be a long one, a blockade was the sole remaining means of reduction,
though this was a thing difficult to carry out with forces which were
not permanent, and which were generally far from numerous. It therefore
became necessary for the besieger to protect his approaches by wooden,
earthen, or even stone works, constructed under cover of the night,
and solid and lofty enough to enable his archers to aim right on to
the battlements of the besieged place. Wooden towers, several stories
high, were also frequently resorted to, put together piece by piece at
the edge of the moat, or constructed out of bow-shot, and subsequently
rolled on wheels to the foot of the walls (Fig. 59). At the siege of
Toulouse, in 1218, a machine of this kind was built by the order of
Simon de Montfort, capable of accommodating, according to the ballad of
the “Albigeois,” five hundred men.
[Illustration: Fig. 60.--Siege of a Town: Summons to lay down the
arms and open the gates.--From a Copper-plate in the “Kreigsbuch”
of Fronsperger.]
When the missiles hurled from the higher stories of these
towers--termed _chattes_ in the south, _chats_, _châteaux_,
_bretesches_, in the north--had driven the besieged from their ramparts
and battlements, a movable bridge was lowered across the moat, and
a hand-to-hand struggle then took place (Fig. 59). The besieged,
to prevent or retard the approach of these dreaded towers, were
accustomed to hurl immense stones and lighted darts against them, or to
undermine or inundate the ground on which they stood, so that their own
weight might cause them to topple over.
[Illustration: Fig. 61.--Capture of a Town: The Garrison
surrendering and throwing themselves on the mercy of the
captors.--Miniature from the “Histoire du Monde,” Manuscript of
the Fourteenth Century (Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot).]
Besides the means we have just described, there still remained the sap
and the mine. Miners, equipped with pickaxes, were sent into the ditch
under the protection of a body of archers. A sloping roof, covered
with mantlets, sheltered them from the missiles of the besieged. They
then pierced the wall, stone by stone, till they had made a hole
large enough to allow the passage of several soldiers at once, while
the sappers put the finishing stroke to the aperture. The besieged,
observing in what direction the enemy was pursuing his operations,
strove to concentrate all his means of defence at this point. Sometimes
he attempted to crush the miners with immense stones or pieces of wood,
sometimes he poured molten lead or boiling oil over them, sometimes, by
hastily constructing a fresh wall in rear of the one the miners were
breaking through, he gave the latter the trouble of beginning their
work all over again just as they thought it was complete.
The mine had this advantage over the sap--that the besieger, being out
of sight while engaged in the former method of subterranean work, had
every chance of surprising the besieged. In order to effect this, an
underground gallery was dug as noiselessly as possible, and carried
beneath the foundations of the ramparts. When the mine had reached the
walls, these were propped up with pieces of timber, and the earth was
dug away until they were supported entirely by this artificial method.
Dry vine wood and other inflammable materials were then piled round
the props and set on fire, so that when the timber was consumed the
walls crumbled down and opened a large breach to the besiegers. Nothing
then was left to the garrison but to surrender, in order to avoid the
horrors of an assault and the sack of the town (Figs. 60 and 61).
[Illustration: Fig. 62.--Watch-tower, lighted up with beacons and
protected by dogs.--Fac-simile of a Miniature of the Fifteenth
Century, from a drawing by M. Prosper Mérimée.]
The only remedy possessed by a garrison against this last method of
attack was to keep a good watch and to endeavour to discover the
whereabouts of the mine, and neutralise it by a countermine. At the
siege of Rennes, in 1356, the governor of the town ordered basins of
copper, each containing several globes of the same metal, to be placed
all about the ramparts; when these globes were seen to vibrate and
tremble at each stroke of the hidden pickaxe, it was easy to guess that
the mine was not far off. There was also a body of night watchmen, who
carefully noted the enemy’s movements, and who rang the alarm-bell at
the slightest noise. These watchmen were often replaced by dogs, whose
barks, in case of a surprise, gave notice to the garrison (Fig. 62).
[Illustration: Fig. 63.--Machine intended to break the ranks of
the enemy and to crush his soldiers.--Végèce, “L’Art Militaire:”
1532.]
[Illustration: Fig. 64.--Machine to shoot arrows, and to assist
in approaching a besieged town.--Robert Valturin, “La Discipline
Militaire:” 1555.]
