as Chateau Gaillard, where the more exposed parts indeed
possessed many successive lines of defence, but at other points, for
want of room, it was impossible to build more than one or, at most, two
walls. In these cases, the fall of the inner ward by surprise, escalade,
_vive force_, or even by regular siege (as was sometimes feasible),
entailed the fall of the whole castle.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Coucy: Plan.]

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Coucy: View.]

The adoption of the concentric system precluded any such mischance, and
thus, even though siege-engines improved during the 13th and 14th
centuries, the defence, by the massive strength of the concentric castle
in some cases, by natural inaccessibility of position in others,
maintained itself superior to the attack during the latter middle ages.
Its final fall was due to the introduction of gunpowder as a propellant.
"In the 14th century the change begins, in the 15th it is fully
developed, in the 16th the feudal fastness has become an anachronism."

The general adoption of cannon placed in the hands of the central power
a force which ruined the baronial fortifications in a few days of
firing. The possessors of cannon were usually private individuals of the
middle classes, from whom the prince hired the _materiel_ and the
technical workmen. A typical case will be found in the history of
Brandenburg and Prussia (Carlyle, _Frederick the Great_, bk. iii. ch.
i.), the impregnable castle of Friesack, held by an intractable feudal
noble, Dietrich von Quitzow, being reduced in two days by the elector
Frederick. I. with "Heavy Peg" (_Faule Grete_) and other guns hired and
borrowed (February 1414). The beginnings of orderly government in
Brandenburg thus depended upon the guns, and the taking of Friesack is,
in Carlyle's phrase, "a fact memorable to every Prussian man." In
England, the earl of Warwick in 1464 reduced the strong fortress of
Bamborough in a week, and in Germany, Franz von Sinkingen's stronghold
of Landstuhl, formerly impregnable on its heights, was ruined in one day
by the artillery of Philip of Hesse (1523). Very heavy artillery was
used for such work, of course, and against lighter natures, some castles
and even fortified country-houses or castellated mansions managed to
make a stout stand even as late as the Great Rebellion in England.

[Illustration: From Clark's _Med. Mil. Arch._

FIG. 9.--Beaumaris Castle: Plan.]

[Illustration: From Clark's _Med. Mil.