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History of Technology 4: Iron and Siege Warfare 55 Views
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Description:
Catapults, and ballistas, and trebuchets, oh my!
Transcript
- 00:00
so we know that iron played a role in regular role stabbing and maiming in
- 00:07
warfare. but it also changed siege warfare. don't know what that is well go
- 00:12
google it what are we supposed to do everything for you okay well I guess we [boy sits at a computer]
- 00:16
are so that's a tall order anyway here we go.
- 00:19
well siege warfare was the kind of battle that wasn't fought with horses
Full Transcript
- 00:24
and swords instead it was fought with cities walls
- 00:29
catapults and long months spent waiting for the people inside the castle to
- 00:34
starve. it was great for the waistline but not so great for well being alive.
- 00:39
siege warfare became more common in the Middle Ages when cities and castles had
- 00:44
walls built around them. a wall seemed like a good idea right keeps out the
- 00:50
riffraff you know the guys who like disembowelling everyone in sight.
- 00:53
but all these big walls also set off a sort of arms race. potential invaders
- 00:59
looked at these castle walls and said to themselves you know what would be [man walks castle walls]
- 01:03
awesome ? a giant machine that would bash those dumb walls down. and you know what?
- 01:10
they built those machines. isn't it nice when dreams come true? of course that
- 01:14
meant that castle builders started making bigger and thicker walls to stand
- 01:19
up to the machines. this of course led to others making bigger badder machines and
- 01:24
so on and so forth yeah. well the crudest of these devices was probably the
- 01:28
battering ram usually they're just big logs used to smash in doors and walls
- 01:34
which yeah it's not the most ingenious idea that's ever been had you know it's [men use battering ram]
- 01:38
kind of the Hulk and whole corner. but still if a fella wanted to bash in the
- 01:44
doors of a castle a battering ram was a good option especially if the Hulk was
- 01:48
around Olinda big green ham. iron did a lot to make battering rams more
- 01:52
effective. by putting iron tips on the logs battering ram builders are really
- 01:57
upped their game. a castle doors and walls weren't nearly as safe well things
- 02:03
got more complex and deadly with the catapult. these ancient machines
- 02:07
they're basically humongous slingshots they were great for hurling big rocks
- 02:12
too. no down castle gates and walls I think. it
- 02:15
also hurl rocks and giant balls of flaming pitch over castle walls to set [catapults hurl things at castle]
- 02:21
everything on fire inside of them wreaking havoc on the citizens therein.
- 02:26
well of course castle dwellers got wise and built catapults of their own
- 02:30
allowing them to hurl things back over the walls and say things like I fart in
- 02:35
your general direction. maybe that was from Monty python. it's kind of like the
- 02:39
neener neener. all right well ballista were another
- 02:43
kind of ancient catapult like thingamajig first invented by the Greeks.
- 02:47
these were basically gargantuan crossbows which shot equally gargantuan
- 02:52
arrows. and while Cupid's arrows spread love, ballista spread a world of hurt. [man uses ballista]
- 02:57
the baddest of these machines was the trebuchet invented in Europe around 1100.
- 03:03
well the trebuchet looked like a catapult okay pretty much was a catapult
- 03:07
except that it included a long sling at one end and wasn't powered by bending or
- 03:13
cranking anything down. instead it used a clever system of weights which were
- 03:17
suddenly dropped. that sling meant that trebuchets could throw stuff much
- 03:22
further and faster than simple catapults. for a while it looked like trebuchets
- 03:27
might end the long tradition of sitting outside the city's walls for weeks
- 03:30
playing solitaire and hoping everyone starved to death. but in general the
- 03:34
defense of building bigger tougher walls seemed to win.
- 03:37
well that and using trebuchets inside castles to smash the trebuchets
- 03:42
shaves outside castles. yeah how about that isn't it sad when trebuchet czar
- 03:47
turned against each other. [two trebuchets talk to each other]
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