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A siege tower, a substantial structure built to equal or greater height than the fortification's walls, could allow the attackers to fire down upon the defenders and also advance troops to the wall with less danger than using ladders.
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* siege tower
A siege tower ( or in the Middle Ages a belfry ) is a specialized siege engine, constructed to protect assailants and ladders while approaching the defensive walls of a fortification.
The siege tower was mainly made from wood but sometimes had metal parts.
The siege tower sometimes housed pikemen, swordsmen, or crossbowmen who shot quarrels at the defenders.
When a siege tower was near a wall, it would drop a gangplank between it and the wall.
Centuries after they were employed in Assyria, the use of the siege tower spread throughout the Mediterranean.
Many castles and hill-top towns and forts were virtually invulnerable to siege tower attack simply due to topography.
One of the oldest references to the mobile siege tower in ancient China was ironically a written dialogue primarily discussing naval warfare.
Medieval English siege tower.
Much of the iron and bronze was reforged from the various weapons Demetrius's army left behind, and the abandoned second siege tower may have been used for scaffolding around the lower levels during construction.
Among his creations are a battering ram 60 metres long and requiring 1, 000 men to operate it and a wheeled siege tower named " Helepolis " ( or " Taker of Cities ") which stands 40 metres tall and 20 metres wide and weighs 180 tons.
Among his creations were a battering ram long, requiring 1000 men to operate it ; and a wheeled siege tower named " Helepolis " ( or " Taker of Cities ") which stood tall and wide, weighing 360, 000 pounds.
In 1201, Kaloyan took over the Varna fortress, then in Byzantine hands, on Holy Saturday using a siege tower, and secured it for the Second Bulgarian Empire.
The modern iron operations began at the foot of Saint Peter hill ( Sanpetru ), close to the most distant tower of the castle called Nebojsa, ( Serbian for " have no fear ", a tower that was the furthest away from the castle in medieval times, to provide last refuge in the case of a siege ).
In Ireland the introduction of heavy siege artillery by Oliver Cromwell in 1649 brought a rapid end to the utility of castles in the war, while in Scotland the popular tower houses proved unsuitable for defending against civil war artillery – although major castles such as Edinburgh put up strong resistance.
Situated about southeast of the city, it consisted of a two-story stone tower of limestone on which the Russians had placed five heavy 18-pounder cannons at the beginning of the siege.
Although it is known that the tower was built some time before the start of the war, the historical records do not show exactly when this occurred, and no mention of this is made in the contemporary descriptions of the siege itself.
As a result of press coverage of the siege of the tower, the Malakhov Kurgan became a household name in Europe.
Under James of Saint George another two storey rectangular tower, connected to the rest of the castle by a curtain wall, the " Engine Tower " ( now in ruins ) might have been the foundation for a siege engine.
They were installed on defensive walls, or rolled near a target ( see siege tower ).
Immediately afterwards a similar flash of intense green light was emitted from the tower of Minas Morgul as its garrison, led by the Witch-king of Angmar, marched out to lay siege to Minas Tirith.
Also used were the battering ram and the siege tower, a wooden tower on wheels that allowed attackers to climb up and over castle walls, while protected somewhat from enemy arrows.
siege and substantial
John built up a strong team of engineers for siege warfare and a substantial force of professional crossbowmen.
Existing siege engines were significantly less powerful than the later trebuchet designs, giving defenders a substantial advantage over attackers.
The Archbishop defected to Parliament, the town of Conwy fell in August 1646 and in November General Thomas Mytton finally took the castle itself after a substantial siege.
It is an affluent area with a substantial park called ' Freedom Fields ', a Civil War battle site where the towns folk of nearby Plymouth resisted substantial Cavalier raiding parties and enabled the town to sustain the royalist siege.
The Cypriot kings, in command of 120 ships, each with a very experienced crew, provided substantial assistance to Alexander in the siege of this city, which lasted for seven months.
The Piedmontese took Peschiera after a short siege, but Radetzky received substantial reinforcements.
In The Commodore ( but not in the real Napoleonic period ), as in the second world war, the RN offered substantial help to Russia: at the siege of Riga, and by guarding the Arctic convoys.
In north-east Wales, Reginald de Grey was more successful, stationing substantial garrisons at Flint and Rhuddlan-neither castle fell to the rebels, though Flint was subjected to a lengthy siege.
siege and structure
They did not, however, have the original purpose of being a structure able to resist a prolonged siege or bombardment.
It is assumed that Roman engineers lifted these extraordinary weights by two measures ( see picture below for comparable Renaissance technique ): First, as suggested by Heron, a lifting tower was set up, whose four masts were arranged in the shape of a quadrangle with parallel sides, not unlike a siege tower, but with the column in the middle of the structure ( Mechanica 3. 5 ).
