How effective were Japanese castles in comparison to European castles? (Other comparisons are welcome as well)

How effective were Japanese castles in comparison to European castles? (Other comparisons are welcome as well)

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Osaka castle

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Osaka castle in its heyday

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        What would it be like living here?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          That really depends on who you are, here’s some information on garrison troops

          >The defence of a castle, of course, relied on more than stout, well-maintained walls. The men of the garrison were vital. Depending upon the size of the castle, the garrison could be permanent, rotated, or kept as a skeleton force. For example, the Arakawa company, located a few miles from Hachigata castle, were ordered to run to the castle when they heard the conch shell trumpet sounding an attack. An order from 1564 relating to Hachigata has been preserved, which requires the leaders of 'company number three', consisting of 13 horsemen and 38 on foot, to relieve ‘company number 2' and serve 15 days garrison duty.

          >Garrison life in a samurai castle was a matter of constant readiness, with its own, sometimes boring routine. The Hojo had a strict system for the samurai of mighty Odawara. In 1575 they were required to muster at their designated wall prior to morning reveille. When the drum beat indicated the dawn they would open the gates in their sector to the town outside. Guard duty lasted for six hours during the day, with a two-hour break. The gates would be closed at dusk when the evening bell tolled. Guards were mounted at night, and had strict instructions not to trample on the earth walls. When off duty their armour and weapons were stored at their duty stations, but guards were posted in the towers day and night, and the utmost care was taken at night to prevent fires and to guard against night attack. Troops were not allowed to leave the castle for unauthorised reasons, and if someone did leave, he would probably be executed and the person in charge severely punished. In 1581 the Hojo orders for Hamaiba castle included some important considerations of hygiene and safety. Human excrement and horse manure had to be taken out of the castle every day and deposited at least one arrow's flight away.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        what do they eat?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          they run on solar

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >The state of a castle's food supplies was crucial when it was about to be besieged, or when such a prospect seemed likely following a enemy incursion. In 1587 Hojo Ujikuni ordered the village of Kitadani in Kozuke province to collect and deposit all grain from the autumn harvest in his satellite castle of Minowa. The value placed on provisions is also given dramatic illustration by another order from Ujikuni issued in 1568, the same year that Takeda Shingen invaded western Kanto, that no supplies were to be moved without a document bearing the seal of the Hojo. Should anything be moved without the seal then the offender would be crucified. Such draconian measures were justified because the threat of starvation could seal a castle's fate. After a 200-day siege in 1581 the defenders of Tottori were almost reduced to cannibalism. The strangest device for combating starvation may be found at Kato Kiyomasa's Kumamoto castle. Not only did he plant nut trees within the baileys, but the straw tatami mats that are to be found in every Japanese dwelling were stuffed not with rice straw but with dried vegetable stalks, so that if the garrison were really desperate they could eat the floor.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          onigiri and egg sandwiches

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Sea weed, grass and plates

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Osaka castle

        Nuragic vibes

        what do they eat?

        they posted on IQfy till they died unironically like we do today

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Why did they have so many tiers and walls?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Japan has a very developed woodworking tradition due to the numerous earthquakes they deal with on a regular basis. Large stone buildings have a strong tendency to collapse under the pressure of an earthquake, while wooden buildings are much more resilient along with trees being plentiful in the country. They plastered and lacquered the wooden buildings to make them fire resistant, and they were fairly easy to repair when damaged.

      Artillery never really caught on in Japan, only really making an appearance during the tail end of the Sengoku Jidai. Japanese castle walls are practically invulnerable to cannon fire in the sense that they can’t be knocked down, the only real use artillery had for the Japanese was bombarding the wooden walls and buildings on top of the castle. Tokugawa Ieyasu used 300 cannons in the Siege of Osaka and killed some of the residents, though they pretty much made zero impact on the walls themselves. They were impractical to transport with how mountainous Japan is and had little use in open field battles, though smaller cannons were mounted on castle walls.

      If you wanted to take a Japanese castle you were pretty much forced to either wait them out until they ran out of food, or you launched an assault on the fortification itself. Assaulting the castle itself practically guaranteed horrendous casualties for the besieger, so it was more common to simply wait out the defenders. Japanese castle’s would make the path to the central keep as confusing as possible, and set up a lot of killing zones for the gunners on the walls to lay into the attackers while they were being held up by the defenders, sort of like a tower defense game. The final line of defense was the central keep where the lord and his family resided, and was usually the site where the defenders would commit seppuku when it was obvious the castle had fallen.

      >you will never live in the timeline where Spanish colionalism was less complete and there's still Aztec/Inca period palace and temple complexes over Mexico, Peru etc that are kept up the way ones in Japan, India, etc are

      it hurts

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Extant Japanese castles are entirely reconstructions, I think. The structures at least (wood), not the earthworks/walls.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          There are twelve original castles remaining in Japan, and Himeji is one of those twelve

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Himeji Castle

            >One of the castle's most important defensive elements is the confusing maze of paths leading to the castle keep. The gates, baileys, and outer walls of the complex are organized so as to confuse an approaching force, causing it to travel in a spiral pattern around the complex on its way to the keep. The castle complex originally contained 84 gates. At present, 21 gates from the castle complex remain intact.

            >In many cases, the castle walkways even turn back on themselves, greatly inhibiting navigation. For example, the straight distance from the Diamond Gate to the castle keep is only 130 m (427 ft), but the path itself is a much longer 325 m (1,066 ft). The passages are also steep and narrow, further inhibiting entry. This system allowed the intruders to be watched and fired upon from the keep during their lengthy approach, but Himeji Castle was never attacked in this manner so the system remains untested. However, even today with the route clearly marked, many visitors have trouble navigating the castle complex.

            Japan has a very developed woodworking tradition due to the numerous earthquakes they deal with on a regular basis. Large stone buildings have a strong tendency to collapse under the pressure of an earthquake, while wooden buildings are much more resilient along with trees being plentiful in the country. They plastered and lacquered the wooden buildings to make them fire resistant, and they were fairly easy to repair when damaged.

            Artillery never really caught on in Japan, only really making an appearance during the tail end of the Sengoku Jidai. Japanese castle walls are practically invulnerable to cannon fire in the sense that they can’t be knocked down, the only real use artillery had for the Japanese was bombarding the wooden walls and buildings on top of the castle. Tokugawa Ieyasu used 300 cannons in the Siege of Osaka and killed some of the residents, though they pretty much made zero impact on the walls themselves. They were impractical to transport with how mountainous Japan is and had little use in open field battles, though smaller cannons were mounted on castle walls.

            If you wanted to take a Japanese castle you were pretty much forced to either wait them out until they ran out of food, or you launched an assault on the fortification itself. Assaulting the castle itself practically guaranteed horrendous casualties for the besieger, so it was more common to simply wait out the defenders. Japanese castle’s would make the path to the central keep as confusing as possible, and set up a lot of killing zones for the gunners on the walls to lay into the attackers while they were being held up by the defenders, sort of like a tower defense game. The final line of defense was the central keep where the lord and his family resided, and was usually the site where the defenders would commit seppuku when it was obvious the castle had fallen.

            >Osaka castle

            all of these is post ww2 construction

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            still the same layout as it always was, there were 2 sieges of Osaka and both lasted long because of the forts in it

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Those are palaces not castles.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          I know some are but I didn't think all were (which

          There are twelve original castles remaining in Japan, and Himeji is one of those twelve

          seems to confirm). In any case, there's very few examples of anything like that in the areas I mentioned: When structures are reconstructed in say Mexico, it's just the inner stone structure or some of the middle layer brickwork: There's almost never full accents, paint, etc applied as the structure would have had.

          It's just to make the ruin not be broken apart in multiple pieces, not to actually show the structure as it existed in it's heyday Wheras stuff like

          Japan has a very developed woodworking tradition due to the numerous earthquakes they deal with on a regular basis. Large stone buildings have a strong tendency to collapse under the pressure of an earthquake, while wooden buildings are much more resilient along with trees being plentiful in the country. They plastered and lacquered the wooden buildings to make them fire resistant, and they were fairly easy to repair when damaged.

          Artillery never really caught on in Japan, only really making an appearance during the tail end of the Sengoku Jidai. Japanese castle walls are practically invulnerable to cannon fire in the sense that they can’t be knocked down, the only real use artillery had for the Japanese was bombarding the wooden walls and buildings on top of the castle. Tokugawa Ieyasu used 300 cannons in the Siege of Osaka and killed some of the residents, though they pretty much made zero impact on the walls themselves. They were impractical to transport with how mountainous Japan is and had little use in open field battles, though smaller cannons were mounted on castle walls.

          If you wanted to take a Japanese castle you were pretty much forced to either wait them out until they ran out of food, or you launched an assault on the fortification itself. Assaulting the castle itself practically guaranteed horrendous casualties for the besieger, so it was more common to simply wait out the defenders. Japanese castle’s would make the path to the central keep as confusing as possible, and set up a lot of killing zones for the gunners on the walls to lay into the attackers while they were being held up by the defenders, sort of like a tower defense game. The final line of defense was the central keep where the lord and his family resided, and was usually the site where the defenders would commit seppuku when it was obvious the castle had fallen.

          or surviving/rebuilt temples in India are often still fully decorated as they were when they were built.

          The only example in Mexico I can think of that being done is the Rosalila temple replica, see pic. Even this replica, as you can see, has some parts worn off or broken off (also the paint job is sort of poor, EX: the paint would have had a metallic sheen/glittery look from mica flakes mixed in)

          Anyways i'd post about Mesoamerican castles but tbh they weren't much of a thing, though there were some forts and fortified palaces as well as things like walled compounds or city centers, but even those weren't particularly common. I posted about that across this thread here: https://desuarchive.org/k/thread/56648787/#56655257. Something I should have noted there is Tenochtitlan's central walled precinct also had barracks and armories in it which could further suggest it sort of also acted as a fortified zone, but it was still primarily a ceremonial precinct.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Rosalila temple replica
            this is in honduras, not mexico lol

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I meant Mesoamerica as a whole, not just Mexico, sorry

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Rosalila temple
            Lol, that was inside a sacrifice pyramid.
            So it isn't a castle.
            It couldn't even function as a castle if is were not inside a pyramid.
            Did they have long defensive walls?
            could you post a picture of that.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Anon, re-read my post: I wasn't claiming the Rosalila temple was a castle or a fortification, I was saying that the Rosalila replica was the only example I know of of a reconstruction (in this case a full replica, but I was also including reconstructive work done to the original structures) of any sort of architecture I knew of in Mesoamerica where the paint and accenting was redone too, as opposed to just the stones/mortar and brickwork

            >Did they have long defensive walls?
            >could you post a picture of that.

            Check the /k/ thread I linked, pretty much everything I have to say about the topic of walls, forts, etc is already there, short of me doing additional research.

            tl;dr though, not really. Mayapan had some pretty relative large walls around it (though there were still suburbs extending out past it) pic related, but it's the closest example I can think of and it's still only encompassing like 4.5 square kilometers.

