This is probably a very retarded question, but please explain to me conquest of strongholds. I never understood it. Why would an attacker ever siege it? Why not ignore it and just take the land around it?
*the concept of. Not conquest.
What do you mean "the land around it"? Are you suggesting just creating another control point?
>>784718
That's an intelligent question actually.
First of all, castles and strongholds knew their peak during the great invasions of the middle ages. It was a simple strategy: riches, peoples and supplies (grains and animals) from a certain piece of land could be easily defended for weeks or even months behing wooden (later stone) walls. The raiders often sought loot, not conquests.
During "traditional" wars strongholds are often strategical: they can lead to the sea or along a trade route.
>>784730
I mean if you have the superior army, why risk defeat or the loss of countless men in a siege or attempt to storm the castle, when you can just take control of the region it is supposed to guard?
Lets say you invade a foreign territory. The enemy lord/king /whatever gathers his men and supplies and hides in his stronghold. You ignore him and take control of the surrounding towns and fields. His people now work for you and the food and resources they produce are yours.
>>784748
And your larger army is now spread out in the towns and villages while he has a unified force ready to strike out whenever he sees fit.
>>784748
Well all the stuff you want to pillage or use to sustain your army is inside the fortifications. I also would assume they have strategic location and to protect yourself from an enemy that has a safe place to return to would require quick and smart fortifications of yours. You have to establish new power relations in the area all while preventing dissatisfaction in your army, which was mostly not professional in those times. If you don't siege it the local lord could ask for help from his allies in the region and then possibly trap you in that area. If you disperse your men too much to establish some sort of new order they are also easy pickings for whatever groups oppose you and, being the invader, your men are usually more needed than the defendants.
>>784718
>Why would an attacker ever siege it?
Because it doesn't want to have a large group of enemies constantly raiding his rearguard while he tries to march past it? Because he wants to have a defensible base of operation from which direct the conquest of the surrounding area?
Seriously how do you even have to ask this question?
>>784718
It's done to day. A strongly defended base of operation. From which you patrol and strike at enemy patrols or concentrations. War hasn't changed that much.
>>784718
Raising an army and keeping it in the field was horribly expensive. This is more early renaissance, but the siege of Harfleur cost Henry V about 2 and a half times his government's entire annual income; and keeping your army in the field is only margianlly less expensive than keeping it camped around a set of walls. (You'll be able to plunder a bit more)
Put simply, if the defenders behind the castle can keep up for even a few months, keeping a force in the 'surrounding area' (which isn't likely to be that big if you're dealing with a proto-nation where there are lots of little lords with their own castles and retinues) for the duration is likely to send you into bankruptcy.
>>784748
Because you now have to try and control that entire region, while there's a constant threat from that stronghold, and all they have to do is wait for reinforcements
>>784718
>Why not ignore it and just take the land around it?
Yes, OP. Just take the land around it, and leave the armed fighting men inside it safe and comfy to harass your rear as you advance.
Funny how many people say the Art of War is just common sense, and then think of shit like this.
>>784718
>Why would an attacker ever siege it?
Consider a group of raiders: they might want all the region's treasure, which the locals put there after notice of the raiders' presence in the area spread.
Consider a civil war: the attacker might want the head of the king (or the pretender) who is hiding within.
Consider a feudal context: you have no guarantees whatsoever that capturing the capital (which might very well be and most likely is a stronghold too) and killing the king is gonna make all defenders lay down arms and accept your rule, so you have to conquer their home stronghold too.
Consider a conquest context: you're going to war to control "x". X is fortified to all shit specifically to make it hard to be conquered, because the current owner shares your views on x's value.
>Why not ignore it and just take the land around it?
Because what do you think it's going to happen when your army moves on? Do you think the enemies in the stronghold are gonna stay put without you threatening them? They're just gonna reassert control over the area you just passed through, and then they're gonna go chase and harass your army from the rear, an advantageous situation. Oh, and did I mention that you've just left a big enemy force between you and your supply lines? Do you think they're just gonna let your provisions pass through to you now? Or will they take them all for themselves?
I'm fairly certain there HAVE been a lot of cases where fortresses were just avoided when it wasn't tactically sound to assault it.
if the garrison is large though its probably a bad idea to walk pass and give an opposing army the ability to hit your rear/sandwich you between another enemy force.
