Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

made this a practical proposition. The provisions
ol the attackers would be rapidly depleted or
a relief army might arrive and drive them oil.
Edward Ill's siege ol Caen, which tollowed his
victory at Crecy and lasted almost a year, was very
unusual, but this was in part because the town lay
on the Channel coast, which allowed the king to
re-supply the army and bring in fresh troops.
Even so, the cost almost bankrupted the Crown.
Once the decision had been made to take the
castle by main lorce then a number of options
presented themselves. In the 11th and 12th
centuries when the majority ot castle defences
were made of timber, the simplest option was to
burn the castle down around the defenders' ears.
We see this in the Bayeux Tapestry's depiction of
the 1058 Norman siege of Dinan. Defenders could
counter this by throwing water over the defences
or by covering them in wet hides. Developments
in stone fortification reduced the risks ot fire but
they were still flammable enough to be reduced if
the besiegers got lucky.
To scale the walls of a fortress was a dangerous proposition. The simplest method
was to use scaling ladders. The Scots were firm believers in the use ot these, employing
rope ladders with metal hooks to grasp the walls, wooden rungs and fenders to keep
them away from the walls. The ladder was raised up using a long pike. Robert the
Bruce used scaling ladders to capture Perth in 1312, and tried at Berwick the same
year, although here a dog alerted the garrison to the night attack.
The belfry, or siege tower, had a long pedigree having been used by the Romans,
and indeed by the Assyrians in the seventh century BC. Siege towers were built by the
First Crusaders at Jerusalem and used to scale the walls. Edward I used a mobile
belfry against the Scots at Bothwell Castle in 1301, having it brought up in
prefabricated pieces from Glasgow on 30 carts. Other belfries seem to have been static,
serving only to give archers a view over the enemy walls so that they could fire down
into the courtyards. Such beltries were built by Louis IX's army at Mansourah to try
to protect the dyke that was being constructed to span the Nile.
If it proved impossible to go over the walls then one might choose to go under
them. Mines were sunk underneath the fortifications and then the supporting pits
CAMPAIGN AND BATTLE •*}*•
A town under siege
in the mid-13th century.
Crossbowmen try to keep
the defenders from the
walls while men both
undermine the walls
with picks and scale
them with ladders. In the
meantime the defenders
use whatever they can
to repel the assaults.
(Bridgeman Art Library)
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