Bringing a castle to its knee's

xx

Quick question, a friend and me are both into fantasy books and have read quite a number of them between us. But we have a bit of a debate going on. We are trying to decide which medieval siege weapon was the greatest threat against a standard fortified castle? Don't want to do a poll on this, but we had the choice of;
1. Catapult
2. Ballista
3. Manganel (or Mangonel, if you prefer)
4. Trebuchet
5. Battering Ram
6. Siege Tower
7. Ladder crews (big ladders with soldiers waiting on them to scale the walls).
I reckon, for all around effectiveness, the Mangonel was best at crushing the walls, but my mate reckons Siege Towers were the best at winning a siege quickly.
What do ye reckon?

Gordon

Does it not depend on what exactly you want to do?

Trebuchet to throw in some rotting animal carcasses to make the inhabitants sick and die over a perio of time

Ladders to bring the troops in quickly with the help of battering rams etc.

xx

Okay, mebbe I didn't explain it. If you wanted to take a castle down as quickly as poss. which one would you use? Eg. Catapult the walls to create an 'alternative' entrance for soldiers or Siege towers to get ur guys on the battlements as soon as poss. etc.

LoLth

Trebuchet >> huge payload, massive damage. Great against most early castles.

Battering ram: depends on a lot of things, does the castle have a moat? How many men are invading (no point in battering down the door if you dont have the men to take the castle.

Siege tower: again, you got the troops to back it up?


possibly the best way to look at it is to take specific examples:

EG: Massada, no siege tower or batterign ram could affect it, trebuchets (very large roman catapults) could just about make it. In the end they built a big ramp and charged with lots of men.

Antioch: good luck taking that with anything less than a crusading horde.

many of the scottish and english castles are excellent examples of how castle defenses changed to counter siege weaponry.

Dutch castles in particular are varied. Some are designed to resist almost any numebr of soldiers, others have low walls and huge earth ramparts to foil cannon, crenelations, murder holes, dual gates, portcullis, drawbridge, killing ground formed by a crescent entryway,

the castle defenses are way too varied to say which method is best.

You need to pick a castle and then ask which would be best for this case.

A favourite of mine has always been poisoning the water table, digging a siege line and waiting the defenders out.

Funky

Trebuchet definitely

Thanx 4 The Fish

No Moat, tunnellers would do it for me, lowest risk of boys getting hocleyed but it would depend on the construction of the walls.

Manach

Bribery:
Simply put, make an offer of X gold of gold to surrender the castle, payable to the opposing commander. This has historical precedence, during the 30yrs War in Germany this happened. The commander in question later got commended for this.

Other than that, starve the castle into submission.

echomadman

Antioch: good luck taking that with anything less than a crusading horde

What about holy hand grenades?

seriousl though Big Trebuchets definitly,
when you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfcuker in the keep

ykt0di9url7bc3

Redeemer




why take the castle?

why not take the country side...no raping or pillaging..just take the countryside and encorporate the peasants/farmers into your kingdom..whatever tax they paid to thier former lord...drop 30% and use it to feed the occupying army...if they come out of thier castle let thme come to you and then engage them in combat...

its a lot easier than throwing yourself at a castle/strongholds defenses or lay siege to them