Continued from Part I, above.

Attacking a Castle.

Considering that castles were so vast, intimidating and well-defended, how did invading armies ever hope to break into them and win a siege? They used siege-engines.

A siege-engine is a massive machine used to bust your way into a castle. There were four main siege engines:

Battering-Ram.

From Medieval.Castles.org.

The battering-ram was used to beat down the castle door. A ram could be anything. Really simple rams were just massive logs carried by dozens of men, who would slam it constantly into a castle door in the hopes that it would splinter and break open. If this proved ineffective, invaders could use a more effective ram, which was housed inside a wheeled, wooden frame. This type of ram was massive, usually made of wood or stone. It was slung up on rope slings suspended inside the wooden frame. The frame had wheels to make it more manuverable and the rope slings made the ram easier to move and smash against the door. These more advanced battering-rams could also have rooves (made of wood or animal-hide) above them, to protect the soldiers manning the battering-ram, from things either fired or thrown on them from defenders on the walltops above.

Trebuchet.

Pronounced ‘Tre-buh-shay’, this siege-engine worked by a system of counterweights. Mounted in a wheeled, wooden frame, the trebuchet consisted of a long, wooden arm. At one end of the arm was a heavy counterweight. At the other end, was a rope net. The projectile (say, a boulder) was put into the net, and a securing rope was released. The heavy counterweight swung down, bringing the arm up, which rotated on a pivot. The momentum fired the projectile either against, or over the castle wall, destroying everything in its path.

Catapault.

Everyone knows what a catapault is. A big siege engine which flings things at the enemy. These worked by winding back the catapault arm and putting the projectile in metal bowl or basket at the end of the catapault arm. The projectile might be a boulder, several rocks or even the carcass of a dead animal, in a form of medieval biological warfare. In one siege battle, the corpses of people who had died from the Black Death, were catapaulted over a city wall, in the hopes that the defenders would catch the plague and die a horrible death. At the right time, a securing rope or pin was either untied or released, and the catapault fired its projectile either at, or over the castle wall.

Siege Tower.

The siege tower was an enormous, wooden tower on wheels. They were loaded with soldiers, and then pushed up against the walls of castles. To prevent siege towers from getting close to a castle, architects tried to build their castles on hills, where siege-towers would be useless. But if a tower did get right up to a castle wall, a ramp at the top of the tower was lowered onto the wall and enemy soldiers charged off the tower and onto the top of the curtain wall.

Examples of all four of these siege engines in action, can be seen in the Battle of Minas Tirith, in the final “Lord of the Rings” trilogy installment: ‘The Return of the King’.

Other ways of getting into a Castle.

Undermining.

Today, if someone has ‘undermined’ you, it means that they’ve done something which has rendered all your actions or precautions useless. 800 years ago, undermining was actually a way to break into a castle.

First of all: Undermining is not tunneling to get under the walls and into the castle grounds. No. Undermining was a bit more complex than just digging under the wall to get out the other side. This is how it worked:

Soldiers burrowed a tunnel under a castle wall or tower. Having dug the tunnel underneath (which would be shored up with wood), soldiers got out of there, while filling in the tunnel with more wood as they left. Once they were out, they set the wood on fire. Once all the wood inside the tunnel had burnt to ash, what was supposed to happen was that the tunnel collapsed. Once this had taken place, the structural integrity of the tower or wall burrowed under, would have been severely weakened. The lack of a proper foundation meant that the wall or tower could collapse when the tunnel did, which gave intruders a way into the castle.

The Petard.

The petard isn’t really a siege engine, but it was something which attackers did use to try and gain entrance to a castle. A petard is a type of bomb, which came into being in the 16th century with the rise of gunpowder in the 1500s. It was an explosive-device made of iron and wood. The iron part was shaped like a bucket, and this was filled with gunpowder. Once it was full of powder, the wooden backing-board was fastened over the top, to stop the powder spilling out. Once the petard was made, it was given to the unfortunate petardier’s assistant (a petardier is the man who makes the petards), who would have to take it and run across the field to the enemy castle gates and fasten this contraption onto it.

A petardier’s assistant running away after having lit the fuse on the petard.

Once it was fastened on, a match-cord fuse was shoved into a small touch-hole in the side of the petard’s iron gunpowder-container, and was then lit. The petardier then tried to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. Petards were incredibly dangerous and they could blow up without warning. Assuming everything went to plan, the fuse burnt into the petard, it set off the approximately ten pounds of gunpowder inside the petard, which blasted a hole in the castle door. If the poor petardier’s assistant didn’t make it away in time (assuming he made it to the door at all, because musketeers would be shooting at him the whole time), he could be blown up along with his bomb. It is from this rather dangerous explosive device, that we get the phrase “hoist by his own petard”, which means to be caught up in the results of your own foul deeds. Of course, 400 years ago, a petardier’s assistant was literally hoist (that is, thrown into the air), by the explosion of his own petard if he didn’t get away in time.

The End of a Siege.

A siege ended when either the attacking enemy was dead or too exhausted to carry on, meaning that the castle had either held out against its enemies, or had successfully repelled an invasion, or when the defenders inside the castle were dead, when the enemy outside had successfully breeched the castle’s defenses.