Siege Tactics Online Quiz | History

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Sieges typically involve a fortification or town being surrounded and cut off from reinforcements and supplies with a view to overrunning it militarily, by deception or through attrition. An early example of a successful military conquest was that of the strongly-fortified city of Lachish by the Assyrian King Sennacharib in 701 BC. What archaeological remains at the site point to the successful strategy?

Answer: Siege ramp

Lachish was one of several fortifications protecting the approach to Jerusalem and was taken by the Assyrians before an attempt was made on Jerusalem. The siege ramp, built to the level of the city walls, allowed the Assyrians to cross the walls.

There are biblical references to this siege which are also depicted in stone panels (known as the Lachish Relief) from Sennacherib's South-West Palace in Nineveh. The panels can now be found in the British Museum.

2. Deception is another tactic that has been used in the past to help overcome a town's defences. There is the story of the wooden horse of Troy, but there was also an antecedent in the conquest of Joppa by the Egyptian general Djehuty in the 15th century BC. Reminiscent of the story of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", how were the attackers spirited into the town?

Answer: In large baskets

The tale goes that Djehuty pretended the Egyptians had surrendered to the prince of Joppa after inviting him to parley. After knocking him out, Djehuty then sent tribute into Joppa on pack animals. The baskets (or sacks) on the pack animals contained 200 soldiers who quickly took over the town.

The story is narrated in a papyrus now held in the British Museum. Although it may be just a story, there was such a general under the Pharaoh Thutmose III from that period and there is archaeological evidence from excavations at Jaffa (known as Joppa at the time) of its destruction around this time or possibly shortly afterwards. Jaffa is in modern-day Israel.

Djehuty's undisturbed tomb was found in 1824. The techniques used were closer to grave robbing than archaeology and little in the way of information was recorded. The finds were sold off and only those items bearing his name can be attributed to the find.

3. An example of an early form of germ warfare was used during a siege of the Crimean city of Caffa in 1347. Corpses of plague victims from the attacking army were catapulted over the walls which resulted in the city's population succumbing to the disease and thus being easier to overcome. Which aggressor used this tactic?

Answer: Mongols

Some people believe that this siege caused the Black Death to appear in Europe, speculating that Genoese traders fleeing the besieged city in their ships introduced the disease to Sicily from where it spread.

Founded by the Greeks in sixth century BC as Theodosia, Caffa was destroyed in the fourth century AD by the Huns. It became part of the Mongol Empire during the 1230s. During that century, it was ruled by the Republic of Venice before being bought from the Mongols by their rivals the Republic of Genoa, who then dominated trade in the region. The name was later changed to Feodosia, the Russian version of the ancient Greek name, when it became part of the Russian Empire in 1783.

4. One of techniques typically employed by the aggressor was the military tactic of investment. In such cases the defender's position was completely surrounded to prevent escape or resupply. A famous example of this took place at Alesia in 52 BC when Julius Caesar successfully defeated the besieged Vercingtorix of the Arverni. This resulted in which region falling under Roman rule for the next 500 years?

Answer: Gallia

The Gallic tribes had been picked off one by one by the Romans over the previous few years. After one tribe successfully rebelled and wiped out a legion, they banded together under Vercingtorix. After some clashes, the Gauls ended up in an easily-defended hill-top fort at Alesia.

Caesar, who had conducted numerous successful sieges during this campaign, decided on a siege to force surrender through starvation. He built an 18-kilometre circumvallation (a fortification facing inwards which prevents the defenders from escaping) in about three weeks. Some Gallic cavalry escaped during the construction phase so he built a 21-kilometre contravallation, an outward-facing fortification preventing outside help from reaching the besieged and to protect the besiegers.

When the relief force arrived, Caesar's men positioned themselves between the two lines of fortification and were also now at risk of starvation. Despite determined and co-ordinated efforts, the Gauls were unable to break the siege. Seeing his relief force decimated, and suffering starvation and low morale, Vercingtorix's forces surrendered.

5. Investing time and energy in building such siege fortifications was ideally best avoided. A negotiated settlement or paying an insider a suitable bribe had many advantages. Psyching out the defenders was another tactic. During the Achaemenid (or First Persian) Empire, the mountain fortress at Sogdian Rock was considered impregnable. In 327 BC the defenders refused to surrender to the Macedonian aggressors, boasting that men with wings would be required to gain entry. After some 300 attackers scaled the heights overlooking the fortress at night, the defenders were so surprised and demoralised that they capitulated without a fight. Which military leader achieved this coup?

Answer: Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great's father, King Philip II of Macedon, turned the Macedonians into a formidable military force. He also developed the siege tactics which allowed the Macedonians to conquer fortifications as well as win battles. Alexander, who never lost a battle, seems to have been amongst the first to use siege weapons in battle, using massed artillery against a Scythian army.

