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List of siege engines

Topic: Engineering

 From HandWiki - Reading time: 3 min

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This is a list of siege engines invented through history. A siege engine is a weapon used to circumvent or destroy fortifications such as defensive walls, castles, bunkers and fortified gateways. Petrary is the generic term for medieval stone throwing siege engines.

By age, oldest to newest

Name Image Date Location Notes
Siege tower 120px 9th Century BC Assyria A giant mobile tower, often constructed at location.
Battering ram 120px 9th Century BC Assyria First siege engine recorded to be used, soon adopted by Sparta.[1]
Catapult 120px 500 BC Greece
Lithobolos 120px 5th Century BC Magadha Siege engines that propel a stone along a flat track with two rigid bow arms powered by torsion. Invented by the Kingdom of Magadha.
Siege ladder 120px 6th Century BC China Consists of attacking soldiers advancing to the base of a wall, setting ladders, and climbing to engage the defending forces.
Assault cover 120px China Protective covers were used in sieges. The most typical were mobile screens and assault wagons. More complex contraptions such as plaited galleries were used for mining and filling in moats.
Watchtower cart 120px China Static observation towers such as the nest and watchtower carts were used to see into the city. Static towers were also used in close proximity to enemy walls to rain down projectiles on the defenders.
Ballista 120px 400 BC Syracuse, Sicily A very large and powerful crossbow. Could be mounted on carts. Similar weapons mounted on elephants were used by the Khmer Empire.[2]
Onager 120px 353 BC Rome The Onager was a Roman torsion powered siege engine. It is commonly depicted as a catapult with a bowl, bucket, or sling at the end of its throwing arm.
Trebuchet 120px 4th Century BC China Similar to the catapult, but uses a swinging arm to launch projectiles. It is usually considered to be stronger than the catapult.[3]
Oxybeles 120px 375 BC Greece An oversized gastraphetes, a composite bow placed on a stand with a stock and a trigger.
Helepolis 120px 305 BC Rhodes Greek siege tower first used in Rhodes.[4]
Polybolos 120px 289 BC Greece A siege engine with torsion mechanism, drawing its power from twisted sinew-bundles.
Sambuca 120px 213 BC Sicily Roman seaborne siege engine build on two ships.
Siege hook 120px 189 BC Rome A siege hook is a weapon used to pull stones from a wall during a siege. The method used was to penetrate the protective wall with the hook and then retract it, pulling away some of the wall with it.
Scorpio 120px 52 BC Rome Similar to the ballista, but smaller. Was sometimes mounted on a mule-drawn cart.[5]
Harpax 120px 36 BC Rome A catapult-shot grapnel created by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa for use against Sextus Pompey during the naval battles of the Sicilian Revolt.
Carroballista 120px 101 AD Rome A handheld siege engine which shot bolts that were smaller than those in other forms of ballistae and generally made of metal.
Catapulta Rome A Roman siege engine for throwing arrows and javelins. The name comes from the Greek katapeltes because it could pierce or 'go through' (kata) shields (peltas). The catapulta was made of wood and were placed on stands.
Mangonel 120px 6th Century AD China A type of trebuchet which uses traction.
Springald 120px 11th century Byzantium An inward shooting piece of siege equipment.[6]
Artillery 120px First seen in 14th century, only called artillery around the 15th and 16th century [7] China After the invention of gunpowder in China, the ability to create firearms and siege artillery was open, siege technology advanced from here but, under the artillery category. There is fewer use for this kind of technology today after the invention of rockets and high grade explosives.[8]

References

  1. ↑ "The Battering Ram - lordsandladies". http://www.lordsandladies.org/the-battering-ram.htm. Retrieved 24 May 2017. 
  2. ↑ "Ballista - lordsandladies". http://www.lordsandladies.org/ballista.htm. Retrieved 24 May 2017. 
  3. ↑ "Trebuchet - lordsandladies". http://www.lordsandladies.org/trebuchet.htm. Retrieved 24 May 2017. 
  4. ↑ Article by James Yates, M.A., F.R.S. (6 August 2012). "Helepolis - A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London, 1875". https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Helepolis.html. Retrieved 25 May 2017. 
  5. ↑ Vegetius, De re militari, II, 25.
  6. ↑ Nicolle, pp. 173–174, the espringal is depicted, in the form of a fairly detailed diagram, in an 11th-century Byzantine manuscript
  7. ↑ Andrew Knighton (25 November 2015). "12 Key Moments in the History of Artillery". https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/12-key-moments-history-artillery.html. Retrieved 21 October 2017. 
  8. ↑ Ian Vernon Hogg (28 December 2011). "Artillery". https://www.britannica.com/technology/artillery. Retrieved 21 October 2017. 



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