5 Misconceptions about Medieval Sieges in Movies
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- čas přidán 25. 04. 2024
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Medieval sieges have become a favorite of moviemakers and game studios. Impenetrable walls, spectacular siege engines, a good dose of hands-on fighting and destruction make for an ideal canvas for heroism and drama. As history buffs we celebrate this attention. As historians, we often shed a tear. In general, most sieges were by far not as spectacular as depicted in popular media. Historical authenticity often falls victim to drama. Over time, the emphasis on dramatic storytelling in pop culture together with the doubtful work of some historians have created several misconceptions about medieval sieges. In this video we’re going to tackle five of these misunderstandings and look at one controversial aspect as a bonus at the end.
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Chapters:
00:00-00:51 Intro
00:51-03:27 Crumbling Walls?
03:27-05:35 Easy Breaches?
05:35-06:35 Nord VPN
06:35-09:13 Living the Good Life?
09:13-10:54 Tent Cities?
10:54-13:00 Siege Towers?
13:00-15:34 Throwing Things from the Walls?
Bibliography:
In this video we heavily relied on
Rogers, C. J., Soldiers’ Lives Through History. The Middle Ages, Westport 2007.
Further reading:
Bradbury, J., The Medieval Siege, Woodbridge 1992.
DeVries, K./ Smith, R. D., Medieval Military Technology, Toronto 2012.
McGlynn, S., s. v. “Siege Warfare” in: Clifford J. Rogers (ed), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology, 2010.
Purton, P., A History of the Early Medieval Siege, C. 450-1220, Woodbridge 2009.
Purton, P., A History of the Late Medieval Siege, 1200-1500, Woodbridge 2010.
In this video we heavily relied on one of Clifford Rogers' book: Soldiers’ Lives Through History. The Middle Ages, Westport 2007. We recommend you check it out yourselves here: amzn.to/3j2kQvG
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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.
What surprised me about actual sieges was all the tunneling they did. Of course that might be a bit boring to watch in film.
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 ._.
During the siege of Malta, a single hospitaller defended one of the breaches in the wall of the fort of st. Elmo. After some hours he asked for a chair so he could sit while doing it.
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
The one that allways gets me is when the defenders face the attacker in front of the wall, with no earthworks or anything, completly negating the advantage of having fortifications.
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
This is random, but I must say I appreciate the fact you included the date for the battle of helms deep as you did the other real battles
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
"Siege towers were not meant primarily to disgorge attackers across a draw bridge, they were used by archers to sweep the battlements."
Every Bannerlord siege, I've wondered why three or four men running across an unprotected plank ten meters above the ground to attack a phalanx of men on a rampart was a good idea. Thank you for clarifying.
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.
About tents: What you said might be true for Europe, but I assume for nomadic armies, such as Turks and Mongols, tents were usual, since they would have lots of tents because they live in them even in peace time. Historians of the time describe Oghuz obas in Anatolia as big tent cities, so they probably brought some of their tents to battle :)
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
Modern movie makers tend to forget that the warriors of the medieval age, was still humans. They didn't just throw themselfs at a castle. But a good reward (As Richard the Lionhearth gave for clearing rocks from a breach) probably gave the incentive to take more daring, dangerous and/or brave risks
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.
Movies fail to depict the importance of having some monks to convert those annoying knights that want to snipe your siege.
Epic comment 😂
MLB confirmed
Or how having a handful of Elite Mangudai garrisoned in a castle for sorties made them siege-weapon-proof.
WOLOLO!
It always bugged me how the walls and towers of minas tirith fell apart like it was made by stacking empty cardboard boxes
Because it was?
Are you aware of the 536ad comet ☄️?
👁️Weak m*n stone palisade can't endure the SPECTACULAR URUK BOULDERS 👁️
I want a period drama set in Caesar’s battle of Alesia.
“Dude, I figured it out. Another wall!”.
"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.