Because there's an army in the stronghold. You leave the area and they'll spill out and wreck your shit. That's the whole point. Additionally, they represent a logistics hookup that will further wreck your shit if you just let them hang around and try to advance past them if you haven't already broken your opponent's army. Lastly, sometimes "the land around it" is impassable terrain. These are the best kind, for reasons you should be able to imagine.
>>784718
>Why not ignore it and just take the land around it?
You mean just let it be while you try to control the land around it?
First of all - castles and strongholds were a centres of administration of many regions. So... yeah you'd have to build ANOTHER castle in their place.
Secondly... how do you imagine it working? You have a land, and assholes from castle that live off smuggled supplies raze the fields, pillage the villages etc. when you're not home with your lances, when they can get back to the castle quickly etc.? Will you keep standing army, something NO feudal power had(in big quantity) to keep them in check de-facto besieging the castle?
>>784748
>wanting to have constant harassment of your forces from a well-entrenched and supplied force
>>784718
It's always easier to fight downhill than uphill.
>>784718
Firstly, castles were almost never taken by direct storming. So we'll put that aside for the moment.
So, if you want to take control of an area with a well-defended castle in the middle, would you
A) camp your army around the castle in fortified entrenchments, send out foraging parties if you need supplies from the area, and wait for the defenders to stave
or
B) disperse your army around the surrounding countryside, thereby giving the castle's defenders some freedom of movement and the ability to bring in supplies, and wait for the defenders to pick off the now isolated components of your army.
If you besiege a fortress, you ARE in control of the surrounding area, because that's where all the enemy's troops are. If the enemy is bottled up in his castle then you have complete freedom to send parties of men out to take whatever you want from the surrounding area. If you allow the army in the fortress freedom of movement, on the other hand, you'll be unable to send out foraging parties without having them taken out by the enemy, nor will you be able to send supplies through that area.
>>784718
Read Clausewitz. You'll get counterattacked.
>>784748
It's not what you do usually. You'll siege it, i.e. dig trenches and build your own wooden palisades. And then you'll wait and starve them out. Historically, most castles were forced into a sortie sooner or later, which mostly ended in defeat.
The other alternative is if you have a large army and siege equipment, you can bombard the castle with rocks/corpses/shit. Or you can build siege towers, which are quite a decent way of taking walls.
Cases were castles were stormed, i.e. using ladders/ropes only with huge losses for the attackers, were rare.
>>784718
>Why would an attacker ever siege it?
Because as long as it stands and you don't have a watchful siege over it, they can raid you and run back to the safety of their walls
>>784718
Every enemy castle near your supply lines needs to besieged or taken before you can move further into their territory. Either you lose 100s of professional soldiers to peasant crossbowmen and boiling pitch or you have to bring more supplies to the 100s of besiegers for the duration of the campaign.
>>784718
There might be as many 300 angry mounted men inside a castle waiting for you to let down your guard for one second to raid your baggage train or frontier villages.
http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1291/1/1291.pdf?EThOS%20(BL)
>>785174
>Firstly, castles were almost never taken by direct storming.
You'd be surprised!
Going by some primary sources of the 15th and 16th century it would seem storming was the first and foremost way of quickly capturing a fortified place, little bloodshed, quick results and such have always driven people to try this.
>>785649
how do you storm a castle?
>>785725
Well the paper linked >>785639 shows a couple of examples.
Mostly involved ladders and getting in under the cover of dark. I believe Antioch was taken like this during the first Crusade too. Another incident in the paper involved armed men storming the castle while most of the garrison was in Church for the Sunday prayer in a village outside the walls. During the campaign before Poitiers folks literally waded through a moat and starting hacking at the base of the wall with a pickaxe while archers shot at the battlements to make sure the defenders didn't dare to look over the wall. The French at one point during the Italian war had to take (I believe Avignon) and went to the city gate with 3 men, one leader and two guys with guns, they asked the leader of the garrison to come outside to negotiate, at a mark the leader of the attackers stabbed the leader of the garrison when discussing and the two guys with guns each shot one of the seventeen guards outside the gate. At that moment 200 men emerged from a wheat field close to the city gate prompting the 15 surviving guardsman to retreat into the city, luckily one of the gunners ran inside along those 15 guardsman and went straight to gate and kept it open long enough for the others to storm in. The details are in a book I have on another PC, the story is quite funny actually.