            I guess something else to say beyond what's in the thread and what I added about Tenochtitlan's walled precinct having armories and barracks in that post linking to the /k/ thread, is that, similar to my point about walled palaces occasionally acting as a makeshift fortified central area during when cities got invaded (and by extension, made occupying or burning them/main temples act as the symbolic/effective act of capturing a city), is that some of the large acropoli complexes Mesoamerican cities had in their cores perhaps occupyied a similar role of a primarily ceremonial/communal area/zone/construction, but also could act as a makeshift/semi-intended to-be-fortified area, since, say

            >Osaka castle in its heyday

            is quite comparable to a lot of those acropoli.

            But the primary purpose of such structures was definitely ceremonial and adminstrative, not as fortifications, and dedicated or even majorily-intended-to-be-fortification structures like actual forts or garrsions weren't common in Mesoamerica, and are tend to be a subject of debate

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Rosalila temple
            Lol, that was inside a sacrifice pyramid.
            So it isn't a castle.
            It couldn't even function as a castle if is were not inside a pyramid.
            Did they have long defensive walls?
            could you post a picture of that.

            whoops, posted the Tajin acropolis image instead of the Mayapan wall one, here

            I don't know much about the actual construction of Mayapan's walls here. cursory searching seems to suggest they were stone (and apparently there's also a second wall, not sure if it's wider or within the walled area shown in pic), and that there were also walls between housing lots, I guess maybe like at Teotihuacan? (though certainly it didn't have a planned grid or mostly/entirely palaces/apartment compounds for houses like Teotihuacan did)

            Also here's a paper on LIDAR work being done past the walls seen in pic related: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/6/9/9064

            I'd link papers on the walls themselves and stuff but honestly I haven't found anything that you probably wouldn't be able to find via googling "Mayapan walls"/looking on researchub, academia.edu, jstor, etc

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            So ugly

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        It doesn't hurt. Thank God for the Spanish

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >not wanting cool architecture to look at

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I mean I guess the white walls really help to provide contrast with the human sacrifice blood?
            Probably considered artistic to the Guro community

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            There's still churches around without burning people at the stake and Japanese traditional architecture without them doing headhunting or seppeku, what's your point?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Dude, WTF is wrong with you.
            The Aztecs hold the the historical record for the most daily sacrifices over a period of 2000 years. The temples were made just for sacrifices. Nothing else.

            The Aztecs had a population of around 5 to 6 million and sacrificed at a minimum 20,000 people a year, so 55 people a day with aztecs claiming that they themselves sacrificed over 100 people a day for their gods, so 36,000 per a year. It is literally the world record for religious sacrifice.
            The Spanish Inquisition in its whole history Executed 5000 people from 1478 to 1834.
            The Japanese likewise didn't just use their towers for daily Seppeku.
            The Aztecs thought blood and guts was cool, they wanted you to see the blood, daily dismembered bodies and hear the screams of the victims. This was their religion and they were sacrificing their own people.
            That is the only meaning behind them

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Calm down sperg. That anon simply said it's a pity those historical buildings haven't survived, not the religion behind them.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Sorry actually In 1000 AD the Chinese Made a supercomputer that told them to build big walls everywhere. So they did. Computer told them to Build one kilometer tall walls. So they did.
            The Japanese sent their domesticated Dragons to attack the Chinese supercomputer.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Firstly, what

            Calm down sperg. That anon simply said it's a pity those historical buildings haven't survived, not the religion behind them.

            says.

            Secondly, you're wrong that Mesoamerican temples were exclusively for sacrifices and that there's no other rites or purpose behind the structures or Mesoamerican religion (For example, offerings of incense, copal, animals etc were a thing, see pic; there were religious festivals that involved kids basically making bags filled with maize flour and playing dodgeballl with them, etc), as well as that suffering was the point of sacrifice (it wasn't, aside from sacrifices to Tlaloc)

            But most importantly, as it applies to your overall point, you're wrong about both the number of sacrifices and even your entire understanding of what the Aztec empire is, so that's what i'm going to focus on

            The Aztec Empire was not a centralized imperial nation: It was a hegemonic network of largely independent city-states that were subservient to Tenochtitlan (or Texcoco, Tlacopan, or all 3) via tax demands or political marriages, but still kept their own rulers, laws, and customs, and managed their own affairs. When cities "in the Aztec Empire" did sacrifices, it was in accordance with their local practices. As a result, it doesn't make sense to look at sacrifices across the whole empire, also because as a result the number of victims, ceremonies, etc would vary from place to place (we know that, say, Cuexcomate did very little, wheras Tenochtitlan did much more). The 5-6m number for the population whole empire also may be a significant underestimate but it's not really relevant here.

            The point being, if you're gonna talk about Aztec sacrifice, you need to do it on a per city basis, and Tenochtitlan is really the only city we have enough evidence to really draw good conclusions about specific practices or numbers, which also works out anyways since most people mean Tenochtitlan (and Tlatelolco, the two cities fused into each other) anyways.

            1/?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Dude, WTF is wrong with you.
            The Aztecs hold the the historical record for the most daily sacrifices over a period of 2000 years. The temples were made just for sacrifices. Nothing else.

            The Aztecs had a population of around 5 to 6 million and sacrificed at a minimum 20,000 people a year, so 55 people a day with aztecs claiming that they themselves sacrificed over 100 people a day for their gods, so 36,000 per a year. It is literally the world record for religious sacrifice.
            The Spanish Inquisition in its whole history Executed 5000 people from 1478 to 1834.
            The Japanese likewise didn't just use their towers for daily Seppeku.
            The Aztecs thought blood and guts was cool, they wanted you to see the blood, daily dismembered bodies and hear the screams of the victims. This was their religion and they were sacrificing their own people.
            That is the only meaning behind them

            cont:
            Recently, the main skull rack in Tenochtitlan (from Ahuizotl's reign 1486-1502) actually has been getting excavated. Pic related shows the size, shape, etc of the rack and towers.

            Per this article: https://eleconomista.com.mx/arteseideas/Gran-Tzompantli-de-Tenochtitlan-una-leccion-ideologica-20181114-0143.html , the rack held around 11,700 skulls. You can also double check this figure by taking the dimensions of the rack (35m long, 12 wide, 5 high) and plugging that into skull-per-cubic-meter values from this earlier research paper which calculated that for different potential rack sizes: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229761556, and that comes out to 11,666 skulls

            Mind you, that paper does note that as rack height increases past 30m, density goes down as the rack requires thicker poles, and the calculation I describe doesn't account for the density varying as the height changes (but it shouldn't make a big difference, since density figure was taken from the 15m height row, which is under 30m). Additionally, not all the city's sacrifices would have gone into the rack (some would have gone to the towers, or to other smaller racks in the city), and while we know the rough date range, we don't know how many years it took the rack to fill

            Even if you want to really high-ball those variables, and say the rack held more like 15,000 skulls, and the rack only held 1/4 of the city's sacrifices, and the rack was filled up twice during Ahuizotl's reign, that would still only be 7500 sacrifices a year. And I'd wager in reality, the rack wasn't filled up that fast and it held a higher % of the city's sacrifices then that

            tl;dr, the excavations highly suggests Tenochtitlan did 100s to 1000s of sacrifices a year, not 10,000s

            This is actually in line with what Cortes claims in his letters (3000 a year) which he wrote while actually in Tenochtitlan. Your 20,000 figure comes from Zumárraga, who was writing decades later, by contrast

            2/2

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            What a shithole

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            It's an illustration. They never had anything as majestic as that and the walls were not white.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >They never had anything as majestic as that
            Pretty sure the Great Temple pyramid of Tenochtitlan was a real place, unless the Spaniards and every archeologist since then lied about it.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I just went there. I asked people for directions & they didnt seem to know what it was. Was bizarre.

      Cool castle though. Make sure you finish your icecream before entering the grounds

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        It was 80 meters tall right?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Osaka castle in its heyday

      Did the Chinese ever build castles like this? Or did they just have walled cities? This is incredibly kino stuff

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        No, that should be Japanese only. The Chinese had "castles", not just walled cities, but it depend on the definition of castles.

        Picrel is an example of a definite castle in China, not a fort, a city or a fortified house.

        It's originally a fort built in the 13th century for defense against the Mongols, but never used, and finally became the seat of the Tusi chieftain in the Ming Dynasty which should fill the definition of castle.

        However, some fortified house could get so big, they equalled some European castles in size.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        The chinese don't really build castles, since castles are by definition fortified residence of a noble and Chinese "nobility" were bureaucrats living in the city unlike Europe or Japan. They did build regular fortress though.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Cool. So China was rather more like the Roman Empire while Japan was rather more like Medieval Europe in terms of politics and governance.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Nope. Medieval Europe would be old China when they still had aristocrats. Roman Empire is more like when China is not unified.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Qin China is modern governance we have now.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Well depends how we compare them. In their respective locations and time periods, they both did their job of defending
    the manor of a local lord from a small army or a larger army until hopefully reinforcements arrived.
    Very few japanese castles could be comparable to massive star fortresses that were rather common in europe.
    It strikes me immediately that japanese castles used a lot more wood for exposed structural elements, likely because production wise japan was poorer than most european countries of the era, so stone building was more expensive as well and had to be more though out.

    If we consider only the masonry structures, the layout of japanese castles is very complex, more than usual
    european castle, which is better against infantry heavy armies, but the problem is
    that by the time massive fortresses like osaka were built, they would already be considered long obsolete in european warfare and military engineering.

    tldr Japanese castles are mich better than european medieval forts, but worse than their contemporary counterparts.
    what do you think?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      TBF regarding later Japanese castles, did they have to face the same threat as European fortifications of the same era? I don’t know much about the history of Japanese castles and cannons.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Yeah, by the end of the the ashikaga era, and the very end of sengoku jidai they were already importing european arms,
        but then the long time of peace and isolation started and military technology didnt really need to progress at all. It started back up in the 19th century, once again thanks to westerners bringing high powered artillery and modern arms.

        I would place japan in the middle of a scale raning from typical oriental castles (very large fort-towns, large garrisons, but technologically obsolete) and european (very well optimized and advanced engineering-wise, but much smaller, relying on overlapping zones of defense with other forts and better logistics).
        Japans problem was (and is) that it is too isolated for its own good, falling into periods of stagnation after rapid expansion
        and modernization.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Japan has a very developed woodworking tradition due to the numerous earthquakes they deal with on a regular basis. Large stone buildings have a strong tendency to collapse under the pressure of an earthquake, while wooden buildings are much more resilient along with trees being plentiful in the country. They plastered and lacquered the wooden buildings to make them fire resistant, and they were fairly easy to repair when damaged.

      Artillery never really caught on in Japan, only really making an appearance during the tail end of the Sengoku Jidai. Japanese castle walls are practically invulnerable to cannon fire in the sense that they can’t be knocked down, the only real use artillery had for the Japanese was bombarding the wooden walls and buildings on top of the castle. Tokugawa Ieyasu used 300 cannons in the Siege of Osaka and killed some of the residents, though they pretty much made zero impact on the walls themselves. They were impractical to transport with how mountainous Japan is and had little use in open field battles, though smaller cannons were mounted on castle walls.

