary solider might have worn in the 1200s.
Not everyone could afford the expensive metal helmets and mail
worn by wealthy lords and knights.
A more basic form of protection commonly worn for combat was the gambeson,
a padded linen tunic whose main protective element was...sheep's wool.
Tom's visiting Ruth in the hovel.
She wants to make him a gambeson and the process starts with the sheep's wool.
Ruth, when you asked me here for a fitting for my protective clothing,
I was thinking chainmail and armour - but that's not the case, is it?
No, no, this is... well, it is, but it's not.
This is cloth armour.
- Cloth armour? And that's good, is it? - It is good, yeah.
You're gonna be glad of this, I reckon.
So you have lots and lots and lots of layers of linen
and then a big fat layer of wool, prepared wool.
And then more and more and more layers, many.
And then you've got to stitch the whole lot together really tight.
Not so it's like big and fluffy like a duvet but...
Right, compact it down.
...compacted right down into something truly dense.
I mean, it's almost... modern body armour is the evolution from this.
It's a balance between protection and manoeuvrability
and trying to cover as much of the body as possible.
And this is the ancestor of Kevlar.
- Yeah. - Of the bulletproof vest.
Here it goes.
One of the defining visual features of medieval castles is their arrow loops.
The ingenious design of these simple slits in the walls
provided protection and gave castle archers a huge advantage.
Very good.
Guédelon mason Constantin Lemesle has specially shaped a stone
needed for building an arrow loop in a corner tower.
Before they mortar the stone in place, they need to be sure it fits.
All right, so that's in position.
I thought that was gonna go the other way round, actually, I thought...
No, er... we have to alternate, we have to have a long face here and after, a short one.
And when you have a short one, you have a long here.
And a short under.
It's to... to get something er... very strong when you cross the stones.
Yeah, OK.
The funnel-shape design of the arrow loop, tapering to a mere three-inch gap,
gave attackers outside only a tiny slit to aim at,
while the defenders could look out without being seen.
The arrow loops sloped down, so archers could see invaders even at the foot of the tower.
If it was um... like this, for instance...
We can't er...
You can only hit people over there, you can't hit them down there.
Unless you've got a step ladder.
So people can be er... in front of the tower, no problem for them.
Completely safe.
I guess this is a weak point of the castle, isn't it?
You're actually creating a crack in your castle wall, so you need to reinforce it.
People say that in the 13th century,
the round tower was very useful to resist when stone are throw...
throwing on the... tower.
Because once the stones are coming, the...
the round form um... used to be stronger.
I can see, you spread the pressure, don't you?
If the stone hits there and it's curved, then all these other stones take the impact.
Now, Peter and I are probably firing arrows at it, we'd just break our arrows on the inside.
It'll be interesting to see if you can fire an arrow or a bolt back in.
That's it, that's the trick, isn't it?
If you're attacking, you want to be able to know
you're gonna at least scare people, if not kill them, on the inside.
There'll be around 40 arrow loops in the finished castle.
In order to test their effectiveness, Peter and Tom will need a suitable weapon.
One of the most infamous at the time was the crossbow.
First seen in 4th century BC China,
by the 1200s, crossbows were increasingly used in European siege warfare.
Crossbows were probably introduced into Britain round the time of the Norman Conquest.
In some ways, they were less effective than the longbows.
They took an awful lot longer to load, so the rate of fire was much, much slower.
Out in the battlefield, in the heat of the moment, they were pretty useless.
But in a siege it was a completely different thing.
Behind some nice safe walls, you had time.
And it was the sort of weapon that anybody could use with no training and no skill at all.
Richard the Lionheart eventually met his end when a crossbow bolt, fired by a boy, in 1199...
pierced him in the shoulder.
The resulting infection did for him.
As a weapon that made knights more vulnerable to lowly foot soldiers,
some despised it for breaking the conventions of chivalry.
But the art of crossbow making became a whole industry by the 13th century.
In Britain, it survives to this day among a few specialist craftsmen like bowyer Chris Jury.
This is what's commonly known as a crossbow prod, which is basically the bow on a crossbow.
- What kind of wood is this? - This is yew wood.
Now, yew wood is probably the best wood for making a bow.
In any piece of yew, you get the sapwood and heartwood.
The sapwood is good in tension, which means it can stretch,
and the heartwood is good in compression, which means it can crush.
So the two grow naturally together in a single piece of wood to form a natural spring.
Chris uses a spokeshave to take off the bark.
I imagine in the medieval period, they would have done it in a production process,
so it'd be done in fairly large batches.