>>784718
Strongholds, even in hostile territory can be a big issue for those who are attacking.
In medieval Scotland during the wars of independence, the English used them as outposts with the ability of striking far out from the land and they could be used as advanced positions for an invading army, which is why Robert the Bruce systematically took and destroyed them to stop the English armies having this advantage.
>>784748
That's what a siege is, and that's how the vast majority of them were carried out. Full on frontal assaults of a castle were rare because of the casualties they would cause, so the attackers would just attempt to starve the defenders out.
>>785382
> You can bombard the castle with rocks/corpses/shit.
It will never cease to amuse my childish humour that tactical shit-flinging is a real thing.
>>784718
First, strongholds have caches of weaponry, ammunition, etc.
Second, strongholds must be guarded by soldiers who could otherwise be on more important frontlines.
Third, they provide great motivation for the enemy to advance into that territory to relieve the siege.
Fourth, they can harass their besiegers with periodic skirmishes.
You can use the 2nd Punic War as an example of why it is generally not a good idea to leave an enemy stronghold up and wander around their territory. After the Battle of Lake Trasimene Rome's army was destroyed and Hannibal could have just gone and sacked Rome, but he didn't have the support of other Italians and so he didn't think he would win. Hannibal needed to keep defeating Roman armies in the field to destroy the faith Rome's allies still had. When Quintus Fabius Maximus was elected dictator he enacted a new policy where he would avoid pitched battles with Hannibal and instead harassed smaller contingents of Hannibal forces and messed with supply lines. He was causing Hannibal to take losses of men and supplies and lowering the soldiers' morale. Hannibal needed to be resupplied from the sea and if Hannibal marched on Rome his conquered ports would be acted by Fabius, which basically meant he wasn't going to be resupplied. So Fabius just kept the Roman army close enough to Hannibal's to keep whittling away at it and making the mercenaries and gauls in Hannibal's army get bored of not getting loot.
I'd just build a stone wall around it with no way out and let them starve to death. Then go in and now you have a castle with no losses and an extra layer of defence around it
>>784718
for the gains from the weighted hill sprints of carrying the battering rams and shit up that hill, op
>>784718
Different principle of war.
Mongols for example, couple simply raze all the local village and cut off access to the outside world if they hole up inside the castle. The european strongholds are all tiny as fuck compared to Chinese fortified cities. Those fortified cities could feed the people inside for years. Where as I doubt the stronghold could last.
Did europe ever have a good concept of supplyline or logistics? Was this the reason they could never field more than couple thousands at a time for most of their history? The chinese could field over 100k+ sized armies due to their logistics capabilities.
>>788643
>The chinese could field over 100k+ sized armies due to their logistics capabilities.
I think it was a matter of population and the brutal serfdom chinese peasants had to endure. If the chinese ruling body wanted something, they were gonna get it from them. The shit they had to endure was ridiculous, even for an average peasant of the time. Living in huts with dirt floors, selling their children, resorting to cannibalism, etc. The chinese government was considered "worse than tigers" at times.
>>788714
>cannabalism, selling their children
Those would be the extreme examples wouldn't it? If these ever the norm, then the population wouldn't survive at all.
>huts with dirt floors
Not like they had cement or anything in the poorest of the rural, but I'm pretty sure the city dwellers had a very luxurious lifestyle similar to the difference between urban/rural we have today.
>>788714
>logistics capabilities
>matter of population and the brutal serfdom chinese peasants had to endure
That's the same thing.
>>788714
>brutal serfdom chinese peasants had to endure.
>The shit they had to endure was ridiculous, even for an average peasant of the time.
No?
For one thing there's no feudalism in China past 200's AD. Hell it was dying by 200 BC.
For another "peasant" is argued to be a very inaccurate term for the Chinese ""peasant."" Peasant implies being beholden to a feudal lord/landowner, When the Chinese word for peasant is "Nongfu." Meaning literally "Agrarian Worker." And the cunt answers to his village rather than just one guy.
Furthermore the mobilization of peasants for public works is called "corvee." Think of wartime conscription but instead of war, you go to a public works project. It was a way to pay debt for some people. The worst part of the works were given to convicts (i.e. latrine duty).