      If you wanted to take a Japanese castle you were pretty much forced to either wait them out until they ran out of food, or you launched an assault on the fortification itself. Assaulting the castle itself practically guaranteed horrendous casualties for the besieger, so it was more common to simply wait out the defenders. Japanese castle’s would make the path to the central keep as confusing as possible, and set up a lot of killing zones for the gunners on the walls to lay into the attackers while they were being held up by the defenders, sort of like a tower defense game. The final line of defense was the central keep where the lord and his family resided, and was usually the site where the defenders would commit seppuku when it was obvious the castle had fallen.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Himeji Castle

        >One of the castle's most important defensive elements is the confusing maze of paths leading to the castle keep. The gates, baileys, and outer walls of the complex are organized so as to confuse an approaching force, causing it to travel in a spiral pattern around the complex on its way to the keep. The castle complex originally contained 84 gates. At present, 21 gates from the castle complex remain intact.

        >In many cases, the castle walkways even turn back on themselves, greatly inhibiting navigation. For example, the straight distance from the Diamond Gate to the castle keep is only 130 m (427 ft), but the path itself is a much longer 325 m (1,066 ft). The passages are also steep and narrow, further inhibiting entry. This system allowed the intruders to be watched and fired upon from the keep during their lengthy approach, but Himeji Castle was never attacked in this manner so the system remains untested. However, even today with the route clearly marked, many visitors have trouble navigating the castle complex.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    BIG BRAIN ANON COMING THROUGH

    classic Euro castle is a relatively small strong point that allows a tiny garrison to hold off a massive force leveraging the passive defensive qualities. You have a castle to control an area and the logistics going through it, being able to disrupt the supply lines etc. in the vicinity. Militarily it's an overgrown tower.

    A Japanese castle is something you fight in with a large force, because it confers situational advantage. It's like hill, but better. Everything is built to be breached, but at a cost making the siege closer to a normal battle. Militarily it's an overgrown army camp.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      That is nicely said, kinda makes sense honestly. Consider that even if european castle was breached you never had a large ground for confrontation,
      a handful of people at most, drastically favouring defenders. Massive walls were used to postpone said breach for as long as possible or untill help arrived.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Accurate. All Japanese castles are essentially hills and are essentially hill defenses that got upgraded over time. Europeans tend to build walls, Japanese build high ground.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Those arent castles, those are forts, like a whole fortification system, a small town almost, why do you even call them castles? Thats like saying pic related is a castle, its not

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Japanese castles were designed maze-like, european had as primary defence of the inner and outer wall "killing zone"

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    With the larger ones it was often deemed more effective to simply starve the defenders out rather than try and take the castle which is about the best you can ask from such a structure.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    On average, the largest Japanese castles were much larger than the largest European castle (Malbork Castle).

    I have no idea how tough it was for 16th-18th century European army to capture. It was not as optimized as European star forts for all around cannon fire with no blind spots, but as with European medieval castles, they were still larger than any star forts I had measured in Google Maps.

    There was a failed bombardment of Japanese castle in the last battle of the Shimabara Rebellion.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Hara_Castle

    It probably failed because of the size of the cannons, but I don't know how even European cannons were supposed to destroy a multi tiered hills. The retaining walls, the main defensive feature, could survive a nuclear blast as could be seen from photo of Hiroshima Castle after the explosion.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Ah, keep in mind that this is feature in general with Asian Palaces and fortresses.
      Such Asian architecture is shorter and covers a larger area with the opposite being true for Europe.
      The Japanese forts were designed to stop people from entering and give a height advantage to the besieged.
      Huge Siege engines and later cannons never became a predominant thing in Japan so their castles were wide, spacious, short and only had stone bottoms.
      Traditional Japanese Castles would have been completely destroyed by European Trebuchets and ballista even before the arrival of cannons.
      They just never encountered trebuchets that could throw 135 kilogram projectiles 200 meters.
      They even made iron balls for trebuckets.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Such Asian architecture is shorter.
        Have you seen a Japanese castle? Or even a Chinese city wall? This isn't the case.

        >Traditional Japanese Castles would have been completely destroyed by European Trebuchets and ballista even before the arrival of cannons.

        The Chinese- who had the largest artillery park in Asia-pacific and had more cannons than any European country- had a lot of difficulty attacking the basic versions of jap castles the Japs raised in the South Korean coasts to protect their supply routes during their invasion of Japan. They had no such difficulty retaking walled Korean towns held by Japan previously as the Ming-Joseon Army pushed the Japanese southwards, but once they hit the Wajo (Jap Castles) they got into a meatgrinder. 40,000 men and 200 cannons the Ming Army brought to that fight, and though they nearly defeated the fortress, the effort cost them 2 1/2 weeks of non-stop assaults only to give up when the Japanese reinforcements arrived.

        >Inb4 its Chay knees guns!
        This was Ming China: they used combinations of local & European designed guns. They had pet Jesuits teach them how to build huge European style guns like basilisks, some of which you can still see in fortress-museums all over China & Taiwan.

        Jap Castles are basically huge & high earthworks hills dressed in stone. That is very difficult for any army to assault- even for vaunted Europeans with their smaller armies- and with Japan having shit/no cannons, it was practically superhuman to assail them in internal Japanese warfare. The Siege of Osaka alone, for example, took 2 years to finish and 165,000 men to finish.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Have you seen a Japanese castle
          Yes, they're shorter and wider for obvious practical reasons.

          >The Chinese- who had the largest artillery park in Asia-pacific and had more cannons than any European country-
          Lol. At that time Chinese was way behind Europe and the Middle east even though the earliest surviving metal gun appeared in Europe approx 70 years after the Chinese.

          >Jap Castles are basically huge & high earthworks hills dressed in stone
          Like every other castle around the world....

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Yes, they're shorter and wider
            You haven't, which explains everything.

            >Chinese was way behind Europe and the Middle east
            The Chinese were using the exact same guns as Europeans & Middle Easterners were using lol, and in the 1500s-1600s, remained still the best siege engineers of Asia. Especially as your average Chinese city wall- being a network of massive squat rammed-earth stone dressed walls- was a very tough nut to crack.

            >Like every other castle around the world
            Not all. Many European & Middle Eastern castles relied on freestanding walls whereas the japs either shaped a hill or a mountain or (if in a flatland castle) raised up artificial hills, then dressed the sides with stone ramparts. They built the castle buildings on top of that unlike Europe or the Middle East which built within a network of freestanding walls. Hence why Medieval Castles were way weaker vs. bombardment than Japanese castles (or Chinese city walls for that matter), which were effectively huge hesco-barriers.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            > Like every other castle around the world....

            European and Middle Eastern castles sometimes used retaining wall like Japanese castles, but these were far from the common practice.

            Japanese earthwork castle was simply larger and more sophisticated than European earthwork castle.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Pre-Sengoku Castles are severely overrated tbhwy. Japs made great earthworks forts.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            > Like every other castle around the world....

            European and Middle Eastern castles sometimes used retaining wall like Japanese castles, but these were far from the common practice.

            Japanese earthwork castle was simply larger and more sophisticated than European earthwork castle.

            This was Shigisan Castle, built in 1536, by carving the hills.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >This was Shigisan Castle, built in 1536, by carving the hills.
            Looks like some hill forts built in Europe around 500 AD. So primitive.
            https://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/14019/

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Reconstruction of the Pictish hill fort of East Lomond - 600 BC

            Europeans started abandoning earth-mound hill forts 1,500 years ago because they weren't effective against siege engines, long range longbows or longbows. Also attackers can just climb up the wall.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >long range longbows or longbows
            Should be longbows or crossbows.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Reconstruction of the Pictish hill fort of East Lomond - 600 BC

            Europeans started abandoning earth-mound hill forts 1,500 years ago because they weren't effective against siege engines, long range longbows or longbows. Also attackers can just climb up the wall.

            Furumiya Castle was built around 1570 AD.

            Maiden Castle, Dorset in was built in 450 BC
            And was abandoned 2100 years ago because European technology actually progresses.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_Castle,_Dorset

            And this was a reconstruction of Windsor Castle in the 11th century, almost 600 years after your latest examples and almost 1700 years from your oldest example. Non-Roman European tech was stagnant for a long time.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Reconstruction of the Pictish hill fort of East Lomond - 600 BC

            Europeans started abandoning earth-mound hill forts 1,500 years ago because they weren't effective against siege engines, long range longbows or longbows. Also attackers can just climb up the wall.

            Furumiya Castle was built around 1570 AD.

            Maiden Castle, Dorset in was built in 450 BC
            And was abandoned 2100 years ago because European technology actually progresses.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_Castle,_Dorset

            And this was a reconstruction of Kidwelly Castle in the 12th century. It look even more primitive than the Pictish hill fort, it didn't even had stone walls.

            Nor did it had multiple walled off sections inside.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            You are comparing random ass hillforts of minor English lords to actually important solar from the 1600s. Making a castle is indeed expensive. Especially when the walls aren't made out of rammed earth.

            > So it wasn't as tall as European castles that are 200 years older and don't derive half their height from wooden towers...

            Those examples, you're putting were like thetallest structures European castles could get.

            The keep of Chateau de Vincennes is 52 m high.

            The keep of Chateau de Coucy was 55 m high.

            The Bergfried of Rheinfels Castle was 53 m.

            The tallest recorded keep of Japanese castle was in Edo Castle which reach 59-62 m in total.

            The Osaka Castle keep which was rebuilt in the Edo Period was only less than 1 m shorter.

            > They weren't all made of reinforced concrete lol.

            > Also a thin reinforced concrete apartment wall is being compared against the multi-meter walls of castles that can be all stone and mortar in construction.

            Reinforced concrete didn't had weakness in the form of the mortar between the stone blocks.

            A stone castle could still be vulnerable to fire because of the mortar.

            https://castletourist.com/can-castles-burn-down/

            "Generally, a fire would cause the brick and mortar of the castle to expand and then create cracks in the stone, causing it to fall into rubble."

            [...]
            [...]

            Burgritter Kanzach, a reconstructed 14th century German wooden castle. Europe still used had wooden fortifications into the 14th century.

            France only had towns with stone walls as standard in the 14th century.

            Walled Towns and the Shaping of France: From the Medieval to the Early Modern Era by Michael Wolfe:

            Page 38:

            “Unless otherwise prompted by feudatory rulers, most towns still found sufficient comfort in their old earthen ramparts and stockades. Any desire to close towns off ran headlong into strong incentives to be open to the outside world.”

            Page 48:

            “However, Beauvais and Noyon located to the north of Paris remained virtually open towns throughout the thirteenth century. In part, the choice often came down to building a new cathedral or new walls.”

            Page 49-50:

            “Like towns long since established across France, the fortifications of most bastides typically consisted of little more than wooden palisades atop earthen mounds fronted by shallow ditches. Had building fortifications been required for every new bastide, far fewer would have been founded because of the crippling cost. Many bastides, in fact, never grew large or wealthy enough to afford stone walls.”

            Page 62:

            “At the outset of the Hundred Years’ War, most French towns possessed defenses that ranged from barely adequate to woefully deficient. A 1335 general survey revealed the deplorable condition of so many places across the kingdom. The enceintes of Saint- Quentin and Rheims, for example, which guarded the main approaches toward Paris from the north and east, remained only half- completed.“

            Page 66:

            When circumstances finally compelled townspeople to begin building walls, they did so in earnest after the mid- fourteenth century. The age of cathedrals then gave way to the age of urban fortifications, which permanently changed the country’s political landscape.

            chinkspammer ass formatting.