The slow and laborious work of the miner was often advantageously
replaced by the more powerful action of certain machines, which may
be divided into two distinct classes. The first, intended to be used
at close quarters and to make a breach in the wall, comprised several
varieties of the ancient battering-ram; the second, employed at a
distance, were termed _pierriers_, _mangonneaux_, _espringales_, &c.
(Figs. 63 and 64).
The battering-ram, which was probably well known from the remotest
periods, is described, in the documents of the Middle Ages, pretty much
as we see it figured on the monuments of Nineveh. “On Easter day,”
says the anonymous author of the chronicle of the “Albigeois,” “the
_bosson_ (the southern name of the battering-ram) was placed in
position; it is long, iron-headed, straight, and pointed, and it so
hammered, and pierced, and smashed, that the wall was broken through
(Fig. 65); but they (the besieged) lowered a loop of rope suspended
from a machine, and in this noose the _bosson_ was caught and
retained.”
[Illustration: Fig. 65.--Battering-ram.--From a Miniature in
Manuscript 17,339 in the National Library of Paris.]
Generally speaking, the battering-ram was a long, heavy beam, suspended
in the centre from a kind of massive trestle. The end which battered
the wall was either covered with an iron hood or pointed with brass.
The beam was swung backward and forward by the besiegers, and by
dint of striking a wall always in the same spot it often succeeded
in shattering or overthrowing it. At other times the ram, instead of
being suspended in an oscillating manner, was mounted on wheels, and
ran forward with great rapidity against the wall to be battered. The
chronicle of the “Albigeois,” just quoted, alludes to the head of the
ram being caught in a noose; besides this manœuvre, the garrison would
hurl stones and pieces of timber upon it, in order to break it or to
put it out of trim; or else they would strive to deaden its blows by
interposing a thick mattress of wool covered with leather between it
and the stonework of their stronghold.
[Illustration: Fig. 66.--Catapult.--When the lever revolves
rapidly on its axis, the centrifugal power causes the loop C to
slip off the hook D, when the barrel held on the fork E E is
liberated and projected to a distance. F represents the end of
the lever when held down by the windlass A, and loaded with a
barrel of combustible matter or iron. B, rings of stone, iron, or
lead.]
The machines which they employed to hurl their projectiles seem to
have corresponded in nearly every respect with the catapults of the
ancients. It was often merely a species of gigantic sling, worked by
several men, and throwing pieces of rock and round masses of stone.
The _mangonneau_, _bricole_, or _trabuch_, was a kind of square wooden
platform, made of thick planks laid crosswise; a long beam, fastened
at its lower end by a revolving axis to the platform, was supported
at an angle of about 45° by an elevated crosspiece resting on two
uprights. The distance between the revolving axis and the point of
support was about one-half of the length of the beam. The latter was
then secured in this position by long cords fastened to the front of
the platform. The men who managed the _bricole_ then lowered the beam
backwards by a windlass fixed in the rear, till it (the beam) formed
an obtuse instead of an acute angle with the platform, and till the
cord securing it in front was stretched to its utmost tension. While it
was in this position the projectile they wished to cast was placed in
the spoonshaped extremity of the beam. A spring, termed _déclic_, then
released the tension of the windlass and the beam, obeying that of
the cord fastened to the front of the platform, swung rapidly forward,
and hurled the projectile to great distances and to some considerable
height (Fig. 66). These _bricoles_ were sometimes employed to throw
into besieged strongholds the dead bodies of horses and other animals,
fire-balls, and cases of inflammable matter; but they were generally
used to shatter the roofs of the buildings inside the walls, and to
crush the protecting wooden sheds constructed on the ramparts.
Their use was still continued long after the invention of gunpowder.
In the wars of the fourteenth century, particularly in the sieges of
Tarazonia, Barcelona, and Burgos, bricoles were made use of side by
side with cannons discharged with gunpowder. It was not until the close
of the fifteenth century that the rapid progress of the new artillery,
which enabled besiegers to breach a wall from a considerable distance,
and with a smaller expenditure both of time and men, caused the whole
paraphernalia of the old-fashioned ballistic machines to fall into
disuse. Thenceforward a new era commenced in the science of attack and
defence--an era of which the immense results do not belong only to the
period of the Renaissance.
[Illustration: Fig. 67.--Ballísta.--From a Miniature in
Manuscript 17,339, in the National Library of Paris.]
NAVAL MATTERS.
