You Just Built the Ultimate Medieval Fortress — Transcript

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1. 0:00If you build a city on an empty piece of
2. 0:01land surrounded by sea on three sides,
3. 0:03[music] then recruit a powerful army to
4. 0:05protect it, you can basically live like
5. 0:07an emperor. The problem is that other
6. 0:09countries might want what you have.
7. 0:11Being smart, you surround the entire
8. 0:12city with a stone wall about 50 ft tall,
9. 0:15then place defensive towers along it.
10. 0:17From those towers, your soldiers can
11. 0:18watch enemies from far away and stop
12. 0:20anyone trying to dig through the blind
13. 0:22spots below the wall. In the age of
14. 0:24swords and bows, that alone [music]
15. 0:25could stop most attackers. But
16. 0:27naturally, one wall is not enough for
17. 0:28you. Being a genius, you build a second
18. 0:30wall in front one. It is smaller, but
19. 0:32now anyone who breaks through the outer
20. 0:34wall gets trapped between two defensive
21. 0:36lines while archers fire at them from
22. 0:38different directions. Still not
23. 0:39satisfied, you dig a massive moat in
24. 0:41front [music] of everything and put a
25. 0:42drawbridge at the gate. Now enemy siege
26. 0:44machines cannot even reach the walls
27. 0:45without getting stuck at the moat. They
28. 0:47can try using catapults from a distance,
29. 0:49but ordinary stones do very little
30. 0:50against walls nearly 16 ft thick. So
31. 0:53crossing the water by boat becomes one
32. 0:54of their best options. Putting your big
33. 0:56brain to [music] work again, you add one
34. 0:58more wall along the inside of This one
35. 1:00is only about 5 ft tall, but that is
36. 1:02enough to make landing much harder while
37. 1:04giving your archers and spearmen a clear
38. 1:06line of attack. Soldiers slowly crossing
39. 1:08the moat in boats are basically moving
40. 1:10targets. And congratulations, you just
41. 1:12built Constantinople, one of the most
42. 1:14heavily defended cities of its time. Its
43. 1:16defenses held for centuries [music]
44. 1:17until Ottoman cannons finally broke
45. 1:19through in 1453.