Could a Castle REALLY Survive a Two Year Siege?

Could a castle really survive a two-year siege? In the movies the lord on the battlements says he can hold out forever. Nobody ever asks the boring question: what are they eating? Today we put the castle on trial: the arithmetic of water and grain, the wells, cisterns and salted pork that decided most sieges, and six real case files from Chateau Gaillard, Kenilworth and Harlech to Acre, the Krak des Chevaliers and Rhodes. Plus the rules nobody tells you about, the bluffs, the betrayals, and why a castle was not a wall but a clock. Chapters: 0:00 Cold open: the movie version 0:40 The arithmetic 1:27 Exhibit A: water 4:12 Exhibit B: food 7:32 Finding one 8:09 Case file 1: Chateau Gaillard, 1203-1204 14:03 Rouen 1418-1419 and Calais 1346-1347 15:41 Case file 2: Kenilworth, 1266 18:59 Case file 3: Harlech 24:07 The other side of the wall: disease, Karlstejn, morale, money 27:17 Case file 4: Acre, 1189-1191 31:07 Case file 5: Krak des Chevaliers, 1271 33:25 Case file 6: Rhodes, 1522 35:37 The rules of the game 38:27 Bluffs and betrayal 40:55 The verdict Sources and further reading: Jim Bradbury, The Medieval Siege R. Allen Brown, English Castles Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Knights Hospitaller in the Levant, c. 1070-1309 William the Breton, Philippidos (the siege of Chateau Gaillard, eyewitness) Jean Froissart, Chronicles (Calais, 1346-1347) Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin (Acre, 1189-1191) T. E. Lawrence, Crusader Castles Overview articles on Harlech Castle, the Siege of Kenilworth, Chateau Gaillard, Krak des Chevaliers, the Siege of Rhodes (1522), the Siege of Acre (1189-1191), Rochester Castle, the Siege of Stirling Castle (1304), the Siege of Rouen (1418-1419), the Siege of Calais (1346-1347), Karlstejn, the Siege of Weinsberg and Dame Carcas The water and grain numbers are round numbers and a historians' rule of thumb, not values from one source. Stories that survive only as tradition are flagged in the video: the toilet shaft at Gaillard, the people eating dogs, Dafydd ap Ieuan's line about the old women, the "five years of food" at the Krak, Suleiman's farewell words, Dame Carcas and her pig (folklore; the real siege of Carcassonne was Pepin the Short's in 759) and the women of Weinsberg carrying their husbands (the siege is real, the carrying was added later).