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ONCE upon a time there lived a very wicked ogre. He lived in a strong castle set on the top of a hill, and whenever any traveler was unlucky enough to pass along the road below the castle, down would come the ogre and carry the traveler off to his donjon tower. 
That sounds like the beginning of a fairy story and that is just what it is. But there is more truth than you might think in a fairy story. In the Middle Ages, when people believed in fairies and ogres, there were many real castles—most of them built on the top of a hill. And although there were no real ogres, there were, I’m sorry to say, bad men living in some of these castles who would really lock up in their donjon towers any one from whom they thought they could get money. Of course not all the knights who lived in the castles were bad. But most of them were warlike and fierce and all the old castles had dungeon cells for prisoners. 
These castles were built because of the Feudal System. The Feudal System worked like this. The king or prince who conquered a country would divide the country up among several of his lords. These lords would then divide their parts of the land up among other lords, and these would divide their share again among the knights. Each lord and knight had to promise that he would help the lord from whom he got his land whenever the lord needed him. Then each lord and knight built himself a strong castle to protect his part of the land from any one who might try to take it away from him. There were no policemen in those days to keep one man from trying to steal another man’s land, and so each knight had to have his own soldiers and his own castle to protect his rights. 
Near each castle was a village where the common people who were not lords or nobles lived. These people were not very well cared for. They lived in miserable little huts. Most of them had to give part of all the food they raised to the lord of the castle, and all the men had to serve the lord as soldiers whenever he needed them. In return, the lord of the castle protected the poor people from enemies. 
The castle was built with great, thick stone walls all around it. Outside of the wall was a deep ditch of water called a moat. The only way to get into the castle was across a drawbridge over the moat. The drawbridge could be drawn up from inside the castle so that an enemy could not enter. If the enemy reached the drawbridge before it was drawn up, he found his way blocked by a huge latticework gate, called a portcullis, which was dropped across the gateway of the castle. 
Courtesy of Pratt Institute 
The castle had huge stone towers at the gateway and along the wall, with very narrow slits for windows. Archers could shoot arrows out of these slits, but the slits were hard to shoot through from the outside. 
Inside the walls there was a courtyard around which were the stables, soldiers’ and servants’ quarters, kitchens, and a high tower called the keep. In the keep the lord of the castle lived. There was a large dining hall and often a little church or chapel in the keep. And down below the ground level were the prison cells and torture chambers. In case of an attack, all the people of the village came into the castle, often with their cattle and flocks, and stayed there, so there had to be great stores of food on hand. 
Here is a picture of the Castle of Pierrefonds in France. Notice how few windows there are in the lower walls. Pierrefonds gradually fell to pieces until it was restored about fifty years ago. 

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