Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 70: Medieval Siege Warfare

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

PRIMAL SCREAM Dr. Eleanor Janega's Patreon: http://patreon.com/GoingMedieval Her book: https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-middle-ages-a-graphic-history/9781785785917 Her website: https://going-medieval.com/ Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod​ Our Merch: https://www.solidaritysuperstore.com/wtypp we are working on international shipping Send us stuff! our address: Well There's Your Podcasting Company PO Box 40178 Philadelphia, PA 19106 YOU ALREADY SENT US ANTHRAX so please don't bother in the future thanks

All right, let me fire up my local recording for the second time. I'm going. Yeah, I'm going. I'm going. We are here. We are here. And I'm patched up and I'm fucking jacked into the cyber zone over here. From WTYP Studios in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. WTYP News. Oh, that was so good.

That was pretty good. Hmm. Okay. Welcome to Well, There's Your Problem. This podcast about engineering disasters has slides. I'm Justin Rosnack. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay, go. I am Alice Koldwell Cally. I'm the person who's talking now. My pronouns, she and

her. Hi, I'm Liam Anderson. My pronouns are he, him. I hate you. Yeah, Liam. Yeah, Liam. I'm Eleanor Yonaga. I'm the person talking now and my pronouns are she, her. All right, we're here. We're podcasting. What you see on the screen in front of you is an isometric castle. That's right.

Stronghold. The best video game ever made. That's a sped-a-yay wall siege warfare. Yeah, I know how to spell on as such this. The name of this episode is Medieval siege warfare. It is, it is, it is a word that I consistently misspell. Do you know what? Everyone thinks it's more complicated than it is. And it's just because like Victorians like to wank real hard about doing that

thing. It's not even like that. I like it. Yeah. Yeah, they love that. If they made the A and E one thing again, people remember what order it's in. Into the Aether or just do them louts medieval. Like medieval I can handle, but words I consistently misspell in the medieval lexicon include monastery, crusade, just stuff like that. And just, you know, can't do it. It takes me a couple tries.

Crusades annoying. Yeah. Wait, how do you spell crusade? Oh, bitch. See, like I just said, I think it's C R U S A D E. Yeah, like you want it to be like a C R U C. I don't know. I keep that kind of SC in like cruciform. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. OK, OK. Yeah, I get that. You know, the other the other problem with the crusades was killing all those

innocent people. Yeah. I mean, I would say that that's my major problem with crusades. Do I have to go with this one? Yeah, I have a moral problem and I have a linguistic problem. Yeah, I was doing research on the siege of Constantinople today in 1204. Oh, they were just like, oh, yeah, they raped nuns. And I was like, oh, fuck, like I shouldn't be looking at this on a company computer. Yeah. Yeah.

Medieval warfare, it's a bad time for a lot of people. Yeah, we are going to make light of over the next hour or something. Yes. Hey, man, if you're going to die at 29 of diarrhea, it might as well be exciting. That's true. I mean, to be fair, your chances of dying at 29 from diarrhea are massively high up until like 1920. No, it's true. What a time to be alive. Or not to be alive.

Yeah, these days, if you're 29, you only feel like you're dying of diarrhea and you have a podcast with your friends. Yes. Yeah, that was my experience a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, these days, you wish that you actually had died. Yes. That's more of the process. Fine. But before we can talk about medieval siege warfare, we need to do the goddamn news.

W. T. Y. P. News in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. OK, so that's bad, right? Yeah, someone dropped the cable car. It shouldn't look like that. Yeah, you shouldn't you shouldn't do that. I'm against cable cars because it's shit like this. This is just what I think happened quite a bit. Just build a funicular like a normal person.

Yeah, exactly. This is a tiny little train. Build a tiny, adorable train. Exactly two times in my life. And each time I was just like, no, no, leave me. Leave me eight good. I was just like in a corner, like a bit. If I threw up right now, though, I could hit somebody at the bottom.

Now, every time I've been in the cable car, I've been like, yeah, this is definitely the one that's going to like snap off. This is the unfralis. Yeah, yeah. Well, time to die. And for well, that happened. This is in Italy, like a week ago. Something was broken on this cable car system where the emergency brake kept activating.

And so these these these geniuses who who run the resort decide, OK, well, you know, we've got a problem here. How do we fix it? We clamp the emergency brake off. OK, yeah, good idea. This is fantastic idea. Works perfectly. It doesn't it doesn't stop, including when there's an emergency.

And so at some point there is an emergency. This thing goes sliding down the cable at 60 miles an hour, snaps the cable, breaks off, hits the mountain, kills fucking everybody. You may be you may be relieved to know that those guys who did the emergency brake thing have now been arrested. So problem solved. Everything's fine. Another person I'd like to arrest in conjunction with this. And as a prison abolitionist, I take no no pride in suggesting this.

Someone who was reporting on this tweeted it and then put the cable car emoji on it. That's interesting. I mean, it is for taste is a phrase that comes to mind. I was just like, I don't know about taste. A lot of French people were very happy about this because of sour grapes about the Eurovision Song Contest, which you're joking. Yeah, 100 percent on God, because Italy won and France came second.

And I genuinely saw a couple of French people tweets that were like, well, God's killed some Italians. Look, I just, you know, not to turn this into Eleanor does some more Eurovision analysis, but I want to tell you that French song, that French song, which was just about how love is crushing and I'm going to be in pain forever because romance is so terrible. Thumbs down, thumbs up, the grab your balls. Hey, fuck you, mom.

I'm not saying in tonight's song. Absolutely. It like, I mean, who else other than a bunch of Italians would write a song where they're like, yeah, I live with my mom. I make her life a living hell. I'm like, when you're a vision, it's amazing. How. Sorry, this has been your vision chat.

I'll stop. I'll stop. I got to. I don't agree, Alice, with your Chiron here because I believe the United States Air Force managed to. Through a car system in Switzerland once. I. OK, fine. I'm willing to say that this is an independent derivation of the same idea. Yes. Well, this was a reused, a different method to get there. The results are the same.

First of mighty man. Yeah, this is not doing anything for like the screaming nightmares that just being in a cable car gives me. I'm going to continue to stay off of them. Thanks. I highly recommend not being on a cable car in addition to not going to nightclubs. Not on the WTYP approved list of things or places you should go to. Absolutely. I actually missed for the news.

There was a mass shooting today at a San Jose Rail yard where the gunman was a VTA employee and killed like eight people. This is true. Yes. So, you know, another day in the world's dumbest country. No, I mean, that means the pandemic is over. The mass shootings are coming back. Yeah, man. Nature's healing. I read like I'm not I'm not tuned into the Eurovision discourse,

but I do love the few European follows I have where it's just like ninety five tweet threads. I'm just like, oh, this is what I'm like during the debates. Like. Or during any Eagles game, I was like, I was wondering what that would be like for the outside looking in. And then sometimes like, it's like, oh, this is ninety eight tweets about a six years game. And I'm like, oh, yeah, like I did that, bitch. Yeah. You know what? In Europe, you know what we used to do

before we had Eurovision was war. Yeah. Yes. All right. Seen here or what is it good for? See, Jig. Yes, yeah, glory. I'm dying of diarrhea at age twenty nine. Yeah. Loot, if you want to loot stuff. It's pretty good. Real niche points, you know. Yes. Yeah.

Proofing. Generating the political museum. Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. Stay tuned for the museum bonus episode. Securing. Securing. I have to write his spice trade. How about bombing people until they say it's OK to have gay pride parades?

Sometimes you just loot Venice on your way to go attack Constantinople. I try to. You know, what happens, you know? You drink too many. What? Yeah. One too many glasses of. Oh, God. What's the. Ross, what's the liquor I like? The clear brandy that makes you want to fight everyone.

Grappa. Yeah. What do you say? That'll do it. Yeah, you wake up after drinking a pint of grappa and you find the, you know, some giant winged horses in your house. You're like, oh, boy, oh, boy, I should return. You know, if you wake up after drinking a pint of grappa, you're already ahead. You're within there.

And I'm like, what's that? Yeah, I've got St. Mark's finger bones. How did I get these? I stole the drink. Looting looting the second temples, Menorah, out of the Vatican on a bender. Yeah, you have to like a piece back together your night by like going back and tracing your steps and finding all the secondary relics

that you've like thrown into different middens. Yes, but one of the things you did as part of warfare is sieging, which is surround. It's it's it's French for spawn camp. Yes. Oh, so like fucking campers. Some guy, some guy has a fortification, right? And you don't like that guy.

And that guy doesn't like you. He has a very annoying opinion on the divisibility of Christ. That's right. Yes. Right. He you want to celebrate International Friends Day with him. I want to give him some presents. In order to change his mind about whether or not we can have women priests. Yes. Right. So the the issue is you want to talk to him,

but he doesn't want to talk to you. So he went in his fort, which you can't get in. So you either surround the fort, you surround the fort and you either storm the fort and try and attack it. Or you starve the guy out. And then when he comes out, you have a nice talk about your problems. You make amends and you resolve the conflict like adults, right? You have to go through this whole process first.

So I mean, I guess a point to make here, too, is that's not just not just for it. Sometimes it's cities. Yeah, because like all cities have walls because frequently some like points needed to be made, you know, I just want to say Roz, the notes say siege warfare continued in some form until World War One. Still happening. Still happening. I guess it is still happening. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah.

Because Alice added more notes later. Yeah, I added some modern warfare stuff because that's my that's my sort of. That's your gig. That's my gig. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we're not above this. We still like a little bit of this, so we do a little bit of it's just. Yeah, it's way easier when people did it. Yeah, it's way easier to like fighting somebody is is is hard and scary because they might kill you, right? So it's way easier to just lock them in a room and like wait until one of you gets bored.

Yeah, yeah, you could celebrate international friends. That's right. Exactly. That I mean, yeah, I mean, the IDF and Hamas have been celebrating for a while. That's how the kids are called it. Yeah. Yeah, I think that they're like that's a siege, right? Like, yeah, that's a siege. Yeah. Yeah. Which are that's a siege?

