At the end of the Middle Ages, guns and portable firearms progressively played a more and more important role. Though primitive and unreliable, these new weapons were far more effective and less cumbersome than ancient medieval hurling machines. Siege warfare was now dominated by the deadly clash of artillery, unless a small and stealthy commando party could infiltrate and open the portal to the rest of their comrades. (Everything previously said about treason, blockade and psychological siege-warfare is of course still applicable.)
In the actual storming of a place, the advantages of firearms lay with the defenders. The attacker up on a scaling ladder was in no positio i to reload his weapon once he had discharged it, while one marksman behind the battlements could keep firing away as fast as comrades could reload and hand fresh weapons to him. In the meantime, cannons placed in the castle towers could smash belfries, battering rams and tortoises. If the besiegers did gain a footfhold on the wall-walk, they could be swept from it by a single charge of grapeshot or lan-grage (small balls, nails and miscellaneous hardware forming a sort of shrapnel).
Firearms, then, obliged the assailing party to develop methods of shielding their attacking forces and concealing them from view. They improvised by using earthworks as temporary fortifications, concealing themselves behind masses of earth working as shields or breastworks, or placing their artillery in trenches. The useful range of siege-cannons being about fifty meters, attacking methods consisted of bringing artillery as close as possible to the defensive walls by digging a network of trenches to which zigzag patterns were given in order to avoid enfilade fire. These earthworks were made by
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