I think boiled water with honey in it would be used in place of oil . both readily available and the sugar in the honey would maintain the heat in the water during the fall

Hey can you do some indian siege videos like the 2 sieges of bharatpur?

@@doctoronishispsychosislab1474 waste honey? Nope! Every bit of food is necessary during a siege!!!

@@SafavidAfsharid3197 even better would be Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj's siege where he used the komodo lizard dragons to scale the walls lol.

@Sandrhoman History i would love if you cover 16th and 17th century warfare in other parts of world.

I'm in a siege and I'm digging a hole, diggy diggy hole, diggy diggy hole!

There's a bit of mining in Alatriste (siege of Breda) and Ironclad (siege of Rochester Castle by King John).

I was watching a (your I later realised) video about the siege of Vienna and it was just tunneling back and forth. Though that is a bit later then the timeframe in this video.

Well, it's not like it can't be made interesting. As the defenders often dug counter-mines. Cue close quarters tunnel warfare

@@SandRhomanHistory the mining scenes in alatriste were horrifying imagine fighting in those cramped dark conditions ._.

Same, why build a wall and then not use it.

And then abandoning their shield wall as soon as the enemy gets into reach of the sword to pair off into one on one duels.

Like in Game of Thrones, they definitely didn't have any clue concerning military tactics & strategy, in this regard, one of the worst series. They'd probably done anything wrong they could have done wrong e.g. "the long night", sending in all the cavalry first without reconnaissance, placing the catapult in front of the infantry, and as you already mentioned why to use walls if you can place your troops in front of it 🙈🙄 Didn't even considered air support 🐲 Movie makers, journalists, and even some politicians, don't have a single clue about military tactics and technology, but making movies, writing articles about military technology, or making decision in security councils 🤔🙄

True, when they the defending army array outside initially however it is worth noting sallying out to fight the attackers was pretty common in sieges just to keep the morale of the defenders up, though that would have been 1 or 2 groups of soldiers likely not the entire defending force

"Troy" (2004 movie).... xD They have "impenetrable walls", but half the army is outside the ramparts waiting for close combat... /huge facepalm

Fellow Bannerlord player! Hurrah

That's why I only assault after breaching walls.

​@@chengkuoklee5734 i...how? untill late game its very difficult to breach quick enough

In Rome: Total War (the first and best one from 2004) siege towers are incredible due to the stupidity of the A.I. because it waits until the last possible moment to switch out archers for infantry and so your own soldiers pour out on to the enemy's wall to chop up all the archers. An exploit I abused unashamedly.

@@mondaysinsanity8193 I take my own sweet time. I have tons of food for pro-long campaign. My enemy garisson are starved out. Without battlements,2 breached holes, and low morale, they can't stand a chance against my elite troops. I don't know but I found concentrating on 2 breached sites is way way better than attack from 3 sides.

Trying to take a castle that has the Knights Hospitaller keeping it safe is just not worth it, it will never be worth the sheer amount you will have to spend to take it, assuming you even have enough bodies, materials, and time, which you probably don't.

@@Cyrus_T_LaserpunchTimur did it quite easily lol

A good historian always cites its sources.

I'm still trying to figure out what that date is actually referenced to. What is TA? Third Age?

​@@mikearmstrong8483yeah

@@mikearmstrong8483yes

​@@mikearmstrong8483yes, anytime you see dates referenced in Middle Earth like that it's FA, SA, and TA for First, Second, and Third Age respectively.

Perhaps not, remember these are the family tents they mainly live in. They still likely had a lot more tents but a lot of depictions have their families and others just in the same general region rather than at the siege. They still likely had far better conditions over all since home would be a little less than a day or so away, so they could lay siege in rotations though obviously then there's the fear concerning supply chains and the question if they can maintain a long seige since the idea of a releif army would be far more threatening, and until later for the Mongols their actual supply base would be rather limited.

You mean a yurt, which is more of a family dwelling.

Battle tents!

@@jonisalmela2399 Yep Genghis Khan , when besieging Chinese cities would set up his encampment with white tents after a specified length of time he would order the colour of the tents changed to black . This was a form of psyops, the white tents meant that the defenders would recieve quarter the black ones meant that they were all doomed (it was pretty effective apparently)

@@codyraugh6599 after the siege of Vienna (1st one 1529) the people told about the tents, also many tents were taken as price, another side this would be the new age

That's also why even Germans, Arabs, Iranians, and Turks, all enemies of the Roman's, idolized and copied Roman's even centuries after their fall and why well into the modern age Europeans worshiped the Roman's. The Roman's could wage war at a skill level and scale that was unimaginable to most of humanity for centuries if not millennia later and their logistics were key to all of this

@@arthas640 Agreed. Only the Ancient Chinese dynasties and some Indian rulers are comparable, and they had more abundant resources and manpower to manage...