Apprentices would have started off maybe at the sort of age of 13, 14.
After seven years, you was a journeyman,
who was nearly at the point where he was a master of the craft.
Then you'd be a master bowmaker
and by that time you wouldn't get your hands dirty with the making of the bows.
You'd just let your minions do it for you.
As I am your apprentice, is there any chance I can have a go with that?
Of course you can.
You want to be gentle but you've also got to put a bit of pressure on, haven't you?
It's quite a delicate task cos you don't want to be cutting into the sapwood,
you just want to remove the bark.
I'm taking off lumps there. Don't look, don't look!
I'll slow down.
The next stage is to taper the prod with an axe.
Yeah, I can tell you've used an axe before,
you've definitely got a better technique than that with a spokeshave,
if you don't mind me saying so.
The more we do this, the more likely it is that I'm gonna make a mistake.
You need all ten toes, do you?
Amputate one of your own legs.
- I think I'm done. - That's it, that's good.
- Yeah, a bit of aggression's OK? - Yeah, that's it, go on.
A draw knife is used to further smooth and shape the crossbow prod.
It's still way too thick, so you can take off a lot of wood.
It's like with everything, it's just about getting your eye in,
understanding the material you're working with and understanding the tools,
and hopefully it all comes together.
Yes, that's why certain tools like the axe and the spokeshave and the draw knife
are ideal because they follow the grain.
So while the tools look a bit crude, they actually do the job rather well.
But you can understand how the apprentices did seven years,
cos it's quite a specialist kind of task, really.
Yeah.
That's starting to take shape rather nicely.
If you've done good work with your tapers, then it should bend relatively evenly.
Well, I think I've done exceptional work with my tapering.
It looks pretty good.
You are so accurate with that.
Carpenter Sam Rooney has come all the way from New Zealand to work at Guédelon.
In his spare time, he makes traditional bows.
Today Sam and Ruth are experimenting with making a crossbow arrow,
known as a bolt or quarrel,
which was shorter, heavier and more deadly than a regular arrow.
You imagine an arrow, whether it be for a crossbow or a longbow,
and you imagine a little stick.
Why are you starting with a great big piece of wood?
Mainly for mass producing arrows.
And you can have several lengths of a tree
and then just split it into small squares...
So I suppose if you think really mass production, that makes sense, doesn't it?
- If you've got to make 20,000 for a castle... - Yeah.
...the amount of time it will take you to find 20,000 sticks that were the right size and shape.
You'd have to send an army of people off to gather twigs, yeah.
Yeah, whereas two or three trees would do you your 20,000 arrows.
Right. That makes a lot of sense.
You're just squaring this off at the moment, are you?
Yeah, I'm just squaring it off, using a er...
...a medieval bandsaw.
The thin piece of wood is then cut into individual strips,
which will be shaped to make each bolt shaft.
And then it'll be practically a circle like this one here.
- So that one's pretty much finished. - That's as round as you'll need it.
So we're gonna drill a small hole in the end of the bolt.
A metal bolt head is then attached.
You would not want that pushed through you, would you?
- No. - What a foul looking thing.
And a slit is cut so it can be fletched.
It's recorded that in 1250, a chief English quarrel maker produced 25,000 quarrels a year
and could be expected to make 100 in a single day.
- I'm fine with that. - It is a huge amount of work all of this, isn't it?
Well, yeah, I guess so.
Bows are still really woven into our modern life.
Bowyer, Fletcher, Stringer, Archer.
And then all the number of phrases that come from one form of archery or another,
things like "to pick a quarrel" or "a bolt from the blue"
or "he's got lots of strings to his bow".
They're all archery terms.
They finish off their bolt by warming up a medieval glue made from an unusual source.
It's made from the bladder of a fish and you actually get the bladder and dry it out.
Shove a bit of glue in here.
So it's just a bit of glue on the leather,
- shove it in the slot. - Yeah, just here, yeah.
- There we go. - That's it. There we go, one quarrel.
Well, thanks very much. I shall um... give it a go.
- OK, good luck. - Thanks, Sam.
By the end of the 12th century, a new design of crossbow was introduced.
The addition of a metal stirrup enabled the crossbowman to hold the bow with his foot
and draw back the string, either with both hands or a belt hook.
This was known as spanning the bow.
Peter has come to make the stirrup with Martin Claudel,
who's been a blacksmith at Guédelon for four years.
They use a process called "smith and striking".
The smith is the blacksmith, he's the guy doing the thinking.