>>788643
>Mongols for example, couple simply raze all the local village and cut off access to the outside world if they hole up inside the castle.
Idiot. Mongols attacked castles. Here in Hungary they fucked up even the smallest hill castles so nobody would chase after their army when they advanced past it.
Strongholds were built next to important roads and you couldn't control a road with a castle that's filled with your enemy.
>>788731
>Those would be the extreme examples wouldn't it?
Yes, such as war I would assume.
>Not like they had cement or anything in the poorest of the rural, but I'm pretty sure the city dwellers had a very luxurious lifestyle similar to the difference between urban/rural we have today.
The source I read didn't really touch on the rural peasants much, but no, I think the divide was much greater. By the sounds of it it was much like the western feudal kingdoms of the times, the people who work the land sustaining those who owned it, only to a greater extreme.
>>788757
>the people who work the land sustaining those who owned it
>Imperial China
>Feudalism
....
They did have economic landholders though a la hacienda, but this motherfucker is answerable to the magsitrate if he thinks he "owns" the peasants.
>>788757
The chinese created the meritocratic system back in 200 BC and its been in use since. So the divide shouldn't be that great between a landowner and the peasant working on it.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_property_law#Imperial_China
>land ownership
>>788714
>the brutal serfdom chinese peasants had to endure.
There were farmers who either lost their family farming land or tried to escape from natural disaster in their village by working on the farms of rich landlords and merchants.
But they are by no means serfs because they are legally entitled to their own bodies and everything they earn. If a landlord mistreated his tenant farmers, he might get a visit from the local governor about abuse, or some of the more violent ballsy tenant farmers would just straight up beat his ass to a pulp, steal his money and rape his wives and daughters.
>>788737
>>788775
>>788808
The source I read mostly touched on Beijing and the Forbidden City and it's surrounding courts. The account it gave was for the surrounding "Nongfu" and it wasn't pretty. It sounds like the court was extremely demanding of them, and also why the court was so wealthy and well off. I mean some fantastic stuff came out of beijing, but them Nongfu man.
>>788828
Did it talk of the Late Qing Dynasty? Because those were really shitty times.
Anyway, Chinese Red Shills love the "feudal" narrative because Communism. When in reality the Chinese peasant for most of history worked for his village, the basic communal unit of Chinese society. The fact that people in the village are often *all* related (i.e. Clan village) meant that you had extra motivation for working (i.e. not letting your clanmates starve to death).
>>788828
Sounds like you read one of those "Chinese history for gweilos" type book which is more popular in mainstream channels.
It's basically a condensed summarized and poorly explained text on Chinese history and society. The real situation, judging by both historical text, personal accounts such as diaries and published books, archaeology evidence and accounts about China from Europeans during the Ming dynasty present a much more complex and multi-layered situation regarding just about most aspects of society, including farmers.
>>788840
Yeah, it was something like that.
Do you have any sources you'd recommend? That shit from the Chinese history for gweilos really tickled my dick.
>>788863
I don't know any English sources on this particular subject, but The Chinese State in Ming Society
examines Chinese society overall during the Ming dynasty and does delve into the relationship between farmers and others.
>>788643
Part of European warfare consisted of raiding the countryside to inflict economic damage, limit the enemy army in their recruitment and supply and also supplying your own army. For some military campaigns river or sea based supply was used but inland warfare and heavily fortified rivers prevented this from happening everywhere. Generally speaking Western Europe was well cultivated so there was not real need to establish supply lines as long as the army moved, eastern Europe was an entirely different story.
That said Europe did have large numbers of men under arms at several points in time but never like 100k in a single nation and rarely coalesced in a single army. At the beginning of the 100 years war France had 60.000 men under arms in three different locations while England send a group to England while also keeping a northern army along the Scottish border. The thing is that the nature of warfare made really huge armies both pointless and economically unfeasible.
>>788932
Adam Smith relied on hearsay but he said Tanka people would regularly drown their own children and that the mandarins gave exorbitant loans to farmers. Another funny thing he says is that China approached it peak prosperity sometime before Marco Polo visited and now more than 200 years later research actually supports this view.
>>788643
>The european strongholds are all tiny as fuck compared to Chinese fortified cities. Those fortified cities could feed the people inside for years. Where as I doubt the stronghold could last.