@@israeltovar3513 that's what always amazes me about the Greeks and Roman's. Of you look at similarly influential empires like various Indian cultures, the Chinese, Iranians, and Egyptians and you'll find super fertile rivers often with massive deltas that were among the most fertile growing regions on earth plus they usually had valuable mines nearby. The greeks though had very poor fields and little in terms of mineral deposits and the Roman's mainly just had the Po valley which isn't particularly valuable and they had to conquer it from other Italian tribes. Despite also having populations that pale in comparison to single _enthic groups_ in china and india the greeks and lster Roman's were able to build empires, develope ideas, and pioneer technologies that were the equal of their eastern contemporaries which is kind of mind boggling. I mean there were greeks building computers and steam engines over 1000 years before the industrial revolution and Roman's were building sewer, water, and road networks that didnt really get eclipsed until the 18th or 19th centuries and were comfortable to those built in China and india despite having populations and resource pools a fraction the size.

The byzantine mentality of waging war with no expense spared really bit them hard when fighting the turks post mazinkert.

@@arthas640 the Song, Tang, and Han Dynasty is the only thing I can imagine that had outpaced the West in terms of technology and civilization to the point that they influenced the rest of Asia for centuries to come. Set aside Persian and the other Indian, Egyptian, and Phoenician civilizations.

Back in medieval times, armies were fairly small and the barrier to entry was high. Yes, any bloke could wield a spear but it took decades before only the strongest men could master the longbow. Armies in medieval times valued their numbers more than armies nowadays because better than average soldiers weren't readily available.

@@moreplease998 Jup.I believe it was more of a pretty solid, dangerous and rough game of push-and-shove to show which side is boss. A) there is an old swiss engraving called "the bad war", showing two pike formations so tightly jammed up that it is down to hand-to-hand melee. It looks pretty much what we are used to from the movies, but the title implies, this was a nightmare everyone tried their best to avoid. B) I once attended a reenactment, featuring lots of polearms. So, in that setting, personal safety was rated a little higher than in the average Hollywood Blockbuster, but the interesting part happened, when we were given an hour of "no script, just do your best" after the rehearsal of the staged show battle: Yes, lines did clash, but ususally that meant they were advancing just into reach of their polearms, and then were mostly busy clearing the space in front of them from enemy weapons, and a fascinating group psychology developed, were the side that was more confident would gain momentum, and the engagement was decided once one side managed to push the other in a situation from which they couldn´t manoever without risking to break ranks. If that happened, it was overin seconds, and the attackers lost all motivation to pursue, as that was fantastically dangerous (both in real life and in-story). It´s still bloody exhausting and plenty stressful, and with some serious injuries occurring here and there due to actually sharp weapons and earnest blows, I can see this would make for a nice bit of PTSD, although the rate of casualties would probably be a lot lower than in a modern firefight. I came to think that watching special police break up a protest is probably the closest thing today to a medieval infantry battle.

@@paavobergmann4920 good info. Thanks for a cool read

Richard the Lionheart, not Richard the Lionhearth. (probably just a typo)

To top it off, they often depicted the army to have good discipline and form their ranks in orderly fashion. That very rarely happens during medieval age as army mostly consisted of mercenaries, soldiers from annexed regions, and conscripted villagers. They will desert the moment they see danger and they wasn't trained to be part of main army. So parts of why people like Genghis Khan, Jan Ziska, and Saladin were successful in their campaigns was because they fought as a disciplined army rather than ragtags of mercenaries and peasants. But of course once they do fight proper army, they got stalled.

Fantasy is not necessary "Medieval".

This annoys me. Armies in virtually every other part of the world were routinely much larger than 10k, Medieval era or not. Historians or commenters always cite the British, French, Italian, German, etc armies, which were significantly smaller than......well, as I said, every other region of the world. I mean the Incas and Aztecs would summon armies over 100k; many battles in the Sengoku era had 50-100k per side; Eastern European armies fighting the Mongols (ie Georgians, Kiev, Cumans, etc) would be 50k or more; and don't even get me started on Chinese, Korean, or Indian battle size.

@@realstarfarts Well, historians from the cultures you mentioned routinely mention the battles their culture participated in.