            Not going to respond to a mandarin anymore, you can't win.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            > Making a castle is indeed expensive.
            >Especially when the walls aren't made out of rammed earth
            Large-scale earthworks are quite expensive, since they are very labor intensive. Are you forgetting that the defining characteristic of feudalism was the very limited state capacity of those states?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Are you forgetting that the defining characteristic of feudalism was the very limited state capacity of those states?
            not limited enough to not make castles.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            But limited enough to reduce the scale of the fortifications being build as well as the means to crack them open.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            But limited enough to reduce the scale of the fortifications being build as well as the means to crack them open.

            "Medieval" castles that are visible today could be built in times spanning centuries.

            It took this castle around 150 years to get an additional tower built and took its present form in the late 16th century, despite being at least there since the mid-12th century.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Reconstruction of the Pictish hill fort of East Lomond - 600 BC

            Europeans started abandoning earth-mound hill forts 1,500 years ago because they weren't effective against siege engines, long range longbows or longbows. Also attackers can just climb up the wall.

            Furumiya Castle was built around 1570 AD.

            Maiden Castle, Dorset in was built in 450 BC
            And was abandoned 2100 years ago because European technology actually progresses.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_Castle,_Dorset

            Hamburg in 11th century. Did they hide reinforced concrete wall somewhere?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            [...]
            [...]

            And this was a reconstruction of Kidwelly Castle in the 12th century. It look even more primitive than the Pictish hill fort, it didn't even had stone walls.

            Nor did it had multiple walled off sections inside.

            [...]
            [...]

            And this was a reconstruction of Windsor Castle in the 11th century, almost 600 years after your latest examples and almost 1700 years from your oldest example. Non-Roman European tech was stagnant for a long time.

            Earth filled walls tend to be wider simply because dirt based walls cannot support their own weight very well.

            LMAO butt hurt Asian moron....

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Reconstruction of the Pictish hill fort of East Lomond - 600 BC

            Europeans started abandoning earth-mound hill forts 1,500 years ago because they weren't effective against siege engines, long range longbows or longbows. Also attackers can just climb up the wall.

            Furumiya Castle was built around 1570 AD.

            Maiden Castle, Dorset in was built in 450 BC
            And was abandoned 2100 years ago because European technology actually progresses.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_Castle,_Dorset

            Burgritter Kanzach, a reconstructed 14th century German wooden castle. Europe still used had wooden fortifications into the 14th century.

            France only had towns with stone walls as standard in the 14th century.

            Walled Towns and the Shaping of France: From the Medieval to the Early Modern Era by Michael Wolfe:

            Page 38:

            “Unless otherwise prompted by feudatory rulers, most towns still found sufficient comfort in their old earthen ramparts and stockades. Any desire to close towns off ran headlong into strong incentives to be open to the outside world.”

            Page 48:

            “However, Beauvais and Noyon located to the north of Paris remained virtually open towns throughout the thirteenth century. In part, the choice often came down to building a new cathedral or new walls.”

            Page 49-50:

            “Like towns long since established across France, the fortifications of most bastides typically consisted of little more than wooden palisades atop earthen mounds fronted by shallow ditches. Had building fortifications been required for every new bastide, far fewer would have been founded because of the crippling cost. Many bastides, in fact, never grew large or wealthy enough to afford stone walls.”

            Page 62:

            “At the outset of the Hundred Years’ War, most French towns possessed defenses that ranged from barely adequate to woefully deficient. A 1335 general survey revealed the deplorable condition of so many places across the kingdom. The enceintes of Saint- Quentin and Rheims, for example, which guarded the main approaches toward Paris from the north and east, remained only half- completed.“

            Page 66:

            When circumstances finally compelled townspeople to begin building walls, they did so in earnest after the mid- fourteenth century. The age of cathedrals then gave way to the age of urban fortifications, which permanently changed the country’s political landscape.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Reconstruction of the Pictish hill fort of East Lomond - 600 BC

            Europeans started abandoning earth-mound hill forts 1,500 years ago because they weren't effective against siege engines, long range longbows or longbows. Also attackers can just climb up the wall.

            Furumiya Castle was built around 1570 AD.

            Maiden Castle, Dorset in was built in 450 BC
            And was abandoned 2100 years ago because European technology actually progresses.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_Castle,_Dorset

            Burgritter Kanzach, a reconstructed 14th century German wooden castle. Europe still used wooden fortifications into the 14th century.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Reconstruction of the Pictish hill fort of East Lomond - 600 BC

            Europeans started abandoning earth-mound hill forts 1,500 years ago because they weren't effective against siege engines, long range longbows or longbows. Also attackers can just climb up the wall.

            Furumiya Castle was built around 1570 AD.

            Maiden Castle, Dorset in was built in 450 BC
            And was abandoned 2100 years ago because European technology actually progresses.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_Castle,_Dorset

            From Journal of Medieval Military History Volume XIII, page 266:

            “In fact, for much of the Middle Ages, most towns in Europe had no walls at all. Some scholars have argued that in the German lands around 1200, there were only twelve towns with proper walls, and nine were left over from Roman times. French and English towns were also usually wall-less, unless, again, they happened to have Roman walls. That is not to say they were defenceless. Many European towns surrounded themselves with ditches, stockades, or low earthen ramparts. This was the case with the vast majority of German towns in the 1100s and 1200s.”

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Reconstruction of the Pictish hill fort of East Lomond - 600 BC

            Europeans started abandoning earth-mound hill forts 1,500 years ago because they weren't effective against siege engines, long range longbows or longbows. Also attackers can just climb up the wall.

            Furumiya Castle was built around 1570 AD.

            Maiden Castle, Dorset in was built in 450 BC
            And was abandoned 2100 years ago because European technology actually progresses.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_Castle,_Dorset

            Castles and Fortified Cities of Medieval Europe: An Illustrated History by Jean-Denis G.G. Lepage

            Page 46:

            “Motte and bailey castles did not disappear overnight. Just because something new [masonry donjons] was invented does not mean that everything of earlier design was immediately abandoned. Until the middle of the 13th century, many local landlords of relatively modest means could not afford, or were not allowed by their suzerains, to build masonry castles. Though many illegal or unauthorized stone castles were built, many low vassals had to be satisfied with rudimentary strong houses, simple towers, fortified farms and poorly defended manors.”

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            If they wanted to cover Japanese architecture, it would have been interesting. But calling them castles and trying to compare the structures invites mockery.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            That castle was in Sengoku Period, it was built in 1571. The Azuchi-Momoyama or early Edo Period was probably the start of the earthen castle being layered with stones as standard.

            Pre-Sengoku castle was not inferior to Sengoku Period castle, though.

            Picrel is Masuyama Castle, but I don't whether this was Sengoku or earlier.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I don't like these illustrations as cool as they are because the scale is very deceptive. The layout of fortress remains are often short as hell and the breadth of each ramparts were much more tight. This picture makes Furumiya absolutely colossal even though the remains provides a much more average Wa type layout.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I don't know for sure, the people did make the castle look massive.

            From the Map of Furumiya Castle, I calculated the area to be over 20.000 m2, around the same size as Krak des Chevaliers when I measure it in Google Map. Measuring Furumiya Castle at Google Map gave an area of around 30.000 m2

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            It really is like a maze. Imagine you're an attacker, you have no idea what the internal layout of this castle is. You're launching an assault and overrun the main entrance, and then you just have all these narrow paths that snake off in every direction and when you find the correct one there's just another barricade and wall of spears waiting for you at the next chokepoint.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Furumiya Castle was built around 1570 AD.

            Maiden Castle, Dorset in was built in 450 BC
            And was abandoned 2100 years ago because European technology actually progresses.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_Castle,_Dorset

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Modern Japanese artillery couldn't even penetrate Beijing's walls in 1937

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Thats largely because early 20th Century Japanese neglected the artillery and when WWII rolled over, they only had 1910s tier field guns.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            There were at least 3 caliber of Japanese siege artillery, all introduced before 1920.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_cm_howitzer_L/10

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_45_240_mm_howitzer

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_7_30_cm_howitzer

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I guess the walls were that huge.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            The crazy thing is that the wall the Japanese faced in WW 2 were from the Ming Dynasty which often topped at 18 m thick at the bottom.

            Warring States Period walls could surpass 24 m and could reach up to 60 m in thickness at bottom and had the same height.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Warring States Period walls could surpass 24 m and could reach up to 60 m in thickness at bottom and had the same height.
            Assuming there's real evidence for this, what's the point? Just to dab on lesser warlords?
            >my walls are wider that your entire palace

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Thick walls in ancient Chinese cities were found through archaeological excavation.

            Thick walls provided platform to mount artillery throughout its length, which was crucial because Chinese sieges could had hundreds to a thousand artilleries. In European fortifications, walls were too narrow to put artillery, so they had to be mounted on towers which were hollow and much easier to destroy than the top of Chinese city wall. Once a tower had its wooden or stone floor destroyed, it's just a hollow shell that cannot mount artillery or had people inside.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            You're full of shit anon.
            Completely speaking out of your ass.
            Jesus christ, holy moly.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >thousands artillery pieces
            This is impossible. At least get your numbers right chang

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            It was very common for eastern states to field a shitload of artillery in sieges. It was similar to how the romans did it(during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 the romans build something like 340 catapults). Even the mamluks fielded something like 100 trebuchets during the siege of Acre.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            That's a hundred not a thousand moron. A thousand would be an entire arsenal and would be logistically impossible and dumb to move to one place at the same time for a siege

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Non-gunpowder artillery was generally build in-situ, only needing a few metal items such as nails to build. There was no royal arsenal where it all sat in times of peace.
            At best the main limiting factor was how many skilled engineers/craftsman you had to actually build the things.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            "to a thousand artilleries."

            First, learn to read first.

            Second, we had evidence.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_weapons_in_the_Ming_dynasty

            The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History
            by Tonio Andrade

            Breach in 1366-1367 not in the wall:

            Page 65

            "It’s true that wall breaches were extremely uncommon in Chinese military history up through the mid-seventeenth century, but the breach at Suzhou in 1366 wasn’t even a proper wall breach. The breakthrough occurred at a gate, and it seems that it wasn’t caused by guns."

            2400 guns in Siege of Suzhou

            Page 66

            "How many guns were present at the Siege of Suzhou? Yu Ben notes that each of the forty-eight Ming divisions (wei 衛) that invested the city was equipped with fifty or more large and small “general tubes” (大小將軍筒), twenty-four
            hundred guns in all.50"

            480 trebuchets including counterweight trebuchets (Xiangyang style catapults)

            Page 69:

            "In any case, catapults—not guns—were Zhu Yuanzhang’s structure-destroying machines at Suzhou. “Everything they struck,” the Ming History notes, “immediately burst into pieces.”70 Of course, this sentence refers not to the walls themselves but to the wooden structures on and within them, the targets at which the catapults were aimed. Even the Xiangyang-style catapults could cause little damage to Suzhou’s thick earthencore walls. Yu Ben says that there were four hundred eighty or so catapults at Suzhou, and they operated incessantly: “the noise of the
            guns and the paos went day and night and didn’t stop.”71"

            Also we had earlier records like this one from Song Dynasty.

