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

urnt causing the wall section to collapse. This was specialist work. English miners
seem to have been regularly recruited from the Forest of Dean where there were
extensive iron mines. A total of 30 were used at Bedford in 1224 during Henry Ill's
attempt to defeat the rebel Falkes de Breaute, where they were so successful that their
leader, John of Standon, was rewarded with 12 acres of land. At King John's siege of
rebel-held Rochester in 1215 miners were used to collapse a section of the bailey wall
and then the south-east tower of the keep. Here John ordered 40 hog carcasses to be
added to the fire; the heat from these fatty masses helped to bring down the tower and
the defenders were forced to close themselves off in the further half of the keep, using
a dividing wall to keep out the attackers. The defenders of a castle might be able to
detect the miners at work, using bottles of water to mark the tremors from the
underground digging. Then counter-mines might be sunk which could either be
flooded, destroying both mines, or allow troops to enter the enemy mine, during which
fierce underground battles could ensue.
Apart from going under or over, one could go through. This could be done with
picks, the troops protected by hide-covered canopies called cats or sows, or by the
use of siege artillery. In the 11th century such perrierd, or stone-throwers, tended to be
man-powered, with a dozen or more men hauling on ropes on one end of a beam, with
a sling on the other.
Occasionally torsion engines called mangoneU were used. These were ancient
machines developed by the Greeks and Romans and used twisted rope or catgut to
produce tension which when released powered the throwing arm.
In the early 13th century there was a major development in the form of the
trebuchet, a counterweight machine. Here the men hauling on the rope were replaced
by a large bucket holding ballast. They could be huge in size. Modern reconstructions
suggest that a range of 200 yards with a projectile weighing 33 pounds was well
within their abilities. Such engines were not built in situ but sent for and delivered
in pre-packed form. Edward I built perhaps the most famous of these engines for
his siege of Stirling Castle in 1304. He named it 'Warwolf' and it was described by
contemporaries as a horrible weapon, said to be able to throw 250-pound missiles
over 600 feet. It had huge impact; the building of it was watched by ladies from a
specially constructed terrace and, just before the beast was completed, the garrison
offered its surrender. It is a comment on Edward I s character that he refused to allow
anyone to enter or leave until he had tried it out. Siege weapons were not just about
knocking down walls, however; in fact given the thickness of most castle walls this
was not their prime function. They could also launch firepots, dead animals in an
attempt to cause disease amongst the garrison or, as at Rochester during William
Rufus' reign, flies that stung the men and covered their food. At Nicaea in 1097 the