11/26/2022 0 Comments City siege medieval siege![]() so building a large city somewhere where most of the food and water it consumes would have to be imported at long distance is simply not something pre-modern societies can generally do.īook Note: These terrain problems do not exist in the books. Long distance transport before the industrial revolution is extremely expensive (land transport more so than river or sea). Pre-modern societies do not generally build cities out on Steppe grasslands (…unless you are the Mongols – Chinggis Khan built his capital, Karakorum out on the Steppe). The countryside outside of Minas Tirith should be broken up by dozens of villages, hundreds of small farms and even the occasional small town (there should probably also be trees somewhere for firewood). There is a river nearby and this is valuable farmland which could be irrigated and tilled. I have a full post on this trope of cities placed in empty plains brewing, but for now, it’s worth noting that this is not what the land outside of a large pre-modern city would look like. The first is the terrain: the army is able to form up like this because they appear to be forming up for battle in a large, relatively featureless plain of grass. The orc army arrives, formed up outside of Minas Tirith. ![]() Are we forgetting something? “What about all of the farms? Literally all of them?” Inexplicably green grass, up here compared to fields of brown grass down there, check. So, without further ado: The Approach (or, the Pelennor Steppe) Dark cloud, check. The book-notes in these sections will be brief, because I want to discuss the book’s take on the siege in a separate, final section.Īs an aside: welcome new readers! If you enjoy this series, check out the ‘ resources‘ links at the top of the main page to see some of my other writings and if you want updates on my future projects, you can follow me on twitter or subscribe using this button: In order, we’re going to look at the approach, catapults, then siege towers, and then finally the battering rams (I won’t spend much time on the aerial ringwraith assault – it will not surprise you to learn that there are no historical precedents for being attacked by immortal wraiths riding flying reptiles). ![]() This time, we’re looking at the assault on the city itself: how accurate and plausible a portrayal of pre-gunpowder assault techniques is this sequence? And what is the historical basis of this siege sequence itself?įor the sake of clarity, we’re going to break this sequence down by the type of assault and response, rather than strictly by scene order (because there is a lot going on at once here). Last time, we discussed Gondor’s execution of a strategy of defense in depth, designed to delay and weaken the advance of the army of Mordor. ![]() Part One and Part Two can be found here and here. This is the third part of of a six part series ( I, II, III, IV, V, VI) taking a military historian’s look at the Siege of Gondor in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Return of the King. (Note: Thanks to the effort of a kind reader, this post is now available in audio format! The playlist for the entire series may be found here.) ![]()
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