Couldn’t an enemy army just march around the castle and take all of the unfortified farmland/resources? Also couldn’t a castle just be sieged out until the defenders starve?
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It really depends on the situation. My favorite fort story is the Defense of Fort McHenry aka the events described in The Star Spangled Banner.
Most people don’t really know what happened at the fort and to understand it requires a bit of back story (which is my point about Fortresses being situational.)
England is at war with France. The English are winning thanks to their navy: they are blockading Frances’ ports and preventing the French from landing ground forces. But this causes two problems for America: England is taking American sailors and forcing then to join the British Navy. And, the U.S. can’t trade with France because of the blockades.
So, U.S. declares war on Britain. The British are a bit confused and don’t really want to fight the Americans, so they wait until after they defeat the French to fight the Americans (But wait! The British war with France was why the Americans declared war in the first place. If the war with France was over weren’t the reasons for war with Britain also over? Yes, but America wanted respect and wanted to take British controlled Canada.)
The Brits decide to send 6% of their military to fight the Americans. The Brits don’t really want anything except to end the war, so every time they take a city with ground forces, they steal all the alcohol, burn the city to the ground, then retreat to their boats. They did this to Washington D.C. then they move to Baltimore, which was then America’s biggest port, a key for international trade.
The Americans finally decide to actually fight back and coordinate multiple troops of men to form a coherent defense. They finally outnumber the Brits on land and American snipers kill the British commander.
The Brits, finally defeated on land, then withdraw land forces and decide to either sail into the Baltimore harbor to destroy the city by cannon or disembark troops there. But… The tide is low and Fort McHenry defends Baltimore with salvaged French cannon. The fort can sink ships. The fort also has walls much thicker than the British ship’s wooden walls and …. The fort can’t sink. The fort walls also allow the cannons some extra range because they raise the cannons up above sea level.
The British, knowing that forts don’t sink but their ships do, have a doctrine of not directly attacking land forts. So, instead, they withdraw out of the harbor and attempt to bombard the fort with long range rockets (red glare) and mortar bombs (bursting in air.)
The long range weapons are inaccurate and can’t hit the giant fort in anywhere that really matters and over 25 hours of bombardment, only four Americans are killed in the fort (random Baltimore civilians outside the fort are also killed by errant shells).
Brits give up and a poem describing the fort becomes the American National Anthem:
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
So… Fort McHenry succeeded! But, the circumstance matters. Fort Mc Henry only succeeded because American land forces stopped the British from attacking by land, which was the original British plan. It only succeeded because British didn’t want to lose ships: a direct cannon attack on the Fort may have succeeded. It only succeeded because the Brits didn’t really care about Baltimore (they only wanted to burn it, so the American would surrender) and the Brits really didn’t want to lose ships. It only succeeded because British long range weapons ship based weapons were inaccurate in 1800s.
The Fort worked… In the given circumstances. The fort definitely wasn’t some impregnable, invincible thing, but it was one of the tools that helped Baltimore survive the War of 1812.
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