I'd have added another point: *scale* . Movies invariably show every part of the ramparts manned by archers shoulder-to-shoulder, and 100,000s of men attacking. That might have been the case on the very largest sieges, but most (including those shown on film) were in a whole other ballpark. A few hundred men was already a very substantial garrison, and very, very few medieval armies numbered above 10,000. A more accurate depiction would involve the defenders very spread out and only focussed on where the attacker was actively pushing against. Similarly, the besiegers were never a sea of men dozens of ranks deep swarming all sides of a city simultaneously.
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.
The hidden costs of war, like the tents, is one of the reasons why the art of war was so irregular in most medieval Europe. When examining other cultures of the times, it also explains limitations and choices of tactics and strategies. Eastern Roman armies kept a measure of the old Roman art of war, which included the State providing, if not the equipment outright, at least the right equipment at reduced prices or more normalized quality. It means that Roman soldiers do used tents, since the manuals prescribed shape, size, and how many men used the tents, as with prescriptions on encampments.
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.
I think the idea of trebuchets firing stuff on fire has two reasons for movies: 1) the audience can see where the object hit 2) it's a super cool idea, even if total nonsense.
I have it on very good authority that castle defenders poured hot porridge onto their attackers. Many times, the first batch was too hot, the second batch was too cold, but the third one was just right. This was called the Goldilocks Defense.
lol
"General Kenobi."
"Commander Cody."
"The siege goes well. With our continued barrage their shields should be down in 3 months."
"But we've been here a month already."
"Yes sir, we're right on schedule."
The reality of sieges is that nearly all of them consisted almost entirely of waiting.
Waiting does not make for exciting movies.
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.
I often get the sense in movies that the range and destructive power of trebuchets were exaggerated for the epic effect.
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...
''the miners were undermining the walls'' wholesome
Something to be remembered about castles in the medieval period: while the surviving castles we have (and thus inform our popular imagination) were stone, many castles were made of _wood._ Because it was much easier to build keeps, towers, and walls out of wood. These would then be plastered and white-washed, just like stone fortifications of the same period. Thereby disguising whether the castle was a strong stone fortification, or a weaker wooden one.
If historical sources talk about testing walls with siege engines, they could also have been referring to literally seeing if the walls were actually stone, or if they were wood.
Or at least, this is what I've heard. Don't quote me on this.
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?
Sudden mention of NordVPN at the time of double wall protection is epic 😂😂
Haha it got me too
The word "undermine" comes from the tactic of digging under a castle wall to weaken it.
What?! So that man-at-arms in age of empires destroying a stone wall with just a sword is not real?! The betrayal brother.... :(
As much I know, In the siege of the Fortress of Massada by the romans . The romans built a ramp to bring a siege tower at the level of the walls. Only to find most of the defenders dead .
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.
Food was also difficult for the besieging army to procure locally because whoever was in charge of the city could be expected to commandeer all of the food in the local area, or order its destruction to keep it from falling into enemy hands. So a siege meant a supply train, along with all of the hassles involved in that.
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!"
i love the subtle flex with the animated animals. the channel's presentation is steadily improving, without distracting from the information given
You seem to be branching beyond your previous focus on renaissance pike-and-shot warfare backwards to the medieval period. Have you considered also going a little bit more recent and doing something on Vauban? His name is basically synonymous with siege engineering and it marks a step change in the speed with which sieges were concluded.
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.
I give LOTR a pass, because the whole point is that Sauron uses Zerg tactics and monsteous machines and creatures and highly disposable troops to brute force his way through problems. Most other films, though....
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
What I've heard is that defenders would more often drop boiling water, or heated sand, on attackers instead of oil. And it makes sense if you think about it - if you have access to plentiful water, then it's pretty damned close to as effective as oil, but much cheaper and available in greater quantities.
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.
The real problem with boiling oil and boiling things in general is keeping them hot. Sieges can last months if not years and you have no way of knowing the time and place of the next attack.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a very realistic Medieval game, and i remember it had one siege in it, we barely managed to get one trebuchet. It was very underwhelming. And realistic, as i learned now.