The story goes that Oxyartes of Bactria had sent his wife and daughters to Sogdian Rock for safe-keeping after the Persians lost their leaders Darius III and then Bessus. Amongst Oxyartes' daughters captured at Sogdian Rock was Roxana with whom Alexander fell in love and subsequently married.

6. Another form of psychological warfare was conducted by the Mongols against the Chinese during the 13th century. The Mongols would arrive at a city and the inhabitants would face a stark choice: surrender immediately and all would be spared; delay and the next phase would result in all men being killed; delay until the final phase meant no lives would be spared. How did the citizens canvas the mood of the Mongols?

Answer: Colour of leader's tent

On the first night, the leader used a white tent. A change to a red tent marked the next phase. The black tent meant no quarter would be given. Dealing with any field armies and minor towns first meant that the Mongols were not threatened by outside help.

The resulting influx of refugees sapped the resources of the besieged city and brought first-hand experience of the ruthlessness of the Mongols, all helping to make the conquest easier.

7. It was not all doom and gloom for the defenders against the Mongol hordes. The Southern Song Dynasty in China held out against repeated Mongol attacks for 45 years until 1279 because of their use of gunpowder. In which century was gunpowder invented?

Answer: Ninth

The invention of gunpowder is placed in the Tang Dynasty of Ninth century China. With the development of gunpowder came gunpowder-fuelled flame-throwers, mines, grenades, fireworks, fire arrows and cannon. The Mongols soon acquired the technology and brought it with them to Europe.

8. Mining or sapping is another age-old siege tactic. The idea is to undermine the walls and then collapse the tunnels creating a breach in the walls, which usually results in a rapid conclusion to the siege. It did not always happen this way. During the struggles of the Aetolian League against the Romans, Ambracia came under siege but the defenders discovered the Roman mining activity and used poison gas as a counter-measure. Where are the ruins of Ambracia?

Answer: Greece

Polybius, a Greek historian, recorded the event in his work 'The Histories', which was written at the time Rome became the dominant Mediterranean power during the second century BC. The Aetolians appear to have been first to use poison gas in a siege, although the Chinese had been using bellows to pump smoke into siege tunnels for a couple of centuries before that.

Another example was the siege of Dura-Europos in 256 AD where the Romans were being besieged by Persians. The Persians discovered the Roman counter-mining and burned bitumen and sulphur to produce poisonous fumes. The archaeological evidence included the bodies of 19 Romans and a Persian in siege tunnels.

Rocky ground can make mining virtually impossible. Philip V of Macedon faced this problem at Prinassos. He solved it by mounding earth brought in from elsewhere around his mine entrance. After a suitable amount had been deposited, he told the citizens that he was ready to collapse the walls and they promptly surrendered.

9. The cannon ball changed the dynamics of siege warfare. Thin tall walls were easily overcome and fortifications had to be redesigned to deal with this new threat. Thicker walls and oblique angles helped so siege warfare continued to be important for several centuries. Italian-designed fortresses built in the 16th century proved to be tough to crack, even centuries later. An example is Spandau Citadel located on the outskirts of Berlin. Which army chose to invest and negotiate a surrender of the occupants during the latter stages of World War II rather than storm it?

Answer: Soviet

The Soviets decided against storming the citadel at potentially high cost in men. The German defenders agreed terms and the fortress was given up to Soviet hands. After the war, it fell into the British sector and became a prison. Spandau Prison, which housed Nazi war criminals, was a separate property in the same borough.

10. Aeroplanes introduced a new dimension to siege warfare. Two examples of battles with siege-like characteristics in which aircraft played a part are Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and Khe Sanh in 1968, both involving Vietnamese attackers. Who was defending in the 1954 battle?

Answer: France

The French underestimated their opponents, who managed to bring in large amounts of artillery and anti-aircraft guns over difficult terrain. Relying on resupply by air, the French were unable to deal with the well-entrenched fire-power of the attackers. The French defeat lead to fall of the French government, the 1954 Geneva Accords and the end of the First Indochina War.

The French had based their strategy on their successful air-supplied battle at Na San in 1952. In addition to air supply, the Americans in 1968 used their aircraft for aerial bombardments of enemy positions, dwarfing the amount of munitions delivered by American artillery.

The Berlin Blockade of 1948 and 1949 was successfully broken by an airlift. For eleven months from June 1948, the Soviets prevented the Western allies from supplying their sectors in Berlin by surface (rail, road, river) in an attempt to give the Soviet Union control of West Berlin. In the end, aircraft were supplying more than had previous been done by rail. The blockade and airlift marked a dramatic intensification of the Cold War.

Source: Author suomy

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Siege Tactics Trivia Quiz

Let's have a brief look at sieges and some of strategies used to overcome pesky defences through the ages.

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