what was the most effectiv or creativ way to defend your city against conquest in the high or late middle age
City defence in medieval cities
Isaac Edwards
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Eli Nelson
Build a massive wall.
Thomas Perez
do somebody know what kind of defense wall this construct under the have is?
Robert Phillips
>what was the most effectiv or creativ way to defend your city against conquest in the high or late middle age
Brave men are a city's strongest tower of defence
Ryan Cook
maybe against raiders but not against heavy siege equipment
Ryan Bennett
Have big towers with ballistas or cannons to shoot far away enemies and murder holes to shoot nearby enemies. Have ranged soldiers (archers, gunmen, javelineers, etc.) up on the walls. If you think enemies are going to break through a portion of the wall, obviously have some melee troops there. Other innovations include dumping hot liquid (water, oil, whatever) onto enemies below. Also having multiple layers of walls can help.
James Long
what is this?
Colton Hughes
selling land to conflicting imperialist powers so they are more busy bordering each other than bordering you
Dominic Jones
seriously tho?
Cameron Cook
Believe it or not, but hedges where a big thing during that time.
Ayden Peterson
People would lay hedges like they do for livestock hedges, just tighter and deeper. It was the medieval equivalent to a barb wire fence.
Carter Sullivan
many villages and castles used hedges for their defenses, but often hedges where miles long, had their own gates and where maintained for centuries.
Ayden Thomas
Such hedges, in German they are called "Gebück" could include a moat, but often rows of thick and thorny brush was enough.
Hudson Ramirez
Gavin Perez
thank you
Juan Lee
kill them dead
James Ramirez
The border of Buckland in the Lord of the Rings is protected with a large hedge. Would any of these have still been around during his lifetime or do you think he took the inspiration for that from history/folklore ?
Nolan Roberts
There are defense works from the 12th century, so high medieval ages, and the trees are still around. They might be not a real hedge anymore, but the remnants are still visible, and still growing in our day.
You often hear of enchanted hedges and stuff in fairy tales, thats because in the medieval, hedges where so common as defense works and they could secure large a large area with modest means.
Jaxon Butler
HEdges where really the fence line of their time, the British for example planted the great hedge in India, several thousand km of hedgerow, to have a customs line and collect the salt tax.
Dominic Cooper
They even used them in WWII.
Jeremiah Richardson
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Luis White
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Jordan Roberts
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Nathaniel Anderson
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Nathan Roberts
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Justin Jackson
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James Kelly
ISWYDT
Cooper Lewis
racist
that's what the enemy WANTS you to do
Austin Johnson
AND THE OTTOMANS ARE GOING TO PAY FOR IT
Jack Moore
By throwing fish onto your foes
Benjamin Brown
How are hedges viable? Can't you just burn them down?
Anyway OP just have a large garrison , a large supply of food, long thick walls and Catapult the dead people and the rats outside to the besiegers to get them sick, burn the land and poison the waters around the city so they can't forage, send raiding parties to fuck their supply lines.
If they're attacking and you want to be creative piss over the walls and watch them trip in your urine.
Oliver Butler
>How are hedges viable? Can't you just burn them down?
Not really, they are living trees, they won't catch fire easily.
They where meant as an obstacle to slow down enemy forces and they did a good job at this. They are impassable for horses and also for most infantry. hacking a path trough it would take hours and make considerable noise.
The hedge offers less protection than a wall, but then it is way cheaper, low tech, low maintenance and it will delay an attack far better than for example a modern day barbed wire fence. Like medieval farmers would lay hedges anyway for livestock, so everybody had acces to the technique, and in case of raiders attacking your village a hedge would offer considerable defenses and buy valuable time.
Anthony Bennett
>How are hedges viable?
Hedgerows were still fucking people up in Normandy in 1944
Jose Barnes
>They won't catch fire easily
Not easily, but against greek fire? Or cannons? Or even hay and torches? Seems to me it wouldn't take long to make a giant gap in them and advance through it
Dylan Bell
Neither Greek fire nor cannons where really a thing during the heyday of the hedge, and even lots of torches and hay will take hours or days to burn trough 10m-20m of a dense interlocked hedge. This is a good defense for a village or a small castle against raiders and small scale warfare as it was at the time. Green trees don't burn easily, and burning lots of them is hard work.
As mentioned, the hedge is not as strong as the wall, but it is way cheaper and it will stop horses, vehicles, smugglers, raiders and in case of full out attack will at least buy you valuable time.
Luke Brooks
>Not easily, but against greek fire? Or cannons?
Dude they were used by small villages to get time to flee or gather some men against a small raiding troop, not to stop the main Ottoman force.
>Or even hay and torches?
That still takes time and hay, your average raiding party looking for food won't bring hay. Also enjoy waiting for several hours with a well visible fire until you burned down a massive hedge.
Christian Sanders
And those where just cattle hedges, not real defensive hedges.
Noah Russell
>Fetchez la poisson
Carter Nguyen
It depends on the city, its defensibility, its ability to provision itself and where it has a means of receiving supplies from the outside. Many medieval sieges only lasted for a few weeks to a few months at the most and so the most effective means of defending the city would be for an outside army to rout the defenders or for the defenders themselves to sally out.
Joshua Powell
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