I don't really know. I think he'd say something about japan being on the other side of the world and time periods but that stuff doesn't make sense to me
YES! One of my favorite stories! He literally moved the Earth. Imagine the mythos and stories that must've spawned from that on the Persian side: "The Great Alexander conquered Tyre by commanding the Earth itself to form a bridge"
I agree! Although this was a nice length for a change no more 3 minute bollocks! I could watch him for hours though! It's karmic - Stefan Molyneux and co release 3-4 2 hour videos a day, then Lloyd releases 30 minutes a week. :'(
I see people suggesting outrageous picks. Sure, these would have been hilarious, but by picking a subject that Lindy is enthralled by but hasn't talked about yet, you pave the way for further videos on this subject. Bravo!
Dumb question perhaps, but what exactly was the point of a castle as a defensive structure? In pop culture, when an attacking army wants to take an area - they go straight for the castle. Conquer the castle, conquer the surrounding land. Now if the defenders are stuck inside a castle, would it not make more sense to leave behind a small army just to make sure they remain contained, and then ignore the castle completely and just take the land?
not dumb at all. always thought about it. perhaps its just a pain in the neck to keep an army there. and perhaps its better to take a castle rather than construct one. keep in mind that reinforcements can come and attack the siegers if they take too long. and then they will stand no chance.
And that's excatly what they did! Why should you spend time attacking a castle if you can easily pillage the sorrounding villages? Castle weren't usually sieged because: 1) most of the times they were strategically useless 2) hard to take if your army isn't that big 3) their garrison was too small to be a threat even if they sortie out 4) most of the things that you need (provisions, materials, animals ...) aren't in the castle.... they're in the sorrounding and unprotecded land!
That is on of the problems with a Castle. Sun Zu wrote in the Art of War that in order to gain land you just ignore the castles and go around them. If the army in the castle want to defend their country they have to come out.
So the role of the castle was to save the lifes of the people inside of it (usually only the lord and his soldiers) and it worked well because an enemy army usually doesn't want to waste time and would ignore you focusing on the land
Thank you so much, Lindybeige. No one talks about sieges. Everyone talks about battles. If you and other UA-cam aficionados talked about sieges, we viewers interested in writing, drawing, and representing the ancient and middle ages could do a better job. :)
Now im imagining a hilarious sitcom about two groups of people, one group building the ramp and the other building the wall, having a casual chat about it with each other while doing so.
minihjalte Don't call me spandau fanboy, but that was just one of the many things Lindy got wrong yet preferred to call critics "fanboys". The MG-42 in fact had an extremely easy and quick way to change barrels, without ever touching the hot barrel. So no need for gloves, even
I'm glad you emphasise the smallness of castle garrisons in the mediaeval period. As an example of this, there is a surviving record of the manpower strength of Criccieth Castle in Wales, circa 1285: the Constable had thirty men at his disposal - ten crossbowmen, an armourer, a carpenter, a mason, a smith, a chaplain and fifteen others. This appears to have been typical.
+Joshua the armorer not only made the armor but also made sure it fight right and was sometimes the garrisons quartermaster as well, dispensing armor and gear as needed. He would also make repairs, if the damage was severe enough, though generally, men were responsible for their own kit. Smiths were metal workers and oversaw the construction of caltrops, chains, iron banding, horse shoes and showing of horses and so on. It was their job to manufacture and repair anything made of metal. During the medieval period this was a fairly cast field, so there were specialist smiths to make armor, weapons, guns and so on. Basically, an armorer might be an armor smith, but they were not a blacksmith
The above answers are broadly correct, though it is likely that the duties of such a small garrison were divided up according to what was practical and convenient, rather than by job title. It is also likely that one of the armourer's jobs was to function as a mediaeval fore-runner to a drill sergeant.
Some quick math... assume: wall is 100 foot long by 70 ft wide. Ramp is at a 30 degree angle, difficult to climb, but sufficient if you're a determined soldier with lots of other soldiers and a commanding officer behind you. The ramp's volume would be 424,000-ish cubic feet. 10k dudes each carrying 12 baskets of earth (one at a time..) is 120k baskets... how big is a basket? I don't know... but, 1 cubic foot of earth can weigh 70 lbs in a dry arid climate to 110 lbs if it rains a lot and there's lots of stones in it (english countryside?)... That's not too difficult for a soldier to carry... 12 of these in a 12 hour day=1 an hour? sure, no problem! Finish early, and there's the local peasantry to aggressively "netflix and chill" with... 424,000 cubic feet needed/120,000 cubic feet moved a day, is about 3.5 days till completion... make the ramp wider (because assume a dude with a shield and spear needs a 3 foot wide area in order to stagger up an incline... at 100 feet, you get 30ish dudes to a rank... wider ramp=longer ranks = more men fighting at once...) make the angle shallower, therefore longer to maintain a tighter, more impressive marching formation... and maybe the men don't want to carry quite so heavy baskets, so they don't fill them quite so full of dirt, or they "spill" some dirt carrying it over to dump it... add MORE dirt because a perfect wedge of dirt will collapse to the sides, and because walking all over the dirt during construction is going to compact it... and english rain might wash some away (that would be...exciting... to march on the next day?) you can probably see that it might take a week-ish to finish... unless they finish their load for the day, and then, the NEXT 10k dudes rotate onto dirt duty... maintain a continuous rotation and you've got yourself a battle-ready dirt ramp in a few days. Lloyd's estimates check out!
The more time you spend building your ramp the hungrier, sicklier, and weaker the opponents you have to fight when you go over the top. Might as well build a big plush ramp in that case.
Indeed, I imagine gunpowder changed the way sieges were performed even before the average soldier was armed with a gun, it would be interesting to hear about. In addition to that, it might also be interesting to hear about some unique siege engines that didn't see long or widespread use. Something along the lines of a crazy invention that didn't catch on, I assume there were just as many bizarre siege engines as there were bizarre personal weapons.
