15 GENIUS Ancient Siege Weapons

ancient people were a lot smarter than we give them credit for ingenious engineers and skilled craftsmen construct the most powerful weapons of their time here are 15 ingenious ancient siege weapons number 15 greek fire in ancient times cities would not only come under siege by troops on land but also because they were often built on the coast they'd find themselves under attack from naval forces as well this posed a problem because traditional defensive techniques wouldn't necessarily work so they were forced to design ingenious methods to deal with enemy fleets one of the most notorious was called greek fire it was first reportedly used by the byzantine empire in the year 672 and was essentially an incendiary weapon that was used to set wooden ships ablaze quite how this was done isn't known for sure but researchers believe a device was used to launch a chemical compound into the water likely one that contained naphtha and quicklime and would burst into flames upon impact it would continue burning on the water and according to records was the reason behind a number of the empire's military victories and was crucial for their defense of constantinople during the first and second arab sieges of the city byzantine greek fire provided such a military advantage that it was a closely guarded secret and only a handful of military scientists knew how to produce it once the empire finally fell all records of the manufacturing process were lost so to this day we can only speculate about the actual ingredients although based on writings by a roman historian it's thought likely that it included calcium phosphide sulfur or niter 14 battering ram nowadays we often think of battering rams as the heavy-duty devices that law enforcement use to break into the homes of suspects but these are minuscule in comparison to the original designs that were used during ancient times back then there were very few ways to effectively break through the defensive walls of cities so to win a siege the attacking force needed something powerful to smash through the masonry or the thick wooden gates essentially and at their simplest they were huge logs that were suspended on ropes so they could be swung back to generate enough momentum to swing forward and exert a huge force on the target because of their weight stone and wooden structures are weak in tension so applying a sideways force on them would at first cause cracks that could then be exploited to cause the walls to crumble the use of battering rams did however make troops vulnerable to attack by the defensive forces so the later designs became far more complicated they incorporated canopies that were both arrow-proof and fireproof to protect the people operating them and allowed the rams to be used much earlier on in the battle than had been possible previously eventually the weapons became obsolete with the introduction of gunpowder and projectiles but until that point they were one of the most effective pieces of equipment on the battlefield number 13 ballista a ballista was in effect a huge crossbow that could be loaded with heavy bolts and stones and would be used to disable and destroy enemy armaments or even to inflict huge casualties against opposition troops they were made up of a ramp upon which the projectile was loaded and a heavy duty string that was attached to a spring-loaded lever on either side the projectile was pulled back to create tension on the levers and when it was released they would propel it forwards the greeks were the first civilization known to use a ballista-like device and believed to have used them on the battlefield as early as 400 bc they also became a mainstay of the roman military force and were deployed across europe to help them capture and defend new territories they did however require a higher level of engineering ability than other weapons so following the fall of the roman empire their use faded away in favor of simpler designs even in the 19th century when designs of ballistae and remnants of ones from ancient battlefields were found researchers were unable to recreate them or understand how they functioned as weapons it was only in the 20th century that modern engineering had caught up enough to make sense of them learn how much of an impact these devices would have made during battle they're one example of how the romans out-engineered their opposition as much as they out-fought them with military training and tactics and without ballast a they wouldn't have been anywhere near as dominant a force number 12 the beyotian flamethrower believed to have been the first flamethrower to have ever been used the beyotian flamethrower was a device that was used for the peloponnesian war in 420 bc this was a time when greek city-states battled the spartans and any technological edge had the capability of turning the tide of war the flamethrower itself was made up of an iron beam which had been scooped out and had a cauldron hanging from a chain at one end and a bellow at the other the cauldron would be filled with a mixture of lit coal sulfur and tar and a small hollow pipe fed into its center it was a huge device and when the operator used the bellow which involved them sitting on top of it the air would blow out into the cauldron and provide a burst of oxygen which in turn would create huge flames they were extremely effective against cities with wooden walls and would soon burn them to ash along with any enemy troops that were nearby at the time but the flamethrowers were also effective against stonewalled cities too in these cases the temperatures achieved by the flamethrower would be so intense that the stone would begin to crack and these weaknesses would then be exploited by a mixture of vinegar urea and other corrosive substances to create larger structural defects that would eventually cause them to collapse number 11. counterweight trebuchet counterweight trebuchets were for centuries one of the most powerful types of siege engines to be used on battlefields and was only with the introduction of gunpowder that they eventually became obsolete they are large catapults that are thought to have first been used in the 11th or 12th century and are made up of a long throwing arm which has on one end a counterweight and on the other is a rope that holds the ammunition they were fixed weapons so had to be constructed close to enemy fortifications but once this was done they had the ability to launch huge projectiles a surprising distance when triggered the counterweight would drop down and cause the lever arm to lift up which in turn hurled the projectile with frightening force and accuracy the forces on the device that would be exerted meant that it had to be solidly built often with an a-frame on either side to hold the arm and a counterweight in place this meant that the full-size trebuchets weren't always practical to use with armies often choosing to go with smaller catapults instead but when there were large fortifications to contend with there was nothing anywhere near as effective for a defending army the mere