He's got the little hammer, he's moving the metal around. He taps it.
The striker has the big hammer and that is me, I always hate doing the striking.
I'm not... I've got no rhythm, basically.
But then he hits, I hit, he hits, I hit, and when he hits the anvil, I stop.
OK, we good?
- Your turn. - Oh, right.
Peter and Martin will hammer the iron flat
and then bend it at four corners, making a stirrup shape.
I think we got away with that.
It's certainly starting to take shape.
We've got a kink in it, we've got a bend.
And then these two ends, he's gonna fire weld.
He's basically splitting the metal,
so when they come together, they interlock.
He'll heat all that up and then he'll basically smack it as hard as he can
and compact that back into a single piece of metal,
essentially creating a fire weld which is ultimately very, very strong.
Which will give it the strength it needs, because if you think about
putting your foot in it and pulling on that crossbow
in order to cock it, you don't want your metal coming apart.
He's gonna ramp up the heat so it goes white hot.
The reason for the darkness in here is so he can see the colours.
Here we go.
That's fantastic.
- Are you happy? - I'm happy.
Back at the hovel, Ruth has enlisted some help to stitch Tom's gambeson together.
- Hello. - Hi, chaps.
Oh, dear. What are these? Are you making rugs or something?
You told me they were making you a suit of armour!
We are - very, very, very slowly.
That's the first layers of cloth all sewn together with the wool going on top.
And then I've started quilting this panel and putting the other layers on top.
- So it's like a front piece and a back piece? - Yeah.
And then as soon as you start sewing, it starts to compress it down.
Feel the difference of that. Look how wobbly that is - soft and wobbly.
And then feel where it is when it's sewn.
Oh, wow!
As long as we fight in the winter, cos this looks quite warm.
I think it's quite warm!
And, in fact, I have to be honest, don't fight any time soon.
This is a day's work!
I mean, I've done nothing all day today except this.
Who was wearing gambesons?
They were being worn by men at arms... fairly ordinary soldiers, you know.
And being worn by the rich soldiers in combination with chainmail.
So they were being worn by quite a lot of people.
I'd certainly be happier if I was on the walls wearing a gambeson
to sort of stand there with my crossbow than I would be if I was just in my shirt.
In the 13th century, gambeson making was a skilled craft done mainly by men.
You keep your right arm underneath, so you just keep poking and pointing.
And if you stretch the cloth with your left hand.
- Blimey! - Yeah, blimey, I'm glad you said that.
You've missed, you've come up over there.
- Do I wanna go back down? - Yeah, you got to come up in line.
He's not a natural, is he?
- At least I'm giving it a go, eh? - At least you're giving it a go.
- No, missed again. - No, try again.
This is like pot luck.
- Right, this time. - OK.
That's better. That'll do, that'll do. It's good enough.
And you need to pull really tight, though don't break the thread.
And then straight back down again.
That's it.
And catch it with the other arm.
I do not envy you one iota.
- It is slow, isn't it? - It is.
Chris is nearing the final stages of his work on the crossbow.
OK, so here we have your bow, all nicely shaped and expertly tapered
and nice and smooth.
Now, the next stage is to make sure it bends evenly.
The prod is ready to be put under tension, using a tiller stick.
If the bow is not evenly shaped, the prod may snap.
So now we basically examine the curve of the bow.
Right.
The trick is to spot the weak bits before they develop into a problem and shave them away.
So even after all this time and work, there's still jeopardy about whether it'll be effective?
There's a massive amount of jeopardy involved in doing it.
This is the real art of the bowyer,
you need to train your eye to see the curve and to notice any flat spots in the curve.
To be honest, it looks pretty good to me.
So we're happy that would make a good shooting bow?
The deep ditch and sloped walls at the base of the castle
are designed to make them harder to approach.
The only entrance across the ditch is a ten-foot-high bridge to the main gate,
a structure which relies on a very humble element to hold it together-
the nail.
677 were needed to make this bridge...
...all forged on site.
Martin, the blacksmith, makes all the nails for the doors and fixtures in the castle.
Inspired by a popular story from the Middle Ages, Ruth has come to the blacksmith's forge.
I'm gonna have a go at making a nail.
This, believe it or not, is a really female activity.
The story goes...
...that when they needed the nails to crucify Christ,
the blacksmith that they asked refused to be involved.
And his wife stepped up. "I'll make 'em," she said.
It was a story that had a lot of popularity in the 13th century.
And, as a result, there are lots and lots of pictures
of women working at a blacksmith's forge, nail making.
