The Armour Archive

I was talking to someone the other day about sieges and he asked a question that I was unable to answer:

Why is it difficult to fight ladders off from a castle?

He suggested having a line of crossbowmen at least one per ladder, more if possible. They stand about 6 feet from the battlement and whenever a head appears over the wall they put a crossbow bolt though it.

I would have thought that at that range even two helmets worn together would not have stopped a bolt. Clearly he is missing something otherwise every castle would have done this and attacks would always have failed but I could not think what is wrong. Can anyone please tell me what it is I am missing?

Eynar,

From what little I have read, the answer is "It depends"

Storming a castle was costly in terms of lives. That was why folks built castles. It was usually preferable to use starvation and disease do the work for you. Beseigers would often put considerable effort into cutting a castle off from supplies. Walls and moats would be built around the castle, and then more walls and ditches to protect the besieging army from other armies that might come to relieve the castle.

Other methods involved batterning down the walls with one engine or another, or digging a tunnel underneath it and collapsing the tunnel.

The source of water for a castle was a closely guarded military secret, as thirst could take out a castles defenders quicker than hunger. Karlsberg castle in the Chech Republic actually has a diverted stream from miles away to supply their water. This was a closely guarded secret, and the water source was disguised as a well even to the inhabitants of the castle.

If you had to go up the wall, there were also several ways to do it. Earthen ramps could be built, protected stairways could be built and then rolled into place, or you could go up a ladder. I would not want to go up a ladder, because it would be easy to shoot me with a crossbow or just plain drop a big rock on my head. There are lots of pictures of people dropping big rocks onto the heads of attackers, by the way.

freiman

And in the meantime, as those crossbows reload, someone pops up and puts a crossbow bolt through their head. Or not even show over the wall, just drop rocks. Shooting straight up is no picnic, either. Plus, they have to actually get to the base of the wall. The defenders have a range advantage; they can shoot further than you can, because they are higher up.

There are pretty much four ways to take a castle.
One, just sit and starve them out. That can take a long time; there are records of castles holding out for years against a seige.

Subset of that method is to try to batter the walls down, or undermine them. Lots of work, still takes awhile.

Third, frontal assault with scaling ladders. Costly in terms of men, and it's hard to get people to work for scale anymore. (sorry).

Fourth, and most effective, hanky-panky. Bribe someone to let you in, find a way to sneak in yourself. Relatively cheap, relatively quick.

[quote="Eynar"]
Why is it difficult to fight ladders off from a castle?[quote]

It's not. What you see in the movies is crap. Real seiges took days, months, or even years. That's not very good for movie making so they speed it up by having people "storm" a perfectly good castle. Joan's rabid followers might do such a thing, but most would consider the cost in lives way too high.

They did use ladders, but not like in the movies. In real life you have to do a lot more setup and planning. Earthen ramps work better than ladders in most cases partly for the reasons you mentioned. If you are going to go up a wall on a ladder, you BETTER have a lot of suppression fire on your side.

Also, keep in mind that to siege a castle you need several times more fighters than the number defending the castle- how many times depends on how good your castle is and how much time the attackers have.

What we do at Gulf Wars is cool and fun but it's more of a recreation of a 60s Hollywood siege than of a real siege.

The standard number for assaulting a prepared position is 3-4 attackers per defender. That is because of the rate of attrition. Think about it.