sight of seeing a trebuchet being constructed often meant the need to organize a suicide mission with the hope that they could somehow destroy before it could release even one payload 10 the claw of archimedes if historical accounts are to be believed then the claw of archimedes was one of the most ingenious bizarre and deadly siege weapons to have ever been devised it was another device that was created to help defend an under siege city against a naval onslaught and was invented by archimedes for his home city of syracuse according to the records from the time the device was made up of a huge crane that had a grappling hook at the end of it which would be dropped onto enemy ships this in itself would be devastating to the vessels but the real danger from the claw was when it was able to grab hold of the end of a ship and lift it up out of the water this would either cause the ship to capsize or at least drop it a significant distance back to the water so it was effectively incapacitated the city was apparently fitted with a number of these devices in time for the second punic war in 214 bc which saw 60 roman cancarames attacking the city in the dead of night the claws were deployed and blamed for significant roman losses which eventually led them to having to retreat and admit defeat number 9 siege tower a siege tower which was also known as a breaching tower was a specialized siege engine designed to protect attackers as they scaled enemy walls they were built to be the same size as the armaments of the city that was being attacked and were mounted on four wheels so they could be pushed right up to the walls inside the towers were a series of ladders that soldiers could easily climb without fear of being shot by archers and sometimes the siege towers were built a little taller to allow attacking archers to stand on top and shoot arrows down on defending troops as they were usually made from wood siege towers were particularly vulnerable to fire so to prevent this they were often covered in a flame-proof material such as iron or animal skins the first record of a siege tower being used was from the 11th century bc by the babylonians who would usually construct them from scratch on the battlefield various different designs were used depending on the particular conditions of the battle being fought but most had gang planks that could be lowered over enemy fortifications so it was easy for soldiers to run across into the city and start fighting as soon as possible we are constantly adding more people to the top fives production team to bring you all the best content be sure to subscribe with notifications on and hit the like button number eight caltrops you may be familiar with caltrops from modern times but they've actually been used for thousands of years at least since the time of the roman empire known to the romans as tribulus which means jagged iron they are made from metal and feature four sharp prongs at different angles this means that no matter how they're dropped onto the ground at least one of the sharp spikes will be pointed upwards and this ensures that they're effective until they've been removed from the battlefield entirely they work as anti-personnel devices and were particularly destructive towards horses and early vehicles like chariots once the spike went into a steed's foot or chariot's wheel it would be rendered useless and the rider would be forced to proceed by foot making them far more vulnerable to defenses and potentially falling victim to a cow trop themselves the spikes would often be used by a defending city to create a region of no man's land between the city walls and the surrounding countryside which would pose a dangerous hurdle for attacking armies to overcome before they could get anywhere close caltrops have remained effective in modern warfare with only slight adaptations needed to enable them to puncture vehicle tires number 7. patards you might have heard of the phrase hoisted by your own patard and this comes from battlefield accidents that happened when using a particularly nasty medieval weapon called a petard they were invented by the french and are small bomb-like devices that were conical or rectangular in shape and contain five or six pounds of gunpowder a slow match was added to act as a fuse and they were mainly used to blow holes in gates and fortifications when trying to overwhelm a city they were specifically shaped like this to allow most of the concussive force of the blast to be channeled towards a small target to cause maximum damage and were sometimes even nailed to enemy gates to ensure they caused as much destruction as possible there was however a danger when using them which is where the saying comes from the fuses weren't always as reliable as you'd hope and there were a number of accounts of patards exploding while they were still in the hands of the person trying to set them against a target which would result in him being hoisted by his own petard number six the sambuca not to be mistaken for the potent alcoholic spirit from italy the sambuco was a naval siege engine that was created by heracliades of tarentum and used for the first time during the roman siege of syracuse in 213 bc two ships would line up alongside each other and each one had a tall tower which doubled as the mast these were attached to an assault bridge that lay between them and once they approached the target city the bridge would be raised up and rested on top of the defensive walls this in theory would then allow the soldiers on the ships to run up the bridge and enter the battle but in practice never fully lived up to expectations in the roman siege of syracuse they failed because they collapsed while being hoisted and the ships became targets of the claw of archimedes while subsequent versions that were used during the seas of chios in 201 bc and the siege of roads in 88 bc also suffered similar faults the greeks and the romans remained convinced that they were a good idea however and it's believed that they finally perfected the design and used them in a number of nautical sieges over the following century number five circumvallation one of the most powerful defensive structures a city could build was a wall around its entire perimeter this would give those inside complete control about who could enter or leave but it also resulted in everyone inside being contained within its boundary attacking troops in the face of an onslaught of arrows and projectiles from within the city had an option rather than waiting for the opportune moment to strike which could have taken a long time to come they could instead build fortifications of their own and in effect imprison all of the city's residents this technique known as circumvallation involved building an entirely new wall trench or fortification around the city but one that was controlled by the attackers this ensured no new supplies could be smuggled into the city and rendered defensive weaponry useless too the first recorded use of circumvallation took place in 429 bc during the spartan siege of plateau and it was also a favored