            城下列炮座二百餘所,七梢炮、撒星炮、座石炮并發,又以強弩千餘助之

            There are more than 200 Pao mounts below the city, and seven-tip guns, star-scattering guns, and stone guns are fired simultaneously, and more than a thousand strong crossbows are used to support them.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            5000 Pao/trebuchets used in the Jurchen siege of Kaifeng written by an eyewitness living inside the city during the siege.

            避戎夜話
            Night talks of evading war

            十九日夜,賊人一夜安炮五千餘座。城上雖棚,人皆不可存住,死於炮者日不下二三十人。

            "On the night of the 19th, the thieves (Jurchen) set up more than 5,000 Pao/trebuchet overnight. Although there are sheds/shelter in the city, no one can live there, and there are no less than twenty or thirty people who die from the Pao/trebuchet every day."

            > would be logistically impossible and dumb to move to one place at the same time for a siege

            Or they just build those from local forests or building material. Chinese trebuchets could be built with wheels which make moving them easier, but I hadn't seen any European or Middle Eastern trebuchets with wheels.

            This is the pattern with East Asian continental powers.

            The Mongol used 400 trebuchets to besiege Fengxiang which was only a provincial city.

            Juvayni recorded a Mongol force of 50.000 moving with 4000 ballistas, 300 catapults(trebuchets?) and 700 naptha throwers.

            The Tang used 300 trebuchets in the 617 Siege of Luoyang.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >The crazy thing is that the wall the Japanese faced in WW 2 were from the Ming Dynasty which often topped at 18 m thick at the bottom.
            >Warring States Period walls could surpass 24 m and could reach up to 60 m in thickness at bottom and had the same height.

            The Great Wall of China is 21196.18km (13170mi) in length, 7.8m (25.6 feet) in average height, and 4-5m (13-16 feet) in average width...

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            NTA but many Chinese city walls are actually thicker than the Great wall. The Forbidden City walls are around 8 metres thick.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >NTA but many Chinese city walls are actually thicker than the Great wall. The Forbidden City walls are around 8 metres thick.
            Another lie? You're not worth the time.
            Seriously you're not.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            ??? You can find this by a quick google search

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            A lot of Ming-era walls survive to this day Black in 11 intact heritage sites, you can google em yourself. What was rare in medieval Europe (cities surrounded by very thick walls) was common in China. A huge workforce can do that to you.

            He's a troll, they would say blue is red just for fun.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            A lot of Ming-era walls survive to this day Black in 11 intact heritage sites, you can google em yourself. What was rare in medieval Europe (cities surrounded by very thick walls) was common in China. A huge workforce can do that to you.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            This was the Ming Wall prior its demolition to build the grid highways. Only the gates remain with us today.

            It was massive.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            What was the biggest pre modern battle they conducted on these.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            It was last used during the Fall of Ming Dynasty when peasant rebels stormed the city and half of it revolted against the collapsing Ming.

            Afterwards it was just left alone. The Qing Dynasty felt extremely secure in the interior of China so they pretty much just maintained the walls as a heritage project, but largely relied on the Banner Garrisons fortresses around Beijing to defend the city.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            That's lame. What's an actual fortress with a history of famed defences

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >pretty much just maintained the walls as a heritage project
            And expanded/enlarged them.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            That happened under Kangxi. By the 1700s Yongzheng and Qianlong Emperors felt they were not that needed.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous
      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        > Huge Siege engines and later cannons never became a predominant thing in Japan so their castles were wide, spacious, short and only had stone bottoms.

        European fortifications became lower too after the introduction of cannons.

        > Traditional Japanese Castles would have been completely destroyed by European Trebuchets and ballista even before the arrival of cannons.

        So why did cannon bombardment using Dutch ship cannons fail at Hara Castle, sepite bombarding it for weeks?

        Another instance of a European cannon use was a keep having its upper part destroyed by a cannon, but this didn't mean much because Japanese keeps weren't the main form of defense in Japanese castles and I'm pretty sure European stone keeps would be destroyed by cannons too. During sieges, the leader would stay at a shorter house that would be covered by the walls and not visible from the outside.

        Japanese castles weren't reliant on above ground walls like european or Middle Eastern fortifications, but on natural or manmade multi tiered hills which was covered with stones and had structures built on the stone cover. If highly trebuchets could collapse hills, then they coud destroy Japanese castles, otherwise they could only be used for killing the soldiers inside the castle.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >European fortifications became lower too after the introduction of cannons.
          Japanese forts were short because they simply prevented people from entering and provided cover from arrows and hand guns. European forts were high and all-stone to prevent siege engines from destroying everything. Oversized siege cannons forced the development of star-bastion fortresses that although effective were exceedingly expensive and still could be breached in months. The castle became obsolete.

          >So why did cannon bombardment using Dutch ship cannons fail at Hara Castle, sepite bombarding it for weeks?
          They used small naval cannons that obviously wouldn't breech the walls? naval cannons at the time were used for sinking other ships made of wood.

          Huge freak cannons were required to destroy European traditional castles.
          For the Siege of Constantinople in 1453 the sheer weight of the guns made transportation nearly impossible ( so some guns were cast on site ). For example this gun.
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardanelles_Gun
          It still took one month and three weeks to bring the castle down.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Constantinople isn't a castle, it's a city, and one that's known to possess the most formidable walls in Europe. Certainly it's not comparable to a regular castle either

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Constantinople isn't a castle
            They are castle walls that kept out invaders for hundreds of years before being destroyed by the freakishly large cannons.
            Get a grip anon

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            > Japanese forts were short

            The walls were short, the earth mound upon which the wals were built could be as high as European castle wall or higher.

            > European forts were high and all-stone to prevent siege engines from destroying everything.

            So why didn't they built fortifications higher when gunpowder weapons became more common?

            > Huge freak cannons were required to destroy European traditional castles.
            For the Siege of Constantinople in 1453 the sheer weight of the guns made transportation nearly impossible ( so some guns were cast on site ). For example this gun.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardanelles_Gun
            It still took one month and three weeks to bring the castle down.

            The walls of Constantinople is not a Medieval castle. The final layer of wall is thicker than your typical city wall in Western Europe and it had a layer of wall before it.
            Big bombards were slow to fire, which mean the defenders could repair between the shot as the walls had been breached multiple times before the final assault.

            https://www.britannica.com/event/Fall-of-Constantinople-1453

            "On April 6 the Ottomans began their artillery barrage and brought down a section of the wall. They mounted a frontal assault of the land walls on April 7, but the Byzantines repelled them and were able to repair the defenses."

            "Having encircled Constantinople in full, Mehmed continued his artillery barrage of the land walls through May 29. The Ottoman cannon created several breaches, but most were too narrow to send troops through. The city’s defenders continued to repair the walls at night and reinforced areas at the damaged Gate of St. Romanus and the Blachernae sector."

            Against smaller and thinner Western European medieval fortifications, it only took days of bombardment.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Cannon were rare in Japan due to the expense of obtaining them from foreigners, and the difficulty in casting such weapons themselves as the foundries used to make bronze temple bells were simply unsuited to the production of iron or steel cannon. The few cannon that were used were smaller and weaker than those used in European sieges, and many of them were in fact taken from European ships and remounted to serve on land; where the advent of cannon and other artillery brought an end to stone castles in Europe, wooden ones would remain in Japan for several centuries longer. A few castles boasted 'wall guns', but these are presumed to have been little more than large caliber arquebuses, lacking the power of a true cannon. When siege weapons were used in Japan, they were most often trebuchets or catapults in the Chinese style, and they were used as anti-personnel weapons. There is no record that the goal of destroying walls ever entered into the strategy of a Japanese siege."

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Sourced from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_castle
            Also includes info on Osaka Castle being destroyed by cannon.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >The retaining walls, the main defensive feature, could survive a nuclear blast as could be seen from photo of Hiroshima Castle after the explosion.
      Dude... People survived the Nuclear Blast lol.
      Ordinary buildings survived the blast.
      You're talking as if a direct nuclear bomb hit at ground level on Hiroshima Castle wouldn't leave a deep crater in the Earth.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Most answers here seem to be good.
    Can't really compare them directly. They serve the same purpose: to defend, but to defend against widely different warfare doctrines.
    Also European castles in particular vary greatly in design based on time period and location.
    They, for most part, do a good job. Castles are badass.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Main differences:
    >Japanese castles had many gatehouses located around the castle whilst European castles had mainly one or two.
    >were built mainly of wood with large timber beams and very little stone, while European castles were built mostly of stone with very little wood.
    >had a central tower called a tenshu that served as a lookout and a symbol of power, while European castles had a keep that served as a residence and a last resort.
    > were designed to resist attacks from firearms and cannons, while European castles were designed to resist attacks from siege engines and battering rams.
    > were often surrounded by moats, walls and gardens that enhanced their beauty and defense, while European castles were often surrounded by ditches, ramparts and baileys that provided extra space and protection.
    >were almost exclusively used by the feudal lords (daimyo) and their retainers (samurai), while European castles were used by various people such as nobles, knights, clergy, merchants and peasants.

    The effectiveness of both types of castles depended on many factors such as their location, construction quality, maintenance level, military strategy and historical context. It is hard to say which one was better or worse in general.

    Advantages of Japanese castles over European ones are:

    >Adaptable to different terrains such as mountains, plains or islands.
    >Resistant to fire due to their use of clay tiles and plaster walls.
    >Aesthetically pleasing due to their harmonious design with nature.

    Advantages of European castles over Japanese ones are:

    >Durable due to their use of stone blocks and mortar.
    >Comfortable due to their use of fireplaces and chimneys.
    >Versatile due to their use of different buildings for different purposes.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      how are european castles more vulnerable to fire when they're stone?

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    >0 arguments besides "lol ur wrong"
    Nice.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >>0 arguments besides "lol ur wrong"
      >Nice.
      Well you are. You are just shooting shit out your ass and you know it.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    > You're describing shit we already had ages ago as if it is a new thing.

    People from the Bronze Age could build a Star Fort, it's just earth.

    Stone walls or layering had been a thing in Japan since the 7th century.

    Picrel is Kaneda Castle built in 667.

  11. 1 year ago
    sage

    [...]

    Frick off back to whatever mental health ward you came from.
    We were having a nice thread until you showed up.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Not an argument

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Frick off back to whatever mental health ward you came from.
      >We were having a nice thread until you showed up.
      Calm down insect.

      [...]
      > Dude everyone has built castles on mountains...
      I'm talking about the height of the actual castle itself.

      I'm talking about the height of the castle.

      The Japanese often built manmade earth mound for castle even in flat plain.

      > Because some of the largest bore guns in history were made during that period just to destroy castles.

      But these were not produced in te second half of the 15th century despite stone and brick fortification remaining in use until 16th century. But you know what, unless you had evidence that these large bore guns could collapse a hill, then it's not destroying Japanese castles.

      > No it was a medieval style castle wall that had been maintained since 500 AD.

      No, Medieval castle walls are Roman type walls.

      > No, that's you saying that. Not the article you're citing.

      It said

      "By 1425, however, it took only eight days for a large Burgundian siege train to leave the walls of Braine-le-Comte so "ripped apart and broken down” that the place would soon have been taken by assault if the garrison had not surrendered. Stronger places could still hold out longer, but by 1449-1451 even the formidably defended town of Harfleur was captured after just seventeen days, and the walls of Blaye “were completely thrown down in many places” after only five days.”

      Here is another example.

      Ottoman siege of Belgrade.