King Steve While I understand and agree that the invention of cannons greatly reduced the safety of the old styles of castles/fortresses, there still were fortresses and bunkers of sorts that people used as cover, and buildings serving such a purpose still exist today. It might be interesting to see the trial-and-error evolution of the castle/fort into what in modern times would most likely be a bomb shelter, or at least it might be interesting to me.
+King Steve Actually no, after cannons became common to use in sieges, forts were built differently, look up 'trace italienne'. It became harder for cannons to destroy the walls and forts themselves were armed with cannons.
The lack of editing in your videos is refreshing because that makes your videos more like improv and the knowledge you have on hand (and maybe a script). It works really well for you and your videos. I'm glad I found this channel.
This is what I love about history. All the epic sword clashes, arrows, ladders, et al, gets shown not just in films, but in songs dating back to the period. It seems so glorious. Then, you get to the history and what Lindy found to be most important about sieges was a competitive building exercise between a wall and an earthen ramp. The history of sieges is competitive infrastructure improvement! When you see construction along the highway, just thing... these men used to be warriors....
***** Reign it back, man, I wasn't saying entertainment would be better if it was historically accurate. In fact, I said that even in the time it was current, entertainment didn't highlight historically accurate siege warfare. In fact, I think it's ironically hilarious how benign siege warfare must have been. "Bring your dirt, dump it on the hill, crack open a beer." Imagine the guy joining the army for fame, glory, and to see the world, and he ends up hauling dirt to a hill. I'm sure the "Thrilling, mate." comment is exactly what they were thinking.
Its genuinely fascinating how much effort goes into beseriging a city, it's hard to imagine tens of thousands of people in one place doing such a thing as building the equipment, let alone the incredible amount of time it all takes.
How have I not found your channel before? Perhaps it's because I'm not much interested in siege-crafty stuff, but somehow watching you talk, I am transfixed.......
Many overlook the problem of logistics in Sieges: Imagine that you besiege a city in the middle of the desert with 10 000 men that need food and water for maybe 1 year and your supply lines are getting ambushed all the time... Thats why many tried to assault castles immediatly. Doing this they either made it in before the defense is ready, or they lose a lot of mouths to feed and possibly get a better picture of the weak-spots of the fortifications. A famous example would be Carcassonne, where they sent their mercenaries first so that they wouldn't need to pay them later.
I looked up the story about the defense led by Lady Mary Bankes, and according to Wikipedia, her force did not hold on to the castle. Up to the point of the quote, it pretty much agreed with what you said: "In 1646 (the siege began in 1643), one of her officers, Colonel Pitman, betrayed her by leading a party of Parliamentarians into the castle via a sally gate. The Parliamentarians under the command of a Colonel Bingham reversed their jackets and were mistaken for Royalists. As a result she was forced to surrender the castle. However, because she showed such courage she was allowed to keep the keys of the castle, which are now held at Kingston Lacy near Wimborne Minster, Dorset. The castle was slighted the same year it was captured by the orders of the House of Commons."
Slighted means partially destroy a castle, either a wall or a tower, so it is no longer viable defensibly, not necessarily destroying the whole building. Parts could still be left inhabitable.
I, as many before me, have always been fascinated by medieval warfare, though my interest has only been 'in passing' until a short while ago. I just wanted to say that your videos have more or less opened up a whole new avenue for me, and I appreciate it. You give us so much information in passing that can be relatively difficult to learn elsewhere- not always because it is obscure, but rather that the collective 'we' had no idea that that it was even a thing or an option. It is rather hard to search for something you don't know existed. (I have become interested in writing a book and have had the most difficult time thinking up reasonably realistic wartime scenarios, but just watching your videos is flooding me with ideas.)
Hey Lindy, Ive always noticed that medieval forces were never the size of ancient armies, but m question is why? Why did the raw size of armies get so much smaller than what they used to be?
Well the concept of empires faded after the Roman Empire for a long time. The Holy Roman Empire was more of a feudal system and thus the volunteering/conscription of large amounts of soldiers was now obsolete. Battles were fought with much smaller levies now from dukes. An important thing to note is that the idea of a standing army also was not present for a majority of feudal europe. Without a trained and experienced force you had a variety of poor to decent fighters as your main army, so large and long wars was nearly impossible to conduct. This use of feudal levies would continue for hundreds of years as battles did not need to be fought by so many men to win a war decisively.
When Rome fell the whole of Europe forgot how to do a ton of things. One of these things was quite possibly the art of drilling large armies. Getting tens of thousands of men to March and fight in unison is incredibly difficult. They're were some trained soldiers but they were generally mercenaries or a noble. Most fights were relatively small and generally took place in one spot.
I'm going through the channel watching videos I failed to watch in the past. this was informative, entertaining, just fucking impressive (I see what you do in every video, Lloyd, and I love my only youtuber who doesn't jumpcut!), topped off with great advise. this is why I came and never left!
You can heat the iron end of a bolt to red hot with a suitable fire (charcoal and bellows) before the wooden shaft begins to smoke. Shoot that into the enemy - if you hit someone it is rather unpleasant as some bloke runs around with smoke coming out of his body until he falls down, or you may hit a structure which will keep burning for some time regardless of water being poured on as the wood insulates the hot iron and keeps on smoldering.
Bruce Lee ah but he's talking about the Hellenistic period, and I'd be willing to bet that the arrow heads would have been made of bronze, which has a lower melting point than, low enough to make heating it fairly useless, though that is conjecture and I may be wrong.
Hey Lloyd, is there any chance you could do a video on the battle of Thermopylae? you know, the one that's famous for the 300 spartans? It's probably my favorite story of all time and yet the details I've found about it are kinda all over the place. Deadliest Warrior seems to have skewed some opinions about the spartans as a whole and especially the 300.
+Priviledgy Shitlord (Rustler of Jimmies) I don't remember the Spartans doing much conquering. They were content to keep to their creepy militarized dystopia and oppress their slaves, not venturing beyond the Pelopenese
Very good content, and incredibly well presented for a 14 minute, uncut, monologue without AFAIK prompts. You could talk the hind legs off a donkey. God Bless You, Squire!