Frequently rather ugly, demonised women - great big hook noses.
But dressed just like me.
This one little piece of metal that we're working, how many nails will it make?
Maybe between ten and er... 20 maybe?
- It's not many, is it, for this much work? - Not many.
I mean, I suppose that really explains why things like furniture are made entirely with no nails,
they're all made of wood with wood joints.
So you only use your nails where you really need them!
It's a precious thing, the nail.
It's a funny thing that when you talk about the past and you list all the crafts,
people imagine that that means it's only men.
If you look at the lists of guilds people in London and, indeed, in Paris,
it's amazing how many crafts are, in fact, headed up by a female name.
There were female blacksmiths.
Once the iron has turned red in the hearth, it softens and can be worked.
- Almost ready. - Almost ready!
Ruth is going to try "smith and striking" with Martin.
I can scarcely lift this hammer, let alone do anything useful with it, we'll see.
A scary moment, ooh!
I've got a block of wood to stand on cos I'm short.
Ooh, sorry.
I'm not on strike, am I?
Oh! Terrible.
- OK. - Whoo-oo!
Good.
Poor Martin is having to reshape it,
as my hits are not quite central and so I'm making dents down the edges
and he's being very, you know...
Sorting out all my... mm.
The metal is heated again and again...
Nice and sharp on the end.
...and gradually driven into a point before being squared up.
The head is then shaped.
And gets clouted.
That's it!
Then just straightened out.
And plunged in the water to cool it.
Just like that.
I can really see why 13th-century people were finding ways of using as few nails as possible.
It's such a lot of work.
The stirrup is in a fairly straight line.
To make the finished weapon,
crossbow expert Robin Knight binds Peter's iron stirrup and Tom's yew prod.
One of the interesting things, for me, about making this crossbow
is you're relying on a lot of different skills -
a blacksmith making a stirrup, a bowyer making the...
Yeah, there was no such thing as a crossbow maker.
One man made the tiller,
the blacksmith made all of the ironwork, another man made the string...
That's where you get the surname "Stringer".
When the guy at the end of the process got all the bits together,
he didn't know how each individual part was made,
because to him... and the trades were, before the guilds, called mysteries...
to him it was a mystery.
Right, that simple.
He just wasn't aware of how it was done.
A group of individuals with very specific knowledge and skills,
bringing together almost like a flat pack of a crossbow, and then one man...
Yeah. One man put it together.
Now what separates a crossbow from the longbow is really,
in defence, you don't actually need a huge amount of strength or skill to use it.
Or training. Training for longbows took from about the age of seven.
A crossbowman, you can train him up in half a day.
But he's still got the capability of killing you with half a day's training
as a longbowman with 15 years' training.
I mean, this is a weapon that was actually banned by the church, wasn't it?
A weapon unfit to be used on Christians, only to be used on heathens and Saracens.
Nobody liked crossbows.
Unfortunately, you get the oddballs like me that sort of quite like them.
OK, now we come to the crunch, we're gonna span the bow.
- The moment of truth. - The moment of truth.
The stirrup works, get your foot in there.
OK, is everybody...
Holy Mm... Mother!
- That looks pretty good, doesn't it? - It looks solid.
It's a proper piece of killing machinery, that.
Back at the castle, the team are almost ready for basic siege combat.
Look at you two relaxing whilst I've been away working.
This is it, there's your stirrup.
I'll come in between you, all right.
That looks pretty good.
- Are you surprised? - Yes.
Fair enough!
I'll be honest, it wasn't me that did most of it.
- This is our medieval killing machine. - Oh, I've got the other bit.
- That's quite a long trigger there. - It's a long trigger.
- And that's our ammunition, is it? - OK.
Yeah, it looks quite deadly.
That looks horrible, doesn't it?
And if you've dipped that in some animal dung or something like that,
you've actually got a biological weapon there.
You're gonna infect someone. Even if you don't kill them straight off, you're gonna do damage.
It's not a nice weapon.
Is there any such thing?
Well, very true, very true.
Ruth, how is Tommo's gambeson coming on?
Well, it's not finished, I can tell you that.
- That's it there? - It's the front panel.
- I've got it sort of shaped and... - That's looking pretty good.
...mostly bound.
It's a pretty rigid beast.
- Have I got the right shape? - It's quite heavy.
Ooh!
I'll have to tense up.
- Get your... - Oh, blimey!
So how much more work is there to do?
I'm gonna do the back panel. I've given up on sleeves.
