Un fuego sobre el profundo
With the the Middle Ages, the hourd is a solid scaffolding, fact of boards.
In the military architecture of the Middle Ages, it is a wood work, drawn up in corbelling at the top of the Courtine S or turns, intended to receive defenders, overhanging by a projection the foot of masonry and giving a wider Flanquement, a projection very favorable to defense. To avoid that the ignited arrows do not burn the hourds the defenders recovered them wet skins of animals. What offered a protection increased to fire without to make the hourds indestructibles.
It is necessary any to believe that, as of the Roman epoch, the hourds were of use, because it is question, in the Comments of César, wood works which are true hourds. In the wood work which crowned the ditches of the camp of César in front of the Bellovaques, the galleries joining together the turns are continuous hourds protecting a lower parapet. The need for the defenders for ordering the foot of the ramparts, for threading the ditches and for taking cover from projectiles launched by besieging, had to make adopt the hourds as of the Gallo-Roman time.
Higher crenellations could not, in the event of seat, to present an effective defense, since while drawing, the archers or principal rafters were obliged to be discovered. If besieging it placed with the foot even walls, it became of any impossibility with besieged not only to strip features to him, but to even see it, without passing half of the body apart from the crenels. At the end of the 11th century already and at the beginning of the XIIe, we notice, at the top of the turns and ramparts, the holes of hourds bored on the level of the covered ways. Often then these holes are double, so as to make it possible to pose, under the beam in rocker, a bond intended to relieve its range.
At the end of the Middle Ages, the hourds, which are provisional constructions, vulnerable to fire, are replaced by their equivalent out of stone (the Mâchicoulis): a corbelling crowns the top of the walls systematically and of the turns, the Créneau X are narrower, of the Meurtrière S are practiced in the merlon S. protection are thus permanent, invulnerable fire, resist better the projectiles sent by the catapult S various, protect the defenders best, and is not likely to take down wall.
Source: Eugene Purple-the-Duke
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