      “Although the city was then “probably one of the strongest fortresses in Europe,” Mehmet’s numerous great bombards were so effective that, according to an eyewitness, “within the space of ten days almost all the walls of the citadel were levelled to the ground.” A few days later, Belgrade’s defences were so thoroughly demolished that, according to Hunyadi himself, the place “could be called a field, rather than a fortress”: non castrum, sed campum.”

      > No, apparently Asians are extremely stupid people. Surprising.

      And white supremacist had IQ below 0.

      You're just repeating yourself anon.

      [...]
      >I'm talking about the height of the actual castle itself.

      If you still had a brain, you could just look at the OP picture.

      >If you still had a brain, you could just look at the OP picture.
      If you still had a brain you would realize that it's an out of proportion drawing and not a photograph or accurate reconstruction.
      None of the surviving Japanese forts come anywhere near close to that.
      I don't even know what the source of the arwork is.

      A lot of Ming-era walls survive to this day Black in 11 intact heritage sites, you can google em yourself. What was rare in medieval Europe (cities surrounded by very thick walls) was common in China. A huge workforce can do that to you.

      Ok, So this is a section of the famous
      Fortifications of Xi'an.
      An extremely wide wall of rammed earth ( 12 meters thick at the top ) covered in a thin shell brick. Has been constantly rebuilt because rammed earth walls don't last very long.
      In the 1300's It was just dirt with no cladding.
      In the 1500's it was given a brick protective shell to stop rain and wind from damaging it.
      In the 1780's the walls were enlarged and Merlons/Crenels were added.
      The wall started disintegrating again.
      In 1926, the wall was attacked with bombs by enemy forces resulting in serious structural damage.
      The wall is enlarged and resurfaced again in 1983 and finally assumed its modern appearance.

      "While China was the birthplace of gunpowder the guns there remained relatively small and light, weighing 80 kilograms or less for the large ones, and only a couple kilograms at most for the small ones during the early Ming era. Guns themselves had proliferated throughout China and become a common sight during sieges, so the question has arisen then why large guns were not first developed in China."

      And once again you have the same pattern of primitive Japanese/Chinese guns that were all very small and never a threat against their primitive walls unlike the giant Middle-eastern/European guns.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >None of the surviving Japanese forts come anywhere near close to that.

        This is why you must know what you're talking about before spouting nonsense.
        The picture is Himeji Castle. Using the painting is being generous to you. If anything, the painting was insufficient as the section of circle blue and yellow in the painting didn't show how high the wall in that section truly was. The circle red show what's likely the lowest section inside the castle, but to measure to total height, you would have to do it from outside the gate of the castle.

        The castle would be at the minimum 46 m high, the height of the keep from the inner courtyard, then you had to add all the height of the inner section of the castle.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >"While China was the birthplace of gunpowder the guns there remained relatively small and light, weighing 80 kilograms or less for the large ones, and only a couple kilograms at most for the small ones during the early Ming era. Guns themselves had proliferated throughout China and become a common sight during sieges, so the question has arisen then why large guns were not first developed in China."
        Yeah, East-Asians are smart but extremely uncreative and superstitious. The original Chinese recipe for gunpowder wasn't even used as gunpowder. It was an elixir for eternal life. On burning it instead of eating it they made early guns and then stopped all further development.
        Strange people.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    VGH, bug people
    >construct mai impressive warr, casr and moat fo me
    >become cannon fodder in our next war
    truly an enlightened form of life right there

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    > Dude everyone has built castles on mountains...
    I'm talking about the height of the actual castle itself.

    I'm talking about the height of the castle.

    The Japanese often built manmade earth mound for castle even in flat plain.

    > Because some of the largest bore guns in history were made during that period just to destroy castles.

    But these were not produced in te second half of the 15th century despite stone and brick fortification remaining in use until 16th century. But you know what, unless you had evidence that these large bore guns could collapse a hill, then it's not destroying Japanese castles.

    > No it was a medieval style castle wall that had been maintained since 500 AD.

    No, Medieval castle walls are Roman type walls.

    > No, that's you saying that. Not the article you're citing.

    It said

    "By 1425, however, it took only eight days for a large Burgundian siege train to leave the walls of Braine-le-Comte so "ripped apart and broken down” that the place would soon have been taken by assault if the garrison had not surrendered. Stronger places could still hold out longer, but by 1449-1451 even the formidably defended town of Harfleur was captured after just seventeen days, and the walls of Blaye “were completely thrown down in many places” after only five days.”

    Here is another example.

    Ottoman siege of Belgrade.

    “Although the city was then “probably one of the strongest fortresses in Europe,” Mehmet’s numerous great bombards were so effective that, according to an eyewitness, “within the space of ten days almost all the walls of the citadel were levelled to the ground.” A few days later, Belgrade’s defences were so thoroughly demolished that, according to Hunyadi himself, the place “could be called a field, rather than a fortress”: non castrum, sed campum.”

    > No, apparently Asians are extremely stupid people. Surprising.

    And white supremacist had IQ below 0.

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    >I'm talking about the height of the actual castle itself.

    If you still had a brain, you could just look at the OP picture.

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    European castles were more innovative.
    They had draw bridges, portcullis, arrow slits, murder holes.
    They also tended to have taller towers which allowed them to rain death on attackers.
    Later in response to cannons they made the walls lower and thicker. They put the mote behind the wall so the enemy couldn't fill it in. They also developed star forts to resist the attacker's cannons.
    By the 18th century castles had been replaced by forts which were basically just mounting positions for artillery batteries.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >By the 18th century castles had been replaced by forts which were basically just mounting positions for artillery batteries.
      The radical transition from tall vertical walls to near horizontal bastion star forts in the 1500's is amazing.
      From the 52 meter tall Tour de Crest keep in France to the 4 meter tall but 16+ meter wide all mortared stone walls of bastion forts.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      They are using the wrong word. Castles are specifically European. Eastern Kingdoms have palaces.

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    >So you didn't lie that one time despite lying earlier. Great....Except this time you are misleading 8 meters thick just at the base..
    Imagine being this blatantly dishonest and still have the gall of accusing others of lying. Why are you even seething for no reason?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Imagine being this blatantly dishonest and still have the gall of accusing others of lying. Why are you even seething for no reason?

      Read your own post.

      ??? You can find this by a quick google search

      8.6 Meters wide at the base and 6.6 Meters wide at the top. But you originally said.

      NTA but many Chinese city walls are actually thicker than the Great wall. The Forbidden City walls are around 8 metres thick.

      >The Forbidden City walls are around 8 metres thick.

      Remember when you said this?

      The crazy thing is that the wall the Japanese faced in WW 2 were from the Ming Dynasty which often topped at 18 m thick at the bottom.

      Warring States Period walls could surpass 24 m and could reach up to 60 m in thickness at bottom and had the same height.

      >Warring States Period walls could surpass 24 m and could reach up to 60 m in thickness at bottom and had the same height.
      Lol

      >None of the surviving Japanese forts come anywhere near close to that.

      This is why you must know what you're talking about before spouting nonsense.
      The picture is Himeji Castle. Using the painting is being generous to you. If anything, the painting was insufficient as the section of circle blue and yellow in the painting didn't show how high the wall in that section truly was. The circle red show what's likely the lowest section inside the castle, but to measure to total height, you would have to do it from outside the gate of the castle.

      The castle would be at the minimum 46 m high, the height of the keep from the inner courtyard, then you had to add all the height of the inner section of the castle.

      >This is why you must know what you're talking about before spouting nonsense.
      Oh it is Himeji castle, yeah exactly the photograph doesn't look anywhere as impressive as the picture.
      46m high and half the height of the central tower approx 20m is wood. It achieved its modern day form in around 1600AD.
      Compare that to.
      The Tour de Crest that Is all Stone Masonry with no wood.
      52 meters tall and built in 1400AD.

      Likewise Château de Vincennes was built in 1370AD, is all stone and 50m high and built on flat land.

      And these are just surviving, old, unmodified castles.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Oh it is Himeji castle, yeah exactly the photograph doesn't look anywhere as impressive as the picture.
        >46m high and half the height of the central tower approx 20m is wood. It achieved its modern day form in around 1600AD.

        For a contemporary European castle built at the same time as Himeji you have Hunyadi Castle in Hunedoara, Romania. Reached its final form in the 1600s and has a total height of 70m.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Wonder what that little ruin below the bridge is.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Wonder what that little ruin below the bridge is.
            Old mill for grinding grain maybe? small undershot waterwheel with the water running past the building? Just a guess.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        > Forbidden City = Warring States Period?

        LOL. You definitely have no brain.

        > and built on flat land.

        You definitely don't understand what we had been saying to you from the beginning.

        The "hill" that you see on Japanese castle wasn't always a natural one, it could be manmade. Therefore, the height of a Japanese flatland castle had to be measured from the lowest level of the castle.

        That means it's 46 m + multiple level height.

        Also there were like 5 castles that had taller keeps than Himeji Castle.

        >The retaining walls, the main defensive feature, could survive a nuclear blast as could be seen from photo of Hiroshima Castle after the explosion.
        Dude... People survived the Nuclear Blast lol.
        Ordinary buildings survived the blast.
        You're talking as if a direct nuclear bomb hit at ground level on Hiroshima Castle wouldn't leave a deep crater in the Earth.

        And you have a photo of a medieval castle surviving a Hiroshima scale nuclear blast?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >> Forbidden City = Warring States Period?
          >LOL. You definitely have no brain.
          Lol, you lied about the thickness of both walls.

          >You definitely don't understand what we had been saying to you from the beginning.
          >The "hill" that you see on Japanese castle wasn't always a natural one, it could be manmade. Therefore, the height of a Japanese flatland castle had to be measured from the lowest level of the castle.
          >That means it's 46 m + multiple level height.
          >Also there were like 5 castles that had taller keeps than Himeji Castle.

          So It isn't as tall as European castles that are 200 years older.
          Cheers already knew that.

          >And you have a photo of a medieval castle surviving a Hiroshima scale nuclear blast?
          Dude, small crap apartment buildings could survive Hiroshima. Humans survived Hiroshima.
          You are actually so insane that you think any castle could survive a direct atomic weapon hit.
          Wow...

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            > Lol, you lied about the thickness of both walls.

            I'm not the guy giving the thickness for the Forbidden City wall, so no I don't remember lying to you. It's just you being moronic as usual.

            > So It isn't as tall as European castles that are 200 years older.

            European castles you mentioned didn't had manmade hills, so, yes, those European keeps were overall shorter.

            > Dude, small crap apartment buildings could survive Hiroshima. Humans survived Hiroshima.

            You forget that those buildings were made of reinforced concrete.

            https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50805052

            "The blocks survived, at least partly because they were made from reinforced concrete."

            Also humans could survive nuclear blast, but died to pistol bullets to the head. Wooden buildings were destroyed by Hiroshima nuclear blast, so to destroy any wooden building you just had to fire a single pistol shot at it.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >I'm not the guy giving the thickness for the Forbidden City wall,
            Yes you are... this is all you can do. Lie.

            >European castles you mentioned didn't had manmade hills, so, yes, those European keeps were overall shorter.
            So it wasn't as tall as European castles that are 200 years older and don't derive half their height from wooden towers...