I think the Trojan horse is one example of how laying a successful siege required a lot of creative thinking with small groups of saboteurs kept engaging in wars of attrition with each other with very few large attacks usually months apart. Those too would be when absolutely necessary to push an advantage or when facing a charge out and a counter attack by a relieving Force. From what I understand medieval commanders were especially risk averse and cautious because one bad maneuver cold cost them their entire army because it was almost always in close tight lines. I especially learnt of the risk aversion from watching a historical reenactment video on the crusades between Salahudin Ayubbi and King George the lionheart. Both leaders failed to capitalize on hude advantages repeatedly because they were so cautious and had to get their numerous generals and commanders agree with a course of action. Generally sieges were a lot of maneuvering with very few kinetic engagements.

@@realstarfarts I think the Afghan and Ukraine wars show that the biggest baddest army doesn't always win.

Because it was?

Are you aware of the 536ad comet ☄️?

👁️Weak m*n stone palisade can't endure the SPECTACULAR URUK BOULDERS 👁️

"You've heard of circumvellation... now... I give you contravellation !" *crowd gasps*

@@Stevie-J what if we put a wall inside a wall

Mark Antony: "WRITE THAT DOWN, WRITE IT DOWN!"

I don't know why people think that bicircumvallation is an invention of Caesar at Alesia. Other Romans had been doing it for centuries. Others were doing it even before the Romans too. The only real "innovation" of the late republic in this regard is the speed at which such field fortifications were built, making them ever more ubiquitous (see Dyrrachium or Philippi for famous examples).

Gaius, this is the seventh battle in a row that you want to build a wall.

lol

Epic comment 😂

MLB confirmed

Or how having a handful of Elite Mangudai garrisoned in a castle for sorties made them siege-weapon-proof.

WOLOLO!

A media based entirely on the duration of a siege would be fascinating and more historically minded. But that's more of a niche theme and styling, whereas these big dramatic events are tailored to the majority audience. There's nothing wrong with both from a narrative perspective, and I'd love more of the former, but it'd probably take a particular effort and a particular audience to be a successful project.

Trebuchets indeed, and so many more things...

It all depends on the size of the trebuchet. The truly monstrous machines built with counterweights could manage 300 metres but they were hellishly expensive and time-consuming to construct and had a very slow rate of fire. The normal size had a range of about fifty metres throwing a 200 pound weight. It's normal however with writers not to make the distinction between machine sizes so the misconception of power occurs. It's like confusing a 155mm howitzer with an 81mm mortar because they're both labelled 'artillery'. As for destructive power, against fortress walls their power is often exaggerated; as this video points out it could take weeks of bombardment to reduce a fortified wall. Against wooden roofs, not so much. Trebuchets could throw much heavier weights than catapults and because their shots came down steeply, they had considerably more kinetic energy. There is however a tendency to treat them like artillery shells. Shells explode and cut men down with shrapnel, and somehow in films the solid shot of catapults and trebuchets has a similar effect. I assume though that's because having men drop down dead intact is less gory than showing them having their limbs torn off or their insides ripped out by the passage of a solid shot.

@@DomWeasel "The normal size had a range of about fifty metres" You are quite obviously seriously mistaken. A range of 50 meters is utterly ridiculous : servants would be at distance of being shot by bolts and arrows very easily, bolts and arrows which can go up to 200m. Hell, you could even throw medium rocks at them, at that distance. Thus, minimal range of a correct trebuchet is minum 200m, up to 450 meters. Quite easy to research and verify...

@@DomWeasel Have you seen what throwing or dropping a rock does to the rock? The rock actually fragments, and fragments are shrapnel!

@@RheaMainz On what planet do you live?? Without velocity from an actual explosion, what you dare to call "shrapnel" doesnt do ANY damage at all... The rock fragments where it lands and the fragments are not going anywhere : it's neither a meteorite nor a landmine... Shrapnel is metal in semi-fusion going at high velocity and capable of piercing through you like you were a piece of cardboard...

I mean, it does make sense. Stonework is slow and laborious, and therefore expensive. A wooden castle will still provide much of the benefits of a stone one, just with the downside of being easier to break down should an army attack.

Actually castles in Western Europe were mostly made of stone. There were some made of wood, but that was mostly geographical thing. Castles in Saxon England, or in the most Rus lands (with the exception of Galich and Pskov) were wooden. But if you go to say Switzerland or Germany fortified houses were made of stone since forever. There are examples of stone castles from 8. or 9. century, making them older than all wooden castles!

@@CharlesOffdensen Now, is that because wooden castles were actually uncommon? Or is that simply supposition, based on the absence of evidence of wooden castles? Wood castles, by their nature, do not survive well in the long term. Much less centuries.