Often, when the wanted Palestinian militants barricaded inside a building, Yamam force put a siege on it while IDF Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozers forced them out by razing the structure.
A hoarding is a similar structure made of wood, usually temporarily constructed in the event of a siege.
The structure suffered heavy damage during the bombardment of the city during WW II by the German army who were laying siege to the city.
Apart from Dover, the only castle to hold out against Louis was that at Windsor, where 60 loyalist knights survived a two-month siege, despite severe damage to the structure of its lower ward ( immediately repaired in 1216 by Henry III, who further strengthened the defences with the construction of the western curtain wall, much of which survives today ).
The Moultrie flag was raised over the structure, and a ten hour siege began.
During the siege, the wooden roof of the Citadel, a ten-sided barracks located in the center of the fort used to house the enlisted men, caught fire and the structure was badly damaged.
The fort has suffered significant damage from enemy action in the siege of Malta during World War II, when much of the internal structure was badly damaged.
siege and built
An elaborate set of stairs were built and the well served as an invaluable, protected source of drinking water during times of siege for some portion of the Mycenaean period.
He then invaded the Glomacze lands on the middle Elbe river, conquered Gana ( Jahna ), the capital after a siege, and had a fortress ( the later Albrechtsburg ) built at Meissen.
Remnants of the Broad Wall ( Jerusalem ) | Broad Wall of biblical Jerusalem, built during Hezekiah's days against Sennacherib's siege
The Roman legion surrounded Masada, and built a circumvallation wall and then a siege embankment against the western face of the plateau, moving thousands of tons of stones and beaten earth to do so.
It was apparently built by Hazael of Aram Damascus, as part of his siege and conquest of Philistine Gath in the late 9th century BC ( mentioned in II Kings 12: 18 ).
* The late 8th century BC siege system surrounding the site of Lachish ( Tell el-Duweir ) in Israel, built by Sennacherib of Assyria in 701 BC, is not only evident in the archaeological remains, but is described in Assyrian and biblical sources and in the reliefs of Sennacherib's palace in Nineveh.
His engineers built a causeway that was originally wide and reached the range of his torsion-powered artillery, while his soldiers pushed siege towers housing stone throwers and light catapults to bombard the city walls.
The Macedonians built a mole, a raised spit of earth across the water, by piling stones up on a natural land bridge that extended underwater to the island, and although the Tyrians rallied by sending a fire-ship to destroy the towers, and captured the mole in a swarming frenzy, the city eventually fell to the Macedonians after a seven-month siege.
Taking considerable time to construct, siege towers were mainly built if the defense of the opposing fortification could not be overcome by ladder assault (" escalade "), by mining or by breaking walls or gates.
However, later constructions known as battery-towers took on a similar role in the gunpowder age ; like siege-towers, these were built out of wood on site for mounting siege artillery.
One of these was built by the Russian military engineer Ivan Vyrodkov during the siege of Kazan in 1552 ( as part of the Russo-Kazan Wars ), and could hold ten large-calibre cannon and 50 lighter cannons.
The Roman army ( Legio X Fretensis ) surrounds the mountain fortress with a 7-mile long siege wall ( circumvallation ) and built a rampart of stones and beaten earth against the western approach.
** The Anadoluhisarı fortress is built by the Ottomans to defend themselves during the siege.
The siege of Byzantium failed, but Athens realized the grave danger the rise of Macedon presented and under Demosthenes built a coalition of many of the major states to oppose the Macedonians.
The siege is also notable for the first use of anti-aircraft artillery, a Krupp piece built specifically to shoot down the hot air balloons being used by the French as couriers.
Caesar builds a circumvallation around the town to lay siege to it but Vercingetorix had summoned his Gallic allies to attack the besieging Romans, so Caesar built another outer fortification, a contravallation, against the expected relief armies ( resulting in a doughnut-shaped fortification ).
He established a line of circumvallation and built siege engines.
Yuan forces built about 20 of them, and used them to assist the siege of Xiangyang.
The City Point Railroad, built in 1838 between City Point and Petersburg, was used as a critical part of the siege strategy.
The Roman Republic was broke and nearly exhausted and had to borrow money from wealthy citizens to fund the construction of a fleet of 200 Quinquiremes, which blockaded Carthaginian positions in Sicily in 242 BC by seizing the harbor of Drepana and anchorages at Lilybaeum, while Roman soldiers built siege works around Drepanum.
The USS Chattanooga was built here and became a vital part of the famous " Cracker Line ," which broke the Confederate's siege of Chattanooga in November 1863.
For the siege he had a fortress built named Juslibol ( a corruption of the Latin slogan Deus lo volt wills it used by the First Crusaders ) and ringed the city with banners bearing the cross.
Tupac Katari was able to rally up 40, 000 indigenous Aymara to lay siege to the city of La Paz which was built in place of the Aymara city of Chuqiago Marka.
1.059 seconds.