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 was playing empire total war as prussia. i had a breach in my fort walls so i put my cannon on cannister shot and angled them and my line infantry to form up in such a way that when the attackers stormed the hole, they were decimated by cannister and musket volleys
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
I remember seeing that if you didn't surrender once you were forced back to the castle interior, the attackers were going to kill everyone for forcing them into the meat grinder of taking the castle itself.
I could have sworn I heard (or read, rather) that, rather than using oil, defenders might utilize boiling water or sand that had been heated to pour onto people trying to climb up siege ladders. I'm not sure how accurate that is though.
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.
You would think that a castle under siege would be hanging on to any oil it had or even animal fat if it was winter because it is actually a food source.
I heard somewhere that hot sand was used which would make so much more sense than oil. Depending on where you are obviously but I mean you could have tons of that stuff and it will get inside armor and stick.
Also, just good old boiling water.
*THE biggest misconception is that people think “siege” means storm, an active assault.*
The word actually means sitting. Nothing happens at all: you just wait until the besieged surrender. Anything proactive rarely happens.
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.
The boiling oil/water/sand thing has always struck me as absurd, its a lot of space, energy and effort to use on a weapon that can only be used once, and is reliant on being i the right place at the right time.
Use it once, but it would definitely give them something visceral to remember over and over again
#7: walls can be destroyed with swords and arrows (Age of Empires)
dont forget the invent torches
Spanish villagers with supremacy and sappers be like:
Many people don't know that the Romans actually couldn't conquer the North of Europe due to the protection of NordVPN!
I heard they tried the food in England and immediately sailed away
Orcs using siege towers with a ramp does fit their reckless tactics, or lack thereof. They relied on shock and instilling fear to brake their enemy.
After all, they did just before launch severed heads into the city.
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.
Even ironclad's depiction of sapping was inaccurate; pig fat was used to cause the fire, they didn't send in live pigs which are made up of 2/3rds water xD
Every time I watched siege movie, I always scream "Where the trenches?", Heck even a mythology movie Wrath of Titan still make sense when they have trenches
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.
Hmm... no wonder Sun Tzu wrote that sieges are to be avoided whenever possible in his Art of War book.
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.
There's an important difference between besieging a castle and storming it. A siege is designed to cut off the castle from the outside world and starve it of resources. If the siege is not relieved by the arrival of reinforcements, then eventually the garrison has to surrender. Storming the castle is a more active and risky approach. That is the bit where the attackers try to enter through a combination of speed and weight of numbers, using ladders, rams and so on.
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.
Yes and I'm sure you'll address it but the thing a lot of movies and especially video games miss is the sieging army was in most cases more likely to run out of supply before the city did. Most castles I went to had a central court yard that had been used to grow food by the monks in a siege or two. Another thing monks themselves people underestimate their drive to keep people healthy they were the medieval equivalent of doctors without borders 😂
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
5:00 fighting into a breach is even worse. Having a choke point like this doesn't only mean that you face an equal amount of skilled enemies a la 300. A clever enemy will form a half circle behind the wall around the breach, which means you are surrounded and can be attacked from all sides. At the same time, the outer circle formed by the defenders is bigger than your inner circle, which means more surface area for them, so at any given time, more of their man are fighting, meaning some of the attackers will always have to fight a 1v2 battle
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.
But, the most important thing...
Where are the ditches!?!?
The part about oil really annoys me. Olive oil has several types of quality to it with different types of olives used for cooking oil or lantern oil. Pouring boiling water is what's a real fantasy.
Vienna.. Wet weather... Lost Canons in the mud... Lots of sicknes... Wall breached (mining) but the City was not captured.
According to Konungs skuggsjá (c. 1250), Chapter XXXIX Military Engines, pitch and sulphur or tar should be thrown down on siege engines following a red-hot plowshare.
"þar skal ok fygja bik ok brennusteinn, eða elligar veld tjara."
"There shall also follow pitch and sulphur (lit: burningstone or brimstone), or otherwise chose tar." (direct translation)
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.
It also stands to reason that siege towers were in most cases impractical or even impossible because the ground outside the walls would not have been flat but instead very uneven and sloping downwards in the direction away from the wall.