Yeah. And yet not even close to being one of the longest running sieges. Oh, no. Hmm. Where's the longest siege? You know, that's that's the sort of question that I really should have researched to before I said something like that. Google. I'm like, that is a good question, because I know about some long ass sieges. Like the siege of Kandia 1648 to 1669 years. Of course, it was the lustful Turk.

He lost in his heart for Vienna and in this case, Kandia, you know, for him, the sieging is his kink and I'm not doing a pride discourse. I'm going to say on the subject is your kids are going to see some shit. It's fine. You're in it. It does not matter. Okay. Hey, check this one out. The fall of Philadelphia 1378 to 1390. God damn Cowboys fans. Which once again, Philadelphia fell to the Turk again.

It's always the Turk. That explains. Yeah, that's why Joe and I are teaming up. I want to know which I'm trying to find out what the longest siege in French history is. Either way, guess what? Guess what? No, no, there was that they were trying to get stuff to Kandia. I was like, it's the Turk again, but actually it wasn't. I was like, like, damn, well done, friend. Just on vacation. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Do you remember the 2006 World Cup that we should do? So we've had siege warfare basically as long as fortifications have existed. Well, I got to go to the parking. There's like evidence of sieges back to the Bronze Age and the Indus Valley. You know, we still have siege warfare today, but we don't call it that. And it's across all cultures. I mean, Native Americans had siege warfare, you know, everyone, right? But one thing in the medieval period, which everyone loves are siege engines.

Hell, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. But before we talk about the siege engines, we have to talk about the things they're designed to siege, which are. When we say, oh, my God. Can you imagine like trying to roll a siege engine into Disney World? Well, I can now. Yeah, well, we're going to talk about that later. The border rail and turn it into an armored trade.

That is my base of operations. As soon as I got my second vaccination, that's it. I'm looking for Disney. That's all. Yeah. The magic crusader kingdom. All right. So I guess we got to ask, what is a castle? It's a fort, but you make it out of stone so it stays up. Well, the king tells you you can have it.

Yeah. And there's it's like a private residence as opposed to like a military fort. Yeah. So like one of the things that people go like and get confused by is that they think sometimes like it has to be connected to royalty, but it doesn't. But usually you have to have permission from royalty to have one. But if there's royalty in it, technically, it's a palace, even if it's isolated. Which means which is they fortified. So, yeah. Got me fortified and you got to live in it.

So it's not a fort. It's a castle. Yeah. They they needed they needed a license from the king. I read this before, a license to crinolate. What's the most English thing you can fucking think of? Yeah, this is actually a shallow issue jurisdiction for licenses to crinolate. I got a concealed crinolation license. Does that mean they like pop up? Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess I close the shutters.

Yeah, I close the shutters over my windows and then yeah, merkin is armored. There were there were people with unlicensed castles called adulterine castles. Hell, yes. Oh, that makes it sound sexy. Yeah. Oh, that's an ATF. Please no, look, I wonder if they had four grip to my castle. Is there like a is there like a horse and cart going around with like a license detection equipment in it?

You don't have to let him in. You don't have to let him in. I have a surf spinning the antenna. It's really funny because it's common here, like houses and stuff will will like crinolate later and especially in the Victorian period. And, you know, they have to still get a license to crinolate. But, you know, you'll see something. You'll be like, oh, that's really impressive.

But then when you go up close, you realize it's just like some Victorians wanking off again, which is which they love to do, frankly, though. Well, who can blame them? Why why do you have a castle as a rich guy in the Middle Ages? Because you occupy a privileged position in a system called feudalism, which is Marxist, we would know, is primitive accumulation where you make people do stuff for you. And it turns out people don't like that.

And they might try and stab you to death with their agricultural implements. Ideally. Yeah, ideally. So you've got to have a big a big stone or woodhouse to stop them doing that. And, you know, sometimes other rich guys who have accumulated something, they want the shit that you've accumulated. So they're going to come over here and they might have a siege engine. Who knows? Who knows? But, you know, like, it gets gets it gets testy, you know,

people are constantly taking over stuff on this cursed island. You know, it's changing hands all the time, the medieval period, really. So, you know, right? You might want to throw throw a drawbridge on that shit. I don't know. Maybe a drawbridge means some some ramparts. Yeah. Mm hmm. You want to, like, exercise control over an area both militarily and, like, culturally, because it's a big thing that you can't miss

sitting on a hill that kind of sends a message about the king taking an interest. Yes. Your oldest castles were made of, like, wood with, like, palisades for walls. And palisades are the big pointed sticks, right? And that was eventually upgraded to stone because you can burn those down. Yeah, it turns out. It turns out. Yeah, it's actually a downgrade for earthworks in that respect. Yeah, this is true. Yeah. Yeah.

Actually, I think it went full circle. We went back to earthworks. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because, like, a lot of, like, the castles that we have left a lot of the time will just have, like, what you call your mott. So, like, the big earthwork that they've they've built up. So it's just a really steep hill that's hard to get up. I mean, that'll still be left. But, you know, even if it was stone, sometimes that bit's just kind of fallen over.

But, you know, you still got the earthworks there because that that should stays, man. Good. Oh, yeah. My castle's been destroyed, but I'm laughing like the Star Wars meme that I have the high ground. I'm sorry, Mario, but the princess is in another castle. Another, you know, common, common perception of castles. Is there these big ornamented structures, maybe with some lava in them, right? Depending on if it's an evil castle or not. But, you know, an actual castle is just a bunch of stone cubes and cylinders and walls.

Yeah, it's a bunker, basically. Yes. Like, don't get me wrong. It is ornamented, but the ornament is intended to convey fuck you specifically if you think you're getting in here. Yeah, it's like, I suppose that one thing about castles is sometimes they are meant to be pretty, but it's like a specific lording it over you kind of way. So it's like, yeah, it's like, even if they do end up adding extra stuff on and like, you know, it's all propaganda.

Even if it's not doing like specific war stuff, it's doing propaganda. So, like, you know, letting everybody know whom's to the fanciest lad is in town. Yes. In this case, Walt Disney. Not a big fan of the Jews, unfortunately. Every time. Oh, God. I've been in Disney World ever went to a few German-American bond meetings, right? If there are 12 people sitting at a table and 11 of them are Nazis, guess who the 12 are? The frozen head of one of America's most cherished animation gurus.

I would gladly go to jail for a chance to drop kick Walt Disney's frozen head. You just you just punt him. You punt him. Yeah, dude, I could probably get a distance on that, set up some uprights. Yeah, field field goal at Lincoln Financial Field. Yeah, how about if I kick a field goal, I get 10 million. And if I don't, like, I could go to prison. Whatever, I'll go fuck.

I'm not doing anything on Tuesdays. OK. There are many parts of a castle, including walls. Some would say that the wall is one of the oldest inventions. Yes. Nothing says, nothing says hello to your neighbors, like a structure that says, fuck you to your neighbors. Yeah, and in antiquity, and specifically, I'm thinking of ancient Greece,

if you put up a wall, that was basically like it, like all your opponent could do was build another wall, just kind of sit there. I mean, so, hey, I'd like to point out that I'm hot for these walls right here. So like this is the sexy walls. You see that nice curtain wall on the outside? I love that shit. And, you know, think about walls, like we think about Constantinople until the lustful Turk over took her.

The reason why it was like basically impenetrable is like three fucking walls and they were really big walls. And, you know, and of course, the Bosphorus, they're on this like particular, you know, peak and they've got a chain in the Bosphorus and stuff. But it was like literally just three big fuck off walls and no one could do anything about it. It's like, yeah, you know, big fucking wall. But this is a hot wall right here.

I like this wall on holiday with anyone and saw this wall. I would like forcibly walk up to this wall and just stand there for 15 minutes, pointing out like different niches to you. And then you'd all be like, can we go drink now? And I'd be like, I saw you from across the bar being my wall, really dig your vibe. I have one more ancient Greek wall thing, which is which is a story. But how in one of the many wars, Sparta destroyed the city wall of Athens, right? And an unwalled city is defenseless.

A walled city is impregnable, basically, at that point. And so there's a story about the Athenian the Athenian general and statesman Pericles going to Sparta after this on like a diplomatic mission. And the Spartans ask him, hey, what's this? What's this we hear about you building walls? You shouldn't be building walls. And Pericles is like, yeah, no, we're not definitely not building wall. I'm going to investigate personally to find out whether we're building walls.

It'll take some time, but like, don't worry about it. Don't don't look. And meanwhile, in Athens, the state is like seizing tombstones and temple columns and anything made of stone and just throwing them into new walls to try and get them down as quickly as possible. I love the idea of the city coming to you and being like, we need to street. Yeah. Hey, is it the Ben Franklin Ross or the Betsy Ross that has a bunch of tombstones in it?

The Betsy Ross Bridge, the rep rap is built up with tombstones from where a temple university built a couple buildings on a condemned cemetery. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. Comfortable. So that's just haunted. That's good. Yeah, it goes pretty pretty. Yeah, that's what you get from coming into Jersey. You want to come into Jersey? You are you are taking your life into your own two hands.

That is none of my business. Give us your five dollars. Tell me about why this wall is so good. Well, this is this is the adhesion wall, not you, Roz. Oh. Yeah, I can I can talk to you anytime I want. I want to hear from Alan. OK, so in the first place. So like this is, you know, this is the hot stuff because you've got the multiple multiple layers of wall.

So I can't remember the exact names of every single one of them. So you like your curtain walls, your outside wall, I know that. And then so do you see how nicely fortified it is at the bottom? It's got like these bits at the bottom, which kind of keep it from collapsing outwards. So you've got your little buttresses there. So because there are like the crenellations on top of all of these, you can sit people right up the top, the very top of the crenellations there.

