Morten St George Theory

[-JKP-]

[pic of swallowtail merlons]

Note that it has a lot in common with your pic: arches and vertical slits in the walls as well as the swallowtails.

Morten, you have to be very careful. After the middle of the 15th century, swallowtail merlons became very popular, they had less of the political meaning than they had in earlier centuries.

So what happened is that they spread to many other areas, and countless towers and castles were rebuilt or repaired with this style of merlon.

And you're cherry-picking again. I'm glad you looked around the the merlons and found an example with many of them, but be careful not to draw conclusions or make assumptions based on a quick find. I spent YEARS trying to figure out where the structures with swallowtail merlons existed in the early medieval period. It takes a LONG LONG time to collect enough images and textual descriptions (mostly written in Latin) to understand them.

You can only be absolutely sure a building had them in the early centuries if you can find very old maps or very old, reasonably accurate manuscripts that illustrated them. Otherwise there's quite a strong chance they've been added later. Some castles have been completely rebuilt, some have been extensively enlarged, and some have had the battlements and towers rebuilt in the newer styles.

From the Wiki on Soncino castle, the one you illustrated:

"In 1200 it was besieged several times by the armies of Milan and Brescia, and in 1283, after being destroyed by the attacks of those armies, the commune of Soncino decided to rebuild the castle. In 1312 the castle was occupied by the Cremonese army, and in 1391 by the Milanese army, using it during the war against the Venetian Republic. In the year 1426 new walls were added to raise the previous ones."

It's possible the swallowtail merlons were added in 1426 when they raised the walls. They might even have been added in the 16th or 17th century when a lot of castles were remodeled or expanded.