Old Traditions: Long Vessels and Broad Vessels.--The
Dromon.--The Galéasse.--The Coque.--Caracks and
Galleons.--Francis I.’s Great Carack.--Caravelles.--The
Importance of a Fleet.--Hired Fleets.--Poop Guards.--Naval
Laws.--Seaport Tribunals.--Navigation in the open Seas.--The
Boussole.--Armament of Men-of-War.--Towers and Ballistic
Engines.--Artillery.--Naval Strategy.--Decorations
and Magnificent Appointments of Vessels.--Sails and
Flags.--The Galley of Don Juan of Austria.--Sailors’
Superstitions.--Discipline and Punishments.
Ships from the most remote ages have been divided into two classes,
namely, long vessels, those propelled by the oar, or by the wind,
sometimes by the two combined, and vessels of greater beam, which
trusted to their sails alone. The Middle Ages conformed to these
traditions; they possessed galleys which answered to the long vessels
of antiquity, and ships which corresponded to the larger class.
The galleys of the Middle Ages, like the long vessels of antiquity,
may be divided into several varieties. The large galley (Fig. 68),
strong in build and swift in sailing, had received from the Greeks the
significant name of _dromon_ (runner). In the fifth century Theodoric
had a thousand dromons constructed for the defence of the Italian
coasts and for the transport of corn; in the ninth, the Emperor Leo the
Philosopher, in the military precepts he gave to his son, recommended
the construction of dromons with two tiers of oars, five-and-twenty in
each tier on each side. For the flag-ship (if we may use the term) of
the commander of the fleet, he recommended the construction of a much
larger dromon with a hundred oars in each tier, similar to those that
used to be built in Pamphylia, and which, for that reason, were known
as _pamphiles_. The fleet was to be accompanied by smaller dromons,
with a single tier of oars, for the purpose of carrying despatches, and
to act as scouts. These bore more particularly the name of _galleys_.
For more than three hundred years the construction and rigging of ships
underwent no change (Fig. 69); in the twelfth century the dromon was
still the principal type of the class of ships propelled by oars. Next
came the galley, smaller than the dromon, but fitted, like it, with two
tiers of oars, and lastly, the _galion_ or _galéide_ (termed later the
_galiot_), a much smaller vessel than the galley.
[Illustration: Fig. 68.--Poop of an Ancient Galley.--From
Pompeian Paintings collected in the Bourbon Museum, Naples.]
The largest and the best-armed galley which at that period ploughed
the Mediterranean was the one encountered by Richard Cœur de Lion,
according to the historian Matthew Paris, on the 3rd of June, 1191,
near the coast of Syria, and which was carrying large reinforcements
to the camp of the unbelievers, who were besieging at that time the
town of Acre. When the sailors of the English fleet first perceived
this gigantic vessel, whose vast hull was painted with the most
brilliant colours, whose poop was surmounted with a castellated tower,
whose three masts unfurled to the wind an immense expanse of canvas,
and whose long oars beat the waves with majestic rhythm, they were
surprised, and undecided how to act. Richard, however, ordered his
men to attack the floating fortress. His lighter galleys surrounded
it on all sides, in spite of the arrows and glass vases showered on
them by the dromon. These vases broke when they came in contact with
the galleys, and enveloped them in Greek fire. The captain of the Arab
craft attempted to sail away from his swarm of assailants, but the
wind fell, and half his rowers having been slain by the English arrows,
he was forced to accept battle. The galleys skirmished around the
dromon, striking it repeated blows with their brazen prows, and making
large holes in its sides. At last, after a desperate resistance, the
giant was engulfed in the waters with all its defenders.
[Illustration: Fig. 69.--A Norman Vessel (Eleventh
Century).--Restoration from the Bayeux Tapestry.]
A companion craft to the dromon, as before mentioned, was the
_pamphile_, which, before disappearing in the fifteenth century,
frequently changed its shape and character. Nor must we forget the
_chelande_ (Fig. 70), or _sélandre_, which a writer of the
eleventh century represents as a ship of extraordinary length, of
great speed, possessing two tiers of oars, and a crew of a hundred
and fifty men, and which, three centuries later, became a large flat
sailing vessel, and was termed _chaland_. The _taride_, a
kind of merchant galley with oars, and the _huissier_, the name of
which was derived from a _huis_, or large door, which opened in
its side in front of the poop to allow of the embarkation of horses,
were contemporaneous with the pamphile and with the sélandre; as also
was the _chat_ or _chatte_, which William of Tyre mentions
in connection with a maritime war which took place in 1121. According
to him it was a ram-armed vessel larger than a galley, and carried a
hundred oars, each of which was handled by two men.