So at three and you've got a clear line of sight if you want to shoot down all the way down to the ground. So like, how do you even fucking get up, right? Like they're going to see you coming from a really far way away. So they can do good projectiles at you before you can even get to the wall. OK, then when you get to the wall, they've got this other position at level two where they can shoot down at you. And then at position of number one, if you do manage to make a pass there,

so say all your friends get got, they could just like hit you with a pokey stick, right? Pokey stick. That's a technical term for it, right? Yeah, pokey stick, huge for city defense. And, you know, you can do stuff like a hot pitch, you know, throw anything directly down there. So it's really difficult to get up past this very first line of defense just because of how high those other walls are and the range of defense they have. So basically, it's just like they can do projectiles from a really long way

and they're going to see your ass coming like you can't sneak up on this, right? That's that's the thing. So and it's pretty well patrolled. They have a really good guard system. So yeah, then they actually shell out the money for a good guard system in concentration levels. So yeah, yeah. For some reason, when you said you can just throw anything down there, what I imagined for some reason was Constantinople

taking over by some kind of Trotskyite set sack and they just start throwing newspapers over the wall. I don't know why they're going to aim into my mind. It's like the thing of it is, though, like a lot of the time in seizures and stuff, they would just be throwing any old shit that they could get their hands on. They will just like, you know, if you run out of arrows or whatever, you're like, all right, well, here's some rocks, you know, it is including literal shit. Yeah, literal shit, which is not really nice to get on you.

I don't know if you've heard this. So yeah, it's it's just a really, really good design. And it took a long fucking it took like a thousand years to for anyone to do anything about it. You know, it's this is this weird sort of asymmetry of technology, right? Where walls incredibly easy to develop, not much refining that you need to add and like the stuff that you need to get over around through under them.

That takes ages to catch up with it. Yeah, it's like it essentially took cannon. Yeah, that's why I love Ancient Greek Wall so much is because, like, if they if you got walled off in like Ancient Greek War, for the only response was build another wall to try and roll off their wall before they could finish their wall. It's like, you know, they got one move, they got one move. Yeah, actually, I guess I take it back to

because the lustful Turk when they took a concentration of the other thing they had was sappers. Oh, we'll get to those. Yeah, I put a slide about them. Oh, good. Yeah, I just I like a bit of a sapper, so I do. So yeah. Mm hmm. Reminds me of an architect I used to work with who would, you know, frequently say while trying to justify something expensive,

you only build it once. So later on, these are supplemented by various defensive structures on the walls. So, like, if you want to fire an arrow without getting fired back on, you have an arrow slit, right? Yeah, or a loop. You can shoot out, but they can't shoot in murder holes. No, murder holes are something different.

Murder holes are just a hole. An arrow slot or a loop is like specifically you can fire a bow through it and the like the crossbar ones give you the sort of the ability to traverse a little bit or by a crossbow. Yeah, this first one is cool because it's it's moral purpose, you know, because it's like just put your because I think about crossbows is they're really fucking heavy. So that's actually quite nice, too, because you can get a little bit of a

yeah, just pop it down there, you know, while you're cranking, cranking that thing back. That one does. Yeah. So, yeah, especially when there are improvements in terms of archery and like the longbow sort of takes off, you'll see a more and more move away from having those ones, but I still think they're cool. So I also really love talking about crossbows because they have

they have a class character in that, you know, you didn't really require a sort of like permanently deformed yeoman class to to like arm with them like you did longbows. Just pretty much anybody could use one at least once and genuinely kill somebody who is much more important than them. And that terrified the fuck out of people. I was reading the other day, like a bunch of old coroner's roles. And as you do in the end of like from, I guess, the 13th century here in England.

And there was like this terrible story about like a dude basically comes out of the woods, walks up to a chick, tries to rape her. She's like, what the fuck? And she screams. Her dad comes out of the house. She shoots her dad with a crossbow, kills him. So what else is like, are you killing people over here? The fucking he shoots him in a leg and then he like runs off into the forest. And everyone is just like, what the fuck?

And it's like one of the townspeople. It's like absolutely outrageous and outrage. But like, yeah, so there's there's problems. Probably some that shit, you know, ask me how Richard Curde Leon died. Richard, the first Curde Leon died when he was besieging a tiny, tiny castle, which was like virtually unarmed and a kid like a child got him in the shoulder with a crossbow bolt. Oh, he got a home art.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he got killed. But as he was dying from gangrene, right, he he did the sort of the chivalric thing. And I'm doing heavy air quotes here because he was like, don't kill this kid, pardon him with my grace and send him away with a hundred shillings or whatever, which is very like kingly thing to do.

And so his his attendant lords then go to this this this kid and they're like, OK, well, listen, come out of the castle. The king has promised that we're not going to kill you. And the kid comes out of the castle and we talk from to death anyway. Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry, I would say that just like basically never believe a king if he's got like if there's one thing I can tell you from medieval history, it's that if a king says it's going to be fine and he's not going to kill you, he's one hundred percent going to kill you.

Played alive. Oh, that's bad. Someone will misinterpret his orders and kill you anyway. I think it was after Richard died, like he was like he went out going, right, you know, pardon that kid dies of the gangrene from the crossbow. And then his his various lords are like, yeah, we're going to I'm I'm feeling going to do our asses. Yeah, I'm feeling more in a flaying mood. Yeah. Another thing which is added to castles is the Bartizan,

which is this guy on the corner here. So you have a little extra to shoot out of. Love, I say now. Yeah. That's I love that because like this is the like medieval equivalent of like, you know, when you see middle class people do up they lofts here. It's like, oh, yeah, just like a little bit more room. We're just going to like put an extension. Like a house window. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And then you had hoardings where you built a temporary wooden structure on the castle. Um, when a siege was imminent so that, you know, you had different better lines of fire and you could dump stuff on the people who are right next to the walls. Yeah, this is a really nice example, too, because, you know, obviously we don't have a lot of extant hoardings. So like if you do see a castle in the wild, we can check out for as you can see, like a little buttresses underneath that they would put out like they will

build those into the wall with the expectation that they can do hoardings later. But then, you know, or if you get some money, you can do it at stone. But it's so it's it's nice when you can actually see examples like this, because obviously when it's made out of wood, it doesn't necessarily last six hundred years all the time. And here's one done in stone. I think that that's a matcha collation. Maca collation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

This is where you dump stuff on the people trying to attack you. Apparently not boiling oil. Yeah, that's like, no, pitch is big. Gotcha. Yeah, sometimes oil would have been a huge pain in the ass to like waste, basically, because I imagine you're getting it from animals. Yeah, like what do you like? I mean, seriously, if we think about it, it's like, are you using like animal fat or something? It's just like, you know, all that stuff is is good shit.

Like people would either like want to be eating that or that's the sort of stuff that, for example, you used to treat leather or you used to make parchment, which is what everybody like writes on. So, you know, you don't want to be just using up oil like there's just no way like it's too much of a high value product. Yeah, pitch, pitch sticks and sticks and it burns and it soaks into the ground. I mean, it's like people talk about Greek fire and stuff. But like if you want a napalm analogue, it's not that much of a stretch, right?

Yeah, I would like to know what Greek fire is, though. I imagine there's a lot of byproducts of the tanning process. You could dump out the side of the castle, which would be very nasty. Oh, totally. Yeah, absolutely. Lately, you know, like. Or just the idea of like dumping burke. I know it's anachronistic of the idea of dumping burke around. So I would be like, enjoy that to the 20 years down the line.

You guys are not going to have a good time. Yeah, a 20 year old with a life expectancy of 30 being like, I don't even give a shit. It's just a perfect day for this way to act. You know, like it's just there's a lot of Yolo vibes happening in the medieval period, you know, and especially wars. It's like, well, you get through this one, another one will come along. Like this is not I don't like want to be one of those people. I hate I'm always like fighting with people when they're like,

and there are so many wars in the medieval period. I'm like, fuck off. There are so many wars in the 20th century. You want to fucking talk about wars? But I'm like, and those are real wars, you know, but, you know, the thing about rich people is they do be like in to risk other people's lives. So that's true. Yeah. I would say there are definitely less wars in the medieval period

because there was a period of time when England and France only had one war with each other over the course of 100 years. And it's more than 100 years, actually, because they had a time out in the middle for the plague. So they were like, all that all that halftime. Can you guys give us a couple of weeks? Well, we'll be with you. It's like shoveling like holding out sick from war. Yeah.

Basically, yeah. So that's that's a good one. So yeah, I was literally just talking about this on my podcast today. So I spent a lot of time talking about the Jackery today. So, you know, hell, yeah, which, you know, one of the premier bunch of poor people kill some rich people revolts. So I love to see it. Yeah, very tight. Yeah. We love a peasant revolt.

How are you? Oh, yeah. Another thing you might have in a castle is a moat. Yeah, not to be confused with a moat. Yes. Oh, that's a hot moat, though. That's a good moat. Yeah. Oh, you know, fuck rich people. But look at that building. Come on. You get a dry moat or a wet moat. And you know, all moats are good.

Just maybe lube it up a little bit. It's fine. It'll be fine. The thing is, if you get a dry moat, it's also going to inevitably fill up with garbage. Yeah, this is true. Yeah, you're just going to use it for a mitten heap. Yeah. Yeah. Well, don't they don't they just kind of go because nobody wants to pick

their way over like a thing full of like broken pot shards. Yeah, that's not fun either, is it? You know, so. Yeah, it's like you make your own sort of defensive fortification merely by throwing your shit and garbage into this convenient hole. Fortifications. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, it's a hot castle there, though. Who's this?

Who is she? You know, I'm not I'm not sure. I just put this here. It's the Wikipedia or triangle castle. Yeah, yeah, I will. I will find out because that's hot. Hold on. Me and my cursor will. So you.

Me and the the walls of Constantinople saw your moat. That's in Scotland. It's Calavera castle. Is it? OK. All right, girl. OK. That's fine. OK. Let's not act more beer. You have. Yeah, I might go.

I might go go hit the refrigerator in a second. Can you get me one? Unfortunately, no, because I don't have an adequate had a poult. I do, Alice, because I think of you. Oh, very kind. So if you have a dry moat, it's just something in the shape of you is rearming. And, you know, people have to go down a hill on and back up a hill to attack your castle, which is annoying, right?