@@Bluecho4 There is plenty of evidence of wooden castles. So we can't speak of lack of evidence.

highly unlikely that anyone could keep it secret that they had made a castle out of wood, or that the wood would require so few repairs that no one from the area would be aware. what is MUCH more likely is that they couldn't conduct proper geological surveys when designing the foundations. thus a wall built on what later turned out to be bad foundations would be weaker than even the defenders realized. further a critical component is deception. where will the attack come from if the enemy is testing all walls?

Other oil from animals

@@lamlol605 you seem to not understand that using oil- especially animal oils that you cook with- would have been ridiculously expensive and in too small quantity to use as a weapon effectively in siege defense.

Noo he's saying that "oil" can be made with any fat's (I believe plant based does too but those would all be edible with longer shelf life, so I don't see you wasting In a seige) but surely anyone trying to survive would be using every last bit of fat, meat, grissle & even Bones/marrow for stew's Etc , but unless it was processed & stored right animal fat/oil can spoil fairly easy. Making it inedible, but luckily in most situations like war or siege's you will have access to a substantial amount of useable fats for fuel/ weapon oil that otherwise would just be wasted & not even consider utilizing Even, Actually the source it's coming from is actually a problem that would have to be handled immediately & unless some how conditions have because so awful & desperate that it's either this or starve to death & even Still some would refuse to eat it , especially if you start having plague or sickness spreading around, then you have really only the choice of burning The Bodies immediately as handling them & burying etc , requiring more people to be at risk & expend calories They don't have & potential risk if a religious or public service is done Etc. Even if you could find men that have the physical Ability to dig a hole that deep, its Way riskier to sanitation than burning, could contaminate water source & soil or starving animals trying to dig it back up as soon as nobody is looking ( then stray dog's are running around with decomposed femurs & arm's etc spreading that nasty ness... Hell even just substantial rain storms could dig the body back up, or at least wash away the dirt ontop of it making the hole Alot shallower &; easier for animals & whatever Else to dig it up.... Yeah burning & using "people oil" seems pretty much like the best option, or really the only option that is responsible

Haha it got me too

You'd also have nearby villages retreat into the castle to avoid being terrorized by the invading army. Which is...you know...the main reason to build a castle. They'd bring all of their food and stuff with them. This also meant since the attacker had to create and maintain a supply train, they could be raided by allies of the defender. A lot of people making these stories don't really seem to think about why people built these huge, ginormous buildings (that were more like cities, complete with gardens and wells) or why they couldn't be avoided by invaders. They seem to think "Hahaha skyscraper made of stone go boom!"

Pretty much. Still he was pretty stupid for an ancient schemer who nearly took over the world in the past but thats a whole separate thing.

That’s the point. Trolls can push the towers because they’re big

I still kind of hate how thin the walls are. They feel like they are made out of paper and make the city appear to just be weak

Archeological evidence suggests that most of the people at Masada were hostages, not defenders, and that there was in fact a fight when they got to the top. But because the Sicarii were so few in number, they were easily overwhelmed and unable to force their prisoners to commit suicide. Josephus, writing shortly after the war under the constraints of his patron Vespasian, probably changed the story to make it more appealing to Roman cultural values.

Realism and entertainment value are often at odds with each other. Hell, just the other day the new Top Gun came out and we see dogfighting, tight twists and turns. In real life, you notice a bogey 100 miles out and blast it with a radar homing missile.

@@jaymeister4850 the piolets are still drmanding the airforce put guns on their planes to this day. so they must be getting used.

@@robertharris6092 You've heard only a bit of the story. Let me help you out: The F-35A (the Air Force version) has an internal 25mm GAU-22 rotary cannon. The B and C variants (Navy) can only carry a gun on a removable external pod. Reason for the configuration change is weight saving; a carrier plane is heavier than a non-carrier variant and the B version (the VTOL version) has to be kept as light as possible. Most missions flown with the Naval planes (B and C variants) are without a gun, because the external gun undermines the stealth features of the plane. As to why the A variants have a gun and B and C variants have an option for a gun: 1. To eliminate the risk of having a minimum distance to engage for their planes. Missiles don't work over extremely short ranges, guns do. 2. The F-35 will have to perform Close Air Support (CAS) on enemy ground troops and for that, you need a gun. 3. The F-35 is expected to go into enemy controlled airspace. It is entirely possible that a depleted aircraft is damaged and then a gun offers at least a very low level of defense. 4. The Air Force learned some very harsh lessons when they removed the guns from the F4 Phantoms in Vietnam and they are unlikely to repeat their mistakes. As far as to my dogfighting point goes, dogfighting has been replaced by Beyond Visual Range (BVR) combat that relies heavily on avionics and low radar observability.

