What Were The Weapons Used To Breach Castle Walls?
Castle walls used to be thick and tall, they ran adjacent to mighty towers that gave them reinforced support. Often castles and forts were built on higher land for tactical support and many had a moat running round them. Various weapons were devised to breach these defences. The earliest siege engines were battering rams that tried to break down the weakest part of a castle, its gate. Then came the catapults, which were built to hurl rocks at the walls and bring them down followed by siege towers. By the Medieval period man had devised the trebuchet which hurled rocks, boiling oil and even rotting carcasses over the walls and into the besieged cities. The ballista which was basically a huge crossbow was used against the defenders of castle walls. The crudest siege machinery and probably the most risky were ladders that were set along the walls to help infantry scale them.