It slows people down. You have a wet moat. It does a lot more because you can fill the moat with shit. So people get diseases and alligators. And I don't think they had alligators. No, how would they have? Also like the United States, right? Is it crocodiles?

It's actually more deadly without wildlife, because unless you're like a fisherman and even then you don't fucking know how to swim, you're going to take time out from your like patch of beets that you farm to learn to swim. No, that's from the Lord. In one of the castles, my family is my family is from near Chisky Krumlov in Western Bohemia and the castle there. They have bears in the boat.

Hell, yes. Fuck no. It's very funny to me because it's like it's an extremely like it's got like a big brook like pink turret and very much looks like a Barbie dream castle. And then you're like fucking bears. What, you know, so it's good. That's good value. That's good.

That's a good day out for the family. They just like unfurl a big banner and check on the front and just says we have released the bears pretty much. So like if you if you get in the water, like past like, I don't know, fucking waste level at this point, you're drowning, especially if it's full of shit, which all water is. And it's it's hard to tunnel underneath because then you get water in the tunnel. Right.

You don't want to do that. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I believe your only problem here is if you're at the top of a hill, it's pretty hard to get the water up there to fill the moat. Also, once it is up there, it is by definition stagnant. You're not changing that water out. And also, you're shitting in it all the time. Which does give some sort of impetus to the whole

we have to move the course every two weeks for clean air thing. Yeah, I'm thinking you. I'm thinking you're going to get a lot of skaters, too. Yeah. Yeah. So I am very secure living in this in this swamp of human feces. Yes, I walk into Philly. Just listen, I drink the skokal water every day and I'm fine. Me too.

No, you get water from the Delaware. No, I actually go with a bucket rise. You can't scoop it out of the skokal. I, too, drink England water. Yeah, well, this is true. Well, they get that water before they have a chance to put before the flow into the river. Shit.

Now, once you have a moat, you need to weigh in and out, which is why you have another defensive mechanism, the drawbridge. Oh, yeah. Yes. Oh, is this Malta? This looks like Malta to me. Probably. Yeah, I jumped the gun.

This is why I said the EU was rearming. Yeah, we have here a synecdoche for EU migration policy. Yes. Which is to send them all to upstate New York. I think this is a good drawbridge, too, there, because like a lot of time, if you see, for example, you know, like a lot of people's. You know, relationship to castles is you see it in like a fucking Disney movie, right? It's like a job, which is like this huge thing,

like an absolutely nervous one. It's like, no, it's all like, you're a little man here. Kind of tiny and cute. Yeah, you don't need a big gap. No, no. It's just like enough to fucking not be able to get a couple of horses across. That's it. Oh, exactly.

Like maybe a man could jump across. But when the drawbridge is lifted, he's just sitting there at the ledge. Yeah, he's getting like shit and rocks thrown at him. Yeah, exactly. Now, now you can also defend your castle through the use of a a portacolis. Portacolis. Yeah. This guy, Portacolis.

Portacolis, the big, the big guy with the wooden slats and the spikes on the bottom, right? Yeah, like a safety cage, you know, same thing. Same, same. It's a kind of the opposite of a safety cage. Yeah, we have segregated the people assaulting our castle in what we had dubbed the chill out room. Yes.

Where we are throwing rocks, shit and hot pitch on them and get them to calm down. So, so, so, you know, the attackers run into your castle, right? And then you open the front one and then but you have the back one closed or maybe you have it open so they think they can run through. And then you close the back one and then they're all like, oh, this is bad.

So then they run back, but it's too late. You close the front one, too. Now they're stuck in there. And now you see them. Oh, yeah. Now you can rain down upon them gifts. Through the murder hole. Oh, I really don't like the way the vegetations grown in those patterns. Oh, boy.

Friendship hole, Roz. I like the hole. I put some gothic ribbing on here, though. Yeah, it's really nice. Like I like it looks like the vault of a cathedral or something. And you just see, like, you know, boss stones there or some master mason being like, listen, I only know how to make one vault. But I can make that one vault very well.

Yes, exactly. All right. So you trap between the two border kill I and then people dump boiling water. Sometimes they throw burning logs down there or pitch or any, any crutch language, whatever the hell I have. Yes. Hey, asshole. Strongly worded letters.

What is this? I can't read. It starts with the the tea from SpongeBob. It just has to stop there. Why is Fred literacy was a mistake? No, don't I know it? Yeah, no, no. If you if you if somehow the attacking army gets through if this if this podcast was made in the Middle Ages,

behold, the line problem with two with two monks and two nuns. It's like it's an informal exchange of letters going around between various fortified monasteries. We have an Islamic scholar. I guess I'm on this version of the podcast. Well, no, yeah, we have a heat. A a a a a. We could just say dirty Jill.

Right. We can we could do this podcast. But the whole. But then we could do this. But only in Al-Andalus. A Muhammadian. Yeah, exactly. More. So if they managed to get into the castle, then everyone pulls back to the keep.

Which is. Alice did put this one in and this drop bridge is not doing much. Listen, I just wanted to give everybody who else who remembers this little isometric piece of art the same nostalgia thrill as I did. What's a keep for us? Why does it have an arrow slit on the front of the rampart? But these ramparts back here don't have anything on.

It's vibes. But because because when when they were designing this for age of As far as they didn't put a lot of thought into. Look, they had like 60 polygons to work with. That's true. It's a sprite. It's a sprite. They're totally. I'm scared.

I don't. Whatever. Go away. So somebody told them that they had to worry about polygons. So they did. Yeah, there you go. Thank you, Alice. Roz, shut up. OK, well, you know, Alice wrote the notes for this slide, so I can shut up.

Oh, she's special. Yeah, you feel special there. You're a special boy. It's a keep. It's like where the fancy people live and to some extent work. It's got like all of the administrative functions here. And, you know, it's therefore also the best protected bit and like the last defensive redoubt.

Has the has the tax office in there where you're trying to deliver the check to keep the orphanage open. Yeah, exactly. Not much. I mean, like this is extremely like where the people go to where their fanciest pants and lord it over other people, because it's like, I mean, another thing about castles to understand is that it's usually like a complex building, right?

So it's like, you get through the big wall when you're in the big wall, like they're going to be all sort of shit in there. There's going to be like stables. They'll be like a kitchen because you don't keep the kitchen in the keep because that shit burns down all the time. There'll be like a forge and there'll be like other buildings that other people live in. But the fancy people, they live in the key.

And then you go back into the keep if the walls, the first walls of the castle are. Pregnated and then you like stay there. And then, you know, all the various women and children. Yeah. And then if that gets a bit too much, the women and children kill themselves to avoid inevitable depredations or, you know, forced baptism. Stuff like that. Yeah.

Horror of horrors. Hmm. Yeah, it's not cool, man. Yeah, we did that in York here. There was a big old pogrom. Tell that to the Mormons. Inevitably, posthumously baptize us. Yeah. Fucking Mormons. Yeah, those those guys upstate were very nice.

But I was just like, you keep you keep your hands to yourself. So that's out of here. So you're really early. Castle keeps were like sort of located on a mound outside the walls. If I remember correctly. Yeah. Yeah. So that's like so you'd have your Bailey on your mat. So you have like, yeah, you have like a fake hill and then it's not necessarily in the actual one, which is interesting

because so they would, you know, have like some kind of bridge whereby they could get to it. Yeah. There was there's a castle here, Arundel, that just got jewel heisted two days ago. Wow. I love Arundel Castle. But yeah, no, they very much they stole Mary Queen of Scots's like execution rosary, which I think is that's very funny to me. On the like the third day it reopened.

Yeah. And like, it's funny because it's like this huge castle and you see it from the train station, like or whatever, like down in the valley and you're like, holy shit, look at that fucking castle. Like I saw it. I'm like lost, you know, it really freaked my nut. Freaks my nut to this day. But it's like a fake Victorian castle. And they were just like, yeah, this is what a castle looks like. And then you go in there and they do still have like a little old

Motton Bailey from like the eighth century or some shit. And they're like, yeah, I would just built this around it. And anyway, they got jewel heisted. So that's kind of funny. Yeah. Another thing you might have in a castle is a secret passageway in and out. Nice. Is this Denver International? No, this is Disney World.

Is that seen in Austin Powers? Yeah, I was thinking of putting that one in. So if you get sieged, maybe you can bring food in and out without the enemy knowing that you're there. But it didn't really work that well because you can't tunnel that far because it's the Middle Ages. Yeah, it's mostly like only useful for spying on your scullery mates. Yeah, you know, but that's always good fun, isn't it?

You know, it's good fun. Yeah. But finding out which of your courty is a secret Catholic and or secret Protestants, whatever. Yeah. Since then sort of the whole ensemble, here's a castle. It's Crac de Chevalier in Syria, which we will come back to later. Big thing to note here is the concentric arrangement of walls,

which as we saw in the Theodosian walls, you can just like do that bigger. You get through the first one, you still fuck because you've got to get through the second one. Yes, clearly, whoever's about to attack this is going to be fine. Look how much higher up they are. Yes. Yeah. Note the lack of moat because there's no source of water up there. Yeah.

And also how it's leading right to it. That can't be very good. Oh, it's controlling the traffic on that road, because that's part of what they're for. Is it's both a trade post and a way of administering taxes and customs and things like that. Also means that if you want to get to it, they're going to see you coming from like one way or the other. I mean, this is a hot castle, but like I don't like to praise it too much because, you know, like anti-crusader action.

Yeah. But like, unfortunately to me, like this is so this is the equivalent of like when someone tells you that they like fancy a Tory on Twitter for like no reason. It's like, why are you admitting this? That's like my secret shame for this one. This would be like this is like Crack the Chevalier, the hot Tory. Yeah. Yeah. Crack the Chevalier is the hot Tory of the castle world.

I'm sorry. Got it. So. Yeah. And you can see all of the like the bastions, the little towers on the walls that have sort of like over interlocking fields of fire, which is very useful. Sometimes your area encircled by the the walls was really big. Like what's that one? I think it's in Wales.