            >You forget that those buildings were made of reinforced concrete.
            >https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50805052
            >"The blocks survived, at least partly because they were made from reinforced concrete.
            They weren't all made of reinforced concrete lol.
            Also a thin reinforced concrete apartment wall is being compared against the multi-meter walls of castles that can be all stone and mortar in construction.

            >Also humans could survive nuclear blast, but died to pistol bullets to the head. Wooden buildings were destroyed by Hiroshima nuclear blast, so to destroy any wooden building you just had to fire a single pistol shot at it.
            Oh yeah, just fire a hand gun once into a wooden building and it will come crashing down... WTF. How are you this stupid? I'm lost for words.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Warring States Period walls could surpass 24 m and could reach up to 60 m in thickness at bottom and had the same height
        Lol
        I'm not the one who said that you moron. The first time I replied to you was by telling you about the forbidden city. What next, you're going to call me a liar again because in your schizo mind everyone who ever corrects you is just a single person?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Lol
          Lol, still butthurt that you were called out for lying more than two times.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Just give it up man. You're embarassing yourself. Are you happy acting like a moron in an anonymous forum

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Just give it up man. You're embarassing yourself. Are you happy acting like a moron in an anonymous forum
            Just don't lie man. It is a horrible habit to have.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Can you name a single lie I said? Curious that you keep accusing me of lying despite the fact that the only thing I said (Forbidden City's wall being 8 m thick) is easily confirmed unlike whatever schizo babble you spouted

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >(Forbidden City's wall being 8 m thick)
            The base is 8m thick...
            And you also lied about the other walls.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            How is that lying? Most people usually talk about the base width when they just mention a wall's thickness, since even kids know everything is narrower at the top. If I say Constantinople's outer walls is around 2m thick are you going to call me a liar too?
            What other walls am I lying about? Most Chinese city walls are actually thicker than the great wall because you don't need to build a 20,000 km long wall across uneven terrain to encircle a city. Just google Xi'an walls (15-18m thick at the base, 12-14 m top), Beijing walls (19-20m base, 16m top). Nanjing (around 14m base), and even smaller city like Xingcheng has walls with base width around 5.7 - 7.0m and top width of 4 meters
            Is that all?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            That's his tactic apparently.

            Call people lying for disagreeing with him, nitpick, double standard.

            When he gets cornered, he'll be screeching racial slurs.

            Apparently to him, the base of a wall wasn't a part of the wall, lol.

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous
  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous
  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >How effective were Japanese castles in comparison to European castles?
    For Himji? All the wood sections would be burned down with fire and it would be completely destroyed by large artillery being used outside of East Asia. Not even comparable.

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    If we are getting into the argument of which castle type was more complex. I think the Europeans win because of the concentric castles. One has to remember that, unlike japan, by the 1600s European castles as we know them were long rendered obsolete by superior arab (and then euro) artillery. Fortifications had moved to star forts and other such fortresses.

    Also, I'm starting to suspect calling Japanese forts castles can be a little misleading. They're not very similar at all to the traditional euro castles. more like large complex hillforts.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Belvoir is technically in Israel but the castle tradition is European via crusaders.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Just check out this link all the largest calibre cannons/bombards
      made for destroying castles were either made in the Europe, Middle East
      or India.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_cannon_by_caliber

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      They're not castles. They're palaces if they're Eastern structures.

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Earth filled walls tend to be wider simply because dirt based walls cannot support their own weight very well.

  22. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    > So it wasn't as tall as European castles that are 200 years older and don't derive half their height from wooden towers...

    Those examples, you're putting were like thetallest structures European castles could get.

    The keep of Chateau de Vincennes is 52 m high.

    The keep of Chateau de Coucy was 55 m high.

    The Bergfried of Rheinfels Castle was 53 m.

    The tallest recorded keep of Japanese castle was in Edo Castle which reach 59-62 m in total.

    The Osaka Castle keep which was rebuilt in the Edo Period was only less than 1 m shorter.

    > They weren't all made of reinforced concrete lol.

    > Also a thin reinforced concrete apartment wall is being compared against the multi-meter walls of castles that can be all stone and mortar in construction.

    Reinforced concrete didn't had weakness in the form of the mortar between the stone blocks.

    A stone castle could still be vulnerable to fire because of the mortar.

    https://castletourist.com/can-castles-burn-down/

    "Generally, a fire would cause the brick and mortar of the castle to expand and then create cracks in the stone, causing it to fall into rubble."

  23. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    > All you do is lie and samegay forever it seems.

    Keep seething. The only one lying here is you, none of those European hill forts came close to Japanese castles.

    > I listed a 70m tall castle.... scroll up and see...
    They get taller...

    70 m when measured from where?

    The bottom of the rock? Because that's the only way you could get 70 m of those towers.

    Which mean using the same standard of measurement, the tip of the Himeji Castle keep could reach over 70 m in height, same with Edo Castle.

    > It was 51m tall...and half of that was a wood tower.

    LOL, no.

    The keep is 51 m tall, the base is 11 m tall, making the full height 62 m. The height of the keep was variable because there 3 versions, but the base was 11 m high.

    https://www.nippon.com/en/news/yjj2020092800611/

    "The castle tower was built three times in the early Edo period (1603-1868). One of the three versions, the 60-meter-high castle tower that was the tallest building in Japan at the time has been recreated on a scale of one to 30, mainly on the basis of documents from that time."

    https://nobu-tokyo.com/do-you-know-about-edo-castle-the-largest-castle-in-japan/

    The castle tower alone is 44.8 meters high.

    "And the total height with the stone walls was 58 m high, making it the tallest castle in Japan and had the largest castle area in Japan."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo_Castle

    "The measurements are 41 meters (135 ft) in width from east to west, 45 meters (148 ft) in length from north to south, and 11 meters (36 ft) in height. A five-storey keep used to stand on this base which was 51 meters (167 ft) in height and was thus the highest castle tower in the whole of Japan, symbolizing the power of the shōgun."

    > Himeji is the tallest original surviving tower in Japan today.

    So what?

  24. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    >Oh it is Himeji castle, yeah exactly the photograph doesn't look anywhere as impressive as the picture.
    >46m high and half the height of the central tower approx 20m is wood. It achieved its modern day form in around 1600AD.

    For a contemporary European castle built at the same time as Himeji you have Hunyadi Castle in Hunedoara, Romania. Reached its final form in the 1600s and has a total height of 70m.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvin_Castle

    "The current castle is the result of a fanciful restoration campaign undertaken after a disastrous fire and many decades of total neglect. It has been noted that modern "architects projected to it their own wistful interpretations of how a great Gothic castle should look".[5]"

    5. Quoted from: Bronwen Riley, Dan Dinescu. Transylvania. ISBN 978-0-7112-2781-1. Page 81.

    Totally original castle, LOL.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      [...]
      > All you do is lie and samegay forever it seems.

      Keep seething. The only one lying here is you, none of those European hill forts came close to Japanese castles.

      > I listed a 70m tall castle.... scroll up and see...
      They get taller...

      70 m when measured from where?

      The bottom of the rock? Because that's the only way you could get 70 m of those towers.

      Which mean using the same standard of measurement, the tip of the Himeji Castle keep could reach over 70 m in height, same with Edo Castle.

      > It was 51m tall...and half of that was a wood tower.

      LOL, no.

      The keep is 51 m tall, the base is 11 m tall, making the full height 62 m. The height of the keep was variable because there 3 versions, but the base was 11 m high.

      https://www.nippon.com/en/news/yjj2020092800611/

      "The castle tower was built three times in the early Edo period (1603-1868). One of the three versions, the 60-meter-high castle tower that was the tallest building in Japan at the time has been recreated on a scale of one to 30, mainly on the basis of documents from that time."

      https://nobu-tokyo.com/do-you-know-about-edo-castle-the-largest-castle-in-japan/

      The castle tower alone is 44.8 meters high.

      "And the total height with the stone walls was 58 m high, making it the tallest castle in Japan and had the largest castle area in Japan."

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo_Castle

      "The measurements are 41 meters (135 ft) in width from east to west, 45 meters (148 ft) in length from north to south, and 11 meters (36 ft) in height. A five-storey keep used to stand on this base which was 51 meters (167 ft) in height and was thus the highest castle tower in the whole of Japan, symbolizing the power of the shōgun."

      > Himeji is the tallest original surviving tower in Japan today.

      So what?

      Mentally ill Asian is still lying. Still butthurt than his ancestors were morons who built wide short "castles" that were technologically inferior to the west.
      Still butthurt that Neither Japan or China had huge siege guns or trebuchets / ballista and this explains why their "castles" and walls were all shit.
      They never had to protect against anything but people with arrows and hand-gun bullets.
      Never evolved beyond masonry protected rammed earth mounds with flammable wooden towers.
      Dumbest shit ever.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous
        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Asian book is just as stupid as the Asians that read them lol.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        > Still butthurt than his ancestors were morons who built wide short "castles" that were technologically inferior to the west.

        LOL, modern star forts were all wider and shorter as a rule than medieval castle and get shorter until a large part of it being underground. According to your standard,

        "European forts were high and all-stone to prevent siege engines from destroying everything."

        they must be inferior technologically to Medieval castles.

        > Still butthurt that Neither Japan or China had huge siege guns or trebuchets / ballista and this explains why their "castles" and walls were all shit.

        LOL, Europeans got trebuchets from the Avar which was ultimately developed in China, the first time it was used against the Romans, it impressed the Romans so much that almost all Roman torsion siege engines disappeared.

        > Never evolved beyond masonry protected rammed earth mounds with flammable wooden towers.

        Those rammed earth mounds make Medieval castles look like tissue paper when faced with gunpowder weapons.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        In case, you're too braindead and call me a liar.

        Picrel is what I mean with European fortifications going underground.

        Also this was what I meant when I said rammed earth mounds make Medieval castkes look like tissue paper.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_city_wall

        We fought our way to Nanking and joined in the attack on the enemy capital in December. It was our unit which stormed the Chunghua Gate. We attacked continuously for about a week, battering the brick and earth walls with artillery, but they never collapsed. The night of December 11, men in my unit breached the wall. The morning came with most of our unit still behind us, but we were beyond the wall. Behind the gate great heaps of sandbags were piled up. We 'cleared them away, removed the lock, and opened the gates, with a great creaking noise. We'd done it! We'd opened the fortress! All the enemy ran away, so we didn't take any fire. The residents too were gone. When we passed beyond the fortress wall we thought we had occupied this city.[39]

        —Nohara Teishin, on the Japanese capture of Nanjing in 1937

        Why the Chinese Communists could not take the city of Tatung is a puzzle, although they besieged it for 45 days last summer. All you need to do is to look at the outer wall, and then the inner ones.... In places, the masonry is at least 50 feet thick. Communist artillery shells may have been able to play havoc with the old wooden drum tower above one gate, but they could not make more than dents and scratches on the brick work.[40]

        —R. Stead

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Even newer style of Chinese gun forts were resistant to British naval bombardment.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_weapons_in_the_Ming_dynasty

          According to Lt Ouchterlony, a Scottish soldier in the Opium War, the Chinese gun batteries at Xiamen were nearly impervious to bombardment from 32-pounder guns due to the protection afforded to them by masonry and earthworks:

          "The engagement was a fine spectacle, but beyond the picturesqueness of the scene afforded no point worthy of comment, save that it furnished strong evidence of the excellence of the Chinese batteries, upon which the fire of the seventy-fours, though maintained for fully two hours, produced no effect whatever, not a gun being found disabled, and but few of the enemy killed in them when our troops entered. The principle of their construction was such as to render them almost impervious to the effects of horizontal fire, even from the 32-pounders of the seventy-fours, as, in addition to the solid mass of masonry, of which the parapets were formed, a bank of earth bound with sods had been constructed on the outer face, leaving to view only the narrow mark of the embrasure.[55]"

          Notice that this was not a Chinese city wall.