The puzzle at the end of video made me laugh so hard I almost fell of my chair! I wrote a paper on the role of Helots in ancient Sparta when I was studying history and it brought all the memories back. Thank you, kind Sir!
R.I.P LINDYBEIGE : Ended Rightly before his time. But that's okay, he knew the risks of facing the pommel and cloned himself before going. This channel will live on in his memory and in our hearts.
See what would be the greatest siege weapon would simply be a large force of men throwing their pommels over the walls the end their enemies rightly, of course the defenders would return fire with a spandau in which case the attackers would have to take cover until the enemy used up all their ammunition as they had kicked out most of the civilians that had the ammunition attached to their belts..
A Gebirgsjäger and his Sturmgewher A suppressor for a Spandau would likely be as big as the gun itself and would not do all that much. Also it'd be worn out quickly due to its rate of fire.
Such a suppressor on the suppressing weapon would suppress its ability to suppress. Being serious, the sound is the thing that was feared. If you can't hear the bullets, is someone firing at you?
The bren. It's lighter and easier to carry into the eventual assault with your troops. Plus you'll go through less ammunition so you can field more guns.
The fact that he adressed the people who were "fully pro-German Engineering" as 'fanboys' tells me he'll probably be alright. We could throw sarcastic comments back though...?
***** I am not going to judge it. It's not the era/period I'm specialized in. Let alone that I ever actually studied the weapons. Therefor I suppose I am not qualified to judge it. (Though I'll gladly throw back some sarcastic comments to those "fanboys" when they do say something even I find untrue.)
To answer that you could say why was the castle built in that position in the first place, usually to dominate an area where there isn't a large walled city but can control some strategic point or large area for resources.
Think of cities as ancient tanks without wheels. It's there, it's strong, and it can ruin your advance. The idea was to have a center of power over the region. Compared with cities, castles are full of military equipment, almost a whole region's trained military force, and feudal lords, and once you remove a feudal lord, you have all their land (including whatever cities the lord owns). It's safer, more economical, and less wasteful to just take a castle than to take down a city and potentially have to burn it down and kill its citizens to ensure security.
If you take a city, you need a detachment of like 300 to 500 people at least to control the local population (weakening your amy), while as Lloyd says, you only need a few to defend a castle.
When the Romans besieged Carthage in 149BC, the Carthaginians decided that their main line of defence would be to use spandaus on their walls, and spent the previous two summers stockpiling spandau ammunition. When the Romans attacked, they were pinned down for several hours, however, the city quickly used up all their ammunition due to the rapid rate of fire. Miraculously, when the Romans picked themselves up from the dirt, not a single soldier had been hit, allowing them to easily take the city.
Haven't you noticed? The last couple of videos have all had a completely irrelevant piece of trivia at the end of it. I personally find them hilarious, but as humour is largely subjective, you're of course free to disagree.
Clark Liberty To be honest, chocolate is toxic to humans as well. It's just that our livers have evolved to break it down very quickly, something dogs cannot do.
Hah! There is a pair of glasses hanging in the wall as art, a jab at the recent prank where some glasses were laid on the floor and mistaken for an art piece.... Nicely done!
Question: What about ladders? If you have archery support from a siege tower and manage to clear a part of the wall from enemies you could put a few ladders you made with wood and rope and get some people inside to open the gates, right? Hell, why not board from a siege tower if you have superiority?
Under normal circumstances of course not, but when you mentioned a siege tower with archers overlooking the walls I was thinking that the archers could provide cover for someone to use a ladder. Another though I has was that if the defenders sometimes dug tunnels into the ramps to sabotage them, couldn't the attackers do something similar? The tunnel entrance could be hidden by the presence of cover for building the ramp, and so would be the presence of dirt. You would have digging noises that might tip the defenders off and they might setup an ambush but having bolts, arrows and other crap thrown at you when making the ramp also doesn't sound too pleasant. I guess that's what you mean by this being a bigger topic then you can cover in 1 video, but it really got me interested.
That must be difficult. Let's say we have 4 guys climbing: that weights a lot. Even in there's only 1 guy at the lower part of the ladder, you just cannot push it unless all the weight it's in the upper part. Maybe fire is an option here?
What are you on about. My dog loves chocolate. He just had a bar of it. Come here spike! Show them how much you love chocolate. Spike! Spike! Spike? OH GOD NO!
Here in Sweden, we had massive armys in the medieval time. There were litterarly hundreds of thousand men in any one army. Albeit, they were very small and disguised themselves as big blokes, cramping in about ten thouseand men in one piece of shining armour.
hazzmati what do you mean wrong? You cant prove it! The men were about 1" high, and weighed in at 50 lbs per man. That made a suit of armour just about the heaviest thing in the universe, when they cramped in those ten of thousands of men in one suit!
"The Lads in the Castle" would be a great title for a sitcom
Luv it...or "the Children Chained in the Dungeon"
This week, Gerald holds off a siege by the French, whilst Rupert encounters a messy problem in the latrine pits. What a kerfuffle.
Pilot episode titled "Dost thou calleth me a lyre?" or something
@@craigmurphy1204 come back next week to find out who stole Paul’s bodkin!
@@craigmurphy1204 BOOM
How to get rid of a castle:
Beat it with a sword until it catches fire. Then it collapses.
But once you become imperialistic, it is just easier to use trebuchets and bombards.
+EyeOfEld Nah, nothing sets fire to a castle better than a cluster of good old fashioned siege rams, particularly if you're the Mongols.
Rams are pretty good in castle, but they are exposed to enemy infantry. I prefer to sit back at a distance and batter it down from relative
safety.
@@EyeOfEld My petards would like to speak with you.
I was about to like but it's on 666 so I won't break it
Wait, are you telling me that Age of Empires lied to me and foot soldiers were not actually attacking walls with their swords?
Age of Empires has swords that can cut stone.
of course they didn't attack with their swords, they used their spears.