There's like a really big one. Tefeli. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's definitely. I think that's the one that has like a whole town inside the walls, which I don't know if that makes it a castle. Well, here's the thing. Like you can apply this stuff to fortify pretty much anything.

You can fortify a monastery like this. You can fortify like one dude's house like this. Yeah. And I mean, you do. And you do see a lot of monasteries that get fortified like this because a lot of monasteries get got and jewel heisted, especially in the earlier medieval period, when he still got to like vikings around. That's a good point, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. But Clooney was unhappy. They took down their walls in the French Revolution. Yes. So now, if you're on the other side, you're the people without the castle. What do you do? See, judges, you need some you need some anti castle technology. Demonstrate a dragon, you know.

Yeah, I was about to say air power is very good against castles. But yeah, dragons were pretty hard to come by. Shame to shame. I wonder how much if you if you have an all stone castle, I bet a dragon wouldn't do that. Do you know, I think that it could kill people that were on top of your like it could kill your guards or whatever. This is true. Yeah. You sort of kept everyone inside.

I don't know. There's got to be some if there were dragons, there would be anti dragon defenses, which we haven't learned of yet. As as yet. No. No, no, no fantasy world seems to have come up with anti dragon defenses. It's the flag on top of the fucking castle. I guess that terrible end of Game of Thrones dead. And I guess and it was really effective until it suddenly stopped

being effective at all, which was, you know, a nice little plot hole. The Germans mounted a flakons on tank shells, maybe. Yeah, it doesn't come around until the forty four. So I'm still fucking mad about it soon. I don't really want to talk about it, but yeah. I got I extremely like like a fuck my boyfriend over. Well, he hadn't seen it when we started dating. I was like, come on, it's good.

And then, like, by the end, he was like, I hate your ass. I was like, I'm so sorry. I literally I like went really hard. I was like, no, it's that's political. I was like, no, you're going to like it. There's titties, you know, and then I'm gone. And then what happened? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, OK, we have no air power to speak of the shame. So we need we need ground based offensive weaponry. So we have siege engines. Yes, we're here for. Yes. Finally get to the topic of the episode. The topic of the episode 58 minutes in. Look at these lads, baby. Look at these lads.

I mean, yeah, this is so much fun. Yeah, it's a big guy. Here's a big here's a big Trebuchet. Yeah, I love a turbo shea. The fun one, this is actually where the term engineer comes from. Really? OK, because the original engineers were military engineers who did military stuff. And then at some point they branched off into like civil engineering.

So you're saying working at a defense contractor is actually the purest form of engineering, right? Actually, yes. They didn't really branch off until like the 1800s. And when the railroad industry became like a major employer of engineers. Yeah, you had to go to West Point before you like civil engineering first. Yeah, it's like they're going to make sure that you pay like you've got to kill at least five children before you can like, you know, construct a bridge, right?

That's that's how we do it. No, the way you did it is you go to West Point, you get a commission, you resign it after two months, you go to work for the railroad. Yes. Hmm. Bring back that level of respect for our nation's military. Yes. So lots of different kinds of siege engines.

We'll talk about a few here and go starting with a very very basic one, the ladder. Yeah, this is this is a good way of climbing a wall is you just put a ladder up against it and then you climb that ladder and you hop up onto the top. You hope none of your dickhead friends kick it out from under you. Well, and you know what? Those hose 100 percent did be using ladders, though.

So, you know, absolutely. This isn't this is not a bad way of climbing a wall. If you don't mind the first time for people climbing the wall being killed. And luckily, rich people never do. So no, no, they don't all dispose. What doesn't matter? I was I was going to say that the Romans used to have a specific military award like a palisade laurel wreath for being the first guy to climb

onto an enemy city's walls to capture it. This was almost always awarded posthumously. Oh, yeah, I'd imagine. Yeah. Yeah, it's just it's fully the meat grinder, right? Like, even if you have like dozens and dozens of ladders with people climbing them, it's it's so easy for people on the top to tip them over or throw stuff down at you or shoot you with arrows. And even if you get up onto the ramparts, you're then fighting on like

a tiny wedge of stone in against both directions at the same time, possibly against pointy stick and a lot of people in possession of pointy sticks who really don't want you to like take their castle. Yeah. So it's it's a bad time and you you will die doing this. Yeah, because, you know, guy with pointy stick to again, guy with pointy stick is almost always like of the same class as those who have been shoved into the meat grinder, right?

So it's like, it's just assume they're going to get killed. And like, no, so they're 100 percent going to, you know, a lot of the time, especially in medieval war is actually the kill counts fairly low because people don't actually like stabbing other people to death. Like that's not fun for us. It's really difficult to set yourself up for that. But in these situations, it's like it's a lot different, right? Like the battlefield is one thing in a pitched battle.

But if it's like, you know, your house that you fucking live in, people start getting a lot more scat stabbing. That's the thing on the plus side. This this horrific brutal process of warfare did get a full size Cadillac SUV named after it. Oh, see, it's true. You used to see sliders is called Escalade. Yeah, Escalade. Yeah.

Hmm. Well, yeah, Escalade's also kill a lot of people. That's true. Yeah, I think I actually Cadillac Escalade's are probably, you know, responsible for more deaths. Definitely. Yeah. Very well, you know, it's it's another disproportionate power thing because the Escalade can murder a pedestrian, but it's very difficult for a pedestrian to murder and escalate.

Yeah. Asymmetrical warfare. Mm hmm. Well, eventually they improved on the ladder by way of a large enclosed ladder on wheels. That's it rules. Sorry, but that should just rules like that's just, you know, and you you know, you're lying if you say that this shit don't roll.

It does. Put the ladder in a box and put that box on the wheel. I guess. Welcome to regular car reviews. Yeah. Eleven ninety two siege tower. This baby. The transmission sucks. And then there's this audio of me peeing, I guess.

There's no cop holders in this fucking thing. It's down. Literary metaphor goes here. Alice, you were you were at these notes. Yeah, I did. And you do the slide putting, putting the ladder in the box and then putting the ladder box on wheels is useful because it stops you getting killed while you're climbing the ladder.

And it lets you like get more people onto the top at the same time. Also, by a drawbridge. Yeah, I was about to say. Notably, does not stop you getting killed when you go onto the ramparts. No, that's that's the problem is you still have to be fighting on top of a wall, which nobody wants to do. Also, these take a long time to build and they're very heavy and they get stuck in mud a lot.

Imagine trying to roll them is not a lot of ground clearance is a thing. No, no. And like the usual solution, if one of these gets stuck in the mud is science, start building another one. It's not at all uncommon for like the siege is involving siege towers to just have a couple of these just be abandoned and they just leave them there. And then the third one is the one that gets through or the fourth one or the fifth one.

And I mean, the thing about that is as well, think about how much wood this requires. And one of the things that people in castles tend to do is like a deforest the area around them so that they can see if a fucking army is coming. You got to you got to bring this all of the equipment for this with you. Yeah, which is way more difficult than just carrying a bunch of ladders. Yeah. Yeah. What I'm noticing here is this bridge needs a railing.

That is not OSHA right there. That's a major fall hazard. Is that a ramp that they have on the bottom of the siege tower? That makes sense. That's what you really like. It is. Yeah. That's what you want to happen as well. The people on the upper story are, you know,

distracted across the bridge. Although, I got to say, like how are you going to get a lower story are then collapsing? I guess you maybe have like twenty dudes in the bottom just sort of shoving for all their worth. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just I don't know if the back comes out of the siege engine. Oh, that's a that's a hot date. Am I right?

Oh, siege engine prolapse. That's what I'm trying to say. I didn't think I'd ever string those words together. Here we are. Here we are. The worst thing that can happen to the siege engine is both of the things work. Yeah, we've just sent a bunch of guys into the into the death because we've breached that exact section of war. Yeah, I kind of like all the the dudes in the middle here

who are just kind of like hanging out. Just vibing. Yeah, they're just like, help you fuckers. People underneath this this door down here, just like I am cowering and powered with rocks. Yeah, I'd say I'm safe in my house. Yeah. I do like they go through the effort of putting a peaked roof on it. Like, yeah, this might get we want to make sure it doesn't

doesn't suffer from water damage. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's more of a plunging fire problem. But yes, also, you normally like coat these and like animal skins that have been soaked in water to try and make them a bit more resistant to heat and fire. Yeah, yeah, because people will shoot flaming arrows at your ass. No, that's real. And that's where you get all the pitch from, right?

A literally hot date, if you will. I thought that would land a little better, but it's all good. Sorry, we were not past the back walls being blown out. So, you know, yes, yeah. Don't don't you hate it when people undermine you? Here's another way when people undermine you. Don't you ever think about where the word undermine comes from? Well, this is another way to blow out.

Is this just one poor guy? Yeah, he's just got to haul all the rocks himself. So one thing about castles, a limiting factor, if you will, is that they have to be built on ground. And with this one weird trick, you can you can siege down a castle merely by removing the ground underneath it. You can dig a tunnel. This is actually called a sap.

And so the guy who digs it is a sapper, which does became a sort of a common name for military engineers. And you can dig this sap under the walls and you can either just like go straight through like the reverse great escape and just like jump out and, you know, behind the enemy fortifications and stab every onto death. Or the shittiest surprise I've ever got. Surprise. Or you can collapse the tunnel under the wall and hope that it brings down whatever's underneath it,

because it doesn't really have like a foundation. I was about to say, I would have thought there would be big wooden piles down here. But I guess not. No, you just put you just start with you dig a trench. You put big rocks in there and then you move to smaller rocks. That's pretty dumb. Well, well, the thing is, a lot of the time in order to, you know, like this particular picture makes it look like, oh, yeah, you're like right up close to it.

A lot of time you you wouldn't be digging from this close in. It's like you're digging from fucking miles out. So again, when the lustful Turk did it, they were like down the block. Oh, like they are the tunnels that they were digging were really extensive because you can see people really close up and like, you know, so it's just too difficult to actually get past any kinds of artillery or whatever to be sapping this close up ordinarily. But yeah. Yeah.