tactic of julius caesar who used it to defeat the gauls in the siege of alessia in 52 bc the method proved so effective that militaries used it in the middle ages too such as during the siege of constantinople in 717 a.d where a huge stone wall was built between the city and the surrounding countryside which gave space in between it and the original city walls for the attacking arab troops to camp in this not only restricted supplies to the city but it also protected the arabs from reinforcements that they had learned would be approaching from bulgaria this is seen by many as one of the most important battles in history but ultimately ended in failure for the muslim arabs of the umayyad caliphate which resulted in them rethinking their attempts to move into europe number four the manjanel siege weapon the man janelle's siege weapon was an early form of trebuchet that was first developed and used in ancient china around the 4th century bc unlike the counterweight trebuchet that relied on heavy weights to pull the lever down and in the process launching the projectile into the air this design relied on human power instead with a name that's thought to derive from the greek word manganon which means engine of war they were called in china and al-manjaniq in arabic according to the records from the time the weapons were 17 feet tall above the ground but were also buried four feet into the ground for stability and featured a throwing arm that was up to 35 feet long three quarters of the arm was above the pivot and attached to the two foot long sling while the remaining part of the arm was below the pivot and had a series of ropes attached to it a team of men would be responsible for pulling on the ropes at the same time and a well-practiced crew was able to launch the projectiles as much as 300 feet they weren't normally used as defensive weapons on city fortifications but on occasion would be used to pound enemy walls that were proving too tough to breach by conventional methods number three exploding mill wheel when the residents of a city found themselves under siege the biggest problem they would soon face was the lack of supplies that made it within the city walls very few ancient cities were fully self-sufficient and without regular deliveries of food weapons and other supplies they'd begin struggling one thing they could do however is be ingenious with their means of defense arrows and projectiles were in short supply so anything and everything was considered as a potential weapon never was this clearer than during the siege of edger in 1552 the castle which is in northern hungary was surrounded by ottoman troops who were present in much larger numbers and had far more powerful weapons than the defenders by all accounts it should have been an easy victory for the ottomans but they ended up losing and had to withdraw the big difference was a man called gergely burnismiza who was incredibly inventive with his use of gunpowder he'd made grenades and powder keg bombs but his most famous creation was made from a water mill wheel he packed it full of gunpowder oil sulfur and flint and rolled it down the hill towards the ottomans when it reached them it exploded and showered fire and shrapnel to kill and injure hundreds of soldiers number two the plague the bubonic plague has throughout human history occasionally re-emerged and killed hundreds of millions of people it takes advantage of unclean environments for a long time people didn't understand how it was being spread but there's one place where the local population wasn't decimated by the actions of rats and fleas but instead entirely on purpose in 1343 the mongols attempted to take the city of kapha but after a long siege they were unsuccessful they were forced to retreat but the residents of the city were sure they'd return again two years later they would prove to be correct but when johnny begg the mongolian leader returned the city just so happened to be ravaged by the black death what had actually happened was that the mongols had contracted the disease on their journey to the city and during the second siege thousands of them had succumbed to it they were becoming demoralized and wanted to quit but before they did they decided to share their misery with the residents of kapha they loaded dead bodies onto catapults and launched them over the defensive walls and there was little anyone could do about it ultimately the residents of kapha were forced to flee taking the plate with them throughout europe and asia and the battle will now always be remembered as the first time mass scale biological warfare was used number one archimedes death ray in ancient times independent city-states would often find themselves needing to defend against aggressors but the city of syracuse had a secret weapon that no others had a resident scientist called archimedes there are a number of times throughout history when the actions of one person change the fate of thousands more but without him the city surely would have fallen to roman advances as well as furthering scientific knowledge in a variety of areas he also ensured that his city was safe so he could continue with his work he was famous for creating the claw that could lift ships out of the ocean but this wasn't his most devastating design not by a long shot he was also credited with creating the so-called death ray a device that was mounted on the city walls and could set fire to a ship further away than the range of any other weapon but there's been a debate for centuries over whether this was a real invention or not but the general consensus is that he did indeed design a death ray and it actually did work exactly how legend says it did it was made up of a series of polished lenses that were either held by soldiers along the city walls or were housed together in one giant contraption these were used to channel the sun's rays into a very thin and powerful beam that simply needed to be directed at the sails of an enemy ship it generated intense heat in such a short space of time that the sails would have appeared to ignite virtually instantaneously and it would have most likely caused the entire vessel to burst into flames and sink according to roman historians it was this weapon that eventually convinced the empire to stop trying to take control of syracuse and instead try to ally with them to share their technologies it seems though that archimedes didn't reveal his design to anyone outside of the city walls because there are no accounts of one of these devices ever being used anywhere else until modern times when researchers recreated it to test whether it would actually work or not 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Channel: Top Fives

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Keywords: GENIOUS Ancient Siege Weapons

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Length: 19min 24sec (1164 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020

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Ballade in F# Minor: Trebuchets

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