Civilians and peasants of the neighborhood, who were arbitrarily rounded up because men-of-arms (until the 17th century) would feel dishonored to handle shovels, picks and wheelbarrows.
Siege warfare was commonly led in an unskillful and clumsy way. Because of careless and foolhardy leaders, ill-disciplined soldiers and lack of systematic methods, siege operations cost many lives; engineering officers and workers were particularly exposed. Success was generally achieved more through the defenders’ weakness than through the besiegers’ merit.
The first phase of the siege was an artillery duel. Besiegers arranged their guns in batteries. They bombarded the defenders deployed on towers and on walls. Mortars launched bombs (explosive devices), carcasses (incendiary projectiles) and shrapnel. Mortar-gunners tried to smash food and water storage and powder-magazines whose destruction would hasten the defenders’ decline. They also fired at random to create panic and terror by blind destruction.
Batteries were installed on “cavaliers” (also called cats), artificial earth embankments raised above ground level, in order to have a dominating firing position. They could also be sunken by being placed in a trench. If necessary, siege guns were installed on wooden platforms made of thick planks resting on beams to avoid sinking in loose ground. Guns were sheltered behind earth embankments, palisades, fascines and gabions. Fascines were large cylindrical bundles of brushwood used to hold back the earth of a parapet, to strengthen a trench or to fill up a moat. Fascines could also be laid together on a wooden frame (called a chandelier) to make a sort of wall that protected the besiegers during sapping operations. A gabion, also called a corbeil, was an open-ended cylindrical basket made of poles and woven brushwood. Gabions were widely used in fieldworks until the end of the 19th century. They were put in rows and filled with earth to form a protective screen, to revet or reinforce the sides of excavations.
The defenders riposted with counter-fire aiming at workers and batteries. They could also launch a surprise counter-attack to disorganize the besiegers and drive them back. As ever, sorties and counter-attacks were quite important for the morale of the defenders; the psychological benefit could even turn the tide of the siege.
Batteries of the besiegers were linked together by trenches and communication saps in order to supply them with men and ammunitions. Fortlets and redoubts were built to serve as supply-magazines, regrouping points, command posts or field hospitals. In the thunder of explosions and the thick smoke clouds, the approach sector was aswarm with activity, the coming and going of workers and suppliers and the bringing of dead and wounded who were evacuated while fresh troops moved onto lines. This zone could become a bloody battlefield when the besieged launched a counter-attack.
As always, the aggressor had to make a breach to penetrate the location by force. To do so, two standard methods were used. The first one consisted of grouping guns in a breach-battery, which meant concentrating a number of guns on one section of the wall and delivering an uninterrupted series of hammering blows until the stone-work collapsed. The second method, possible only if the nature of the ground was favorable, consisted of digging a mine, that is, an underground tunnel under the city or castle walls. In this mine the besiegers would place kegs of gunpowder. The explosion of the powder would blast away a part of the solid wall. In reaction, the defenders might dig a counter-mine, tunneling under or alongside the attackers’ work, entombing and sealing the mine.
Mines were more and more frequently employed for breaching walls, so much so that in the terminology of war, a mine eventually came to be regarded as the explosive device rather than the tunnel in which it was laid. Mines were reported in Orense in 1468, in Malaga and Sarzanello in 1487, in Naples in 1503, and in Padua in 1509. A specialized refinement of the explosive mine was the petard, a conical metal cask filled with gunpowder ignited by a fuse used to blow up gates, doors or sally ports.
Once the breach was made, foot soldiers would storm in and fight in bitter hand-to-hand combat in the smoking ruins. This assault could be more difficult if the defenders had had time to construct a temporary work, called a lodgement or retirade, to seal the breach from inside, or if they decided to continue to fight in the castle-donjon or in the urban citadel. As previously mentioned, the final assault was a crucial confrontation for both parties and the turning point of the siege. A repulsed assault cost a lot of casualties and might result in the collapse of the attacking party. On the other hand, a successful assault might result in pillage, rape, destruction, fire, and the massacre of the defenders. To avoid either catastrophe, a party might choose to negotiate an honorable capitulation.
World History