So the way that you collapse this tunnel is like you build the tunnel. Same as same as a mine at this point, you just dig into the earth and you put like wooden props up. You want to collapse those wooden props. And the safest way to do that is to start a large slow burning fire. And I have a primary source here because the siege of Rochester Castle in 1215 King John orders the first Earl of Kent sent to us with all speed 40 of the fattest pigs of the sort least

good for eating to bring fire beneath the tower. And this works. This works. You can just set fire to a bunch of pigs and the fat will eventually like, you know, conflagrate enough or collapse the tunnel. And later on, once gunpowder makes it west, you can you can refine this by adding explosives. And there's there's also lots of very fun ways to to counter mine. If you are aware that your enemy is doing this and you are in your castle,

your monastery or whatever, and you don't want them to do it, you can, for instance, find out where they're tunneling, dig into it and pump smoke into it with a bellows and suffocate everyone in the tunnel. Or you can dig your own counter tunnel and fight them underground. The worst way to die in the history of warfare. Thank you. I'm not doing the Rotten Creek. No, no, no, just kill me. It's hand to hand in pitch dark underground.

No, thank you. I was supposed to. You got to have one guy with the torch. Pretty much got to bring in the torch behind you. And Steve takes an arrow to the leg. And then I guess at that point, what you do is you just a big sharp stick, light it on fire and then just do it that way. Yeah, just you just kind of swinging Minecraft, Steve. Anyway, the good news is that far from having passed into history,

all of this was still current as of at the league at the absolute least World War One, where there were like tunneling companies of miners who are recruited to dig under trench lines and plant explosives onto them. It's a miserable job. It's terrible. It's got to be one of the one of the worst in a long, long list of shitty jobs to have. Comes up a lot in the Goods Shoulders Shvick. You guys read the Goods Shoulders Shvick. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's there's like there's lots of talking to Hungarian sappers that goes down.

Yeah. And do they ever use the Roman tunneling method of building the big fire and then throw an ice water on it? Huh, I don't know. I'm going to have to look into that. Thanks. Thanks for the homework. Great. Fantastic. OK, we have some seeding problems later in the episode. Here's here's here's really.

Here's how you can play at home. Yeah. This is a ballista. It's like a really, really big crossbow. Oh, that's that's how I use these in cell damage. Alice, did you ever play cell damage? No, never. No. OK, it was a cell animated vehicle combat game on the GameCube. And that seems like the weird shit you would have enjoyed.

I never had a GameCube. Really? Really? OK. Pretty good. It's a cube. You can play games on it. It had a little handle. I only respect one GameCube and it's the carver. Maybe pretty good if you could like you could like take your GameCube

and like put some like decals on it and make it look like the carver. I'm sure I've seen a Photoshop of the carver as a GameCube. My brain is trying really hard to turn this particular ballista into like a cute little bird. It's all like, oh, like, you know, it's got little birdie feet. It looks like a dipping bird. Yeah. My brain is like, that's what you're seeing right now. So that's good.

You put you put a big bolt in here, right, which is like a big arrow. And then you take this thing, put it in the back. You take these guys and you twist these ropes. And then when the ropes are sufficiently twisted, it's aimed in the right way. You release them, the ropes untwist the wooden bits go forward and that shoots the bolt at the front towards whatever you're shooting at. And yeah, that that's that's a ballista.

At least that's my understanding of work for very little gain. Yes, it was not the projectile was not very big. Wasn't very effective against walls. The Romans use these a lot, but in the medieval period, you know, they found some better and easier ways to deal a lot of damage without all of particularly the metallurgy this required, right? Yeah. So, you know, this is this is this is the thing about the Middle Ages. They had better technology than the Romans.

Yeah, I mean, I get, you know, wound up about this whole thing, but like they were they really did. I know everyone doesn't believe it, but there was a period of imperial decline and decline mean things get worse. OK, look, if there are no slaves, if I don't see any fucking brown slaves in here, then this means that everything is worse. That's just how it works, basically. Jesus Christ. That's. But I mean, yeah, like I don't understand.

Well, I do understand. I was about to say, I don't understand how the Roman Empire gets good such such good PR. And it's like because a bunch of slave empires wanted to justify what they were doing. So they lied to y'all and told you that like stuff was really good. Those people know. No. No, like the stuff I've heard people say that they think that like Romans had workable medicine and stuff. And it's like, I don't know what to tell you. It's 100 percent.

We're now OK, shit, Christ. It's it's very it's it ruins my life. And it sends that terrible human pet man after. My life is very hard. I love medicine because it would be like, yeah, you you have angered the gods. Now I have to punch you unconscious and take all of your blood out. Here's some hemlock. Yes. Like there's a lot there's a lot of like, oh, yeah, you got junk problems.

Why don't you make a model of your junk and then go take it to the temple? Is that what you're dropping a bunch of foul smelling pastes on it? Do you guys do? Oh, oh, which temple did you bring it to, Liam? Don't don't worry about it. Liam has sixty nine answering phone messages. Please pick up your tiny replica statues. That you left that tiny.

It's not that exciting, but it's not that tiny. And we could move swiftly on for talking about what are we replacing? A place to work for us. All right, dongs. Battery ground. It's a battering ram. Yeah, on some of this is what is combined with a manlet. I was just like a manlet.

A mantlet. It's updated a few of those. Hey, it's a big wooden shed, so they can't fire arrows at you. Right. You love being in sheds. It's yes, it's a man came on wheels. Yes, it's an early man cave, you know, for when your wife won't shut up. Am I right? I hate my wife so much. I built a battering ram and on backyard.

What you're going on? She makes me dinner. I brought it into the family room on purpose. What do you do? What do you do with this? Is you pointed at the wall and you got a bunch of people inside and they sort of Fred Flintstone car it into into the wall. Right. And hopefully the battering ram does something.

Yeah, it's it's less that you're running the whole ram on the wheels and more that you wheel it up and then you swing the ram back and forth from, you know, like this is the thing it's suspended from. Well, I'm still accurate in that they're Fred Flintstone carring it. That's true. That is true. You propeller by Fred Flintstone carring this. But then once you've done that, it's it's way easier to just swing the thing back and forth with handles.

You don't have to swing it forward. You can just pull it back and let it drop and it will smack into mostly a gate is what you want to hit this with. You know, like this hitting into a wall, you're not going to do that much. But like the relatively weaker spots like gates and poor calluses and stuff. Yeah, so that's I just think they're neat. Then you have the classic, the catapult.

Yes, this is very small. Also, it's impression. Yes. Well, I used I used up all my spoons for the day, building this catapult. Well, a manganelle, if you're nasty. Yeah, no manganelle, no manganelle, almost I thought. I guess it's another year slides. Manganelle, you know, for one, you need to throw me the ball. I don't know.

I was going with yeah, I don't know. You you you impart some some rotational force to to launch a projectile upwards and forward. You can use this to throw stuff into walls more usefully over walls, because the one weak spot that a castle has other than being built on the ground is that it doesn't have a roof over it. Yes. And you can throw stuff. Now, we've talked about stuff before in the context of murder holes.

Stuff can include but is not limited to rocks, dead cows, dead guys, piles of like severed heads, death threats. Trots guide, newspapers, trots guide, newspapers, balls of flame and garbage. Yes. Just put it. Please don't call me that in public. Just whatever you feel like, just go nuts with it. You put you put it in the little the little basket thing on the end of an arm. The arm is like held under under tension from cords.

You release that tension. It goes flying up and over and lands on somebody and they have a bad day, you hope. Now, here is here is what I'm here. Here is my thesis here, even if the castle did have a roof, you could still just throw things in there and just go straight through the roof. That's true. Even if we're like a modern, I bet if you threw a dead cow into like an Amazon headquarters, we could do it.

Probably go to the Mollie Barn. The dead cow and dead dude thing is an early example of bacteriological warfare. Yes. Yanni Begg did it out on the Crimea with plague bodies. And I think that there is something about the Justinian plague and that happening as well. I could be making that up. Yeah. You want to spread plague and disease within within the castle or town that you're sieging,

especially if you're going to keep them in there for a long time, because it's difficult to like stab people when you have plague. And you're also doing this without a germ theory of medicine. You're doing this on the basis that like, well, let's go ahead, plague. Probably give them plague. Don't know how bad that smells probably. Just because they don't know about germs doesn't mean they don't understand contagion, right?

Like, you know, you don't have to be, you know, you don't have to know that there are microbes doing it or whatever the hell. And like, don't at me if it's just bacteria or microbes. I don't give a fuck. Don't worry, someone's going to add you in the comments. And I think you'll find, you know, shut up, nerd. Thank you so much for bullying our comments section. They need to deserve it, you guys.

That is the main purpose of this podcast. I cannot emphasize enough that you people deserve this. Yeah, look, I'm I'm very tired and I'm giving you people gold here. I'm giving you names of obscure, you know, Mongol horde leaders. So you take that. I don't care if I'm about to launch this podcast into into your courtyard with a manganelle, but that's right.

I'm on Chanel. Sorry, I just like I mean, extremely like real Italian. I don't know. No, I've never seen the word in print before. Oh, I love to throw my car into the castle. The Virgin Castle. You guys are assholes. That's why I didn't realize is these were done also by like tying ropes

around like the axis of rotation of the catapult arm. Because for some reason, I always thought they had come up with some form of elastic, I guess not, because it was. I wonder what elastic was it that I last elastic is like, I don't know, you wet leather cords and like they stretch and then they contract as. Yeah, but like it's a lot less. But not in a horny way. Just to make that.

No pink at pride. Yes. I'm launching guys and leather into pride. See, gentlemen. In order to ensure the kink is preserved. Doing some light. We're battering rounds. Yeah, I love it.