So they didn't just fire a crap lot of arrows at walls either :O
Maybe theres a lost piece of history and medieval nights made their longswords like katanas and AOE got it right.
iyke ewnaho Do you mean Spandaus using Katanas as their bayonet?
God dammit jack, you had the chance to pick fire arrows!
Soon!
Do flaming thrown pommels instead!
+Hebl von Heblowitz or flaming spandaus!
Jack is going to a special level of hell where he will have fire arrows shot into his arse for eternity.
That's as silly as throwing a good spear at your enemy and calling it a pilum and using a short sword instead!
A katana could easily cut through castle walls, and then you could mow down the men inside with a spandau.
A piece of Lindybeige just died
+William Churchill Why? Seems reasonable enough in my opinion.
I don't really know. I think he'd say something about japan being on the other side of the world and time periods but that stuff doesn't make sense to me
> ...with a spandau.
Too soon.
Which piece, though? I'm rather curious.
Could listen to classic sieges all day.
I think i would even spend money for a audiobook by him on that topic. (as with multiple other topics :P)
Agreed though, maybe points about small and large regional sieges :3
I would gladly spend money for that.
siege of constantinople lol
Thanks Lloyd, now if I get thrown into the bowels of history and inexplicably put in command of a large army, I'll be ready for the task at hand.
or if anyone ever makes a competent medieval RTS/RPG
Now that's just illogical.
Divaad95
That's easy.
Just take Rome I and add Spandaus. Or make it the MG-34 for extra brownie points*.
*Not exchangeable for brownies, no refunds.
Did you have a dream you were a "Time Commander" ?
not really. lindy is clueless about this stuff and he is just talking out of his ass. you might want to get your info from actual experts.
Siege of Tyre, that time Alexander the Great turned an island into a peninsula
YES! One of my favorite stories! He literally moved the Earth. Imagine the mythos and stories that must've spawned from that on the Persian side: "The Great Alexander conquered Tyre by commanding the Earth itself to form a bridge"
Im originally from a village right next to Tyre
How did he do it?
Yeah, how did he do it?
A fellow Gondorian
The sad feeling you get when a Lindybeige video ends
I agree! Although this was a nice length for a change no more 3 minute bollocks! I could watch him for hours though! It's karmic - Stefan Molyneux and co release 3-4 2 hour videos a day, then Lloyd releases 30 minutes a week. :'(
Yh. Hes so brilliant! 😄👌
Don't remind me that it's inevitably coming.
420th like, enjoy it.
@@runertje550 thank you trooper
You should have a topic on medieval or ancient Naval warfare.
yes
I am very interested in that, too.
+1
Lots of bloody rowing about...
There's an idea.
you made all of this sound so straightforward, now I want to go conquer a city
can you do a video on Monty pythons search for the holy grail?
Yes!!
I hope he does it in a helmet, because that makes him look exactly like Graham Chapman ^_^
Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
flyingkoopa45 haha
+flyingkoopa45 not at all... they could be carried.
I see people suggesting outrageous picks. Sure, these would have been hilarious, but by picking a subject that Lindy is enthralled by but hasn't talked about yet, you pave the way for further videos on this subject. Bravo!
Of course sieges never happened in Japan since they had katanas capable of cutting straight through stone walls ;-)
***paper walls
The Japanese would simply have agreed that it would have been rude to overcome the walls.
The real battles were taking place deep in the forests between ninjas with superpowers
Or they just set the whole place on fire like Hirata Estate...
Considering that very few of Japanese castles actually used stone as their primary ingridient, okay.
Dumb question perhaps, but what exactly was the point of a castle as a defensive structure? In pop culture, when an attacking army wants to take an area - they go straight for the castle. Conquer the castle, conquer the surrounding land. Now if the defenders are stuck inside a castle, would it not make more sense to leave behind a small army just to make sure they remain contained, and then ignore the castle completely and just take the land?
not dumb at all. always thought about it. perhaps its just a pain in the neck to keep an army there. and perhaps its better to take a castle rather than construct one. keep in mind that reinforcements can come and attack the siegers if they take too long. and then they will stand no chance.
.
And that's excatly what they did! Why should you spend time attacking a castle if you can easily pillage the sorrounding villages? Castle weren't usually sieged because: 1) most of the times they were strategically useless 2) hard to take if your army isn't that big 3) their garrison was too small to be a threat even if they sortie out 4) most of the things that you need (provisions, materials, animals ...) aren't in the castle.... they're in the sorrounding and unprotecded land!
That is on of the problems with a Castle. Sun Zu wrote in the Art of War that in order to gain land you just ignore the castles and go around them. If the army in the castle want to defend their country they have to come out.
So the role of the castle was to save the lifes of the people inside of it (usually only the lord and his soldiers) and it worked well because an enemy army usually doesn't want to waste time and would ignore you focusing on the land
I'm enjoying this trend of giving random advice at the end of your videos, Lloyd!
Fav part :D
Thank you so much, Lindybeige. No one talks about sieges. Everyone talks about battles. If you and other UA-cam aficionados talked about sieges, we viewers interested in writing, drawing, and representing the ancient and middle ages could do a better job. :)
what stands out most is your passion for all of what you talk about! that's what I keep coming back for! keep it coming!
Now im imagining a hilarious sitcom about two groups of people, one group building the ramp and the other building the wall, having a casual chat about it with each other while doing so.
Instead of a ramp, why didn't the attackers just build a spandau?
because the superior amazing craftsmanship is lost on them
sounds like the spandau is a meme for lloyd, like pommels for skallagrim xD
Not enough katanas to make one.
Is this going to become the equivalent of Pommel Throwing for Skallagrim?
They also could follow lindys example and just call everyone who disagrees with them fanboys. That would sure help a lot.
Spandau jokes on Lindybeige are like pommel jokes on Skallagrim
Yes.I wish people would be a little more creative with these things.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand it's become a meme. Great.
