How well will a star fort design work in the Middle Ages?

So how would circular forts like Tudor Cannon forts ,as AlanJWhite proposed earlier perform instead compared to medieval castles?

Well, they're essentially developments of Medieval concentric castles, except lower to make artillery less effective. So presumably easier to storm than an actual concentric castle, but not as difficult to defend as a star fort.
 
Moats/Ditches can only be so deep while the only limit to tunnels is time and the water table. If your ditch is 10 ft deep the miners make the tunnel 20 ft deep.

Solid rock hills are actually pretty rare, especially in areas you'd want to protect with a castle, like river valleys or coastal plains.

You can dig a ditch to the water table in that case.

If you use crossbowmen and ballistas/catapults like early modern armies used musketmen and cannon, then a star fort would be reasonably effective. You don't have to defend every foot of the wall--the job of the defenders is not to meet the enemy as he climbs up top but to shoot him down before he does. This is where the star fort really shines--in a circular fort there are dead zones where shooters can't see because it's around the curve of the circle. In a star fort shooters posted at any of the vertices have a perfect view of the two walls that extend from them, and if they have adequate rate of fire they can shoot down any attackers that try to take any of those walls.

In short, if you rely on melee fighters to throw the enemy off the walls then star forts are awful. If you rely on archers and crossbowmen instead they are excellent.
 
Prior to the introduction of siege cannon, tall masonry walls were the best form of protection against attack by enemies using mechanical weapons and siege engines. It was the introduction of effective cannon that required the change to lower earthwork fortresses. So, a star-fort would not work well in the middle ages.
 

jahenders

Banned
True, but that being the case, I don't think we could say they're "inherently inferior" since they're clearly superior once you get significant cannons in the mix.

I think we could say that medieval castles are superior at preventing overruns by large numbers of enemy forces armed with melee weapons and/or bows, while a star fort is superior at resisting cannonade.

In my opinion, star forts are inherently inferior to solid walls. The only reason people switched to them was because cannon could bring down solid walls.
 
Hire Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci and see what they do with the design.

Remember that they both made their reputations as Military Engineers, and quotes have been attributed to them to the effect of criticising them as artists but as superior builders of fortifications.

In at least one case Michelangelo built a fort on a hilltop and made the slope of hill less steep to improve defensive fire .:cool:
 
You can dig a ditch to the water table in that case.

If you use crossbowmen and ballistas/catapults like early modern armies used musketmen and cannon, then a star fort would be reasonably effective. You don't have to defend every foot of the wall--the job of the defenders is not to meet the enemy as he climbs up top but to shoot him down before he does. This is where the star fort really shines--in a circular fort there are dead zones where shooters can't see because it's around the curve of the circle. In a star fort shooters posted at any of the vertices have a perfect view of the two walls that extend from them, and if they have adequate rate of fire they can shoot down any attackers that try to take any of those walls.

In short, if you rely on melee fighters to throw the enemy off the walls then star forts are awful. If you rely on archers and crossbowmen instead they are excellent.
Are things like ballistas and catapults as accurate as artillery in the 17th century?
 
No ones saying they would be utterly useless. But they'd be expensive and much less effective than actual mediaeval fortifications.

A good chunk of medieval fortifications are basically wooden keeps or lone stone towers, and that seems to have worked well enough for most part. The massive fortification effort is on the balance actually pretty late, chronologically, and coincides with the development of effective cannon.

The big round towers (drum towers as well as their taller cousins) were probably already designed with cannon in mind.
 
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