So we've talked about the Virgin indirect fire. Yes. Now we're going to talk about the Chad. Yes. Yes. Grab your shade. I just I'm telling you, this tribe, we say meme lives in my head rent free. I just absolutely love it. I love it so much. Yeah, so it's like a real, real good way to hurl a big rock a long way away

is to use gravity. So rather than having a bunch of ropes, you know, in tension, try and move stuff. What do you have as a whole bunch of weights, right? And the weight drops down, right? And that makes a big long arm go up, right? And you use the power of leverage, including a big sling in order that their rock goes out and over and far away from you at high speeds.

Yeah, and these things rule, which is part part of the reason why people love reconstructing them and you can therefore see them doing their shit on YouTube. And it makes a hell of a noise. The physics department in my high school had a tribute shade competition every year to see who could who could hurl a tennis ball the farthest tennis ball. Tennis ball, yeah. Well, the people. Someone was a fan of Henry the first one.

The team that won actually built a catapult. I guess there's a lesson here not to be partisan. Yes. Well, elastic is a lot better now than it used to be. You know, you can do a lot with bungee cords. Yeah. Whereas this is a bucket full of big rocks. Yes. One much bigger rock for dead cow. I think I think my team built it out.

We built it out of PVC pipes. Yeah. OK, all right. So, you know, this is this is a big this is a big ass machine. It throws the rock a long distance. You can usually get off two big rocks an hour. I don't know if you can find two big rocks an hour. That's something I'm a little confused by. By rocks. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm pretty much. Well, yeah, because you have to transport all the rocks there, probably so you had adequate ammunition, right? In addition to, I guess, your disease, cattle and your dead plague victims. Well, I mean, like fundamentally, a rock is good because rock is heavy. But, you know, you you throw anything from far enough away. And it, you know, if it hits people. But I heard, yeah, I'm not trying.

I'm not trying to get a hit with dead cow. You know, this is true. Yeah, I think the good thing about disease, cattle and plague victims as they make themselves because siege camps are notoriously unhealthy. Like the thing that you that sort of burning man town that you erect around a castle that you are trying to besiege is a horrible place for anyone to live in an absolute breeding ground

for any disease, but most notably syphilis, which originated in one of these. Yeah, the syphilis fun fact, like 15th century, I think maybe 16th century, it just like shows up at the end of the mid year real period, like what up? And it's like an army camp thing. So, yeah, we don't have it around in the 12th century or whatever. And there's a lot of hand wringing about where from all the syphilis

done came and was it God? Yes. And is he mad at you for all of the camps? Yes, believe it. Someone fucked something they shouldn't have. But you know, I like that. Yeah, I like that a lot. And of course, the various polities of Europe's response was to name it after their worst enemy. So the French disease, the Spanish disease, the English disease,

depending on who you hate the most that month. So this is a very efficient way of delivering very large payloads a long distance until the course is also my tender profile. Yes, ladies. Now, one of the problems is in order to get all the stuff there, you have to get all the stuff there. Yeah, so you have to have this God awful train of horses. This is a relatively modern one.

In order to move all your giant siege engine equipment, then you got to like like assemble it. Yeah. And the more horses and carts that you're using for siege equipment, the less you're using for food, which means the more that you have to forage, which, you know, is kind of like diminishing returns, because there's only so many times you can rob the same farm. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, this is.

And the other thing is they may have some like big siege engines inside the castle, so they might be shooting rocks at you. Works both ways. Yeah. Donnie, I thought we'd do some exercises. OK, and to open your your text. Yes, open your copy book now. Look around you. OK. So here's a castle.

And we want to siege it, right? OK. This is the Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World. In the magic magic. I'm coming. Future episode. But yeah, we are going to we're going to siege this down and we are going to make them convert to Islam, because we are.

Exactly. The luckful Turk in this in this example. Yes. OK. I was just going to make them apologize for hating the Jews and for charging eight bucks. We can do two things. We can do a few things. We can we can walk and chew gum. Yeah. That's right.

Hi, I'm Alice. I'm here to kill you. And this is Liam. He's here to make you apologize. Yeah, we should probably order operations there. He should probably do the thing first. OK, so I can tell you a couple of facts about this castle. It has a moat, right? It has some pretty thin walls.

How thin? It's fake stone. Oh, OK, I feel good. Yeah, feeling pretty good so far. It is actively defended by many Disney fans. And Disney Securities. And Disney Securities. I'm psychopaths.

Excuse me, they're called cast members. And I can tell you there's a Disney Security Challenge coin. Terrifying. Oh, my God. Oh, you got to send me a picture. There is a thin blue line Mickey silhouette with protecting the magic on it. Wow. I just, you know what? Back of my day, back.

Well, my back of my father's day, he used to just go to like Disneyland and drop acid as like a fucking 14 year old. And this is what I got to put up with now. It grew cops on it like mold. One. Yeah, it's just everything is just like cops to fuck now, you know. One thing we have to consider is that there is a network of secret passages, but someone leaked us the map. Ah, yeah, I have an informer.

OK, you have an informer. OK, so. How are we going to lay siege to this castle? Well, it looks like there is a drop bridge there. No, is that correct? So I guess that we're going to. Can they even raise that drawbridge? I would be surprised. Yeah, that is a good question.

Yeah, I'm not sure they can do that from the back, from the back. Attack it from the back. Well, yeah, I guess. Because it's less of a choke point. This is my first thought is that if we were approaching through Main Street, USA, I think you want to either flank it through Tomorrowland or through Frontier Town or whatever the hell this is. We'll see. Oh, yeah.

I mean, the other thing that we can see on, yeah, like this Frontier Town and stuff side, you know, we've got a lot. You've got a lot of trees over here. So if we don't, we can get the stuff together to make a siege engine. That's right. Yeah. That's like free. That's like free timbers. So that would be.

By the Disney Corporation. These have been sorted by the Disney Corporation. Have a magical day. And it's just us being tortured to death in Cinderella Castle's basement. If we did. Yeah, if you did that way and you will kind of like come at it from the side. See, it doesn't have like the walls are all inhabited. Like it is castellated, but none of those are like defensive.

Right. So, yeah, Trebuchet that you build out of that stuff from over on the side, I guess. Just go ahead and see what you could see. Hit it a couple of times. Dead cast members into Cinderella Castle. I'm going to go get that rock out of the Indiana Jones ride. Just a 13 hour question that was spray painted on somebody's corpse.

You get a nice couple of nice clear areas to set up the siege engines, too. I think you get a pretty confident about this. This is a badly designed castle. Yeah, I think. It's not even deep either. If you could knock out some of the big towers, you could probably take out that the walls just by having a fall on there. Hmm.

This is all gothic bullshit, right? It's going to fall over instantly. Yeah, I just feel like, yeah, I'm I'm good. I feel like, yeah, I'm going Trebuchet. I'm going from over there. If we just wear some kind of costume, maybe people will think we're cast members. Speaking of that, don't worry about us.

Worry about yourselves. Yeah, exactly. All right. All right. So maybe let's let's think of a maybe a more difficult siege. So here's Hogwarts Castle, right? We are coming to establish the number of genders in this town, and it's more than two.

Yes. We're we're here. We're here as part of the anti-Turf army. Doesn't this thing only exist if you believe it exists or something? You mean like a gender? Yeah. Yeah, I guess what I do. Alice, there are at least three genders. I follow Joe Biden thought on this.

No, we do believe it exists. And that's why we can lay siege to it. That's right. We build we build our siege engines at Hogsmeade because there's a train which will be able to deliver materials to us. That's a good point. What we can see is control of the Hogwarts Railway. If we see is control of the railway.

There's no stops between there and Hogsmeade. You got to wonder where the main line we can ask Gareth about that. Yeah. All right. So let's assume we can assume that we can take control of the Hogwarts Railway. Now, under my plan of attack, we will we will be turning the buildings the villagers live in into siege engine bits because we're not going to fucking need them. They're all three feet tall. They can't fight back.

What? No, I guess it's full of normal people. It's like an actual town. No, that's fine. Collateral damage, collateral damage, Roz. First of all, do you respect Alice or not? That's right. So there's there's one easy route of access. And I say easy in quotes that isn't like scrambling up Brockface. So we got to secure that.

Seems to be this staircase. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got to secure. However, that doesn't make any sense because so because the kestrels take you to Hogsmeade. I'm embarrassed about how much I'm now thinking about this. Yeah, because, like, where are Hagrid's grounds in this? Listen, we're putting the four that we are putting the four d'anglia

in the fucking. Why don't we just why don't we just use the prison? Why don't we just go to the Forbidden Forest? Yeah, I think we're going directly into this main tower by spiders. Well, look, spiders have several genders. So they're on our side. It's good point. Yeah. No, I think I think we could flip Hagrid. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah. So long as we have an informant inside the castle, we're doing OK. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, otherwise, I mean, like, I don't know, we don't have the 360 on this one. But, you know, I guess we'd have to try to find an image. We're going to have to knock down a couple of these big towers. We're going to just we're just going to have to go through the Forbidden Forest. We're going to have to give a couple of centaur's handies or something like that.

Maybe we collapse this little whatever, the first one, a bridge thing, this fucking thing is down here in front. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And maybe we just go under that and then we tunnel under. I mean, we would be really obvious. My thought is what you do is you attack some of these clearly Victorian additions. Yeah, that's I mean, a lot of this is like pretty clearly Victorian in it. So like none of this is going to stand up to nothing.

Is clearly there was a massive increase in enrollment somewhere around a 70 or something. Yeah. So, yeah, like if you want to go for one of those because that's just going to fall, like, and I mean, none of this is actually like defended by anything other than like the cliff face children, children, children, children, child. Whatever collateral damage we already talked about with the best. So, I mean, like, again, like it depends on,

I don't know how far this cliff goes down, but, you know, a couple of trebuchets down the bottom there. I think if you could calibrate them to really like shoot up instead of out, yeah, you probably do pretty good. Yeah, yeah, totally. I'm feeling good about this one. I'm feeling pretty good. I think we could take on Hogwarts. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. But the other thing, of course, is medieval siege weaponry becomes compromised by the invention of the cannon. Yeah. Yeah. Fatih Sultan Mehmet Allah Akbar. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Anyway, this is the reason why it's Istanbul and not Constantinople. Yeah, that's a big, that's a big boy right there.

