A step by step guide in taking a city, Roman Style

[removeduser_426582376423734]

Here you will find all you need to know about beseiging, treachery, night attacks and many, many more ways to take a city.

Part One, Seige Equipment

The basic way to take a city is by using siege equipment. It has gone on for many centuries, from the days of the Pelopennese to the post-Jesus days. The most used equipment is the 'ram'.



The battering ram. The fundamental usage was to attack the gate of a city or town. However, the men moving the ram would often be fired upon by missiles thrown by the defenders. This causes a problem. How would one take such a huge thing all the way to the city walls when there are no men left to move it?

Another problem, this time for the defender. When the ram touches the walls or gate, according to ancient Greek warfare, no surrender will be allowed. This is the same for both sides. However, this does not mean the men can rape, pillage and burn, this just means that the enemy army will not be spared. But, hey, if a couple of women complain of harsh treatment, well, thats not too bad, is it?



The nice Time Team here model the ladder. In Roman times, the ladder would have obviously had to be big enough to scale the walls, but not too big, otherwise the soldiers would have trouble getting onto the walls. This, quite obviously, would not apply to small towns or cities with no real fortifications or large walls. However, any city of real importance had large enough walls to hold off invaders, therefore ladders were quite the necessity.

Part Two, Treachery

Now we move onto treachery. So many times have cities and towns been given up by residents that are in favour of the invading army that it largely outnumbers the amount of times that the towns and cities have been stormed and taken by fighting. Many famous cities were taken by treachery, more famously in the Second Punic War, for example, the invasion of New Carthage.

However, if you want to take a city by treason, you must win the favour of the inhabitants, some way or another. Portraying the opposition has the enemy, or defeating them in decisive battles or even minor ones, may win the approval of factions in these cities. This, however, is more probable in civilised states such as the Greeks, where the more honourable factions will allow you access, rather than the barbaric men of Gaul and Spain, who would rather die than face blissful Roman civilisation, famously shown by Publius Cornelius Scipio as he took over Spain.

Part Three, Surrender



This image, above, is the famous painting of the Count of Tripoli accepting surrender of his city. In this way, many cities can be taken. Either by starvation, or by treachery (look above), or without either, any army can make a city surrender. All you need to do is take control. Make the enemy stand on the wrong foot, and with this sway the masses. Any city has gossip, and such gossip is your key to success. One must imagine a citie's population as thatch roofs. One roof begins to burn, then another, then more and more burn until the whole city lies in cinders. In this way, you must work the enemy to your advantage, and cause a surrender. And, when they do, use my example above, and burn their houses.

Part Four, Night Attack

This is last, for it is the most likely to fail en route, as well as the easier to explain. The title says it all, night attack. This, however, is harder than it sounds. For example, imagine that your camp is a mile away from the city. One must walk one whole mile to the city, in pitch black (so as not to arouse the suspicion of pickets and sentries) and there must be sufficient men to take the walls by storm and open the gate for the army, as well as cause some havoc. Siege equipment (look above) will have to be used, most probably scaling ladders (although in some examples, treachery and night attacks have been used, look above) Once inside the city, it is just the point of surprising the sentries, and opening the gate. And, there you have it, a city asleep, soon to be shocked.

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[/ROMANO STYLE]

Anyone can add any comments or whatever, this was just a spur of the moment thing.

[Legionary Jezza]

what about their siege towers?

[removeduser_426582376423734]

Don't believe everything Rome: Total War tells you, siege towers were very rarely used until the Middle Ages. This is more Roman (i.e. the title)

[Slowpoke]

Well, there's the story of the helepolis...

[antaeus]

i like the way the romans took athens from mithradates...

the pontic army was holed up in athens' port, the city itself was defended by local militias.

first sulla attacked the port with various missiles and rocks, so the pontic forces covered the walls with hardened leather and metal and the rocks bounced off. he then tried mining under the walls of the port - the pontic forces simply built a new wall inside the one that was undermined. they then tried an all out assault on the wall with ladders only to get tangled up in the bits of wall and rocks from previous assaults and got thoroughly repulsed.

finally some bright spark thought of attacking the city itself rather than the port - they over ran athens' militia in hours with virtually no losses... the city itself was so poorly defended - with this done the pontic forces had no point in remaining so they simply got in their boats and left.

the romans tried almost every technique to capture a city - makes for some great lessons.

julius caesar obviously liked to starve his opponents out - throughout his gallic wars he talks of building walls around fortifications to force a surrender or a starvation. the downside of this of course is that you are open to attack from the rear... so a second wall facing outward is essential. he also used the technique in the civil war several times against pompey's forces - failing him at Dyrrhachium where pompeys forces forced a breach in the wall and threatened to roll along caesars enture line....

titus brought missile weapons to jerusalem in AD70 in such numbers that jewish writers spoke of defenders not being able to man the walls or even the neighbourhoods near the walls for the force of the showers of bolts and arrows. the wall was breached by a crack assault force using a massive ram under the cover of this massive missile fire. he did try to build siege towers to capture the fortress of antonia, but the jewish fighters attacked them from streets and forced them to withdraw. in the end it was a small assault force in a night assault that won the day. ironic much like sulla against the pontic forces in athens... that it was small forces suffering few losses that won where massive manpower and direct assault had failed.