This makes me wonder. Why didn't Europeans try something like this in their larger cities? Not enough population even in London and Paris?
>>789488
>The thing is that the nature of warfare made really huge armies both pointless and economically unfeasible.
sounds like a european excuse as to why they couldn't match Chinese proportions and talent.
>>789519
They did. Its just castles that are memed way too much in European history thanks to the role of Feudalism in European history. Especially in Romantic English sources for Medieval Europe.
In fact cities in Europe are interesting because a lot of continental Euro cities operated outside the feudal system. They were self-governing, had their own laws in addition to that of the realm, were """democratic""" (in a sense that a bunch of guilds/council of urban nobles/elites picked their leaders), and their defense is answerable to the citizens.
In the Feudal Countryside. Peasants have Knights and Men-at-Arms and their castles to run away to in case of trouble. Urban Citizens don't. So Urbanites form militia companies organized around guild/neighborhood/district/your gentleman's club and defended the city. Citizens bought their own armor and weapons, richer ones even had horses. At times some militia companies were so good, they marched to war along with the professional fighters.
Walled cities in Europe also became worse during the advent of gunpowder. In 1500's-1600's literally every major town had defensive works.
>>789523
Not my words but those of period writers. They lament how the king of France had trouble keeping a certain duke in line, if he would march a small army into his territory he would be beaten in the field, if he amassed a large army the duke would just sit it out in fortified cities and castles until the large army starved in the field. He therefore advocates a medium sized fast moving army to devastate the countryside several years in a row to force the Kings will on the said duke.
PS, See the Crusades, 100 years war or opium wars for what a small coordinated force can achieve. European armies only breached the 100k size regularly when Napoleonic instituted conscription which hitherto had been largely unknown in Europe.
>>789519
I forget which city wall it was but one of those gigantic city walls was built by 100.000 laborers working for ten or twenty years. No king or emperor in Europe could force that many people to work on a wall or pay them for it. Instead cities with city rights were commonly asked to raise money through taxes themselves and built a wall with skilled masons instead. China was way way way more centralized than Europe until the fall of the Qing dynasty and probably even after. If the King of England wanted to expand his London residence he had to get a building permit from the city just like any other man, the emperor of China could erase certain people from the face of the Earth at a whim.
>>789571
>>789571
>>789571
I meant this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Wall_of_Nanjing
Earth core with stone facings. Any unskilled laborer can dig up earth and carry it but it takes skilled people to do the masonry. Medieval European walls do not have earth inside but are entirely made of masonry, hence the need for a large skilled labor force. It was only really with those star forts that Europe started using earth walls with stone facings.
>>789523
Good point, European realms should have been raising armies that mirrored those of realms on the other side of the world with which they had little to no contact, not armies commensurate to the actual demands of their own warfare, economies, and populations.
>>789594
DUDE. HAVE YOU ANY IDEA HOW LABOR INTENSIVE RAMMED EARTH WALLS ARE?
>Be Chinese
>Have shitloads of people/excess population for public works.
Ok guys lets build a defensive wall.
>Layer wet earth.
>Have HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE JUMPING ON FLAT BOARDS TO COMPACT IT.
>Layer it again with another batch of wet earth
>Have HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE *YET AGAIN* JUMPING ON FLAT BOARD TO COMPACT IT.
>Repeat till you have made a small earthwork wall.
>Cover it with stone battlements.
Rammed earth walls aren't like Middle Eastern Mudwalls that one piles up and hopes to dry. It's a method to make the wall as compact as if it was a natural hill that stood there for millenia. It takes thousands and thousands of people to set it up. Medieval Europe can't afford that and so resort to thinner, masonry walls.
Stone dressed earthworks did show up in the 1500's though with all them star forts.
>>789559
Do you know of any books that discuss specific cities in depth? Preferably outside of Italy, but Italian cities are cool too.
>>789641
>DUDE. HAVE YOU ANY IDEA HOW LABOR INTENSIVE RAMMED EARTH WALLS ARE?
