How did the normans defend their castles?

Answer 1

There were several defensive measures in ancient castles. Some were standard to any castle, but others were more unique.

The most obvious of these is probably to have people stand on the walls and throw things at attackers. And by things, I mean pretty much anything they could get their hands on that might hurt someone it landed on and was not already being used to fortify the gate: arrows, javelins, rocks, pots, spare metals, a chunk of of the wall that had been knocked off, etc. Sometimes they would use things like heated oil or tar if they had it available to burn attackers or try to set battering rams on fire (with the aid of a flaming arrow or some other incendiary). Other heated materials were also used in castle defense, such as boiling water or hot sand or animal fat. These heated materials could be very effective, sometimes even more so than things like rocks because while a smallish rock might just bounce off an enemy's armor, the hot sand or boiling water can sneak in through small cracks and cause severe burns. Some castles had arrow holes built into the wall, from where archers could shoot or other people could throw whatever they had on hand or pour hot materials onto passing attackers. The trick was making these arrow holes big enough to shoot from and placing them in locations they could be effective but still enabling them to afford some protection to the person using it. For example some castles had intricate gates where the actual gate was built at a point inward from the perimeter of the wall and the walls on either side of this alley leading to the gate would house arrow holes that were at angles somewhat harder to hit from outside the castle, but the defenders inside could use them to shoot at attackers entering the alley. These arrow holes also sometimes had protective wooden covers the defender could push out of the way while shooting (i.e. with his shoulder) and then the cover would fall back into place when the defender retreated back into the wall. Many castles also had towers built into them from which defenders could fire projectiles, often with arrow holes all over them. Some castles also had defensive catapults or ballistas (giant mechanical crossbows) within them, so while the enemy catapults shot stuff into the castles, the defenders would try to shoot them back. (They usually had their own ammunition stockpiles, at least at the start of a siege, but when that runs low you start looking around for anything else you can use. And if an enemy catapult projectile hit a stone building or part of a wall and turned it into rubble, that too becomes ammunition). There we also some incidents of "biological warfare". Although these were usually reports of besieging armies using catapults to hurl corpses into a castle or city hoping to cause an outbreak of disease, the defenders in castles that had catapults of their own could load them with these same corpses or simply the corpses of fallen defenders and hurl them back onto the enemy army.

All of this would take place for as long as the castle was under siege and there were still enemies to shoot stuff at and the defenders had any ammunition left and it was "safe" to get to these defensive positions, or indeed if the person in that position got stuck there because the enemy had cut off his ability to retreat to a more "safe" location. Safe is of course a very relative word when you are talking about warfare, and during a siege there really was no completely safe place if the castle was breached, or really even before then because some catapult's projectile or enemy arrow might still find you. Although some castles did have access to underground tunnels or similar very secure places where the defenders might hide women and children and/or VIPs such as royalty during a siege, but some had no such secure places and while those would most likely be safe during the siege, once the outer defenses were breached it was usually only a matter of time before these places were breached as well.

Once the walls (or the gate) were breached and the enemy began flooding into the castle itself, it was time for the front linesmen to take up swords or spears or whatever weapon you could find and meet the enemy head on. Any archers still alive could still fire at the attackers within the walls too, of course.

Of course, that's all assuming whoever was in command of the castle did not surrender once the outer perimeter of the castle was breached or at some point before that (assuming any surrender given was actually accepted and the attack stopped). Sometimes castles were surrendered just at the sight of an enemy army on the horizon, other times the siege raged until every defender (or any other occupant) was killed. It was sometimes not just the knights who fought. Often times these sieges, for whatever reason they may have started, became a pure battle of survival and any occupant in the castle, whether noble or peasant, would be forced to try to defend his or her life to the best of his or her ability.

Answer 2

They were defended by nothing.

Therefore they were actually known as poor the people in castles.

People even ate them in the history

Answer 3

With an army circled round the outside of the castle to protect it.