Besides all these there were the _bucentaures_ (Fig. 71), large
Venetian galleys, and the _sagettes_, or _saïties_ (arrows),
whose names denote their slender shape and speed, and which, with
their twelve or fifteen oars on each side, played the same part in
the twelfth century as the _baliner_, or _barineal_, and the
_brigantin_ played from the fourteenth to the seventeenth.
[Illustration: Fig. 70.--Turreted Vessel which protected the Port
of Venice.--From a Medal struck in honour of the Doge P. Candiano
I., who died in 887 (Venetian Museum).]
There were two sorts of vessels used in the fifteenth and the sixteenth
centuries also belonging to the numerous and varied family of the
galley--the _fuste_ and the _frégate_, both smaller examples
of the _galéasse_. A galley was termed _galéasse_ (Fig. 72)
when it was of large size, powerfully armed, and propelled by such long
and heavy oars that it took six or seven men to work one of them.
[Illustration: Fig. 71.--The _Bucentaure_, State Barge used
for the Marriage of the Doge of Venice with the Sea.--From the
Model preserved in the Arsenal of Venice.]
We have not by any means exhausted the number of long vessels propelled
by oars, but we will now turn to those which only used sails, and which
were termed _nefs_, or round vessels.
In the tenth century the Venetians employed these large heavy vessels,
which they had adopted from the Saracens, and which were termed
_cumbaries_ (from the Latin _cymba_), or _gombaries_. To
the same class belonged the _coque_ (Fig. 73), which, according
to an old chronicler, had a round stem and stern, a high freeboard,
and drew very little water. This style of vessel, which from its shape
was considered insubmersable, was largely used both for warlike and
commercial purposes, from the twelfth to the close of the fifteenth
century.
The _coque_, so frequently employed in the Middle Ages, doubtless
suggested the construction of another large vessel of the same sort,
called by the Venetians _buzo_, by the Genoese _panzono_,
and _busse_ by the Provençaux, three words having a similar
signification.[4] These various names plainly indicate the character of
this kind of vessel, namely, that it was a broad-beamed, slow-sailing
craft, but one capable of carrying large and heavy cargoes.
[Illustration: Fig. 72.--Sketch of a Galley of the Sixteenth
Century, painted in distemper on the door of a cupboard preserved
in the Doria Palace, Genoa.]
Such names, however, as _gombaries_, _coques_, and _busses_, are
nowadays as completely forgotten as the ships to which they were
applied, while such terms as _carraque_ and _galliot_ still convey a
meaning understood by everybody. Indeed, they immediately call up in
the mind the memory of the numerous Spanish galleons which, according
to popular tradition, were constantly returning home laden with
Peruvian gold, and of those gigantic caracks which, hailing from the
French ports on the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, invested the navy
of France, in the reigns of Louis XII. and Francis I., with such a
splendid and imposing renown.
[Illustration: Fig. 73.--The Coque.--From a Miniature in a
Manuscript Virgil of the Fifteenth Century (Riccardi Library,
Florence).]
In 1545, Francis I. had a magnificent carack constructed in Normandy,
so richly decorated, with such lofty decks and towers, and so capitally
appointed, that it was called the Great Carack. It was anchored in the
roadstead of Havre-de-Grâce. Henry VIII. ordered one equally splendid
(Fig. 74), in which he intended to embark when he started to meet
his brother sovereign at the famous Field of the Cloth of Gold. The
French vessel was about to set sail at the head of a powerful fleet
dispatched to meet the English. The King, desirous of inspecting it,
boarded it on the eve of its departure, accompanied by a numerous and
brilliant court. A collation had been prepared for him and his suite,
the band was playing, salutes were thundering out in his honour, and
he himself was in the midst of his inspection of the floating citadel,
when suddenly cries of alarm were heard. A fire had broken out between
decks; it burnt with astonishing rapidity, and, before help could be
efficiently rendered, the whole of the rigging was in flames. In a few
hours all that remained of the Great Carack was an immense hull, half
consumed, aground on the beach, upon which the sea was casting up the
corpses of those of the crew who were killed by the discharge of its
cannons during the progress of the conflagration.
[Illustration: Fig. 74.--Man-of-War in which Henry VIII., King
of England, embarked in 1520 at Dover to come to France.--From a
Drawing by Holbein.]