Yeah that is more or less exactly what I said. Wet rice cultivation has yields double, trippel or even quadruple that of grains cultivated in Europe. Correspondingly unskilled labor was way cheaper in China. A mandarin with a pound of silver might be able to pay for food for say 500 people while a count with a pound of silver might be able to pay for food for say 200 people. The disparity in pay between a skilled and unskilled laborer in Europe was also smaller meaning that in some cases investing in skilled labor was more advantageous than hiring tons of unskilled labor.
Imperial China had both a really good bureaucracy, centralized power and fiscal power coupled with a vast population and dirt cheap labor. All of this enabled the construction of big monuments and fortifications. Meanwhile Europe had a smaller population, less efficient or non-existent central taxation and high labor prices.
This was exacerbated even more by the Black Death which killed off a large part of the population driving wages up even further. This difference in society is perhaps nowhere better shown than in printing; China invented individual type set printing way before Europe yet largely stuck to woodblock printing which requires less skilled labor to make. The increased efficiency of individual typeset printing was offset by the low wages and large numbers of unskilled laborers who could be sent to work on woodblock printing. Europe had the inverse where it was more viable to invest in expensive machinery and skilled labor wages since the unskilled labor wages were quite high anyways.
>Stone dressed earthworks did show up in the 1500's though with all them star forts.
That's what I said in my post didn't I?
>>789488
>Generally speaking Western Europe was well cultivated so there was not real need to establish supply lines as long as the army moved, eastern Europe was an entirely different story.
What? Poland was the bread basket of Europe, to the point the Polish nobility fucked themselves and the entire country, by concentrating exclusively on agriculture while ignoring and in fact looking down on manufacturing.
>>789759
I consider medieval Poland to be central European to be honest. But the more Eastern European armies often had bigger baggage trains than those in Western Europe. Even in later times Napoleonic could live of the land in most of Europe but failed in Russia, though Russia was actively persueing a scorched earth policy.
Renaissance Poland was indeed a country slowing fucking itself to death. Western Europe profited quite a bit from the Prussian grains though, Holland probably the most.
>>789641
You forgot the best part, where if a shitty peasant dies you get to bury him in the wall itself! It's great!
>>788546
This sounds like Caesar's plan at the battle of Alesia.
>>789571
>See the Crusades
the thing European small armies lost to large Muslim armies?
Not really proving your point.
>>789870
>You forgot the best part, where if a shitty peasant dies you get to bury him in the wall itself! It's great!
Nope. That's dynastic propaganda to shit on the overthrown dynasty's works. "This is why we replaced them. Evil bastards!" and such.
It's also bad architecture. Bodies rot, create a cavity in the wall, hooray weak wall.
They found graves along the great wall alright but not IN the great wall.
>>790027
They occupied a rich part of the Middle East for 200 years. An enclave as it were.
Bit like modern day Israel desu.
>>790104
They held it for 100 years because the Muslims were in the middle of a series of civil wars.
>>792273
200*
>>788546
That's called a siege
>>788546
>I'll build a stone wall under fire from the enemy
>I'll try to build a stone wall around the castle out of range of the enemy
pick one, neither will work
>>794720
Akshually, it did work in the case of Munster.
The city was taken by the Anabaptists and the mayor of the city was kicked out. He gathered mercenaries and laid siege to the castle, building another wall around it. It essentially created a no man's land in between the castle and his siege line, anyone entering was shot.
But this only worked because they weren't sieging a army, but instead a civilian population (even if they were fanatics).
>>784718
>Why would an attacker ever siege it? Why not ignore it and just take the land around it?
Because there is a not small chance that there is more food inside that stronghold then in the area around it. There is also armed men inside it was well. If you just ignore it as your force leave that area they will tear down what ever control systems you just put in place. The local villagers know this and so they will have very cold feat about going along with what ever you want to do because of that. Even if they hate the guy in said stronghold. Also if you move pass it with out taking it they will attack you supple lines. If your supple lines are motorized then you can just bypass with out to much trouble. If it is based around the ox cart not so much.
>>792419
100*
A handful of coastal enclaves aren't relevant.
>>784718
If you control the stronghold, you do control the area around it.
>>784748
That's a siege, yes. Storming a castle isn't a siege, it's an assault and is usually suicidal.
>>787076
>hannibal could've just gone and sacked rome
>Rome
>the city where all adult males of a certain age had at least passing experience with weaponry and the city fortified to all hell
>without siege weapons
Meh.
Nigga
