Siege Equipment

[caldrail]

So Hannibal decides to march on Rome.

 

He's got an army of about 35,000 men tops, because we are told he lost 8,700 of his 40,000 at Cannae. He's got to get them to the other side of Italy, and over the central mountain range, so let's say it takes a month to do the 400km or so.

 

In this time Rome fortifies its walls, sends recalls to armies from Iberia and Sardinia, and reconstitutes the survivors to Cannae into two legions (it actually did the latter). Since the harvest is just in (its now early September), Rome collects as much food as possible and makes sure that there is nothing in the area of Rome for Hannibal's army to eat.

 

Rome also orders a spring levy of manpower from her allies, who are no longer being harassed by Hannibal as he has gone to Rome.

 

Lacking siege equipment, there is no way that Hannibal is going to take Rome before winter, so after setting up in autumn, his army spends a miserable four months sitting under canvas while illness and disease spread. In spring he finds his supply columns being harassed by Rome's new levies, and with his depleted army, he has both to keep food from getting into Rome and guard his own supply lines.

 

By summer, Rome's overseas legions have returned. Hannibal is pinned against the walls of Rome by an army equal in size to his own, but now in considerably better shape. The commander of an army that has won its victories by being highly mobile and seizing the strategic initiative has allowed himself to become totally immobile while his enemies have the freedom of Italy to organize their counterstrike.

 

I can't see it.

 

Siege equipment was not essential. Lacking such things, and let's be honest, most ancient armies built siege equipment in situ and as required if they knew how, then simply waiting for the city to starve was still a viable tacttic. Rome was after all in state of panic already (something Hannibal might not have known). Strategically the city of Rome was a tempting target but Hannibal chose to stick with his game plan. For a man with a known hatred of Rome and one who basically set of the war as an excuse to get at them, it must be said that not wanting to hurt his enemy by sacking a vulnerable capital does look odd.

[Maty]

[siege equipment was not essential. Lacking such things, and let's be honest, most ancient armies built siege equipment in situ and as required if they knew how, then simply waiting for the city to starve was still a viable tactic. ]

 

This is something I've been meaning to look at when (if) I get the time. I was talking this over a few months back on the topic of Antony losing his siege train in Parthia. Apparently though you build your siege equipment in situ, the current theory is that you bring certain crucial metal bits along with you - hinges, ratchets, that sort of thing. Then you bolt them onto locally cut down trees.

 

Bearing in mind that a full-blown Roman siege catapult stood several metres high, I can believe they were quite sophisticated bits of kit. So Hannibal might have been lacking his widgets rather than the raw material.

 

On the starvation side, the problem is that you have a month of forced marches to get to Rome, meaning that you can't stop to gather supplies, while Rome has a month to stock up, remove non-combatants etc. Hannibal might have starved before the Romans did.

 

As you say, H had the motivation, and he had the opportunity. So we have to assume he did not have the means.

[Maty]

['Regarding the crucial metal bits, that sounds more like modern thinking to me, though I can't discount the point. There wasn't an industrial base to produce standard fittings thus having hinges and brackets would mean odd bits and pieces rather than an Acme Catapult Kit. They never bolted things together as we do now. Everything dovetailed or slotted together, thus the iron bits weren't as necessary as we might imagine, being more of a useful convenience than a requirement.']

 

There's a lot to discuss on this - is it possible to prevail on the moderators to move it to a separate thread?

 

It's certainly possible to build a complete siege engine from scratch. In theory, you could leave me in a clearing with enough soil rich in iron ore, and I could do the job. However, even then, some of the springy stuff - women's hair, sinew etc would be best obtained beforehand. And once the specialized bits have been built for one catapult, I'd assume a forward thinking general would bag them and keep for the next siege. (Unless he was crossing the Alps or something.)

 

Things didn't get bolted, mainly because of the trouble with making matching threads without a lathe, but they did get nailed or clamped. And in 69 AD we find a legion taking a siege catapult with them on a forced march, which they wouldn't do if they were that easy to knock up in situ.

