Asiege engine is adevice that is designed to break or circumvent heavy castle doors, thickcity walls and otherfortifications insiege warfare. Some are immobile, constructed in place to attack enemy fortifications from a distance, while others have wheels to enable advancing up to the enemy fortification. There are many distinct types, such assiege towers that allowfoot soldiers to scale walls and attack the defenders,battering rams that damage walls or gates, and large ranged weapons (such asballistas,catapults/trebuchets and other similar constructions) that attack from a distance by launching heavyprojectiles. Some complex siege engines were combinations of these types.
Siege engines are fairly large constructions – from the size of a small house to a large building. Fromantiquity up to the development ofgunpowder, they were made largely of wood, using rope or leather to help bind them, possibly with a few pieces of metal at key stress points. They could launch simpleprojectiles using natural materials to build up force bytension,torsion, or, in the case of trebuchets, human power or counterweights coupled withmechanical advantage. With the development of gunpowder and improvedmetallurgy,bombards and later heavyartillery became the primary siege engines.
Collectively, siege engines or artillery together with the necessarysoldiers,sappers,ammunition, andtransport vehicles to conduct a siege are referred to as asiege train.[1]
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The earliest siege engines appear to be simple movable roofed towers used for cover to advance to the defenders' walls in conjunction withscaling ladders, depicted during theMiddle Kingdom of Egypt.[2] Advanced siege engines including battering rams were used byAssyrians, followed by the catapult inancient Greece. InKush siege towers as well asbattering rams were built from the 8th century BC and employed in Kushite siege warfare, such as the siege ofAshmunein in 715 BC.[3][2]TheSpartans used battering rams in thesiege 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 resemblingflamethrowers.
The first Mediterranean people to use advanced siege machinery were theCarthaginians, who usedsiege towers and battering rams against theGreek colonies ofSicily. These engines influenced the ruler ofSyracuse,Dionysius I, who developed a catapult in 399 BC.[4]
The first two rulers to make use of siege engines to a large extent werePhilip II of Macedonia andAlexander the Great. Their large engines spurred an evolution that led to impressive machines, like theDemetrius Poliorcetes'Helepolis (or "Taker of Cities") of 304 BC: nine stories high and plated with iron, it stood 40 m (130 ft) tall and 21 m (69 ft) wide, weighing 180 t (400,000 lb). The most used engines were simple battering rams, ortortoises, propelled in several ingenious ways that allowed the attackers to reach the walls or ditches with a certain degree of safety. For sea sieges or battles, seesaw-like machines (sambykē orsambuca) 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 sambuca included shields at the top to protect the climbers from arrows. Other hinged engines were used to catch enemy equipment or even opposing soldiers with opposable appendices which are probably ancestors to theRomancorvus. Other weapons dropped heavy weights on opposing soldiers.[citation needed]
TheRomans preferred to assault enemy walls by building earthen ramps (agger) or simply scaling the walls, as in the early siege of theSamnite city of Silvium (306 BC). Soldiers working at the ramps were protected by shelters calledvineae, that were arranged to form a long corridor. Convex wicker shields were used to form a screen (plutei or plute in English)[5] to protect the front of the corridor during construction of the ramp.[6] AnotherRoman siege engine sometimes used resembled the Greek ditch-filling tortoise of Diades, this galley (unlike the ram-tortoise of Hegetor the Byzantium) called amusculus ("muscle") was simply used as cover for sappers to engineer an offensive ditch or earthworks. Battering rams were also widespread. TheRoman Legions first used siege towersc. 200 BC; in the first century BC,Julius Caesar accomplished a siege atUxellodunum inGaul using a ten-story siege tower.[6] Romans were nearly always successful in besieging a city or fort, due to their persistence, the strength of their forces, their tactics, and their siege engines.[6]
The first documented occurrence of ancient siege engine pieces in Europe was thegastraphetes ("belly-bow"), a kind of large crossbow. 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. Latertorsion siege engines appeared, based on sinew springs. Theonager was the main Roman invention in the field.
The earliest documented occurrence of ancient siege-artillery pieces in China was the levered principled traction catapult and an 8 ft (2.4 m) high siege crossbow from theMozi (Mo Jing), a Mohist text written at about the 4th – 3rd century BC by followers of Mozi who founded theMohist school of thought during the lateSpring and Autumn period and the earlyWarring States period. Much of what we now know of the siege technology of the time comes from Books 14 and 15 (Chapters 52 to 71) on Siege Warfare from the Mo Jing. Recorded and preserved on bamboo strips, much of the text is now extremely corrupted. However, despite the heavy fragmentation, Mohist diligence and attention to details which set Mo Jing apart from other works ensured that the highly descriptive details of the workings of mechanical devices like Cloud Ladders, Rotating Arcuballistas and Levered Catapults, records of siege techniques and usage of siege weaponry can still be found today.[7]
Indian, Sri Lankan, Chinese and Southeast Asian kingdoms and empires usedwar elephants as battering rams.
Medieval designs include a large number ofcatapults such as themangonel,onager, theballista, the tractiontrebuchet (first designed in China in the 3rd century BC and brought over to Europe in the 4th century AD), and the counterweight trebuchet (first described byMardi bin Ali al-Tarsusi in the 12th century, though of unknown origin). These machines used mechanical energy to fling large projectiles to batter down stone walls. Also used were the battering ram and thesiege tower, a wooden tower on wheels that allowed attackers to climb up and over castle walls, while protected somewhat from enemy arrows.
A typical military confrontation in medieval times was for one side to lay siege to an opponent'scastle. When properly defended, they had the choice whether to assault the castle directly or to starve the people out by blocking food deliveries, or to employ war machines specifically designed to destroy or circumvent castle defenses. Defending soldiers also used trebuchets and catapults as a defensive advantage.
Other tactics includedsetting 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 ofmining, whereby tunnels were dug under the walls to weaken the foundations and destroy them. A third tactic was the catapulting of diseased animals or human corpses over the walls in order to promote disease which would force the defenders to surrender, an early form ofbiological warfare.
With the advent ofgunpowder,firearms such as thearquebus andcannon—eventually thepetard,mortar andartillery—were developed. These weapons proved so effective thatfortifications, such ascity walls, had to be low and thick, as exemplified by the designs ofVauban.
The development of specialized siege artillery, as distinct fromfield artillery, culminated duringWorld War I andWorld War II. During the First World War, huge siege guns such asBig Bertha were designed to see use against the modern fortresses of the day. The apex of siege artillery was reached with the GermanSchwerer Gustav gun, a huge 80 cm (31 in) caliberrailway gun, built during early World War II. Schwerer Gustav was initially intended to be used for breaching the FrenchMaginot Line of fortifications, but was not finished in time and (as a sign of the times) the Maginot Line was circumvented by rapid mechanized forces instead of breached in a head-on assault. The long time it took to deploy and move the modern siege guns made them vulnerable to air attack and it also made them unsuited to the rapidtroop movements of modern warfare.
