How Not to Defend a Castle

When I was 10, my father taught me how to attack a castle. Dad was teaching at a university in Germany for four months. My whole family went with him, and we spent much of the time traveling around Europe and exploring historical sites.

Shortly after we arrived, my parents, my 7-year-old brother and I visited a castle in the nearby town of Wurzburg. It was a hot day in early September. To get to the castle, we had to climb a hill turning back and forth along switchbacks through a vineyard. My brother and I were getting hot and uncomfortable, so my mom said to my dad, “We need to do something to distract the kids.”

My dad called us over and said, “Let’s pretend we’re Vikings, and we’re attacking this castle. We have to walk up this hill wearing armor and carrying metal weapons. And you see those little holes in the wall? People are standing behind those holes shooting at us.”

And so he continued. When we finally made it up the hill, he pointed out bastions jutting out from the wall on either side of the gate so that archers or gunmen could attack us from three sides. He showed us the draw bridge, the portcullis, and the murder holes in the ceiling through which the castle’s defenders would drop rocks and boiling oil on our heads. There were two walls with gatehouses whose corridors turned to make it difficult to push cannons through. After looking at the defenses for a while, I asked my dad, “Why are we attacking this castle, again?” It seemed like a poor life choice.

But during the Thirty Years War, that castle did fall. The story of its fall is a textbook example of how not to defend a castle.

The young lieutenant in charge of Wurzburg Castle heard that the army of Gustavus Adolphus, the king of Sweden, was coming to attack his castle. The normal procedure at this point would be to stock up on supplies, hide in the fortress and wait for your enemy to get close enough to shoot them through those arrow slits I saw. But this young lieutenant had a better idea: why not send a line of men with guns outside the gate? They could shoot one volley at the incoming army and then retreat inside the gate and pull up the drawbridge.

Unfortunately for him, the attacking army arrived quicker than expected. The defending troops panicked and fled before they had a chance to shoot. They ran inside the gate and slammed it shut, but not before the other army was on the drawbridge. So, they couldn’t pull the drawbridge up, which meant that the moat was useless.

The lieutenant was disappointed, but he was not ready to give up. There was still a second wall with a gatehouse. So, the defenders wheeled a cannon out between the gatehouses. They planned to fire it at the attackers when they broke through the gate, and then wheel the cannon in through the second gate while the attackers were stunned. What could go wrong?

But the Lieutenant hadn’t counted on the attackers’ secret weapon. They had a group of crazy Scottish engineers who approached their general and said something to the effect of, “Ooh! Can we blow up the gate? Pretty please?” The general agreed, so the engineers put together a bomb called a petard and hung it on the gate.

The defenders stood around the cannon waiting to hear the sound of a battering ram. Then the gate exploded. The defenders panicked and fled through the second gate, leaving the loaded cannon behind them.

The attackers entered the courtyard between the gates and said, “Hey, cool! It’s a loaded cannon!” Then they turned it around and used it to blast open the second gate.

Thus, Wurzburg Castle fell.

Why am I telling this story? First, because it’s funny. Second, because of a tendency I see in my own life to make a similar mistake.

Several psalms compare God to a fortress, a place of defense to whom people can go for help. Martin Luther’s great hymn “A Mighty Fortress is our God” was based on Psalm 46. It was also written in Germany, possibly in a castle similar to the one in Wurzburg. Psalm 18:2 says, “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”

The young Lieutenant’s big mistake was failing to trust his fortress. Instead of relying on the built-in defenses that so impressed me when I was 10, he relied on his own strength and planning. He sent his men outside the fortress’s protection, foolishly thinking that their strength could defend the castle better than the castle could defend them.

But how often do I do the same? When anxiety presses in on me, when something goes wrong in my life, or the lives of my friends, my country, or the world, I tend to ask, “What can I do to fix this?” And sometimes, the answer is, “nothing.” But instead of accepting my helplessness and trusting in God, I try to find my own ways of making things work out. Or I panic and abandon the things I can do, leaving a loaded cannon for my enemies to use.

Defending a castle does require effort, and God graciously chooses to use us to make a difference. But we cannot rely on our own power. We must take refuge in our Fortress, trusting Him to protect us.