Initially, I was gonna plan you the proper full gambeson with the sleeves but I'm sorry.
It will be a bit like a straitjacket without sleeves.
I found an ancient gambeson that's at the end of its life, if you want to try a complete one on.
Put one on Peter.
Oh, no.
I told you it was a bit smelly and ancient.
This is classic Ginn.
- It's smelly. - Oh!
- It might actually be alive. - It smells like a tent.
- Looks like a straitjacket. - Arms out.
Look how much softer this one is. This is much more flexible.
I quite like mine, to be honest. I like the cleanness of mine.
- Do me up. - It is like in a straitjacket.
You start at the top, do you? Shall I hold it across?
Yeah.
Just imagine some chaps trying to get into all this lot in a hurry.
A sort of team effort, isn't it, actually?
There you are, go on, that'll do.
What d'you think?
- Yes, this is... - Suits you.
- It's pretty good. - And not just the staining.
- Do you feel strong? - Yeah.
You've got a few little weak points.
Those who could afford it would have covered their gambeson
with a chainmail shirt weighing over 25 pounds.
There is only way of doing this.
Oh, no, this is like...
- Try your hand to the right, Peter. - Oh, my hair is stuck in it.
I'm gonna have a bald spot by the time I get out of here.
Can you get in?
Ah, we've lost a sleeve on this side.
Oh, so glamorous.
- There we go. - All right, pull your sleeve down.
There we go.
- How's your movement now? - It's good, it's...
- A bit more restrictive under the arms. - It's actually not that restrictive.
It's just the weight, you know.
- It's heavy. - It's really heavy.
But it's not that heavy, I can still...
Seeing the chainmail, it looks like it would give you better protection than I thought originally.
It is quite dense, isn't it?
That's fine.
That is... That's actually fine.
I'll take a run up - close contact.
You're gonna be pretty safe from a sword blow in that.
Now we get to see him taking that off.
- We're not gonna help him? - No.
- Sorry, Peter. - No, this is gonna be the amusing moment.
Here we go.
I've seen some wonderful period images of blokes trying to get out of their mail shirts.
Here we go. Here we go.
The years I've spent in the asylum.
This is exactly what the pictures show.
This is exactly what they show!
- Unbelievable. - Hooray!
I'm impressed.
Wow, that's a weight off your shoulders!
The team are going to give the gambeson a sterner test, using their new crossbow.
I can't tell you how glad I'm not really in the 13th century facing an invading army.
I just can't imagine how horrible that would be.
Bolts shot from a high-powered crossbow could be as deadly as bullets and shellfire.
OK, I'll duck down so you can rest.
- I'll hide. - Thumb's on there.
Ooh, I wish it looked less like a person!
There's no head.
Ooh, it's horrible!
There is, it's very, very small.
- OK, here we go. - OK.
Three, two, one...
Thank goodness for that, I missed.
Load you up, big boy.
You're below that.
Trois, deux, un...
urgh!
Nice.
You meanie! You meanie!
- Well, I've gone to the side and low. - Yeah.
- Shall we go have a look? - Yeah.
How are we looking?
- Well, it has gone through. - It's gone through, has it?
That much.
I really expected that to be up to the flight.
Yeah, I thought it was gonna be spaded into you, yeah.
And let's not forget the quality of the gambeson.
That layered approach has obviously worked.
While some sieges were won by overpowering the castle,
it was often something far more basic which finally forced the defenders to surrender.
In truth, when castles fell,
it was rarely to actual siege engines and far more frequently to starvation.
Indeed, in 1215 at Rochester,
besieged inside the castle, the people were holding out.
King John, on the outside, had amassed five trebuchets
that were battering the walls for two months.
Inside, food was running short and they looked around them
and began to eat their expensive war horses.
And it was only when they had finished eating every horse that they surrendered.
Defending your food was a vital aspect of strategic castle design.
With this in mind, Guédelon's Great Tower contains its own food store and a well.
It's the castle's ultimate stronghold.
If the walls were breached, it would be possible to fall back to the Great Tower.
Next to the Great Tower is the kitchen,
where Ruth begins preparing a meal fit for fighting men.
Meanwhile, Peter and Tom are about to put the arrow loops of the Great Tower to the test.
That's quite a narrow target, isn't it, really?
Do you ever really aim to hit someone on the other side
or do you just try to get the bolts out the gap?
Can't actually see much out of there.
- I guess there's only one thing to do. - Yeah, go for it.
Are you aiming for anything out there or just...
