In ancient times, cities often had strong walls around them, and warfare against these cities had always involved the basic tasks of breaking the walls, going over or under the walls, or starving the defenders into surrender. In the Middle Ages, Europe’s decentralized political structure put a new twist on the siege by planting heavily fortified castles all over the landscape. Constantinople’s thick city walls were similar to the fortresses of Roman, Greek, and more ancient times. Northern Europe, on the other hand, had several hundred small fortresses that were designed to hold off disproportionately larger attackers. In order to capture a region, an invader would need to besiege more than one fortress.
After the period of the First Crusade, knights returned with much grander ideas of defensive fortification. They had seen Byzantine fortress designs and had participated in attacks on Antioch, Acre, Jerusalem, and Tyre. Crusaders had built their…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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