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> Sieges often didn’t involve much fighting at all, as simply waiting outside the castle till the people inside ran out of water and food was a much easier and
by jackconsidine 3y ago
> Sieges often didn’t involve much fighting at all, as simply waiting outside the castle till the people inside ran out of water and food was a much easier and less bloody way to win.
Currently reading Plutarch. Twice already he's mentioned sieges where the attackers waited for the besieged to run out of water. The grueling wait is compressed in history.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoMy favorite siege weirdness is circum- and contravallation. Caesar's seige of Alesia perhaps being one of the better examples. The man built a wall around the already walled fortification of Alesia... then built a wall behind him to keep the besieging army safe from Vercingetorix' allies. That's a wall around a wall around a wall. Like a frickin' onion.
- catlover76 3y agoLike an ogre, one might say
- jamiek88 3y agoMy favorite siege story is Alexander being taunted by islanders who thought themselves immune to being under siege and attacked. They slowly stopped laughing as they realized the Macedonians were filling in the shore front to make a kilometer long 200m wide causeway to march across. It did not end well for the island City of Tyre and its inhabitants.
- lloeki 3y agoI jumped to read a bit about it, expecting from your comment a swift victory, but it's much more involved than that, the sequence of attack strategies and counterattacks are quite suspenseful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tyre_(332_BC)#The_siege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tyre_(332_BC)#The_sie...
- Tao3300 3y agoMy answer to the tiktok trend: "Roman Empire? Not much. Mostly I think about the late Republic."
- Animats 3y ago> Twice already he's mentioned sieges where the attackers waited for the besieged to run out of water. The grueling wait is compressed in history. That's happening now in Gaza. Israel has cut off water.