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.
Another issue with going hunting, You could run into an issue where men would get rabbit sickness. I can't remember the exact term for it,. But it's when you have A diet with sufficient protein but insufficient everything else, And you feel constantly hungry. A man who is under the impression that he's starving even when he's fed fairly well will be a very poor workman, soldier, and guard.
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.
5:30 That was such a good transition into an ad i cant even be mad at it.. still gonna skip it though lol
Reports of the siege of Odawara in 1590 seem to indicate the besiegers having a large party outside the castle for weeks on end. Though the strategic circumstances of that siege were unique, as it was effectively the last stronghold the attackers needed to take for Japan's unification so the defenders had nothing else to rely on to save them.
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.
"Pour the boiling oil!"
*grabs the cauldron with his bare hands*
That's not even a historical inaccuracy that's just some very basic knowledge everyone should have.
Very nice video. I never considered that siege towers were mainly missile platforms. Guess I played too many Total War games and thought they were based on real things. Anyway, good job!
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.
Problems I see in some scenes is defenders leaving the security of the walls to form up outside
Another thing left out of film sieges is counter battery fire. Just like today, siege weapons faced the risk of being destroyed by enemy siege engines, however, counter battery does not necessarily need to destroy enemy artillery, it can also suppress enemy fire, giving the defenders or attackers time for other strategic roles. Siege weapons during the middle ages were not static, but when they were, would be entrenched or barricaded by palisades, in order to conceal the weapon's position, and to shield siege weapons from counter battery or infantry sorties.
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."
As for the oil, as said below it's more likely boiling water: readily available, much easier to handle, very similar effect. I also once read they'd heat sand, which would then get between armor and cause great pain. As for the effect, it probably wasn't meant to inflict maximum casualties but rather to destroy morale and cause wounded. As we know, wounded are a big burden on the attacker: you have to get them back to camp, treat them, they may spread disease, and others see them, lowering morale. You also can't just leave them to die, as anyone would then think twice before attacking.
Hot oil and various highly useful items thrown down murder holes I have massive doubts of. Calories were preserved. Just ask if it's a valuable resource in a siege and you will have your answer. Pitch, maybe if there was an excess I think would be used in conjunction with straw to choke and burn the enemy would be vastly more useful - oil and rocks would make armoured men struggle for balance and footing and break up formations. Excrement could be saved and boiled for this purpose but it would only provide a moderate long-term obstacle. Caltrops I think would be obligatory! but 3-4 people with simple crossbows with 5-6 people reloading for each of them would be incredibly effective against helmets and armour while providing excellent cover, brilliant ammunition use/accuracy and armour penetration/point blank range.
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
Love how you added the dates for the fictional middle Earth battles lol
A couple copulating at 6m49s certainly adds to our understanding of camp life.
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.
I knew Siege Towers were tall Towers rather than assault plataforms most of the times, I didnt knew they did that to move them
Also game wise,I hate how some games make them into carrying hundred of soldiers like its some kind of modern APC
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.
All that being said, what movies are a contenders for most realistic siege scene?
From my understanding, the King on Netflix has a very accurate - albeit condensed - siege scene.
Masada 1981 I think the best
I like the way Mount and blade handles seiges. Long, tiring battles that are meant to exhaust the cities resources while maintaining your armies supplies and morale. Yes the games have an action sequence you can play to help weaken the fortress's, but the most effective way to capture them was to starve the people and have them surrender
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.
meanwhile my engineers in stronghold crusader: "OIL AWAYYYY"
HERE COMES BESSIE!
@@HrHaakonwood needed
Fuck I love stronghold
Don't drop hot oil on the enemy. No no no. Save up all your animal and human waste and then drop it on the enemy. LOL
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
I would also point out that in the Middle East and the Byzantium area there was the use of a substance known as Greek Fire that was a burning pitch.
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.
I love KCD military campments, most soldiers sleeping on the floor covered by a simple cloth roof, and straw in the floor in which they did sleep.
