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A siege engine is a machine that is designed to break or circumvent heavy castle doors, thick and other in siege warfare. Some are immobile, constructed in place to attack enemy fortifications from a distance, while others have wheels to enable advancing up to the enemy fortification. There are many distinct types, such as that allow to scale walls and attack the defenders, battering rams that damage walls or gates, and large ranged weapons (such as , / and other similar constructions) that attack from a distance by launching heavy . Some complex siege engines were combinations of these types.
Siege engines are fairly large constructions – from the size of a small house to a large building. From Ancient history up to the development of gunpowder, they were made largely of wood, using rope or leather to help bind them, possibly with a few pieces of metal at key stress points. They could launch simple using natural materials to build up force by tension, torsion, or, in the case of trebuchets, human power or counterweights coupled with mechanical advantage. With the development of gunpowder and improved metallurgy, bombards and later heavy artillery became the primary siege engines.
Collectively, siege engines or artillery together with the necessary , , ammunition, and transport vehicles to conduct a siege are referred to as a siege train. "Siege train" on Answers.com
The first Mediterranean people to use advanced siege machinery were the Carthage, who used and battering rams against the Greek colonies of Sicily. These engines influenced the ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius I, who developed a catapult in 399 BC."The Catapult: A History", Tracy Rihall, 2007
The first two rulers to make use of siege engines to a large extent were Philip II of Macedonia and Alexander the Great. Their large engines spurred an evolution that led to impressive machines, like the Demetrius Poliorcetes' Helepolis (or "Taker of Cities") of 304 BC: nine stories high and plated with iron, it stood tall and wide, weighing . The most used engines were simple battering rams, or tortoises, propelled in several ingenious ways that allowed the attackers to reach the walls or ditches with a certain degree of safety. For sea sieges or battles, seesaw-like machines ( sambykē or sambuca) were used. These were giant ladders, hinged and mounted on a base mechanism and used for transferring marines onto the sea walls of coastal towns. They were normally mounted on two or more ships tied together and some sambuca included shields at the top to protect the climbers from arrows. Other hinged engines were used to catch enemy equipment or even opposing soldiers with opposable appendices which are probably ancestors to the Ancient Rome corvus. Other weapons dropped heavy weights on opposing soldiers.
The Ancient Rome preferred to assault enemy walls by building earthen ramps ( agger) or simply scaling the walls, as in the early siege of the Samnium city of Silvium (306 BC). Soldiers working at the ramps were protected by shelters called vineae, that were arranged to form a long corridor. Convex wicker shields were used to form a screen ( or plute in English)An obsolete English synonym for "pluteus" is "plute". to protect the front of the corridor during construction of the ramp. Another Roman siege engine sometimes used resembled the Greek ditch-filling tortoise of Diades, this galley (unlike the ram-tortoise of Hegetor the Byzantium) called a musculus ("muscle") was simply used as cover for sappers to engineer an offensive ditch or earthworks. Battering rams were also widespread. The first used siege towers ; in the first century BC, Julius Caesar accomplished a siege at Uxellodunum in Gaul using a ten-story siege tower. Romans were nearly always successful in besieging a city or fort, due to their persistence, the strength of their forces, their tactics, and their siege engines.
The first documented occurrence of ancient siege engine pieces in Europe was the gastraphetes ("belly-bow"), a kind of large crossbow. These were mounted on wooden frames. Greater machines forced the introduction of pulley system for loading the projectiles, which had extended to include stones also. Later torsion siege engines appeared, based on sinew springs. The onager was the main Roman invention in the field.
A typical military confrontation in medieval times was for one side to lay siege to an opponent's castle. When properly defended, they had the choice whether to assault the castle directly or to starve the people out by blocking food deliveries, or to employ war machines specifically designed to destroy or circumvent castle defenses. Defending soldiers also used trebuchets and catapults as a defensive advantage.
Other tactics included setting fires against castle walls in an effort to decompose the cement that held together the individual stones so they could be readily knocked over. Another indirect means was the practice of mining, whereby tunnels were dug under the walls to weaken the foundations and destroy them. A third tactic was the catapulting of diseased animals or human corpses over the walls in order to promote disease which would force the defenders to surrender, an early form of biological warfare.
The development of specialized siege artillery, as distinct from field artillery, culminated during World War I and World War II. During the First World War, huge siege guns such as Big Bertha were designed to see use against the modern fortresses of the day. The apex of siege artillery was reached with the German Schwerer Gustav gun, a huge caliber railway gun, built during early World War II. Schwerer Gustav was initially intended to be used for breaching the French Maginot Line of fortifications, but was not finished in time and (as a sign of the times) the Maginot Line was circumvented by rapid mechanized forces instead of breached in a head-on assault. The long time it took to deploy and move the modern siege guns made them vulnerable to air attack and it also made them unsuited to the rapid Maneuver warfare of modern warfare.
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