Just remove the barrel from your Spandau and throw it at your enemy to end him rightly
Ah but that would be easier with a bren, as he stated in his video on why the british gun was superior.
minihjalte Don't call me spandau fanboy, but that was just one of the many things Lindy got wrong yet preferred to call critics "fanboys".
The MG-42 in fact had an extremely easy and quick way to change barrels, without ever touching the hot barrel. So no need for gloves, even
3,584 Spartans to change an oil lamp? Don't be ridiculous, Spartans will fight in the shade!
MOAR SIEGE TALK! (please)
agree
Hear hear!
agree
Yep,about siege machines
agree
I'm glad you emphasise the smallness of castle garrisons in the mediaeval period. As an example of this, there is a surviving record of the manpower strength of Criccieth Castle in Wales, circa 1285: the Constable had thirty men at his disposal - ten crossbowmen, an armourer, a carpenter, a mason, a smith, a chaplain and fifteen others. This appears to have been typical.
I'm not an expert but I think so. We have to remember that making chain or other armor is not so easy.
+Joshua normal smiths didn't make armour and weapons that was armourers job
+Joshua the armorer not only made the armor but also made sure it fight right and was sometimes the garrisons quartermaster as well, dispensing armor and gear as needed. He would also make repairs, if the damage was severe enough, though generally, men were responsible for their own kit.
Smiths were metal workers and oversaw the construction of caltrops, chains, iron banding, horse shoes and showing of horses and so on. It was their job to manufacture and repair anything made of metal. During the medieval period this was a fairly cast field, so there were specialist smiths to make armor, weapons, guns and so on.
Basically, an armorer might be an armor smith, but they were not a blacksmith
The above answers are broadly correct, though it is likely that the duties of such a small garrison were divided up according to what was practical and convenient, rather than by job title. It is also likely that one of the armourer's jobs was to function as a mediaeval fore-runner to a drill sergeant.
Some quick math...
assume:
wall is 100 foot long by 70 ft wide.
Ramp is at a 30 degree angle, difficult to climb, but sufficient if you're a determined soldier with lots of other soldiers and a commanding officer behind you.
The ramp's volume would be 424,000-ish cubic feet.
10k dudes each carrying 12 baskets of earth (one at a time..) is 120k baskets...
how big is a basket? I don't know... but, 1 cubic foot of earth can weigh 70 lbs in a dry arid climate to 110 lbs if it rains a lot and there's lots of stones in it (english countryside?)... That's not too difficult for a soldier to carry... 12 of these in a 12 hour day=1 an hour? sure, no problem! Finish early, and there's the local peasantry to aggressively "netflix and chill" with...
424,000 cubic feet needed/120,000 cubic feet moved a day, is about 3.5 days till completion...
make the ramp wider (because assume a dude with a shield and spear needs a 3 foot wide area in order to stagger up an incline... at 100 feet, you get 30ish dudes to a rank... wider ramp=longer ranks = more men fighting at once...)
make the angle shallower, therefore longer to maintain a tighter, more impressive marching formation...
and maybe the men don't want to carry quite so heavy baskets, so they don't fill them quite so full of dirt, or they "spill" some dirt carrying it over to dump it...
add MORE dirt because a perfect wedge of dirt will collapse to the sides, and because walking all over the dirt during construction is going to compact it... and english rain might wash some away (that would be...exciting... to march on the next day?)
you can probably see that it might take a week-ish to finish...
unless they finish their load for the day, and then, the NEXT 10k dudes rotate onto dirt duty... maintain a continuous rotation and you've got yourself a battle-ready dirt ramp in a few days.
Lloyd's estimates check out!
The more time you spend building your ramp the hungrier, sicklier, and weaker the opponents you have to fight when you go over the top. Might as well build a big plush ramp in that case.
They don't, because such a narrow earthen ramp won't be stable.
Carrying baskets is a little inefficient. Lots of ropes, wheels and a railing system.
@@Barbarous_Wretch also don't forget they had horses and mules to pull carts full of earth.
yesss MATHS!
That signing off had me laughing so hard, love your channel and I appreciate everything you do to illuminate the past!
This is perfect, i really want to see more about Sieges!
Wow, so much lindybeige. I love it!
I love videos on sieges
Yes. Can't wait for a part 2!
well, off to go play total war
Rome, medieval, japan or napoleon?
Warhammer
ZiSt1989 rome II actually
Mount & Blade for me. Agger? No, everybody run up the same ladder! That's clearly the best strategy to take this massively fortified castle.
Everyone! Stay down at the bottom of the ladder, shooting uselessly at the defenders while our leader runs up... Alone... With a spear
Plataean siege defense: Just troll 'em the whole time.
Noooo Jack what have you done!? That was our only chance to see the video on fire arrows and you blew it!
Could you do a video on sieges during the age of gunpowder?
Indeed, I imagine gunpowder changed the way sieges were performed even before the average soldier was armed with a gun, it would be interesting to hear about.
In addition to that, it might also be interesting to hear about some unique siege engines that didn't see long or widespread use. Something along the lines of a crazy invention that didn't catch on, I assume there were just as many bizarre siege engines as there were bizarre personal weapons.
Sean Madson That could also work.
Cannons forced Armies to be bigger. No longer could you hold out in your castle/fortress. You had to meet the enemy on the field.
King Steve
While I understand and agree that the invention of cannons greatly reduced the safety of the old styles of castles/fortresses, there still were fortresses and bunkers of sorts that people used as cover, and buildings serving such a purpose still exist today.
It might be interesting to see the trial-and-error evolution of the castle/fort into what in modern times would most likely be a bomb shelter, or at least it might be interesting to me.
+King Steve
Actually no, after cannons became common to use in sieges, forts were built differently, look up 'trace italienne'. It became harder for cannons to destroy the walls and forts themselves were armed with cannons.
The lack of editing in your videos is refreshing because that makes your videos more like improv and the knowledge you have on hand (and maybe a script). It works really well for you and your videos. I'm glad I found this channel.
Would love a Lindybeige podcast.
Jack you should have picked topic Spandau vs Katana
Goddamn it.