"Seige of Helm's Deep, March 3-4, TA 3019" has me dying
I don't think I have ever seen a movie that depicted the use of battering rams against stonewalls...
4:25 The seventeenth-century siege of Clonmel is a pretty famous example of how dangerous it could be to assault through the natural chokepoint created by a single breach. Cromwell was under time pressure so he decided to speedrun the siege: that didn't work out particularly well for his Ironsides. en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Siege_of_Clonmel&oldid=1080559560#Assault
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
Also WHY use boiling oil, people getting boiling water over themselves will also stop trying to scale or break down your walls. Burndamage from scalding water is about as dangerous as from boiling oil and has about the same dangers of infections and so on as boiling oil or tar or pitch - and water in general is way cheaper and more likley to be accessable in large amount
@@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.
@@toboraton5911yes 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
Trebuchets were used to hurl stuff OVER the wall, or to destroy wooden walls. They were common in the Rus lands for example, but you could find them everywhere. Trebuchets were also used by defenders. The defenses that the attackers had to build were not made of stone, but of wood and earth, so the trebuchets could be effective against those.
According to Totalwar, when the besieging soldiers reached the wall, they can pull out a ladder out of thin air to scale the wall.
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
1:40 noob got killed by his own rock
Boomerang rock xd
Most sieges in film show what a not so well versed siege leader would do
I'm quite impressed and inspired by your original graphics. You've clearly spent a lot of work building them and probably pushing the limits of a fairly simple program, which is the kind of technique I myself have always been forced to rely on. What you've accomplished here is amazing!
Nice video man thanks. I agree all the points you made in the video except one; tent cities. This may not be true for Medieval Europe but it was true for Asia originated states. They were using tents when they lay siege. An example is the Siege of Constantinople in 1453. It is clearly stated in the chronicles of both Roman and Ottoman that where the Mehmed II put his otag/ordugah which was a literal tent city. Also, we have accounts from European travelers who saw these tents. On the Ottoman miniature paintings you can see those tents portrayed. Also, you can see some of those tents in the museums of Germany and Austria gathered from the 2nd siege of Vienna. You might say that those are belong to high ranking officials yes that is true but it is because they were the prettiest ones so they wanted to keep them. In addition, soldiers having tents in Ottoman Empire or any other Turkic or Mongolic states was not a rare thing because it was part of their life even after they settled down.
before the battle of guagamela Persian army slept outside the camp
because they afread of night attack by the Macedonian
Pretty sure the "most people never left their hometown for their entire life" thing is, in itself, a misconception.
Not really. What reason did they ever have to leave? And what resources did they have to manage to go away for the hell of it?
There were no social security back then you know. There were no pensions being paid out.
There was no holidays , paid or otherwise, and definitely no sick pay.
It's actually been researched how much mobility between places there was in settled communities, and usually the only ones doing ANY kind of travelling, apart from being in an army, ofc, was merchants and preachers.
"Normal" people rarely went more than 5 miles away from their place of birth.
Unless a big move happened for some reason, such as famine, plague (any kind) or war...
Or simply an apprentice trying to make it in another location, since there's little need for multiple artisans in a village or small town.
The majority worked for food (own land or others') and never had reason or opportunity to go anywhere else.
@@Stevie-J most peasants were legally tied to the land and were legally obliged to work almost every day for their landlord
now considering how peasants were majority of medieval population, it makes sense to say that "most people(peasants) never left their home town/village/hamlet"
dunno what guilds you're referring to, either. Merchant guilds? Sure, they had to travel, it's their job. Craftsmen guilds? Not really.
@@wilhelmu yeah and the majority of the army were..... Not peasants lol. Huge mistake in the video.
@@genestealerjon3033 no, you are wrong. majority of the army were peasant conscripts, levied en masse and then after the war was over they went back home to farm
professional armies weren't a thing in medieval
I'm surprised to see soo many on this channel believing the myth of the medieval peasants having such terrible living conditions, no freedom, no free time, and no spare money. This image has been developed later in history. They want to make you believe life in medieval times was so harsh so you don't complain about your own life. If you really knew how life was, yours would look like shit.
