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Castles and Cannons |
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The Douglas fortunes were to take a turn for the worse when James II took the throne in 1437.
The young king was not happy with the level of autonomy that his nobles possessed, and in particular with the power the Douglases wielded. The friction between James and Scotland's most powerful family erupted into open hostility when James invited William, the 8th Earl of Douglas, to dinner at Stirling Castle, only to murder him in cold blood at the dinner table.
Immediately James, the 9th Earl, swore revenge, proclaiming the king a murderer and outlaw. James responded by proclaiming the Earl, "guilty of his own death by resisting the king's gentle persuasion".
James began his campaign in the northern Douglas territories and gradually worked his way south until, by the summer of 1455, only Threave Castle remained in Douglas hands.
James's vendetta against the Douglases also led to a change in the physical appearance at Threave, with the prosperous outbuildings being torn down and the stone being used to build further defences round the base of the tower, and the "household" moving into the tower. The reason for this redesign of the castle was due to the monarch's obsession with the latest technology of warfare, which was just beginning to appear on Europe's battlefields - cannons.
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Large towers were no longer enough to protect a castle from attack, and at Threave, Douglas built his extensive artillery wall around the tower.
Only one of its three round towers survives today, but each had three floors and the wall was equipped with 22 gunports facing south and east - although he was obviously not overly confident in his castle, as he fled to England in exile before the siege began.
James laid siege to Threave for two months before the garrison surrendered, although, it was not artillery that brought about the end of hostilities but rather the bribery of the defenders with promises of land. Perhaps Douglas should have stayed within his bastion's walls.
A local legend has it that Mons Meg, the celebrated cannon now held at Edinburgh Castle, was constructed in the area for the siege. Apparently, a local blacksmith named M'Kim noticed that the king's artillery was making little impact on the castle defences and offered to make a medieval super gun. He then constructed the cannon at Carlinwark. However, most scholars believe the weapon to have been constructed on the continent and to have formed part of James's wife's dowry.
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