@@jaymeister4850 damnnnnnnn 😲😊👍

@@Kruppt808 *blushes* Yeah I geel out heavily

I heard they tried the food in England and immediately sailed away

Absolutely. We have our star fortress 2.0 video planned for some time but we feel like we already said most of what we would say about Vauban in other videos. The thing with Vauban is that he did not invent as much as people think. Most of what he wrote about was already used. He did make an art of besieging fortresses though, so I'm sure we'll cover him at some point. Same for the 18th century. But generally speaking, branching out takes us lots of time because we need to buy new artwork and create a whole new set of characters. We're still operating with a relatively small budget compared to the big guys like K&G, armchair historian etc. These channels have lots of writers and animators as well. If we want to branch out, we need to think about it twice because it comes with a substantial risk due to the fact that we only release two videos a month. If one or even both of these videos don’t get an average amount of views, we could be in trouble. Especially, since advertisers look at your last few videos when deciding if they work with you and how much their willing to pay.

@@SandRhomanHistory Have you done anything on early modern warfare in the Americas? Sieges and battles at Havana, Porto Bello, Jamaica, Quebec, between the French, English, Dutch and Spanish from 1492 to 1713?

@@SandRhomanHistory fascinating look into the behind the scenes business consideraions. have you considered supplementing these big videos with some short non/low animated videos about smaller topics? Might spread the risk abit? but i have no idea what im talking about tbh lol

@@internetenjoyer1044 yeah, we thought about that too. Maybe we‘ll do it at some point. but generally speaking shorter video make less money and we always struggle to keep our texts short because, well… there is always so much to cover.

@@picklerick8785 we‘ve not done anything related to the americas as of yet but we‘d like to do that at some point.

Empire's AI is pretty braindead, even when the AI has enough artillery to obliterate your fort, the AI chooses to throw it's army at that the first breach they make

The Turks at The siege of Malta would be proud of that kind of tactic

in Rome Total War I always used Leavy Pikemen at the bottlenecks, always decimated their entire army

The advantage of oil/fat is that you can get it hotter I think. Like you van get water to 100 degrees, but oil only boils at around 300 degrees, which would be much more painful for a soldier, especially if they only get hit by a small splash

@@hanneswiggenhorn2023 Certainly, but you can also do that with sand or dirt.

dont forget the invent torches

Spanish villagers with supremacy and sappers be like:

No, until winter, the campaigns were carried on only in the summer

I mean it makes sense, ideally you get the city taken without losing any men, win win

Yup a city ounce declared they had food for 10 years. The romans yelled back so we wait for 11 years. so the city did surrender @ ounce

@@ronald3148there was once a siege where the defenders flung pigs over the walls at the invaders because they literally had more than enough food and so the invaders gave up

@@ronald3148 To be fair to those defenders; if anyone could keep a siege going for 11 years, and be stubborn enough to actually do it, it was the Romans.

it would at least be both cheaper and more available than oil. I can imagine scalding water would be a great deterrence to attackers

I think Stones do the job Just as good.

@@vinz4066 liquid can easily penetrate armor, and then the victim has boiling liquid next to his skin and can’t get relief until he gets his armor off. Josephus describes the agony of Roman soldiers doused with boiling oil, and it sounds very nasty.

@@Stevie-J You mean... like... bolts and arrows? Oh wait... =D

For many sieges, water was too valuable to be used as a weapon. Urine on the other hand... Pouring a cauldron of boiling piss on an attacking force was a great way to make them retreat. Sand however was the norm. Dropping hot sand would work its way into armour and clothing and burn skin but it would also create a cloud of dust which would blind attackers. It's painful enough getting sand in your eye; imagine if it was almost red-hot.

Gotta stop the baddies from reaching the precious walls lol

@@bignumbers like imagining 1450s gunners not firing their guns because of how cool they were styled

Defenders sallying out to engage in the field was a very common and valid strategy for a host of reasons.

Ancient armies such as the Greeks frequently fought in front of the walls. There's several advantages to this. 1. You can't be flanked. 2. Your archers are safe atop the walls to rain arrows down on the enemy. 3. If the battle goes badly, you can easily retreat behind the walls.

