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Forum:	School Projects
Topic:	attacking a castle

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T O P I C R E V I E W
james I need help on different ways of attacking a castle (with a few pictures). I have got most of the obvious types e.g Archers etc. but I still need a couple more ways.(I need this information by 2nd june.)Thanks.
Philip Davis Attacking a castle could be difficult and many assaults would have used several techniques, possible at the same time.
However the main methods would be.
1. Psychological/Diplomatic. If you can get the defender to give without a fight its a very good thing. You might do this by frightening the defenders by suggesting if they don't surrender at once terrible things will happen or that if they do surrender then they go off free.
2.Storming the walls. Basically just charging the walls with ladders and climbing up the ladders. This requires a lot of very brave troops but if the defenders are short on man power and can't knock all of the ladders away it is a very quick and relatively cheap method. A more expensive version of this that offer more protection to the attackers would be to build a movable tower, called a belfry (because it looked like a church tower) with the ladders inside. Smaller war machines (such as ballista, a large crossbow) might be used to keep the defenders off the wall walk while the ladders where put up
3. Knocking the walls down.
This is done in three main ways;
a) Picking at the walls. Using men with pick axes and such like to remove the stone at the bottom of the wall. Even with a wooden shield or roof over them this was pretty dangerous.
b) Stone throwing machines to bash the walls down - and later gun powder artillery to do the same thing. You probably know of these since they are the thing always mentioned.(see site below)
c) Undermining, digging a tunnel under the walls, to weaken the walls and bring them down. This required specialist miners and took time but was very successful in many sieges.
4. Fire.
Many early castle (and a few later ones) where made of wood (much like the army forts in western movies), so fire was a good tool. Burning a wooden castle isn't quite as easy as it sounds since clay covered thick, damp, timbers don't actually burn that well, and medieval attackers didn't have petrol (gasoline) to help them. Even stone castle often have wooden doors and roofs so fire can be a tool
5. Starvation and disease.
If all else fail in time the defenders in a siege will run out of food, or usually before this happens start to develop diseases like dysentery. The attackers might speed this up by throwing the bodies of disease victim over the walls to splatter inside the castle. However, in practice, the attackers were usually more likely to get disease than the defender and many sieges ended with the few remaining, disease ridden, attackers crawling away.
There are some useful links in my "getting the most out of Castle Quest" post.
------------------
And as I rode by Dalton-Hall Beneath the turrets high, A maiden on the castle-wall Was singing merrily: The Outlaw by Sir Walter Scott
http://www.castlesontheweb.com/members/philipdavis/index.html
Levan Try these two links:
http://www.castlewales.com/siege.html
http://armouries.com/castattk.htm
I'm sure they're mentioned elsewhere in CastleQuest. For other information you could always try the CastleQuest Seach.
Levan
[This message has been edited by Levan (edited 06-01-2000).]

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T O P I C R E V I E W
james	I need help on different ways of attacking a castle (with a few pictures). I have got most of the obvious types e.g Archers etc. but I still need a couple more ways.(I need this information by 2nd june.)Thanks.
Philip Davis	Attacking a castle could be difficult and many assaults would have used several techniques, possible at the same time. However the main methods would be. 1. Psychological/Diplomatic. If you can get the defender to give without a fight its a very good thing. You might do this by frightening the defenders by suggesting if they don't surrender at once terrible things will happen or that if they do surrender then they go off free. 2.Storming the walls. Basically just charging the walls with ladders and climbing up the ladders. This requires a lot of very brave troops but if the defenders are short on man power and can't knock all of the ladders away it is a very quick and relatively cheap method. A more expensive version of this that offer more protection to the attackers would be to build a movable tower, called a belfry (because it looked like a church tower) with the ladders inside. Smaller war machines (such as ballista, a large crossbow) might be used to keep the defenders off the wall walk while the ladders where put up 3. Knocking the walls down. This is done in three main ways; a) Picking at the walls. Using men with pick axes and such like to remove the stone at the bottom of the wall. Even with a wooden shield or roof over them this was pretty dangerous. b) Stone throwing machines to bash the walls down - and later gun powder artillery to do the same thing. You probably know of these since they are the thing always mentioned.(see site below) c) Undermining, digging a tunnel under the walls, to weaken the walls and bring them down. This required specialist miners and took time but was very successful in many sieges. 4. Fire. Many early castle (and a few later ones) where made of wood (much like the army forts in western movies), so fire was a good tool. Burning a wooden castle isn't quite as easy as it sounds since clay covered thick, damp, timbers don't actually burn that well, and medieval attackers didn't have petrol (gasoline) to help them. Even stone castle often have wooden doors and roofs so fire can be a tool 5. Starvation and disease. If all else fail in time the defenders in a siege will run out of food, or usually before this happens start to develop diseases like dysentery. The attackers might speed this up by throwing the bodies of disease victim over the walls to splatter inside the castle. However, in practice, the attackers were usually more likely to get disease than the defender and many sieges ended with the few remaining, disease ridden, attackers crawling away. There are some useful links in my "getting the most out of Castle Quest" post. ------------------ And as I rode by Dalton-Hall Beneath the turrets high, A maiden on the castle-wall Was singing merrily: The Outlaw by Sir Walter Scott http://www.castlesontheweb.com/members/philipdavis/index.html
Levan	Try these two links: http://www.castlewales.com/siege.html http://armouries.com/castattk.htm I'm sure they're mentioned elsewhere in CastleQuest. For other information you could always try the CastleQuest Seach. Levan [This message has been edited by Levan (edited 06-01-2000).]