Did People Ever Really Put Crocodiles in Moats? - YouTube

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common

image in pop-culture is that of a castle moat filled to the brim with water and hungry crocodiles.

So did anyone ever actually do this?

The short answer is that it doesn’t appear so.

That said, while there’s no known documented instance of crocodiles intentionally being

put into moats, we do know of at least one castle that had (and has, in fact) a moat

full of bears…

Before we get to that and why crocodiles in moats are probably not the best idea in the

world, or at least not a very efficient use of resources if your concern was really defence

of a fortress, we should address the fact that the common image most people have in

their heads of a moat isn’t exactly representative of what historical moats usually looked like.

To begin with, moats have been around seemingly as long as humans have had need of protecting

a structure or area, with documented instances of them appearing everywhere from Ancient

Egypt to slightly more modern times around certain Native American settlements.

And, of course, there are countless examples of moats being used throughout European history.

In many cases, however, these moats were little more than empty pits dug around a particular

piece of land or property- water filled moats were something of a rarity.

You see, unless a natural source of water was around, maintaining an artificial moat

filled with water required a lot of resources to avoid the whole thing just turning into

a stinking cesspool of algae and biting bugs, as is wont to happen in standing water.

As with artificial ponds constructed on certain wealthy individuals’ estates, these would

have to be regularly drained and cleaned, then filled back up to keep things from becoming

putrid.

Of course, if one had a natural flowing water source nearby, some of these problems could

be avoided.

But, in the end, it turns out a water filled moat isn’t actually that much more effective

than an empty one at accomplishing the goal of protecting a fortress.

And as for putting crocodiles (or alligators) in them, introducing such animals to a region,

beyond being quite expensive if not their native habitat, is also potentially dangerous

if the animals got out.

Again, all this while not really making the act of conquering a fortress that much more

difficult- so little payoff for the extra cost of maintaining crocodiles.

Unsurprisingly from this, outside of a legend we’ll get to shortly, there doesn’t appear

to be any known documented cases of anyone intentionally putting crocodiles or alligators

into their water filled moats.

It should also be mentioned here that while at first glance it would appear that the key

purpose of a moat is to defend against soldiers attacking at the walls, they were often actually

constructed with the idea of stopping soldiers under the ground.

You see, a technique favoured since ancient times for breaching cities, fortresses and

fortified positions was to simply dig tunnels below any walls surrounding the position and

then intentionally let them collapse, bringing part of the wall above that section tumbling

down.

Eventually this was accomplished by use of explosives like gunpowder, but before this

a more simple method was to cart a bunch of tinder into the tunnel at the appropriate

point and set the whole thing ablaze.

The idea here was, after all your diggers were out, to destroy the support beams used

to keep the tunnel from collapsing while digging.

If all went as planned, both the tunnel and the wall above it would then collapse.

To get around this very effective form of breaching fortifications, moats would be dug

as deeply as possible around the fortification, sometimes until diggers reached bedrock.

If a natural source of water was around, surrounding the fortress with water was a potential additional

benefit over the dry pit at stopping such tunneling.

Either way, beyond making tunneling more difficult (or practically impossible), dry and wet moats,

of course, helped dissuade above ground attacks as well thanks to moats being quite good at

limiting an enemy’s use of siege weaponry.

In particular, devices such as battering rams are rendered almost entirely useless in the

presence of a large moat.

Though the later advent of weapons such as trebuchets made moats less effective overall,

they still proved to be formidable barrier capable of kneecapping a direct assault on

a castle’s walls.

All this said, it wasn’t as if proud moat owners didn’t put anything in them.

There are plenty of ways to beef up moat defences without the need for water and crocodiles.

Pretty much anything that slows an enemy’s advance works well.

And, better year, anything that is so daunting it deters an attack at all.

In fact, archaeological surveys of moats have found evidence of things like stinging bushes

having once grown throughout some moats.

Whether these were intentionally planted on the part of the moat owners or just a byproduct

of having a patch of land they left unattended for years at a time isn’t entirely clear.

But it doesn’t seem too farfetched to think this may have been intentional in some cases.

As you might imagine, wading through stinging or thorny plants while arrows and rocks and

the like are raining down at you from above wasn’t exactly tops on people’s lists

of things to do.

As for moats that were filled with water, while filling them with crocodiles or alligators

wasn’t seemingly something anyone did, some savvy castle owners did fill them with fish

giving them a nice private fishery.

(As mentioned, artificial ponds built for this purpose were also sometimes a thing for

the ultra-wealthy, functioning both as a status symbol, given maintaining such was incredibly

expensive, and a great source of food year round).

Moving back to the dry bed moats, when not just leaving them as a simple dug pit or planting

things meant to slow enemy troops, it does appear at least in some rare instances fortress

owners would put dangerous animals in them, though seemingly, again, more as a status

symbol than actually being particularly effective at deterring enemy troops.

Most famously, at Krumlov Castle in the Czech Republic there exists something that is most

aptly described as a “bear moat”, located between the castle’s first and second courtyard.

When exactly this practice started and exactly why has been lost to history, with the earliest

known documented reference to the bear moat going back to 1707.

Whether designed to serve as a stark warning to potential intruders, a status symbol, or

both, the castle’s grizzliest residents were tended to by a designated bearkeeper

until around the early 19th century when the practice ceased.

This changed again in 1857 when the castle’s then resident noble, Karl zu Schwarzenberg,

acquired a pair of bears from nearby Transylvania intent on reviving the tradition.

From that moment onward, outside of a brief lapse in the late 19th century, the castle’s

moat has almost always contained at least one bear.

Today the bears are most definitely completely for show, and each year bear-themed celebrations

are held at Christmas and on the bears’ birthdays during which children bring the

bears presents.

If bears aren’t you thing, Wilhelm V, the Prince Regent of Bavaria, in the late 16th

century supposedly kept both lions and a leopard in the moat of Trausnitz Castle while he lived

there.

However, again, it appears that Prince Wilhelm kept the animals more for show and fun than

he did for defence.

Beyond dangerous creatures, his moat also contained pheasants and a rabbit run.

Moving back to crocodiles being put in moats, the earliest reference to something like this

(though seemingly just a legend), appears to be the legend of the Coccodrillo di Castelnuovo.

This story is recounted by the 19th and 20th century historian and politician Benedetto

Croce in his “Neapolitan Stories and Legends“:

In that castle, there was a moat under the level of the sea, dark, humid, where the prisoners,

who they want to more strictly castigate, were usually put.

When, all of a sudden, they started to notice with astonishment that, from there, the prisoners

disappeared.

Did they escape?

How?

Put a tighter surveillance and a new guest inside there, one day they saw, unexpected

and terrifying scene, from a hole hidden in the moat, a monster, a crocodile entering

and, with its jaws, it grasped for the legs the prisoner, and dragged him to the sea to

eat him.

Rather than kill the creature, the guards decided to make the fearsome creature an “executor

of justice”, sending prisoners condemned to death to meet their end in its toothy maw.

Exactly where the crocodile came from and when this supposedly happened depends on which

version of the legend you consult, though our favourite version suggests that Queen

Joanna II smuggled it over to Naples from Egypt sometime in the 15th century with the

sole intention of feeding her many, many lovers to it.

A consistent element in most versions of the legend is that the beast bit off more than

it could chew when it tried to eat a leg of a giant horse, ultimately choking on it.

Of course, this is generally thought to be nothing more than a legend, with no evidence

that it actually occurred or even exactly when.

At least the story does show that the idea of a crocodile in a moat isn’t just something

found in modern

pop culture.