So what about the common depiction of a siege tower being rolled up to the wall, a drawbridge lowered and men stormed the wall? How common was this?
If the tower were on an agger, then it wouldn't have to be very tall, and could compensate for any heightening of the wall.
And how many siege towers were used without an agger, built as high as the wall?
This is what I love about history. All the epic sword clashes, arrows, ladders, et al, gets shown not just in films, but in songs dating back to the period. It seems so glorious. Then, you get to the history and what Lindy found to be most important about sieges was a competitive building exercise between a wall and an earthen ramp.
The history of sieges is competitive infrastructure improvement! When you see construction along the highway, just thing... these men used to be warriors....
***** Reign it back, man, I wasn't saying entertainment would be better if it was historically accurate. In fact, I said that even in the time it was current, entertainment didn't highlight historically accurate siege warfare.
In fact, I think it's ironically hilarious how benign siege warfare must have been. "Bring your dirt, dump it on the hill, crack open a beer."
Imagine the guy joining the army for fame, glory, and to see the world, and he ends up hauling dirt to a hill. I'm sure the "Thrilling, mate." comment is exactly what they were thinking.
I started watching this and just couldnt turn it off.. well done sir!
Lindy we need more siege videos! Much, much more! This was incredibly interesting to listen to. It would also be awesome if they were much longer ^^
I would love a series on this sort of topic. A weekly video on ancient warfare, or something similar, would be nice.
Its genuinely fascinating how much effort goes into beseriging a city, it's hard to imagine tens of thousands of people in one place doing such a thing as building the equipment, let alone the incredible amount of time it all takes.
I love the little bits of practical advice at the end ;)
How have I not found your channel before? Perhaps it's because I'm not much interested in siege-crafty stuff, but somehow watching you talk, I am transfixed.......
Good effort on all the plentiful recent uploads.
And the channel is now undergoing "Spandau-Gate" or "BrenGate"
I think we've declared his version of "throw pommel and end him rightly"
+Vito C Unscrew the pommel first willyou? Thén you can go ahead and end them rightly.
Hammel Gammel Shhhh, don't tell them that... ;P
Hammel Gammel A World War was nearly won due to the brutally effective strategies of Field Marshal Erwin Pommel
OMG! This guy is uploading daily now! It's great!
This week I'm doing four videos, to make up for the two weeks recently that had only one.
do a video on the siege of platea, please. it sounds interesting.
Many overlook the problem of logistics in Sieges: Imagine that you besiege a city in the middle of the desert with 10 000 men that need food and water for maybe 1 year and your supply lines are getting ambushed all the time...
Thats why many tried to assault castles immediatly. Doing this they either made it in before the defense is ready, or they lose a lot of mouths to feed and possibly get a better picture of the weak-spots of the fortifications. A famous example would be Carcassonne, where they sent their mercenaries first so that they wouldn't need to pay them later.
would be?
hahahaha the seige huts - quote 'everyone would go hup hurrrrr hup chup and the whole thing would move along' ahahahahahah nice sound effects man
We here in Würzburg tell the tale of 30 knights holding Castle marienberg against 30.000 smallfolk
30,000 smallfolk? What's a smallfolk?
+Keith Larsen peasants
Hobbits. There were plenty in medieval Germany.
well yeah but so were there dwarves
I can´t help but feel like I´m being ridiculed for my english ;-;
11:50 I absolutely love these vocal effects and gestures. It makes the video come alive!
I looked up the story about the defense led by Lady Mary Bankes, and according to Wikipedia, her force did not hold on to the castle. Up to the point of the quote, it pretty much agreed with what you said:
"In 1646 (the siege began in 1643), one of her officers, Colonel Pitman, betrayed her by leading a party of Parliamentarians into the castle via a sally gate. The Parliamentarians under the command of a Colonel Bingham reversed their jackets and were mistaken for Royalists. As a result she was forced to surrender the castle. However, because she showed such courage she was allowed to keep the keys of the castle, which are now held at Kingston Lacy near Wimborne Minster, Dorset. The castle was slighted the same year it was captured by the orders of the House of Commons."
Slighted?
Alex Metherell It means to raze or destroy a fort.
Slighted means partially destroy a castle, either a wall or a tower, so it is no longer viable defensibly, not necessarily destroying the whole building. Parts could still be left inhabitable.
I, as many before me, have always been fascinated by medieval warfare, though my interest has only been 'in passing' until a short while ago. I just wanted to say that your videos have more or less opened up a whole new avenue for me, and I appreciate it. You give us so much information in passing that can be relatively difficult to learn elsewhere- not always because it is obscure, but rather that the collective 'we' had no idea that that it was even a thing or an option. It is rather hard to search for something you don't know existed.
(I have become interested in writing a book and have had the most difficult time thinking up reasonably realistic wartime scenarios, but just watching your videos is flooding me with ideas.)
Hey Lindy, Ive always noticed that medieval forces were never the size of ancient armies, but m question is why? Why did the raw size of armies get so much smaller than what they used to be?
Well the concept of empires faded after the Roman Empire for a long time. The Holy Roman Empire was more of a feudal system and thus the volunteering/conscription of large amounts of soldiers was now obsolete. Battles were fought with much smaller levies now from dukes. An important thing to note is that the idea of a standing army also was not present for a majority of feudal europe. Without a trained and experienced force you had a variety of poor to decent fighters as your main army, so large and long wars was nearly impossible to conduct. This use of feudal levies would continue for hundreds of years as battles did not need to be fought by so many men to win a war decisively.
Zoltan Gyongyossy great post, I was also going to comment saying the feudal system put a stop to large armies
Djlawson1000 aa
When Rome fell the whole of Europe forgot how to do a ton of things. One of these things was quite possibly the art of drilling large armies. Getting tens of thousands of men to March and fight in unison is incredibly difficult. They're were some trained soldiers but they were generally mercenaries or a noble. Most fights were relatively small and generally took place in one spot.
I do love a new video from Lindybeige, especially when it's about seiges. Made my day.