@@gamesguy archers had the risk of friendly fire, a battle would not go south if there was no battle, but it does seem sorta useful under some situations to prevent siege

Use it once, but it would definitely give them something visceral to remember over and over again

This type of things were done by actual humans, to be fair. Shock&awe + biological warfare before its time. Spread foulness, disease AND terror. We have nothing to learn from literary creatures concerning violence and cruelty. They are based on us....

they do definitely rely on fear in the book they do other things as well like making a fire burn round the city etc

as distasteful it is to a modern populace, terror does work well in war. The easiest siege you'll ever do is one where you can just scare the defenders into surrender.

The orcs also have trolls to push their towers forward.

@@voodoodummie Mongols also used biological warfare. In cause a city didnt surrender and they managed to enter it then damn that's a bad luck day, week, month, year, years or the quickest route just death.

Also, just good old boiling water.

Also the attacking army often outnumbered the defending one massively, so they would suck up much more food than the surrounding land could offer

@@hanneswiggenhorn2023 3 to 1 usually if successful

boiling water will evaporate, boiling oil will not. boiling water quickly loses heat, boiling oil does not.

​@@user-hr849gfj7udj7hdh Oil was expensive and when its medieval settings, infections from water burnt skin will be deadly.

Yes, but you can’t set wooden siege engines on fire with water, but you can with oil, because it’s highly flammable. Also, you don’t need to pour boiling water onto soldiers, it’s just too much work to fill a big bucket of water, boil it, carry it onto the walls, and finally drop it before it cools down. You can just simply throw rocks and it would have the same effect, you know. Lol.

Stirling Castle had 30 defenders in 1303.

Curtain walls fall like a curtain from tower to tower, unless they are breached slowly from the top. A narrow passage like an open gate is held in front, not behind unless you hold it with artillery.

@@2adamast well, holding it in front on the other hand will put you at a disadvantage, because it allows your attackers to make use of their numerical advantage and negates most advantages a castle brings you. Can you elaborate why you would do this?

@@hanneswiggenhorn2023 I believe we lost/forget most secondary structures to castle defense set before the walls. Those are documented in star forts (with infantry position present in front of the wall) and absent in historical or new medieval castles. The whole space in front of the wall must be a choke ground and you get support by the towers. Standing behind the breach there is nothing in your flanks or back.

Edit: "þar skal ok fylgja bik ok brennusteinn, eða elligar veld tjara."

@@Stevie-J Konungs skuggsjá is a conversation between son and father on what to do an how to behave etc. It's one of the most reliable sources we have on what they actually did in the period since it's aimed at the King himself.

Boomerang rock xd

From my understanding, the King on Netflix has a very accurate - albeit condensed - siege scene.

Masada 1981 I think the best

I think its called protein sickness, and this is due to the lack of fat, rabbits are very very low in fat or maybe no fat at all so rabbit meat is most likely used as a sort of additional piece of meat through into a cooking pot along with a few other things to be fed to teh soldiers.

It way harder then you think + there are lots of them. And it not like they dont try

They did. A lot and often. In general, ladders were not used that often unless you had a good idea that the defenders' morale was low or that you'd have a good opening because their numbers were stretched thin. Or if you also had a breach going on where the ladders would supplement an assault. They were used in specific situations, either en masse to create a demoralizing effect to the already demoralized defenders or very locally to try to exploit weaknesses while other diversions happened. The reason for that is very obvious: as you mentioned, ladders are not that efficient to climb a wall. You're climbing solo, while armoured, facing an opponent that is looking down at you. It's an extremely exposed position. They can also push back the ladder, even if your friends are trying to keep it pinned to the wall by holding it down at the bottom.

its leverage once a ladder is propped it easy to push of a wall unti 10 men 1000 pounds are on it. then it become dangerous. helmets plus weight hard to stop

The attackers were not stupid. They had large ladders, placed them at 60-45 degree angles to the wall and secured them underneath with ropes or chains (there are some pictures showing this). Try pushing a 100kg ladder with three 80kg soldiers on it, with the bottom end about 3 to 4 meters from the wall. And multiple bowmen shooting at you.

@@TrueIQ21 Defensively, the advantage is to the defenders no matter how you spin it, unless they're effectively suppressed to the point where it's a formality to scale. At that point, the defenders would have likely surrendered a while ago, though. While all you said is true and there would have been some measure of suppressing fire (along with artillery) to help the men-at-arms make their approach to the wall, the archers would have largely stopped firing in the direction of the ladders as soon as the men were on it, for obvious reasons. It's not that easy, from 50m or more, to snipe defenders hiding behind crenelations, in the middle of a melee. It's also highly ineffective. Archers, if used at that point, would have likely focused on trying to hit other defenders who were on the periphery, to prevent them from raining arrows and stones from the sides.

you remember it huh, that book just one page with a few words and sun tzu think its done, not even explain it to the reader and make an example lol

that says nothing about Medieval strategy as a whole though, I mean if you think Medieval wars in europe its mostly sieges. That's what the Western Way of Warfare is largely known for.