 

(Did you see a programme on the BBC a few years back called junkyard challenge, where two teams had to make a siege catapult from scrap? In the end an onager-style machine beat a trebuchet design. Great fun. But neither team tried the crossbow-on-steriods which seems to have been the most common early siege weapon. Though older, these were actually more complex.)

[Melvadius]

Siege equipment discussion split as requested.

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

I would also wonder at the level of skill in siege warfare of the punic armies. One of the strenght of the romans was that they build and kept a knowledge of artillery due to the amout of sieges they did. The Carthaginian were much less often besiegers, especially of fortified cities. We don't hear very often of battlefield artillery either, except ont the roman side. Thus it might very well be that a lack of engineers who knew how to build the things might have been a factor in Hannibal's decision.

 

Because one has to remember that countrary to appearances, catapults and other sieges weapons are delicate things which can easily malfunction if not properly set up : siege towers that can't move due to weight or terrain, onager that dissemble due to an inability to stay cohesive after the "kick",...

 

The metal fittings of more complex pieces like scorpio might also have required more time or ressources to make than could be spared by the besiegers too, who had to use what they had on hand as tools and ores to make pieces which would be subject to tremendous stress. Also the amount of ressources needed for a full blown siege might well have been rather high, as shown by the siege of Rhodos by Demetrios Poliorcete (and I don't speak only of the Helepole, the massive 40m/125 feet tall siege tower with it's iron cover...) : remember that the rhodian built the Colosseus in part with the scraps left behind...

[GhostOfClayton]

(Did you see a programme on the BBC a few years back called junkyard challenge, where two teams had to make a siege catapult from scrap? In the end an onager-style machine beat a trebuchet design. Great fun. But neither team tried the crossbow-on-steriods which seems to have been the most common early siege weapon. Though older, these were actually more complex.)

 

I did see that (though, to be unnecessarily pedantic, it's called 'Scrapheap Challenge' in the UK and 'Junkyard Wars' in His Majesty's Former Colonies In The West). As I remember, the trebuchet was so powerful that it destroyed it's own (not insignificant) metal frame.

 

 

. . . . and it was on Channel 4.

[Melvadius]

There were also a couple of programmes which came out a few years back about building siege weapons which may be of interest.

 

Secret's of Lost Empires: Medieval Siege in which two different patterns of trebuchet were built - this appeared on Channel 4 a few years back although was part of a US Series.

 

There was however in 2002 a BBC TV and the Discovery Channel

[parthianbow]

For all that the Carthaginians weren't ones to besiege cities, Hannibal encircled Saguntum and took it by siege, using multi-storey towers and covered structures (vineae) that allowed his engineers to mine under the walls.

 

Maybe he left those guys behind when he went to Italy?!

[caldrail]

No, he just left safer territory behind, and in nay case, his siege of Seguntum was part of the action that instigated a Roman response. Sieges are all very well, but it ties your forces down to one place and makes foraging increasingly difficult if other forms of supply don't exist. Also, Hannibal did want want static emplacements surrounded by Roman forces while he looked the other way.

[Virgil61]

 

Because one has to remember that countrary to appearances, catapults and other sieges weapons are delicate things which can easily malfunction if not properly set up : siege towers that can't move due to weight or terrain, onager that dissemble due to an inability to stay cohesive after the "kick",...

 

The metal fittings of more complex pieces like scorpio might also have required more time or ressources to make than could be spared by the besiegers too, who had to use what they had on hand as tools and ores to make pieces which would be subject to tremendous stress. Also the amount of ressources needed for a full blown siege might well have been rather high, as shown by the siege of Rhodos by Demetrios Poliorcete (and I don't speak only of the Helepole, the massive 40m/125 feet tall siege tower with it's iron cover...) : remember that the rhodian built the Colosseus in part with the scraps left behind...

 

I recently finished rereading the passage in Caesar's Commentaries. He recounts the Nervii siege of the winter-camp of some of his remote Roman cohorts (possibly the one commanded by Cicero's brother, can't be bothered to look it up) and clearly mentions their siege engines recreated--with the help of Roman prisoners--to Roman designs. He explicitly states the Nervii lacked the necessary metal parts and hence the machines were less effective.

[caldrail]

Which indicates the metal may have been used for little more than strengthening.