Encyclopedia
A
siege engine is a device that is designed to break or circumvent
city walls and other
fortifications in
siege warfare.
Ancient siege engines
The earliest siege engine in Europe was the
battering ram, followed by the
catapult in
ancient Greece. The Spartans used battering rams in the siege of Plataea in 429 BC, but it seems that the Greeks limited their use of siege engines to assault
ladders , though Peloponnesian forces used something resembling
flamethrowers. It has recently been proposed that the
Trojan Horse was not, as the legends say, a covert container for stealthy attackers, but rather a large battering ram resembling a horse.
The first Mediterranean people to use advanced siege machinery were the
Carthaginians, who used
siege towers and battering rams against the Greek colonies of
Sicily. These engines influenced the ruler of
Syracuse, Dionysius I, who developed a large siege train.
The following Mediterranean area rulers to make use of siege engines to a large extent were
Philip II of Macedonia and
Alexander the Great. Their large engines spurred an evolution that led to impressive machines, like the
Demetrius Poliorcetes'
Helepolis of 304 BC: nine stories high and plated with iron, it stood 40 m tall and 21 m wide, weighing 180 t . The most utilized engines were simple battering rams, or
tortoises, propelled in several ingenious ways that allowed the defender to reach the walls or ditches with a certain degree of safety. For sea sieges or battles seesaw-like machines were used. These were giant ladders, hinged and mounted on a base mechanism and used for transferring marines onto the sea walls of coastal towns. They were normally mounted on two or more ships tied together and some sambyke included shield at the top to protect the climbers from arrows. Other hinging engines were used to catch enemy equipment or even opposite soldiers through apposite appendices which are probably ancestors to the Roman corvus, or to drop against them heavy weights.
The Romans preferred to assault enemy walls building earthen ramps or simply scaling the walls, as in the early siege of the
Samnite city of Silvium . Soldiers working at the ramps were protected by shelters called
vinea, that were arranged to form a long corridor. Wicker shields were used to protect the front of the corridor during its construction. Sometimes the Romans used another engine resembling the Greek ditch-filling tortoise, called a
musculus . Battering rams were also widespread. Siege towers were first used by the Roman legions around 200 BC.
The first documented occurrence of ancient siege artillery pieces was the
gastraphetes , a kind of non-torsion bolt-thrower. These were mounted on wooden frames. Greater machines forced the introduction of pulley system for loading the projectiles, which had extended to include stones also. Later torsion systems appeared, based on sinew springs. The
onager was the main Roman invention in the field.
Medieval siege engines
Medieval designs include the
catapult , the
ballista and the
trebuchet. These machines used mechanical energy to fling large projectiles to batter down stone walls. In Europe, the catapult was invented in Greece by Dionysius in 399 BC. Also used were the battering ram and the
siege tower, a wooden tower on wheels that allowed attackers to climb up and over castle walls, while protected from enemy arrow fire.
A typical
military confrontation in
medieval times was for one side to lay siege to their opponent's
castle. When properly defended, they had the choice whether to lay siege to the castle or to starve the people out by blocking food deliveries, or more proactively to employ war machines specifically designed to destroy or circumvent castle defenses.
Other tactics included setting fires against castle walls in an effort to decompose the cement that held together the individual stones so they could be readily knocked over, another indirect means was the practice of sapping, whereby tunnels were dug under the walls to weaken the foundations and destroy them and also catapulting diseased animals or people over the walls in order to promote disease which would encourage the defenders to surrender.
Modern siege engines
With the advent of
gunpowder,
firearms such as the
arquebus and
cannon—and eventually the mortar and
artillery—were developed. These weapons proved so effective that
fortifications, such as
city walls, had to be low and thick, as exemplified by the designs of
Vauban.
The largest railway rifle ever constructed, called informally "
Paris Gun", was used by the
Germans in the siege of
Paris during
World War I. The largest and longest range cannons proposed for use in
World War II were the little-known German V3 weapons, a series of fixed barrels bored into tunnels and intended to fire a shell of over a
metre in diameter, constructed on the coast of
France and intended to completely destroy
London. Their construction was halted after bombing by allied forces, using earth-penetrating bombs. The remnants of this weapon may still be viewed today.
Prior to the
First Gulf War it was believed that
Iraqi armed forces were developing a "supergun" to attack
Israel, under the leadership of a
Canadian engineer named Gerald Bull. It is believed that this engineer was
assassinated by the Israeli security forces . This was fictionalized in the 1994 film
Doomsday Gun.
Siege weapons are now considered obsolete owing to the effectiveness of aircraft-delivered munitions and
cruise missiles, which have made defensive area fortifications obsolete. The only cost effective static defensive structures are now deep bunkers used for military command and control. Even these fixed assets are of questionable value as it appears that the most survivable command and control of mobile defensive forces is through decentralized command and the use of mobile command centers.
Sources
- Greek and Roman Siege Machinery 399 BC - AD 363, Duncan B. Campbell, Osprey Publishing, 2003
See also
...
External links
- , working Siege Engine Kits