The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Seems like the benefit of a breech is diverting the attention of the defenders. They would have to pull people and resources from other areas to fortify the breech, even if it seems like the attackers aren't making a full push toward it.
Its hilarious how horses were always able to smash through a wall of spears but the elves got impaled en masse 😂.
I like the idea of a soldier becoming rich just by moving rocks.
Depends if your alive to collect your payment, your not just moving rocks, your doing it while getting shot at by the defenders.
@@BNOBLE981 I repeat. I like the idea of a soldier becoming rich by moving rocks. There must have been a few soldiers who were set for the good life. A nice retirement, with maybe a steel bucket dedicated to shyt in, instead of cook and shyt in.
@@ItIsYouAreNotYour I don't know I can just imagine most of the gold vanishing, at the very first brothel or pub the solider came across.
@@ItIsYouAreNotYour ah yes the cookshit bucket, a classic, but not to be confused with the shitcook bucket, that one makes some sour soups
That whole part about the tents and huts really reminded me of how construction workers will live in small shacks and huts when doing work somewhere far away and remote.. like a mountain maybe.
One thing I don't get about boiling oil is that boiling water is just as effective and obviously much more available.
Water has more important uses. Not much use for urine in a besieged castle.
Water doesn't reach such temperatures. The temperature needed to burn human skin is around 55C and water boils at 100C. If you manage to dump the lot on someone quickly out of the pot that's going to do some damage, but by the time it has fallen through air (rapidly cooling on the way) and splashed off its primary impact point it's going to be more of an irritant for the attacker than a real threat.
Animal fat boils at about 200C, olive oil at about 300C, and crude oil can get up to 500C before it starts vapourising, so it's likely to cause more serious injury to anyone hit by it, even on a splash. And some of these oils are also flammable, meaning you can use them to douse, say, a battering ram, then set fire to it.
Boiling oil?! Pah, If I'm ever in a besieged castle I'll throw freshly toasted poptarts.
oil sticks to surfaces much more
SMH rocks are superior.
They cost you nothing, they take no preparation, you just throw them at people and they get hurt... It's great!
Regarding pouring oil... well I've just encountered a passage in the Josephus Flavius book about pouring oil on the attackers. It is both contemporal and first hand account, so I guess we can believe this story. Of course, this is not medieval, but it shows that the boiling oil can be effectively used against attackers, when they get near the top of the wall. Yet, it also shows that the oil was not the defenders first choice of weapon and it was kind of improvisation, made in despair:
28. Then did Josephus take necessity for his counselor in this utmost distress, [which necessity is very sagacious in invention when it is irritated by despair,] and gave orders to pour scalding oil upon those whose shields protected them. Whereupon they soon got it ready, being many that brought it, and what they brought being a great quantity also, and poured it on all sides upon the Romans, and threw down upon them their vessels as they were still hissing from the heat of the fire: this so burnt the Romans, that it dispersed that united band, who now tumbled clown from the wall with horrid pains, for the oil did easily run down the whole body from head to foot, under their entire armor, and fed upon their flesh like flame itself, its fat and unctuous nature rendering it soon heated and slowly cooled; and as the men were cooped up in their head-pieces and breastplates, they could no way get free from this burning oil; they could only leap and roll about in their pains, as they fell down from the bridges they had laid. And as they thus were beaten back, and retired to their own party, who still pressed them forward, they were easily wounded by those that were behind them.
Oil was a luxury commodity back in Joesphus’s time, and like this video said oil would have not been readily available, if anything, it would have been a mix of boiling oil and water with oil to amplify the scalding effects
Assuming they did use olive oil in the siege defense, it is impractical and economically wasteful to boil oil
@@Shinyboy29 we are talking abour war, not some football game. City under attack uses all it has at hand. All your comodities are not of good use if the city is taken and the population is slaughtered. The only thing you consider is if the oil is effective right now and here. According to Josefus, it was effective and that's why it was used.