- Just aiming for the gap, my friend. - Aiming for the gap.
Right, bolt's in, touching string.
That was fast.
In this environment, that seemed far more powerful and these a lot faster.
I guess from a defensive point of view, something like that shooting out the loop,
it's a bit of a fear factor straightaway, isn't it?
Satisfied with the defensive capacity of Guédelon's arrow loops on the inside,
Tom and Peter set about seeing how resistant they are to attack from the outside.
Do you think we can get a bolt through that gap?
Luckily, we're not under fire.
We're not having rocks thrown at us.
I reckon we could definitely do it in six.
- Shall we give it a go, then? - Yeah, let's give it a go.
- So are you gonna load for me? - I'll load.
Arrow in the groove.
It's on the spring, it's loaded.
- Oh, that was terrible, that was. - No, it wasn't.
After many attempts, a shot finally finds its target...
Yes!
...a feat that would be somewhat harder to achieve in the heat of battle.
No, that was lucky.
Well, still, that was a good height on there as well.
That would have gone in about head height inside.
Yeah.
Architecturally, these arrow loops, they work for this castle, don't they?
You can be in there, you can fire out.
But if you're outside here trying to fire in,
it's not impossible but it's lucky if you do.
While Peter and Tom return to the building work,
in the castle kitchen, Ruth is preparing food for medieval men at arms.
It is slightly conjectural, we have to sort of look at as many sources as we can
to come up with what a 13th-century soldier would actually be eating.
So, it largely comes down to pork.
Pork was considered to be the food which was most compatible with the human body.
Medieval thinking was that the body of someone of high social standing
digested and responded to food differently to that of a common man.
So their food needed to be cooked differently.
For the common soldiery, it just all goes in -
fat, skin, marrow.
All good for building strong, fighting bodies.
This broth, or pottage, simply contains pork, onions, beans and some herbs.
So that should just quietly...
...cook for the next couple of hours.
So almost the same ingredients, the pork, the beans and the onions,
are also gonna form the basis of a dish suitable for the lord.
But it is the cooking methods that make the difference.
13th-century medical ideas...
thought of the stomach as a cauldron that had to cook through the food.
They thought that by cooking food itself,
you could be helping the stomach to do that process.
So for the lord, we start by boiling the meat.
It's par-boiled - part-cooked by boiling it.
Then we roast it, which is the stage I've reached here.
And then once it's mostly roasted,
it's gonna come off the spit again, cut up and then fried lightly.
So this is still running a little bit pink, "done to a turn," as they say.
Meaning to within one turn of the spit,
which is exactly what I want ready for this last quick flash fry.
Although we call it frying, it's more like sort of braising.
I shan't give it long, about two minutes and it will be done.
And that, with the beans and a sprinkle of dandelion leaves,
should make him one of the most fearsome warriors in Christendom.
It's nearly time to down tools at the end of the day.
But first there's a special delivery to the top of the tower.
- You can really smell your food, Ruth. - All I smell is smoke.
- What have you got for us? - Oh, wow.
Well...
Right on cue.
Oh, a pot. Pass it over.
- Right, crockery. - Crockery.
Fried onions.
Tommo's food.
- Beans. - My food.
- Pork. - Ruth's food.
- A nicely balanced diet, then? - Oh, yeah.
So, where do you fancy yourself on the social scale, really?
I know where I am on the social scale!
I'm roughing it at the moment but...
Dandelion petals...
they are associated with the planet Mars.
Oh, really?
So you're going to be that martial by the time you've finished. That's the point.
- So you'll start with... - I'll start with a bit of pottage.
...some man of arms. - I know you're a man.
That's enough of that, OK.
I'll eat this and I'll start working.
- What are you going for? - I'm gonna nick a bit of that thrice-cooked pork.
It would all look more lovely if it was on silver platters
along with beautiful napkins and so forth.
Oh, it's got that rustic look to it.
Yeah, I'm good at rustic, I don't really do posh, pretty food.
But if you're up on the walls doing guard duty,
I reckon you actually want the kind of pottage, stew-type meal.
You don't have to think about it, you can just enjoy your food, it'll warm you up.
Of course, I suppose, you know, if you're in a castle...
...this is a great meal on day one of the siege.
But by day four, you're starting to look at the stocks and say, "How much have we got?"
As it drags on.
As much as anything, food is a weapon of war.
- Yeah. - Exactly.
Interior design, 13th-century style...
...which means mud...
paint...
...and a fiery furnace.
Can you imagine living in a world with no electric lights?
Ripped By mstoll