Siege engine

From Free net encyclopedia

A siege engine is a device that is designed to break or circumvent city walls and other fortifications in siege warfare.

1 Ancient siege engines
2 Medieval siege engines
3 Modern siege engines
4 Sources
5 See also
6 External links

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Ancient siege engines

Image:Battering ram.jpg 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 (probably much of the machine, mēchanai, cited by Thucydides must be included in this category), 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 (or "Taker of Cities") of 304 BC: seven stories high and plated with iron, it stood 40 m (125 ft) tall and 21 m (60 ft) wide, weighing 180 t (360,000 lb). 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 (sambykē or sambuca) 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 sambykē 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 (agger) or simply scaling the walls, as in the early siege of the Samnite city of Silvium (306 BC). Soldiers working at the ramps were protected by shelters called vinea, that were arranged to form a long corridor. Wicker shields (plutei) 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 ("Little mouse"). 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 ("belly-bow"), 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. Image:Guidoriccio mangonel.jpg

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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 Dionysios 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.

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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 (Mossad). 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 (such as modern tactical and strategic aircraft, mechanized cavalry and mechanized infantry) is through decentralized command and the use of mobile command centers.

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