While the battlements were being softened up by bombardment, towers were being constructed, ditches were being filled, and the army leaders were working to secure the defenders’ surrender, night escalades were often attempted. This was unlikely to succeed against a town with a well-organized system of watches, but it forced the defenders to keep their guard up, contributing to their exhaustion. Escalade attempts moreover added significantly to the worries of the townsmen. Even a relatively small chance that such a coup could succeed was frightening because the consequences would be so dire if it did: a town taken by storm was normally treated very harshly. Thus each assault, whether it was the initial attempt at storming the ramparts, or an attempt to sneak up the walls, or an all-out prepared assault, worked to push the defenders toward negotiating a surrender. Very often such talks were opened after a near-miss attack brought home to the townsmen the peril of their situation.90
It was partly for related reasons that the immediate preparations for major assaults were often conducted in open, even ostentatious, ways, with ceremonies of muster and review, proclamations, religious services, dubbings of new knights, and so on. These steps eliminated any chance that the defenders would be taken unready, but there was little likelihood of that anyway. More importantly, the visible and audible measures setting up for an attack made for a powerful threat, like a crossbow bolt loaded or a fist cocked back, and on the day before the planned assault the defenders would normally be offered a new opportunity to surrender before the blow was delivered.91
From the perspective of the individual soldier, however, the purpose of a grand assault was to succeed in taking a town, not to contribute to a negotiating strategy. For him this was a major life event, comparable (though not quite equal) to taking part in an open battle.92 Along with his comrades, he was putting his life and limbs in real jeopardy and his courage to a hard test. He knew the greatest men of the host would be participating themselves, both as fighters and as witnesses of honor or shame. As the banners formed up and took their positions, there was plenty of time for worry, for boasting, for mutual encouragement, and for leaders’ harangues. It was not like skirmishing at the barriers, which could be left to the most eager warriors, or like fighting with the watch against a sally party, where the current of events could catch one up and carry one along without a pause.
Siege towers moved slowly, so if they had been prepared they would be brought forward first, while the mass of the army held back, out of arrow range. The defenders’ engines would work all-out to halt or smash them. All eyes would trace the great stones as they flew toward the towers; an impact might be met with a groan from the defenders and a cheer from the attackers, vice versa for a miss. James the Conqueror described how he had to listen to the demolition of one of his great belfries at the siege of Borriana. It had gotten stuck halfway on its journey to the wall and was being pounded by the enemy’s traction trebuchets. Even after it had been evacuated by its crew, said James, each stone that struck it “pained us as much as if somebody had struck us in the side with their fists. In fact, even that would not have hurt us as much as the blows that we heard given to the wooden castle.”93 For an assembled army watching the movement of a construction they hoped would support them in their own upcoming assault, and knowing that the structure was packed with dozens or even hundreds of their comrades, it must have felt much the same. For those actually manning the tower, the experience must have had all the paralyzing intensity of a modern artillery bombardment. At the siege of Acre in 1190, the soldiers manning the top of a siege tower did little dances of joy when enemy projectiles seemed to smash against their belfry without doing any damage. Their happiness was short-lived, however, because it soon turned out that the first projectiles had been pots full of flammable liquid, which subsequent shots set afire, burning the crew to death.94
When trumpets and drums sounded the advance and banners tilted forward, a great roar of war cries would go up, and the troops would surge forward like the surf against a cliff. Often, soldiers would carry or push before them screens of wood or wicker and leather, to provide themselves with some protection from the defenders’ missiles. The Vikings attacking Paris in 886, for example, made a thousand such mantlets, each capable of sheltering three or four men.95 In combat, even when scaling a ladder, agility was less important than protection, and the armored men would normally lead the assault, their helms tightly laced, shield straps looped around their necks so that they could be shifted from arm to back if necessary.96 Small groups would carry forward the heavy and awkward ladders—a 30-foot siege ladder would weigh over 200 pounds—while others tried to cover the bearers and themselves with their shields.97 From behind them, protected by large shields or mantlets of wood or wicker, archers, crossbowmen, men with staff-slings, and various shooting engines would keep up a steady stream of fire. Each opening in the battlements might be assigned as a target to several archers.98 High-trajectory shots could be sent over the wall to impede movement along the streets and open spaces behind it, an early version of interdicting or barrage fire.99 If the first wave failed to make a lodgment, new lines of attackers might be sent forward in relays, until the defenders were low on ammunition and numb with exhaustion.100
Although it is rather difficult to envision how they managed to be effective against strongly built fortifications, there is no doubt that men with pickaxes were often set to work during an assault to undermine the walls; they are often mentioned in chronicles and shown in illuminations. We sometimes read of their working so quickly as to carve out alcoves from the wall, in which they could shelter and keep working even if the rest of the assault forces were driven back. Presumably, these instances refer to walls of adobe, brick, masonry-faced earth, or concrete and rubble, rather than large blocks of solid stone.101 Like deep miners, these men sometimes worked at digging down below the foundations and setting up props for later burning. In any case, the chronicles indicate that sappers working directly at the base sometimes succeeded in opening breaches in town walls or cracking or shattering towers.102