[removeduser_426582376423734]

As in many historic battles, the attention was taken to the frontal assault and the enemy forgot the back door. I think I metioned it in my post, but New Carthage was taken through such a means - a treacherous Punic guide lead a force of 500 Romans through a lagoon at its lowest tide while Scipio Africanus kept the opponent at its front gates.

[conon394]

antea

inally some bright spark thought of attacking the city itself rather than the port - they over ran athens' militia in hours with virtually no losses... the city itself was so poorly defended - with this done the pontic forces had no point in remaining so they simply got in their boats and left.

Hardly, Sulla carried out simulations sieges of both Athens and the Piraeus for 8 months. The city did not fall until after the defenders had been reduced to cannibalism…

[antaeus]

the cannibalism part is probably romanstorytelling.. but if you look at it closely... its a little flawed.

the pontic forces controled the sea, and would have been able to supply the pontic garrison at will , proof of this is given in the actions of the pontic force at the end of the siege, they managed to remove the substantial force from the besieged city, unmolested, by sea, thats no small number of soldiers to move by sea - if you listen to the roman historians it was a force of 10s of thousands of men and would have requred a naval force of several hundred ships. they then continued unmolested to the north where they linked up with the main pontic army and took the offensive - thats not the actions of a garrison reduced to cannibalism.

the roman story of the first mithridatic war is full of holes... even the battle of Chaeronea suffers - they claimed to only suffer 13 casualties in a battle against a hundred thousand men that included 90 chariots - Archelaus wasnt that bad a general - he had been facing sulla for over a year already...

[conon394]

Mithridates could feed his army at the Piraeus just fine, no argument. The issue is the fact that Sulla was besieging both the Piraeus and Athens at the same time. I see no particular reason to doubt the reduced state of the city defenders, Athens had no ability to import food – the long walls were defunct and likely had been so for a good 150 or 200 years. In fact Sulla is explicitly notes as using the remains of the long walls as building material.

[Rhone]

Everyone knows that the romans favoured tactic was to encircle a city, and starve its inhabitants into submission. That simple.

[rez]

" siege towers were very rarely used until the Middle Ages."

Im sure the Assyrians would disagree with you on that one my friend.

http://authors.history-forum.com/lia...anreliefs.html

Theres a selection of relefs here which show the Assyrian seige tower attacking enemy walls.



heres one of them anyway.
Everybody else ended up learning from the Assyrians

oops, think i got sidetracked from "Roman" sieges.

[removeduser_426582376423734]

Everyone knows that the romans favoured tactic was to encircle a city, and starve its inhabitants into submission. That simple.

Can you prove that? Studies show that in the Punic Wars, more cities were won with night attacks and treachery than any other method.

@rez: Yes, its "Roman" seiges, however I never knew that about the Assyrians. Nice info

[Final Frontier]

Everyone knows that the romans favoured tactic was to encircle a city, and starve its inhabitants into submission. That simple.

To add onto Spartacus' post: Some cities had means of getting supplies, most notably the sea, so starving them out would have been a tough thing to do. Also, if you've read Polybius you'll notice that what Spartacus has mentioned is true.

But, while we're on the subject of towers, didn't Alexander the Great use towers to assault Tyre? I'm not sure if they were siege towers, but I know he used some kind of towers. Sorry to get off track again.

[removeduser_426582376423734]

Don't worry, Sel, its on-topic really. And, yes, I found that in the siege of Tyre, Alexander used siege towers on ships to gain access through the sea, but they were sunk. However, I'm guessing this method of siege was learnt from the Middle Eastern states, like rez said - Assyria, and never made it back, or just was rarely used for practical purposes.

[conon394]

However, I'm guessing this method of siege was learnt from the Middle Eastern states

and never made it back, or just was rarely used for practical purposes

Not really. I suppose in the sense that the Assyrians can obviously be shown to have used siege towers first, but I see no reason not to see Alexander’s siege techniques as basically developments of existing Greek methods. Athens seems to have used ship mounted towers as early as the Peloponnesian war.

Rather than un-used or unknown, most Greek states simply did not have the resources or the numbers to maintain a siege of a large city or carry out an assault.

[antaeus]

agreed.

its one thing to know what a siege tower is, another altogether to have the resources and knowhow to be able to put one together and use it.

a siege tower is not practical in many cases - the ground around the city has to be relatively level to allow it access to the walls. in the case of gaul for example - the gauls built their forts on hilltops - making siege towers largely unusable - it was far more practical to simply fence them off and starve them out. now the romans and greeks were known at times - where they had enough manpower - to make the walls accessable by building ramps or causeways to walls where they could attack with towers or rams - but that was a massive expense in manpower hours that armies dont always have in enemy territory.

so, like mentioned above - while the romans and greeks did know how to use siege towers and occasionally did, they were largely unpractical in most situations.

[sabaku_no_gaara]

If you read Caesars civil war, in the siege of massila A few roman soldiers got the idea of building a tower from wich they could fire at the enemy, they built tunnels to reach the walls of the city and be able to remove some bricks to make the wall colapse and they apparently built a wall allmost directly against the city walls as to be able to throw javelins at the defenders.

I allways wondered how they where able to build this wall Caesar described as it would be hard to build a wall there as they would have to be in range of the enemy