Why did armies in the middle ages and early modern period engage in so many sieges?
I get big ones, where the goal is to capture a city full of loot and a nations nobility, such as the Seige of Vienna or Constantinople.
However, in military history you constantly have armies of 20,000 getting bogged down trying to take a fort with 1,000 men. Why? Even if they come out behind you it's a small number and sieging meant missing the main war goals and giving the enemy weeks or months to prepare.
if you attack you might lose like 5k men
it's almost like a fortificated structure full of soldier in a tactically relevant position had actually some value beside the estetical one
>sieging meant missing the main war goals
Examples?
>missing the main war goals
If the main war goal is to conquer the land then you have to take the fortresses in the area.
If the main war goal is to beat the big enemy army in one battle then you still have to take the fortresses in the region because the soldiers there can be send to fuck you in the ass at any time.
I wasn't asking why they didn't attack. I was asking why they didn't just go around forts with small garrisons.
In 1848 the Italian army could have raced to the mountain passes and blocked Austrian reinforcements but instead dithered to pick off 300 man defenses. So what if they come out, you have 60k soldiers. They can't even supply themselves if you've looted the land.
Napoleon in the first Italian campaign bypassed forts to rush to the passes through the Alps to bottle up Italian and Austrian armies.
He did eventually siege Mantua but only after running all around the garrison cities and giving battle to the Austrians multiple times.
Well that's because that's how conquest works.
Let's say you're the king of Castile and you want to take Andalusia back because deus fuckin vult : so ok you beat the Almohads at Las Navas de Tolosa but that doesn't give you the region.
The battle is important because the Almohads are not a serious threat anymore but then the spaniards had to siege each castle and city to conquer them.
I get that. But what if there is 700 men in a for blocking your way to the city. Why not just walk around it?
Also why did forts lose their relevance? I'm guessing planes + high explosives.
>But what if there is 700 men in a for blocking your way to the city
How do you know how many men are in the fort?
You can only control land and move the border by holding fortified administrative centers like walled cities. Walled cities in turn tended to have a network of forts around them in the 17th century to act as protection.
They can get horses and rape your baggage train and foragers.
In terms of sieges things really did change with Napoleon but more due to the difference in logistics and warfare than the absolute strength of forts.
>why did forts lose their relevance
forts are relevant but not that sturdy anymore since you can bomb the shit out of them
if you leave them they can attack you from behind, cut your line of supply, comunicate with their commander about your movement, represent a focus of rebellion for locals
when you get it down, to add with all those removed risk, you also get a fortress to store up supply, prisoners, place for soldiers to rest more safely etc etc
With the power of eyesight? There are very few examples of armies of the period successfully concealing their numbers from the enemy, and when you're bottled up in a fort it's fairly obvious what the maximum capacity of said fort is, and a few days observation will show whether it's undermanned or not.
My stupid take on that :
- you don't know for sure how many men are inside the fort
- if left alone, they can undertake guerillas and disrupting the supply lines
- battling on several fronts is not desirable
- you have to surround the fort with many men because they can make a concentrated sortie
One reason this was so common in the medieval period is that by tradition, the knight who does the capturing of the fort gets given it as his fief after the war. Most knights were land-poor and always on the lookout for an addition to their demesne.
No.
That's exactly the opposite of what I asked, namely examples of armies getting bogged down into sieges rather than pursue their war goals.
No.
History does have examples of bypassing heavily fortified positions, but you run several risks. As some people in the thread have pointed out, they can wreak havoc on your supply lines - it's very difficult for a large army to live off the land for a prolonged period of time. They can also cut off your lines of retreat if things go pear shaped. The defenders will also likely have dragged any worthwhile loot and/or plunder into the fortification with them. Armies in the Middle Ages were pretty risk averse - there's generally a limited window within a campaigning season, so if you're the defender - why not just shack up and wait out your enemies? Conversely, how many 'war goals' exist that don't involve destroying your rivals capacity to fight - and most of that capacity in this period was represented through large fortifications.
Not if you do the capturing for King Harlaus though
retarded and incorrect
go back to videogames moron
Yes even if you're fighting for a king. Of course your sovereign decides who gets the spoils, but traditionally he would choose the knight who captured it, especially if said knight is landless.
At least get your facts from Paradox games, not Mount & Blade.
Wouldn't they pack up all the gold and valuables in the forts too?
I'm now recalling that being able to pay the soldiers was a constant problem in the 30 Years War.
>HURR it wuz in a vidya so it cant be true!
Read a book you dimwitted faggots.
>HURR how can medieval peeps use sword lmao sword is in vidya lol dude lmao
Landless knight? Were those even a thing.
They were probably the majority. Sons of landed knights, for the most part, but there were a few accounts of common warriors being knighted in battle.
Tons - most of the knights in the knightly orders were landless for instance.
Wasn't handing over your land part of the admittance procedure to joining said orders in the first place?
based video game history shitposter
The Templar's and Hospitaller's did - but I'm pretty sure these orders were formed from an excess of pious landless knights in the first place.
>letting anyone cut your supply lines
People have to eat.
>Go around fort
>When you leave they come out of fort
>You have an Army
>You need a supply line
>You now have an Army and a fort between you and your supply line
War isn't just about who has the most swords.
Napoleon exists at the point where forts we're declining in importance.
feudal tenure gave way to a contractual system in the 12th century
you can thank the marxist conception of history for assuming land enclosures marked the end of feudalism
what was the biggest demesne a king ever had?
Then why won't king harlaus give me shit
An individual king, rather than an Emperor? Probably the late Bourbon kings, they essentially owned the whole country.
It's almost as though fortified building's served some kind of purpose.
Idk man, maybe he hates you. Ask him.
First do not operate in a vacuum, but as a network of defense. A fort was there to tie you up, and it only needed to have enough men and provisions to hold you there until the other forts in the area could organize a relief army that would attack you from the rear. So in addition to being designed to maximize the ability of a small number of men to defend against many times more, they were also part of a larger defensive network you had to worry about. For a lot of history, siege engines and techniques were not able to quickly reduce a castle, so defenders had the advantage
So you can be sure
It's part of Gillinghams paradigm my dude, otherwise called vegetian strategy.
The paradigm essentially argues that the castles and strongpoints were too effective so economic warfare was key, seizing these strong points and destroying enemy farms etc. In chevauchess
Battles are very risky, sieges are usually not.
Dont be ridiculous. There was no way to know. Counting the patrolling guards will not be reliable.
Ill give you another example of why you should take forts.
Maybe you dont fear them killing your supply lines but, what if they attack at the same time of an important battle? Maybe they dont attack your army, maybe they attack the encamptment while the main army is doing an important battle. They may take/destroy absolutely all your supplies, including the money to pay the soldiers.