He took this whole video from one book. Said book gets a ton of shade from historians since it’s release. Take the whole thing with a pound of salt.
@@boriskapchits7727 Where would they get that much oil to boil in the first place?
To pour on estimated 70k Roman troops? No ancient defenders would have put giant pots of boiling oil on top of fortress walls that is just pure Hollywood fiction
Did Josephus specify which oil was used to pour on Roman legions?
Only olive oil was the most common in the region in his day
@@Shinyboy29 did you just say it would have been a mixture of oil and water? How you really that dumb? Oil and water.... mixing....
That was really interesting, love it! I never knew they 'pulled' the towers forwards via rings & ropes... I guess even those ropes must have been really expensive to make.
The battle for cities in Lord of the Rings are actually pretty realistic for assaults on the walls. When those attacks fail or the army doesn’t have the means for them in the first place is when a beseiging force settles in for the long haul, provided their supply lines are secure.
10:13 Those janky horse animations kill me. XD
Thought it's bullshit they destroyed my castle so fast in Stronghold Crusader
SO MANY questions answered! Thanks for uploading!
11:36 I always wondered about this! It always seemed too risky to just "push" it up to the walls!
If stonewalls were easy to take down then you would not waste energy building them in the first place especially if you were someone living in the Middle Ages with a limited diet and limited tools requiring you to do a whole lot of manual labor just for a simplest of tasks
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 😂.
The main misconception is that people think sieges are simply the preparation stage of storming/attacking a castle. While the main reason for a siege is to starve out the enemy and make them surrender. If you eventually decide to attack the enemy, of course it will also be a lot weaker. Most probing attacks are destined to fail, no matter if your force is 10 times the size of the defenders force. That’s the point of medieval fortifications in the first place, numbers mostly don’t matter. Some castles are actually easier to hold with less people, because your supplies will go further. Often sieges are complimented by a sea or river blockade to make sure re-supply doesn’t matter. Later on this changed, when castles and medieval fortresses became a lot easier to penetrate (cannons, tunnels with explosives, etc.) and eventually useless (artillery).
It would be awesome if we got more media depictions of Roman sieges. Just imagine Caesar's siege of Alesia or the siege of Jerusalem on the big screen?
Byzantine Empire used Greek Fire for defense and naval battles. Its exact composition is not known, but it was a sticky, flammable liquid. They didn't pour it out of pots though, they sprayed it out of a tube under pressure as a targeted weapon. Just pouring a bunch of oil over your wall and then setting it on fire would weaken your wall and render that section of the wall temporarily indefensible from the smoke and heat.
I watched the NordVPN section because of how smoothly you placed it in your video. Good job.
Josephus clearly described the use of hot oil in Jotapata in 68 ad. And it is contemporary eyewitness description.
However, that was not middle ages event
That smooth transition to an ad.👌
An argument for the fire being used could be greek fire. Seeing as they were appart of the early crusades, they may have supplied handlers to assist.
Greek fire or simply any kind of pitch made from tree resin, which is not scarce or super valuable as oil can be...
Why they dont mention pitch and resin in this video baffles me.
@Thisis Gettinboring Oil in the Middle East, while always there (and usually deep underground), wasn't really known until recently (early 1900s). Oil, just kinda hanging around on the surface, wasn't very common... ancient Babylon had used it, as great quantities of it were found on the banks of the river Issus, but don't confuse Armies of Middle Age Muslims with modern-day oil sheiks. There just wasn't oil bubbling to the surface all over the middle east... not a thing except in extremely rare cases.
@Thisis Gettinboring I've heard about a lot of things... also, I wasn't asking, I was telling.
Sounds like you live with your panties in a very tight bunch as you find everything so condescending... maybe you should stay off the internet if you're so easily offended at everything, it would help your stress levels 😉
@Thisis Gettinboring indeed, naphta is an excellent mention that I forgot to add in my previous comment.
@@wolfshanze5980 They still had important quantities of naphta (or "rock oil") at their disposition, contrarily to the rest of the world. Nobody claimed that they were drowning in black gold at the time though.