I love you Lindy. Can you do something on Irish Gallowglasses and Kerns next? Or the Fianna? Or something on the ancient Gaelic Irish warrior class.
Haatchii but they suck
Norman invasion of Ireland would be cool.
This was great, the way you present information is truly top notch.
MG 42 could've won a siege singlehandedly.
An African MG42 or a European one? And what if the attackers had katanas?
...
maybe if u had enough ammo, but they would probably retreat anyway in fear of the MG-42's horrifying sound
While this is meant as a silly thing, yes, it actually could have, actually.
Have you ever actually used a spandau to break a medieval siege from men with stabby spears? Then you are not a sufficient expert to know.
I'm going through the channel watching videos I failed to watch in the past.
this was informative, entertaining, just fucking impressive (I see what you do in every video, Lloyd, and I love my only youtuber who doesn't jumpcut!), topped off with great advise. this is why I came and never left!
11:30 incendiary devices eh? and what might they be? not fire arrows would they...
...it could be fireballs from from a launcher...
You can heat the iron end of a bolt to red hot with a suitable fire (charcoal and bellows) before the wooden shaft begins to smoke. Shoot that into the enemy - if you hit someone it is rather unpleasant as some bloke runs around with smoke coming out of his body until he falls down, or you may hit a structure which will keep burning for some time regardless of water being poured on as the wood insulates the hot iron and keeps on smoldering.
Bruce Lee ah but he's talking about the Hellenistic period, and I'd be willing to bet that the arrow heads would have been made of bronze, which has a lower melting point than, low enough to make heating it fairly useless, though that is conjecture and I may be wrong.
Is the Spandau or the Bren gun most effective during a seige? (Sorry Lindybeige... I had too..)
Spandau more effective when defendign the wall bren when assaulting.......obviously!
During a siege I'd use a Spandau as a suppressor, but I'd also use a Bren for single target/multi target effectiveness
i would take the mg42.
Ah, so that is the reason why we are having such difficulties finding life there.
In ancient days, Spandaus used to shoot katana bullets.
I loved this video and I would like to request a part 2.
YES! A new Lindybeige video! Love it, looking forward for more siege talk!
Hey Lloyd, is there any chance you could do a video on the battle of Thermopylae? you know, the one that's famous for the 300 spartans? It's probably my favorite story of all time and yet the details I've found about it are kinda all over the place. Deadliest Warrior seems to have skewed some opinions about the spartans as a whole and especially the 300.
No immediate plans, but one day, I don't see why not. It could be combined with a review of 300.
I would really like to watch Lloyd talking about the true story of that battle, good topic
+Catch_Me_If_You_Can Cuz people don't know history
were they really?
+Priviledgy Shitlord (Rustler of Jimmies) I don't remember the Spartans doing much conquering. They were content to keep to their creepy militarized dystopia and oppress their slaves, not venturing beyond the Pelopenese
Very good content, and incredibly well presented for a 14 minute, uncut, monologue without AFAIK prompts. You could talk the hind legs off a donkey. God Bless You, Squire!
"people dropping rocks on us and this is just awful"
Mordhau in a nutshell
The puzzle at the end of video made me laugh so hard I almost fell of my chair! I wrote a paper on the role of Helots in ancient Sparta when I was studying history and it brought all the memories back. Thank you, kind Sir!
"One man on a wall is worth 10 beneath it." - Tywin Lannister
R.I.P LINDYBEIGE : Ended Rightly before his time.
But that's okay, he knew the risks of facing the pommel and cloned himself before going. This channel will live on in his memory and in our hearts.
See what would be the greatest siege weapon would simply be a large force of men throwing their pommels over the walls the end their enemies rightly, of course the defenders would return fire with a spandau in which case the attackers would have to take cover until the enemy used up all their ammunition as they had kicked out most of the civilians that had the ammunition attached to their belts..
you are a tactical genius
they would bring in tactical bushes to hide behind in case the defenders start firing the spandaus
If only the attackers had a group of men armed with katanas they would've been able to parry every single bullet from the spandau with them.
Well if you have katanas just cut trough the fortifications with them.
I love the drawning you use of the castle from my home town in Belgium -Ghent : The Dukes Castle or in Flemish : Gravensteen
Bren or spandau, which one would be better for siege warfare?
which side?
BAR
A katana!
Well obviously one is more defensive then the other!
You stupid fanboy!
Maschinengewehr 42 >
Lindybeige, appreciate all the content. Loving it!
can spandau stop an uprising?
No, but it can suppress it.
+Beriorn If a Spandau is good for suppressing is it quiet?
A Gebirgsjäger and his Sturmgewher
A suppressor for a Spandau would likely be as big as the gun itself and would not do all that much. Also it'd be worn out quickly due to its rate of fire.
+Beriorn What about a quick-change integrated suppressor and a firerate lowered to 3/4 the normal rate? Still formidable but more concealable.
Such a suppressor on the suppressing weapon would suppress its ability to suppress. Being serious, the sound is the thing that was feared. If you can't hear the bullets, is someone firing at you?
Your videos & Your knowledge are amazing & quite frankly AWESOME....!! Thank you for making them... I'll keep watching & giving thumbs up....
If I could only use Bren guns or Spandaus to besiege a castle, which should I pick?
The Bren being more accurate could take out individual archers, but the spandau would make the whole wall of defenders put their heads down.
The bren. It's lighter and easier to carry into the eventual assault with your troops. Plus you'll go through less ammunition so you can field more guns.
I hope these meme catches on
+SkyClap pretty sure it already did, god i love the internet
Why would you want to take out individual archers, or eve suppress the wall, when you could simply end *the wall itself* rightly!
Great topic! I love videos that explain how medieval life really was.
Didn't the Romans build Siege towers out of Spandaus?
Found the channel a few nights ago and I’m loving the deep dive into each topic. Merry Xmas good sir
Please, Lloyd. A single Spandautana will take down any fortification.
only works if dual wielded by a VIKING!!!
But it has to be a berserker.
+Blitz Krieg or his studded leather
Quick quick... must add more dank memezzz...