          > Still butthurt than his ancestors were morons who built wide short "castles" that were technologically inferior to the west.

          LOL, modern star forts were all wider and shorter as a rule than medieval castle and get shorter until a large part of it being underground. According to your standard,

          "European forts were high and all-stone to prevent siege engines from destroying everything."

          they must be inferior technologically to Medieval castles.

          > Still butthurt that Neither Japan or China had huge siege guns or trebuchets / ballista and this explains why their "castles" and walls were all shit.

          LOL, Europeans got trebuchets from the Avar which was ultimately developed in China, the first time it was used against the Romans, it impressed the Romans so much that almost all Roman torsion siege engines disappeared.

          > Never evolved beyond masonry protected rammed earth mounds with flammable wooden towers.

          Those rammed earth mounds make Medieval castles look like tissue paper when faced with gunpowder weapons.

          Cool lies autistic Asian child.
          Maybe if your ancestors weren't so technologically backward neither of these three events would have happened -
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Even newer style of Chinese gun forts were resistant to British naval bombardment.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_weapons_in_the_Ming_dynasty

        According to Lt Ouchterlony, a Scottish soldier in the Opium War, the Chinese gun batteries at Xiamen were nearly impervious to bombardment from 32-pounder guns due to the protection afforded to them by masonry and earthworks:

        "The engagement was a fine spectacle, but beyond the picturesqueness of the scene afforded no point worthy of comment, save that it furnished strong evidence of the excellence of the Chinese batteries, upon which the fire of the seventy-fours, though maintained for fully two hours, produced no effect whatever, not a gun being found disabled, and but few of the enemy killed in them when our troops entered. The principle of their construction was such as to render them almost impervious to the effects of horizontal fire, even from the 32-pounders of the seventy-fours, as, in addition to the solid mass of masonry, of which the parapets were formed, a bank of earth bound with sods had been constructed on the outer face, leaving to view only the narrow mark of the embrasure.[55]"

        Notice that this was not a Chinese city wall.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >horizontal fire
          They were using naval guns. Land artillery with mortars would be able to hit the enemy cannon and soldiers.

          >Notice that this was not a Chinese city wall.
          City walls burdened with encompassing a wide area would be more vulnerable than a purpose built fort.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            > They were using naval guns. Land artillery with mortars would be able to hit the enemy cannon and soldiers.

            Neither star forts or medieval European castles would be able to defend against plunging indirect fire from gunpowder weapons. You need a 19th century fort built out of concrete to build a casemate to properly defend against that.

            > City walls burdened with encompassing a wide area would be more vulnerable than a purpose built fort.

            But as you can see Chinese city wall were quite capable against modern artillery too.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Dude, these topics have ALREADY been covered to death and you know that you're wrong.
            You know you are.
            Stop lying.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Don't even bother. He does shit like this FOREVER. Every single fricking time there is an important detail that he omits or just lies about.
            He doesn't care about reality.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Dude, these topics have ALREADY been covered to death and you know that you're wrong.
            You know you are.
            Stop lying.

            We had already had covered these and you're wrong. Got it.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >We had already had covered these and you're wrong. Got it.
            Lying again. All you do is lie.
            You know you're wrong.
            You're repeating stupid shit that you said ages ago that is obviously wrong.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Let's see

            > The lie that the Japanese didn't had siege guns in the 1930s.

            Refuted. The Japanese had 3 different calibers of siege guns introduced before 1920.

            > The lie that European stone fortifications were more resistant against gunpowder weapons.

            Refuted. It only took days of bombardment with medieval bombards to destroy medieval walls.

            > The lie that European fortification being higher meant it's better against siege engine.

            Refuted. European fortifications became lower and made of earth after gunpowder were used, they didn't became taller.

            What else?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            You're still lying insect man.
            Holy shit, are you an actual psychopath?
            Do you ever not lie?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            > Accuse others lying despite lying himself.

            > Accuse others being psychopath while being psychopath himself.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Dudes still lying. Mentally incapable of not lying.
            Actually expects other people to put up with his crap.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            You got problems with everyone else.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >You got problems with everyone else.
            You just posted to yourself idiot.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Does it look like I care? LOL, I refute all your lies.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Show wooden houses, Black person

            Pathologically lying chink
            is now just talking to themselves.
            Bizzare.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Does it look like I care? LOL, I refute all your lies.
            No you just demonstrated once again that you're a liar.
            Yes, of course you don't care about lying.
            It's all you ever do.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            > Never give any sources for his opinions, call others liar.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Oriental man lies again.
            Nothing new.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Literally a drug addict or a mental patient on the loose.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            You literally replied to your own post pretending to be a different person locust moron.
            Did you actually think anyone would fall for that?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Keep seething, germs.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Keep seething, germs.
            Oh right "seethe" a word that trannies say all the time.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            troony calling other people trannies.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            You're obviously a troony anon.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Even trannies were better than you. The only problem here is you, you're the one that had problem with everyone else.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Even trannies were better than you.
            And you're saying that because you're a troony.

            >you're the one that had problem with everyone else.
            You're one person. Do you actually think you're five different people?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            LOL, germs thinking it had the right to call human trannies.

            > You're one person. Do you actually think you're five different people?

            So you admit you had problems with five different people?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >LOL, germs thinking it had the right to call human trannies.
            >> You're one person. Do you actually think you're five different people?
            >So you admit you had problems with five different people?
            You're one person insect.
            You're lying again insect.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            LOL, you got problem with that guy who gave the thickness of the Forbidden City wall and me. Nobody else but you had problem with me.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            > Accuse others lying despite lying himself.

            > Accuse others being psychopath while being psychopath himself.

            Mentally ill insect is talking to themselves.

  25. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Those arent castles those are forts, that thing on top might pass as a castle, castles are relatively small compared to that, basicaly castles are fortifird residences with room for a garison and warehouse, while those things are whole fortification complexes, thats like calling a star fortres a 'castle' cause it has some towers

  26. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    European fortresses were much better sloped and so more protected from cannon fire.

  27. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Show wooden houses, Black person

  28. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Why are you guys arguing ?

    Castles are cool.
    But to add something, Guédelon is supposed to be a early-mid 13th castle.

  29. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    Man you're a genuine sperg aren't you?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Man you're a genuine sperg aren't you?
      You really are a pathological liar aren't you?
      You really are a samgayging poster aren't you?
      You really are an autistic troony aren't you?
      You really are an Asian Insect aren't you?
      You really are butthurt over shit Asian tech aren't you?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You sound angry

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >You sound angry
          troony said something.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            did I touch a nerve?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >did I touch a nerve?
            him/she typed on the keyboard

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I have a suspicion that you're a chronic projector. Yes or no?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Do you eat cheese sometimes? yes or no?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >deflecting
            My suspicion is confirmed. Thanks for your answer

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >My suspicion is confirmed. Thanks for your answer
            Do you project projecting onto other people? yes or no?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >desperately saying "n-no, you"
            This shit is just too funny

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Said things
            My suspicion is confirmed. Thanks for your answer

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Do you eat cheetos?
            They were invented by the Japano-Aztecs you see.

  30. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Japanese Castles were 500 meters tall with one kilometer wide walls. Confirmed by the Meiji emperor himself to be meteorite proof, volcano proof and god proof.
    The seven celestial water dragons clean it castle with their tongues.
    This prevents pollution.

  31. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    Can you point in which post did "we" establish that? Half of the later posts are filled with that crazy guy talking non-sequitur

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I read the whole thread and that was my impression. I mean Euro cannons and trebuchets from the same period would rape those Asian castles.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >I mean Euro cannons and trebuchets from the same period would rape those Asian castles
        Trebuchets(and all pre-gunpowder artillery, in fact) were not made to punch through walls, but rather to destroy battlements and towers, the real wall killer of the pre-gunpowder sieges being battering rams.
        Conversely, eastern-style earth-filled walls tended to be fairly resistant to cannon-fire because their structure tended to be self-correcting in case of collapse.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      And then the illustrious Japanese spirit men of the rising sun flew on the backs of their domesticated dragons to Turkey where they revealed all the secrets of castle building and gun smithing. This way the Ottomans would have the divine Japan's inspiration needed to kill the godless, racist red haired pig skin devils of the west. One again the Japanese Illuminati control the world behind the shadows. Truly the image of celestial perfection itself.

  32. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >an actually good thread about comparing and contrasting different kinds of fortifications and the conditions that produced them
    >descends into unabashed moronation and race-baiting.
    at this point i just hope asiatic-moot nukes this entire board. i'd rather see it dead than linger on as the failed abortion that it currently is.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >an actually good thread about comparing and contrasting different kinds of fortifications and the conditions that produced them
      Lol, no it was a vanity project for an Asian dude who didn't expect a no bullshit attitude from IQfy. One thing is fricking up one bit of info but multiple bits? People just turn off.
      How do you even work with somebody like that.
      It just becomes a joke.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        What asian dude, asiaticmoot?
        The only one who ruined this thread is the mass replier who accuses anyone of lying without presenting any citation and once proven wrong with actual data started chimping out and call everyone liars/asians/trannies/samegays. Hard to imagine someone sperging that much over some wall's height

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Apparently he finds it hard to imagine china can build a wall

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Because they're calling palaces "castles", idiot.

  33. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I always knew this was off, even before AOE II added the Wakanda civilizations... this was already moronic. Asian ""castles"" were never comparable to European castles and Mesoamericans never had them either.

  34. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    European castles rarely covered a area bigger than a football field, moats and all, the majority didnt take up more space than a larger gass station, there were fort complexes much larger than that, spanning many acres, fortified towns, cittyes even, later star forts and other earthworks, frickloads of fortifications of all kinds, huge ones even, but castles, by definition, were relatively small, like a say a 4 story aparment building for the lord and his family and servants, sorrounded by a wall and some towers, thrown in a crampy barracks a stable a workshop and a warehouse, usualy these themselves were in the towers as such so as to save space, and a basement dungeon, maybe a wine cellar if the owner wasnt big on torturing people
    Then the castles themselves stopped even having a defensive function and literaly became just apartment buildings for the feudals, while forts were made out of earthworks mostly
    Now theres some impressive ones, castles i mean, but its realy not like fortifications in asia or middle east were significantly inferior, if anything some were frickhuge by comparison, but thing is these werent castles, a castle is a specific kind and type of fortress, not every fortress is a castle
    OP pic rel is not a castle, you could fit like 3 castles into that

  35. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    That's not a castle.

  36. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    Palace implies it is some royal residence doofus
    Castles are just a fortification smaller than a city, the word itself comes from latin and guess what romans had built tons of them long before medieval times.

  37. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    Right, so what do you think a castle is. Fortress, but european?

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