Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the Artifact. A short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on particular objects, ideas, and moments in time. There's nothing quite like a good
siege sequence in a fantasy or historic motion picture. As those within a castle or walled city defend themselves against incursion from the army encamped just beyond their fortifications, each side employs various tactics, clever and cruel, to turn the tide of battle. These include the use of fantastic siege engines and siege towers on the part of the besiegers, while the besieged have the benefit of their existing fortification.
One of the key advantages of the besieged is that you wouldn't have to waste arrows on enemy soldiers trying to batter down the door. You wouldn't even need to mess with burning oil, as military historian Dr bred C. Devereaux points out in his excellent blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry in a critique of the Siege of Gondor. In two thousand threes, film adaptation of the Return of
the King. Burning oil was used historically, but boiled water and sand were cheaper choices, and nothing lands quite as well as a rock turned via gravity into a murderous weapon. Fortresses were even designed with special apertures through which to drop such objects on the enemy. The mertry air or murder hole was found in the ceiling of a fortress's gateway or passageway. He created a psychological threat to any enemy that might pass underneath it, as well as a
very real means of dropping things on the enemy. Fortress walls featured similar apertures. Maticulations looked roughly like stone cabinets affixed to the outside of a fortress, and they gave defenders a protected place from which to drop all manner
of terrifying and deadly things on the besiegers. For attackers, these holes were quite difficult to fire arrows into, but as renaer ats Back points out in the legend of hot tar or pitch as a defensive weapon, the use of both sorts of murder hole declined during the fifteenth and sixteenth century parallel to the spread of hand firearms. It simply became all too easy for the besiegers to
swiftly and more accurately fire back up. The whole Xbox chiefly discusses the use of boiling tar, however, and concludes the high temperature and the production of non porable pitch in the heating process would have made its use quite difficult, and they conclude that the rise of tar and feathering as a means of public torture and punishment may have fostered the legend of its use as a widespread defensive weapon. Far better and simpler to simply drop rocks through your
murder hole. Again, gravity is generally on the side of whoever holds the high ground in a siege, a situation quite similar to the idea of orbital superiority in interplanetary war. If one were to besiege an entire planet, the gravity advantage would be reversed. An orbital attacker wouldn't have to rain nuclear weapons down on the enemy planet. All they need is mass telephone pole size tungsten rods, captured asteroids, or even spare ship parts could be dropped in a
kinetic bombardment. Such tactics would create nuclear weapons style impacts. Without nuclear weapons style fallout, high ground may be difficult to overcome, but as Devereaux points out sieges were ultimately a contest of collective will quote. Far more cities and castles were taken by surrender or else by betrayal than were ever taken by storm. Tune into additional editions of the artifact each week. As always, you can email us at contact it's stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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