It is crucial to understand that even a breached wall was very difficult to attack. The rubble of a collapsed rampart could itself greatly hinder an assault. At the siege of Acre in 1291, for example, it was “impossible to pass” the stones where the King’s Tower had been brought down, until the besiegers spent a night throwing sacks of sand over the debris, which made it smooth “like a roadway.”103 A century earlier, in the same place, King Richard first offered two gold bezants (about a week’s pay for a skilled physician) for every stone block carried away from the spot where his miners and stone-throwers had shattered the Cursed Tower, but the work was so dangerous that he had to go up to four bezants. Eventually, enough was done that “many could enter,” and a significant assault was begun, but still the “nimble” attackers had to “climb up” to do so and “leap down” when they failed.104 A passage from the Alexiad helps illuminate the matter from a different angle as well as providing a superior description of a common element of siege warfare:
[Bohemund of Taranto] made a small shed, fashioning it in the shape of a parallelogram, put wheels under it, and covered its sides, both above and
Laterally, with ox-hides sewn together. . . and then hung the battering-rams inside. When the machine was ready, he drove it up to the wall by means of a large number of men pushing it along from inside with poles and bringing it close to the walls of Dyrrachium. When it seemed near enough and at an appropriate distance, they took off the wheels, and fixed the machine firmly on all sides with wooden pegs, so that the roof might not be shaken to pieces by the blows. Afterwards some very strong men on either side of the ram pushed it violently against the wall with regular co-ordinated movement. The men would push forward the ram violently with a single movement and the ram thus brought up against the wall shattered it, then it rebounded, and returning made a second shattering. And this it did several times as it was swung several times in either direction, and did not cease making holes in the wall. . . . But the inhabitants laughed at this futile battering of the wall by the barbarians and at the men working the ram, and at their ineffective siege, and they threw the gates open and bade them come in, for they utterly despised the blows made by the ram. “For,” said they, “the ram will never make such a large opening by its battering, as the one this gate presents.” Consequently this work was shown to be futile owing to the bravery of the inhabitants and the confidence of the governor Alexius, the Emperor’s nephew; and the enemy themselves relaxed and abandoned the siege as far as this part was concerned. . . . So the work round the battering-ram stood still. None the less, fire was thrown down from above on to this engine which now stood idle and immovable for the aforesaid reasons, and converted it into ashes.105
Several other examples of portals left open to dare an assault could be ad-duced.106 An attack on a breach, like one on a gate demolished or purposely left standing open, could only be a frontal assault against the best of the defenders, a daunting prospect in itself. Unless the adjacent towers and walls had been well demolished, moreover, the attackers would suffer heavily from various missiles shot or hurled from above, whereas the defenders would have little to fear from the attackers’ bowmen once they came to grips with the assault party. Even if the adjacent firing positions had been demolished and the besiegers had plenty of covering fire to keep the townsmen off the walls, success in such an operation was by no means guaranteed, and casualties were likely to be high.107 It could take dramatic leadership to get the troops to make the attempt, as Shakespeare recognized and as James the Conqueror memorably learned after months of mining work opened a breach in the walls of Majorca. James drew up his veteran soldiers in preparation for an assault, with the footmen in front and the knights behind. There had already been four days of intense preparations, during which James hardly slept. He had borrowed a large sum of money and distributed it so that all the men could be fully ready and equipped. They had been required to swear oaths that once the assault began, no one would turn back for any wound, as it was recognized that if this attack failed, the army would hold itself defeated and break up. Orders had also been given for everyone to hear Mass and take Communion:
And we said to them: “Go, worthy men, begin to march in the name of Our Lord God.”
However, even with these words, nobody moved, though they had all easily heard them, the knights and the others. And when we saw that they did not move, we were filled with anguish, because they did not obey our order. And we called upon the mother of God, and we said: “Oh, mother of our Lord God, we come here that the sacrifice of your Son might be celebrated: entreat Him that we should not receive this dishonour, neither I nor those who serve me in your name and that of your Beloved Son.”
And we shouted to them another time: “Go, worthy men, in the name of God! Do you fear them?”
And we said it three times. And after that, our men gradually began to march.
When all had begun to march, the knights and the foot-sergeants, they approached the moat where the breach was, and all the army began to shout: “Santa Maria! Santa Maria!” . . .
[The Christian footmen entered the breach and met a phalanx of Moslem spearmen] but they did not dare attack each other. Yet when the knights entered with their armoured horses, they went to attack them. And so great was the multitude of the Saracens, that they stopped them with their lances; and the horses reared up, unable to pass because of the density of the lances, which was so great that they were forced to turn round. And as they turned round the others pushed back, and the knights were able to continue to enter, until there were some forty or fifty of them there. And the knights and the foot soldiers carrying shields were so near the Saracens that they could attack them with their swords, so close in fact that nobody dared to put out his arm, for fear that some sword of the other side would wound him on the hand. And, a little after, when there were already some forty or fifty knights there, they turned to face the Saracens, with their armoured horses, and they all cried with one voice: “Help us, Mary, mother of Our Lord!”
And we shouted “For shame, knights!”
Finally, the horsemen managed to break through the defenders, and the city fell. But it had clearly been a near-run thing. No wonder, then, that even many years later King James could remember, in order, the names of the first four knights to enter the breach.108
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