The galliot occupied an intermediate place between the ship properly
so called and the large galley. It was, in fact, a slighter vessel,
longer and narrower in the beam than all other kinds of ships. Galliots
were sometimes, but not often, propelled by oars (Fig. 76). The
ordinary build of galliot, whose poop consisted of two rounded quarter
circles, separated by the rudder-post, had two decks; the largest of
all had three. Two remarkable galliots are mentioned in history, one
of which was an exact model of the celebrated Great Carack. It was
built at Venice to carry three hundred guns and five hundred soldiers,
besides its own crew of sailors, but while still in the lagoons it was
caught in a tremendous hurricane. Being severely tossed by the wind
and the waves, its rolls threw the whole of its heavy ordnance to the
port-side, and, being unable to right itself, it turned over, and went
down in sight of the town.
[Illustration: Fig. 75.--Spanish Ship of the End of the Fifteenth
Century.--From an Engraving in the “Arte del Navegar,” by Peter
of Medina.]
Merely mentioning the _palandres_, the _hourques_, the _pataches_,
and the _mahones_, which were smaller than the galliot, but which had
certain advantages of their own, we come to a craft whose diminutive
dimensions have not prevented it from acquiring a kind of historical
renown, in consequence of the important events at the close of the
fifteenth century in which it played a part. The craft we refer to is
the _caravel_ (Fig. 77), which had the honour of carrying Columbus to
the New World. The design of the caravel was taken from the _caravo_, a
small barque used by the Spaniards. The grace, the lightness, the fine
outlines, and the speed of the caravel, recommended it to the hardy
mariners who sailed, in search of new continents, across the Atlantic
Ocean. Narrow at the poop, wide at the prow, carrying a double tower
at its stern, and a single one at its bows, the caravel carried four
vertical masts and one inclined one. Two square sails were bent from
the foremast, while the three others each bore a single triangular one
(Fig. 78). The caravel sailed as well against the wind as before it,
and tacked as easily as a row boat; so, at least, we are told in the
log of the first voyage of Columbus.
[Illustration: Fig. 76.--Three-masted Galley, with Square Sails,
of the Sixteenth Century.--From a Picture by Raphael in the
Cathedral of Sienna.]
It is, therefore, an undeniable fact that the sailors of the Middle
Ages did not lack large and handsome ships, though the boldest mariner
did not care to put too much salt water between his craft and the
shore, and, as a rule, the longest voyages were made by following the
outline of the coast. The Middle Ages, moreover, could often boast
the possession of considerable fleets. In 1242 the Genoese put to sea
with ninety-three galleys, thirty traders, and three large ships,
to struggle for the supremacy of the seas with a hundred and ten
Pisan and Imperial galleys. At the beginning of the same century the
Crusaders, when they set sail to attack Constantinople, had a fleet of
three hundred vessels according to one writer, and of four hundred and
eighty according to another. Amongst them there was one called _The
World_, of such large size and so beautifully finished that it was
the admiration of all the ports along the coasts of the Mediterranean.
Joinville, the ingenuous historian of the crusades of Louis IX., tells
us that that sainted king sailed from the port of Aigues-Mortes with a
fleet of “eighteen hundred vessels, large and small,” some of which
carried as many as a thousand passengers, and some a hundred horses.
[Illustration: Fig. 77.--Spanish Caravel in which Columbus
discovered America.--From a Drawing attributed to Columbus, and
placed in the “Epistola Christofori Columbi:” undated edition
(1494?), 8vo.]
In 1295, the combined French and Norwegian fleets, intended to act
against the English (Figs. 79 and 80) in the wars of Philippe le
Bel and Edward I., amounted to upwards of five hundred vessels,
two hundred and sixty of which were galleys, and three hundred and
thirty ships of different sizes. Three centuries later fleets were
not a whit more numerous or more powerful, though better equipped and
organized. In 1570, Sultan Selim sent from Constantinople, against the
island of Rhodes, a fleet of a hundred and sixteen galleys, thirty
galliots, thirteen _fustes_, six large ships, one galleon, eight
_mahones_, forty _passe-chevaux_ (horse transports), and
a great number of _caramoussats_, laden with provisions, with
artillery, and with stores of all kinds. The Christians, under
Marco-Antonio Colonna, could only oppose to this formidable flotilla
one hundred and four galleys, twelve _galéasses_, one large
galleon, and fourteen large ships.