...end that fortification rightly!
This is getting far too dank, people. Get out of the sewer!
I really enjoyed this topic. It really puts things in perspective. Thank you Lindy!
Spandau is excellent in sieges
Your videos are actually my favourite!
Oh poor Lindybeige, he is under siege of all these Spandauer comments x)
The fact that he adressed the people who were "fully pro-German Engineering" as 'fanboys' tells me he'll probably be alright. We could throw sarcastic comments back though...?
I didn't see that video before I commented, you're right, that video wasn't great. ._.
***** I am not going to judge it. It's not the era/period I'm specialized in. Let alone that I ever actually studied the weapons. Therefor I suppose I am not qualified to judge it. (Though I'll gladly throw back some sarcastic comments to those "fanboys" when they do say something even I find untrue.)
TheRustler dont comment before watching. Makes for silly comments
i really appreciate your passion and attention to detail, great channel, thanks for the hours of clever entertainment
How could they built these ''aggers'' while being pelted by arrows?
Vineae.
+Lindybeige Sorry, I'm fairly new to the channel, I love your content, but have you done a video on Trebuchets?
@ Neb - "pioneers" and siege engineers !- RESPECT!
He briefly discussed trebuchets in one of his videos about the film "Ironclad".
sir, I wish to report a beach hut approaching.....yup....looks like seaweed
I'm excited about this vid. Thanks for the topic coverage.
Span span span span...
Lovely Span! Wonderful Span...!
10/10 clip, my ideas of sieges has now been crumbled and rebuilt but i enjoy learning new things thanks Lindybeige
Quick Stupid Question, What was the strategic benefit of taking a castle ? wouldn't a city be better ? more Supplies, food and loot
And that's what usually happened.
To answer that you could say why was the castle built in that position in the first place, usually to dominate an area where there isn't a large walled city but can control some strategic point or large area for resources.
Think of cities as ancient tanks without wheels.
It's there, it's strong, and it can ruin your advance. The idea was to have a center of power over the region. Compared with cities, castles are full of military equipment, almost a whole region's trained military force, and feudal lords, and once you remove a feudal lord, you have all their land (including whatever cities the lord owns). It's safer, more economical, and less wasteful to just take a castle than to take down a city and potentially have to burn it down and kill its citizens to ensure security.
Rexel Harder Ancient cities and castles aren't the same subject, different time span.
If you take a city, you need a detachment of like 300 to 500 people at least to control the local population (weakening your amy), while as Lloyd says, you only need a few to defend a castle.
I love these videos, Keep it up!
When the Romans besieged Carthage in 149BC, the Carthaginians decided that their main line of defence would be to use spandaus on their walls, and spent the previous two summers stockpiling spandau ammunition. When the Romans attacked, they were pinned down for several hours, however, the city quickly used up all their ammunition due to the rapid rate of fire. Miraculously, when the Romans picked themselves up from the dirt, not a single soldier had been hit, allowing them to easily take the city.
these comments aren't funny.
where did you get this from?
+Oswald Chai lol
+Oswald Chai his last video
+Julian Blow That's because you blow.
0:09 plz anyone tell me the name of the sound effect he used 🙏🙏🙏🙏🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗
"As always, don't feed chocolate to dogs." What? I mean it's true, but What?
Haven't you noticed? The last couple of videos have all had a completely irrelevant piece of trivia at the end of it. I personally find them hilarious, but as humour is largely subjective, you're of course free to disagree.
Chocolate is toxic to dogs,like arsenic to people.
Clark Liberty To be honest, chocolate is toxic to humans as well. It's just that our livers have evolved to break it down very quickly, something dogs cannot do.
@@rjfaber1991 Which means it's nontoxic. At least in the sense that most people use that word.
I've been thinking and searching for the words for those screens and 'sheds' in the Medieval period. Thanks for sharing.
Hah! There is a pair of glasses hanging in the wall as art, a jab at the recent prank where some glasses were laid on the floor and mistaken for an art piece.... Nicely done!
these hang these since forever...
Question: What about ladders?
If you have archery support from a siege tower and manage to clear a part of the wall from enemies you could put a few ladders you made with wood and rope and get some people inside to open the gates, right?
Hell, why not board from a siege tower if you have superiority?
Would you fancy climbing a ladder? What stops the defenders pushing it away with you on it?
Under normal circumstances of course not, but when you mentioned a siege tower with archers overlooking the walls I was thinking that the archers could provide cover for someone to use a ladder.
Another though I has was that if the defenders sometimes dug tunnels into the ramps to sabotage them, couldn't the attackers do something similar? The tunnel entrance could be hidden by the presence of cover for building the ramp, and so would be the presence of dirt. You would have digging noises that might tip the defenders off and they might setup an ambush but having bolts, arrows and other crap thrown at you when making the ramp also doesn't sound too pleasant.
I guess that's what you mean by this being a bigger topic then you can cover in 1 video, but it really got me interested.
That must be difficult. Let's say we have 4 guys climbing: that weights a lot. Even in there's only 1 guy at the lower part of the ladder, you just cannot push it unless all the weight it's in the upper part. Maybe fire is an option here?
What are you on about. My dog loves chocolate. He just had a bar of it. Come here spike! Show them how much you love chocolate. Spike! Spike! Spike? OH GOD NO!
That was cringey.
At 8:16, it says that the Siege of Plataea lasted from 429-427 BC. Just wanted to let you know!
Here in Sweden, we had massive armys in the medieval time. There were litterarly hundreds of thousand men in any one army. Albeit, they were very small and disguised themselves as big blokes, cramping in about ten thouseand men in one piece of shining armour.
wrong
Medieval man powered mech suites... FUND IT!
Completely wrong
People with no sense of humour...
hazzmati what do you mean wrong? You cant prove it! The men were about 1" high, and weighed in at 50 lbs per man. That made a suit of armour just about the heaviest thing in the universe, when they cramped in those ten of thousands of men in one suit!
I really enjoy these longer videos.