Keep
The keep (or dongun , doignon , dangon ) belongs primarily to the Féodalité; it is not the Roman castellum , it is not either the withdrawal, the last defense of the Citadelle of the first times of the Moyen-âge. The keep orders defenses of the Château (see keep of Roquetaillade), but it orders also the outside, and is independent of the enclosure of the fortress of the Moyen-âge, in what it always has a particular exit on the countryside. It is there what characterizes primarily the keep, which distinguishes it from a tower. There is no feudal castle without keep , as there was not, formerly, of strong Ville without castle, and like, nowadays, there is no place of war without citadel. All good citadel must order the city and remain however independent of its defenses. Nevertheless, in the old texts such as accounts of châtellenie, the term of " donjon" do not indicate the main tower of the castle, but its high-court very whole. " The unit consisted the pralet, the bêtiments and the fortifications call the keep. The keep is thus not the most powerful tower where most of the complex such as that is often said, but the high strengthened place of the capacity, which, politically and militarily order all autres" extract of the publication of the thesis of doctorate of state supported in 2005 per Mr. Alain Kersuzan: To defend the Savoyard Bresse and Bugey, castles in the war against the Dauphine one (1282-1355). Thus the definition given above comparing the keep to the main tower of the castle constitutes it a modern drift of the term.
With the the Middle Ages, it was the same for the castle, and the keep was with the castle what this one was at the city. The garrisons of the Moyen-âge had a defense moreover than ours: driven out city, they were withdrawn in the castle; this one taken, they took refuge in the keep; the tight keep of too near, they could still run the chance to escape by a skilfully masked exit, or to pass through the lines of circumvallation at night by a bold blow. But this provision of the keep pertaining to the feudal fortress was not only taken to resist or to escape the enemy from the outside, it was the consequence of the feudal system. A lord, if powerful that it was, held its power only of its vassal. At the time of the danger, those were to go to the call of the lord, to contain themselves with the need in the castle and to contribute to its defense; but it happened that these vassal is not fidelity with any test. Often, the enemy gained them; then the betrayed lord had of another refuge only his keep , in which it was locked up with his people with him. It remained to him then for last resource, or to defend themselves until the end, or to take its time to escape, or to capitulate.
The system of the defense of the places, during the Feudality, was only one series of means accumulated by the distrust, not only towards one declared enemy, but towards the same garrisons. This is why the study of the fortresses of this time provides an inexhaustible subject of interesting observations; the distrust sharpens the spirit and makes find resources. Indeed, if some castles present about similar whole layouts, the keeps offer, on the contrary, an infinite variety, either in the general design, or in the details of defense. The lords, being able to be at every moment in war the ones with the others, held much so that their neighbors did not find, if they came to attack it, of defenses laid out as those which they had on their premises. Each one was thus ingéniait to divert its enemy, sometimes the friend of the day before; also, when a lord received his equal in his castle, were they his/her friends, had he the care to place them in a body of special building, received them he in the large-room, but it only very seldom in the keep led them, which, in times of peace, was closed, threatening, while testimonys of friendship reciprocally were given.
In times of peace, the keep contained the treasures, the weapons, the files of the family. The lord placed there with his family, on the noble floor: the first stage. As it could not remain there and there only be defended, it was surrounded then of a more or less great number of men-at-arms to his pay, which were contained there with him. From there, exerting a meticulous monitoring on the garrison and the outside (because the keep is always placed opposite the contestable point of the fortress), its faithful and held to him in respect the vassal ones and their men piled up in the home; at any hour being able to leave and return by masked and well kept exits, the garrison did not know which were the means of defense, and naturally the lord did all so that they were believed formidable.
It is difficult to find a more beautiful program for a military Architecte; also the keeps , among the buildings of the the Middle Ages, are often masterpieces of precaution. We found in these constructions, little known generally, or incompletely studied, of the provisions which require an attentive examination, because they clarify one of with dimensions of the feudal life.
The reason first which made raise keeps was the invasion Norman. The villas mérovingiennes were extremely to resemble the Roman villæ; but when the Norman ones were thrown periodically on the Western continent, the lords, the monasteries, the kings and the cities themselves thought of protecting their fields by kinds of Blockhaus out of wood which one raised on the river bank and possible on sites already defended by nature. These fortresses, in which, if need be, one brought to haste what one had of more invaluable, ordered of the more or less wide cuttings off, composed of a natural escarpment or a artificial ridges crowned by a palisade and protected by a ditch.
The Normands themselves, when they had taken the practice to go down on the coasts from the Gaulle S and to go up the rivers, established, in some islands close to the mouths, or on headlands, fortified camps with a fortress to put their spoils at the shelter of the attacks and to protect their moored boats. It is also in the regions which were particularly devastated by the Normands that one finds oldest keeps , and these primitive fortresses are usually built on rectangular level forming a Parallélogramme divided sometimes into two parts.
The area of the Loire Valley presents some of the oldest French keeps to Langeais (towards 994), Loches (about 1010-1030), Montbazon, Lavardin (fine XIIe century), Chinon (turn of Coudray, about 1200).