Not necessarily. A siege is a military operation designed to capture a castle/city/fortress. You can try to capture it by starvation, storm, treachery, or attrition, but those are all tactics to successfully complete the siege.

In sieges, besiegers storms the city until it fell. In blockades, blockaders try to starve defenders. Sieges are far more common than Blockades in history.

There are actually a few cases or sieges lasting years or even decades because the besieged were able resupply by sea

@@Asterix958 no sieges are just laying a castle under siege most castles are citys were taken by starvation

@@shadowlord1418 Your saying somewhat true. In sieges, besiegers storm cities or castles (castles can suffer starvation just like cities) periodically. If these offensives become unsuccessful, siege prolong and starvation become factor for surrender. Guy I replied claim that Besiegers don't attack castles or cities which is totally false. Capitulating due to starvation is probably least common surrender of castles. Most common reason for surrender is that defenders don't expect or trust relief army to come and save them from besiegers, thus, they surrender castle in exchange of leaving castle with their familly and money. Second common way of city fall is repeated besieger assaults as I mentioned above. Surrendering due ro starvation is very rare in siege history comparing to direct capitulation and capturing by assault.

In age of empires 3 you can load 25 heavy cavalry onto one canoe!

AOE has a tactic where you build a defensive watchtower right up near the enemie's base. Turns out, that is realistic. It shows how real life is alot more of "whatever works" than not.

@@zubbworks that is true, castle rushing was actually what they did IRL more or less

It's hilarious seeing towers crammed with men being wheeled forward because their added weight would make an already heavy tower virtually impossible to move by hand. LotR gets the excuse that they're being pushed by trolls.

Even if medieval people were smaller men should still easily be 20 men a tone. So if a siege tower carried about 60 men it wouldve had 3 tones of live power. I imagine the structure itself was tones too. Through it must be better to have soldiers mainly on the top so it's not tones heavier and when target is reached the soldiers on the ground would go up in the camp and would flood some part of the wall with soldiers that otherwise be on the ground.

Yep, just imagine your pushing a tower forward and suddenly a wheel gets stuck in a hole some defender dug the night before under cover of darkness. Over it goes and hundreds of men + thousands of hours of labor just became another obstacle to keep you from the walls.

In cases like that you might just flatten the ground. This isn't medieval but at Mesina the Romans just built an entire fucking ramp all the way up to the fortress and then rolled siege towers up it before storming the walls. Medieval people hadn't forgotten how to do earthworks so while they might not quite do something on that scale they would know to like flatten the ground before rolling over it, they'd also be filling in moats, which is why so many of them are empty because just a ditch is a decent bit of defense.

Trenches are overrated as we saw in WW1. They were totally useless. Just look at how many ppl died then. ;) I agree, if you want to "deliver" troops to the walls, you don't let them walk over a plain field to be shot to shit. But that's not artistic enough and produces way too few casualties for the viewer.

@@etuanno the main casualties during medieval age up to Napoleon age wasn't during warfare, but rather diseases and plagues. Both offensive and defensive, face the same situation, however the offensive usually face more problems since they need logistics and manpowers (3-1) to take down defencers

@@etuanno In what way are trenches useless? What a mind boggling thing to say,

@@argon2423 the wonky face implies that it’s a joke dude

@@argon2423 If you would've read my full comment, you'd understand I was joking.

The use of "fire" when referring to missile weapons that aren't using, you know, fire, is also a common inaccuracy. People using bows should say "loose."

Yeah, though for older TW games(Rome 1, for example), they also had the missile firing on top, so if you could destroy the towers with artillery, you could use the siege towers to clear the walls of defenders before attacking.

@@ocadioan When you built the great towers, their ballastae could sweep whole sections of wall clean. It was hilarious watching four or five men at a time being shot from the wall top. Not so funny when you were on the receiving end.

@@Bezosisgod if your goal is to light it on fire there really isnt a need to biol it first i think - and for the coxt of lets say 100l of lampoil (wich is probably what they used) you can get a hell of a lot of water and having 96 degrees celcius water thrown on you i think is a pretty bad experience - and that for a FFRACKTION of the cost, and if you want to attack a seige engine (lets sy a battering ram) you could use oil in a molotov coctail like thing ( a earthen jar with some burning clothe on the outside thrown at the machine, break open and take on fire from the burning cloth - so suddenly you use like 1-2 litres of oil instead of 80 litres to achive pretty much thew same effect

Boiling oil is much hotter than boiling water, and it sticks, is slippery, etc.

@@toboratonyes it is BUT the cost is so many times higher -letys say you need to pour two or three couldrons of water to reach the same effect it is still WAY cheaper - and aftre a persone is drenched in boiling to near boiling hot water the dont want to stick around any more at the wall - and they most likley will need to be out of cambat and a fairly large amount of them will die or be removed from combat due to the conditions in the besigers camps and no healthcare - cost - benefirt factors is a thing and people inside the keep might have better use for that lamp oil later on...

Heated sand was also popular since it got EVERYWHERE in the attackers' armor and clothes and stayed there.

Boiling water probably isn't very effective. It's not very hot, will cool down really quickly when falling down and spread out so thin that it barely does anything

Tbh in most cases stones from a hight of 10-15 meters would deal quite some harm to an armoured soldier, in most cases more then arrows, but still got outclassed by bolts from crossbows. But until crossbows were widely available and used most heavily armoured troops got taken out by blunt force trauma, as it didn’t need to penetrate to cause injury to the person it hit.

​@@tehnosan5769 yeah still aint feeling good getting hit by 150+ pound warbows no matter how much armor you have

That's not even a historical inaccuracy that's just some very basic knowledge everyone should have.

Party as in "Chug bloody Maries all night" or party as in "Group of people"

@@TDOPB Definitely a lot of drinking, dancing women, and non-combat related entertainment of that nature, even plays. The men defending the castle didn't have as much fun. A good example of a siege that was more intense would be Osaka, which was around 24 years later in 1614. If by intense, I mean the attacking army actually putting in serious effort and care into what they were doing.

Not the most historically inaccurate thing, some sieges went for months/years and small cities grew up around the siege camp, with female company being a highly priced commodity among a group of thousands of lonely young men.

You could even heat the waste up to near boiling and it would have a similar effect to boiling oil. It might not be flammable and not as hot, but being doused with boiling water would at the very least incapacitate the victims. And given that they can't quickly take off their soggy gambesons (or if they do they'd be way too vulnerable to projectiles) means the hot liquid will stay for quite a while

Yeesh, not invisible ladders, grappling guns! Don't you know anything?

in most total war games you had to build siege ladders separately, you wouldn't know that if you only play warhammer tho

apparently the japanese were also chads and scaled massive fortification walls by hand

not from their ass and then assemble it?

As med 2 player, can't relate

HERE COMES BESSIE!

@@HrHaakonwood needed

Fuck I love stronghold

Good read, much thanks for this.

Scaling a breach was deadly for anyone attempting it, in the British Army such units assigned to this duty were called "The Forlorn Hope"

@@coinneachreid8971 The 'Forlorn Hope' from the Dutch 'verloren hoop' were the vanguard of assault force; not the entire force. Their job was to spring the traps waiting for them and clear the way for the rest of the attackers and 50% casualties was the norm for them.

@@DomWeasel And instant promotion for the officer in command if he survived (which they didnt often)

20-30 casualties vs 2,000 casualties Sometimes patience really is a virtue

i think boiling oil was often in the middle east. There was even an oil lake in armenia.

It was occasionally used in the UK too. Especially if aiming for wooden buildings as fire will always do more damage than hailing single rocks.

Well Greek Fire was only known to Byzantium and it was a closely guarded secret, so much that we don't actually know for sure how to make it today. We can easily make something like it but we have no surviving recipes so we don't actually know how it was made.

@@hedgehog3180 actually it was used further away. Edward I famously used it. Although he probably did not know it, just paid for someone who did to be a part of his war retinue.

@@hedgehog3180 Greek fire gets mentioned by different authors at different times that it seems to be synonymous with a burning pitch in addition to the actual substance that was Greek fire. Burning pitch seems to have been used in various areas including England and France.

before the battle of guagamela Persian army slept outside the camp because they afread of night attack by the Macedonian

In mount and blade if you try a siege instead of assault, a doomstack of 15 enemy lords will appear. If you deal with that, they just respawn with full army and come back for round 2.

​@@AmraithNRIt's annoying as hell, especially if you need siege towers that makes you wait until 3-4 days and let the enemy Lords to assist the castle.

Fanaticism made us build fort walls well after the discovery of powder, that french dude made sick star shaped fortifications whose ramp-shaped walls would pretty much make cannon balls bounce off. I guess it was a sick status symbol back then. Besides obviously that raidings were common, you'd want to have a structure between you and the enemy 😂.