That's a technical term. Yeah. Yeah. Canons. Canons. Canons. Canons. Let's not do it. There you go. All right, end the episode. People talk about this being like a gunpowder thing, but, you know, in China, they had gunpowder weapons for centuries before this. But not metallurgy, right?

Yeah, it's a metallurgical thing. It's a metallurgical thing, yeah. Is it metallurgy or like metallurgy? Metallurgy. Metallurgy. Thank you. Another word I've only ever read and never ever. Yeah, I got I got Jokasabian syndrome.

Yeah, and like the earliest cannon are literally like made of wood reinforced with metal bands like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gustavus Adolphus had, there we go. Gustavus Adolphus had portable ones made out of walrus skin that you could like break down. Did those work? Yeah, apparently. Like well, like reusably.

Well enough, I guess. He was he was kind of a badass. So yeah, there it is. The the science of ballistics is not very advanced at this point. All you need to know for ballistics is K. E. equals M. V. Yeah, square. Yeah, but like the early cannon have this habit of killing

everyone around them as well as whoever they're pointed at. Yeah, no doubt. Mostly because of barrel ruptures is the main thing. James, the second of Scotland, most famous casualty of this, who was laying siege to Roxborough Castle in 1460 with a couple of cannon he had got from Flanders. Get fucked. I love that. Sorry.

That's very good to me. He was compromised to a permanent end because he he stood next to one of these cannon, which was called the lion. And he was like, yeah, aren't I cool? Look at my cool, my cool Dutch cannon. Cool Dutch cannon. And then what happened? The barrel ruptured.

It exploded and it like took one of his legs off. It's from which he died instantaneously. You know, it's kind of like in Donkey Kong Country, you get some of them exploding barrels, except with a cannon and a king. So it's funny because it's funny when kings die. That's true. You can love me on that. It's a big, it's a big smoothbore, a big smoothbore cannon.

And you just fire a big metal ball or sometimes just whatever you feel like again, because that that idea hasn't really lost its luster at this point out of it. Trying to trying to like work out a way to use big smoothball cannon as an insult in some way. And I'm not sure. But yeah, I'm the smooth brain cannon. Yes, that's me right now.

I will I will say also that castles are still very useful at this same time period in places where it's not practical to take cannon like most noticeably Japan where it's like it's too expensive and nobody really wants to import them. But for the most part, this puts paid to like stone castles as a fortification because you just blow a hole in it. Yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting because none of this earlier siege weaponry was effective against walls. But this is you might ask, well, why?

I'm here to answer you. Why? Why? Because kinetic energy equals mass time velocity squared. Hey, it's Justin in post production here to say that the kinetic energy equation is actually kinetic energy equals one half mass times velocity squared. Now, I would like to point out before you get very mad, velocity is the second order term here. So even though I got it wrong before the basic sentiment still stands, right?

So please feel free to get really mad in the comments, but you're still wrong and I'm right. OK. So if you could increase the velocity a lot, I already make this joke. Yeah, but I'm here to explain it. Oh, OK. You made a joke about it. I'm here to be serious about it. Oh, excuse me, sir. So if you fire a smaller projectile with less mass,

when you increase the velocity a lot, you're imparting a lot more kinetic energy into that wall. And as a result, instead of, you know, the big rock bouncing off, the big, the smaller cannonball just goes straight through and then and then like punches Archduke moron in the face. Archduke, fuckface. Yeah, fuckface. Yeah. Yeah. And then all of a sudden you're doing tar away in the ISFA. Yeah, exactly. Right. So, yeah, cannons, they make your they make your they make your castle obsolete.

You're obsolete now. You have to do a new and much more expensive thing. Which has to involve a lot of enlightenment math. Yes. Well, no, because it's come up with in the most horrible thing that ever happened, the Renaissance. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The pointy castles. I really like a starfall. Yeah, I think they're pretty.

Yeah, they're pretty. I like it when I like it when there are towns that are built on starfall patterns. I think that's really nice. Yeah. You got a whole town with a starboard around it. Yeah. And these stay around for a long time. This this is wanting to do that in city skylines for ages. Yeah, these these really stick around there. They're really good at disrupting it, actually.

So I always have to teach this every year when I have to teach military revolution. This is the Halifax Citadel here. I know the Scotia. Yes, we have been here where they fire a cannon at noon directly at the Scotia Bank building. So, yeah, the cannon is a big problem for your old timey castle. But this one guy named Leon Batista Alberti, right,

who was notable also for being the guy who said, Old St. Peter's is too far gone to fix. He had an idea for defending against castles, which was these low slung walls with sort of sawtooth pattern, you know, angles, right, and earthen embankments behind them. So you wouldn't it would be hard to get a straight angle on the wall to the cannonball would bounce off as opposed to imparting all its energy into there.

And because there's a big earthen berm behind it, even then a cannonball can't do too much permanent damage, right? Going back to Earthworks. Yeah, exactly. Works real good. You know, also, these are pretty. And, yeah, it's it makes it really hard to get a run up on any one thing, right? It's all designed along straight lines because you the defensive fire is now going to be musketry or rifle fire. So you want to be able to, like, have these these outcrops that you can shoot across from

without having to, like, think about stuff like trajectory of projectile, like you would with archery. And sometimes you see, like, castles will kind of like retrofit themselves with star fortifications as well, if you've got enough money. And you can see that in places like here in England. There's a little castle on the Isle of White in Yarmouth and that which did this and which is quite interesting. And then you know, little things like that where, you know, you'll get extra ones and they'll be like, quick, we've got to get some of those star fortifications.

And you got any of those star forts and you would need one of those. So it's like, you know, you can always add that on later. You know, it's so you don't have to just throw the whole castle away. It's just there are new options is the thing. Imagine it's got to be inconvenient if like a town has grown up around a castle. It's going to be like, all right, we need a house to build some fortifications. But then again, you know, they're just porous. So this is the point. Yes.

And I mean, also, again, at this point in time, you have things like this happening. If you are if you are during, you know, the dawning of the quote unquote military revolution, I don't necessarily like the term or think it's useful. And suddenly you have like professional armies marching through town. You're like, yeah, maybe a little bit of a star fort. I can retreat in there. Right. Yeah. OK. Cool. Yeah. You know, that would be that'd be good. Right. Yeah, I think they're still they still built these things into like 1840s, 1850s.

Because they're really effective. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, now that we have cannon, we have to go to exercise three. You know, what happens to castles? They become playthings or rich morons. Oh, yeah. How do you are? Nois van Stijn. Yeah. This MF or was on so much of an opium. My God, like.

This is this is this is what happens when you're gay on opium and have only perceived any media in the form of opera. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. This is what the Disney castle is based off of. Yeah. Yes. So. So how do we lay siege to Nois van Stijn? There's the theory one. Yeah, there's the theory.

I walk up to the front door and knock hard. Honestly, yeah. Yeah, I put a shotgun into Archduke, fuck faces now. And I say, give me your cancel. It was only ever like a third built because it's like it's like a stage set. And yeah, there's supposed to be another building over here. Yeah, there's I think the only thing that was really finished

is there's like a performance space in the attic. Yeah. Yeah. Wink, wink. I don't think it even has like many interior walls that's really close to the interiors unfinished. Yeah. I mean, think about how big that would be. Like even when you are this rich and gay, like that's a lot of money to finish all that. And think about how much staff you would have to pay

in order to keep that thing up. You know, it's like these things are not like you can always pick up like for not compare like, you know, for the price of my like one bedroom flat in London, I could like go buy like a Jeanika in the in like the Czech Republic, a Chateau or whatever. That's fine. I could go buy one. Can I fucking live in it or like get it to a habitable space? No, I can't. Like, yeah, it's just not going to happen.

So, you know, you can look at them. But man, they take armies of fucking people to keep them going. Literally, you know. Yeah. So, you know, this is castles become kind of they keep building castles into like the 1900s. You know, I know I should have put that one in Michigan in here. Host Castle still counts. Yeah. Yeah.

Host Castle absolutely counts. Yeah. It's all the Scottish Baroneal houses. Yes, there's a bunch of these. Also, I do want to, you know, express some thanks to to Neuschwanstein for driving history on a bit in the almost bankrupting the entire kingdom and thereby advancing the cause of German unification. That's right. Which would lead to no bad consequences.

Thanks for nothing, dickheads. My I guess you'd call her a friend friend slash X is in Germany right now and and her boyfriend's German. And I end to protest. I said her a picture. Alice, you'll appreciate this of raising a flag over the Reichstag. Just keep them in line. That's right. That's right.

We can't can't trust those Germans. Hmm. Alice, this is your slide. Ah, fuck, yeah. Speaking of those Germans, because we were talking about how how siege warfare perceived the Cascino. It's Monte Cassino 1943.

The last road my great uncle died. Oh, I'm so sorry. This is OK. It was a long time ago. Yeah, still, though. This is this is like the last roadblock before liberating Rome. It's a fortified monastery, which is like, ooh, you know, fuck knows how many centuries old.

A lot. That was eighth century, right? Eighth, ninth century. Sounds right to me. Filled with filled with Waffen SS guys, not good dudes. Very bad. Now, I mean, we've said that castles are obsolete, right? Because we have modern artillery, because we have air power. Well, we used all of those things on the monastery at Monte Cassino.

And this is the result, right? It like turned into like atoms, a rubble. Yeah. And this actually made it more defensible rather than less because you could just like take cover in the in the various like crypts and catacombs and stuff when the U.S. Army Air Forces were bombing and then just come back out into a ready made shell hole. And the cost of taking Monte Cassino was incredibly high,

even by like World War Two standards. It hurts. I mean, like, don't get me wrong. Get the get those fascists. Get them. Oh, yeah. And I'm extremely enjoy killing fascists. And I think it's good. But like this was the original monastery. You know, it's still it's still controversial.

The decision to have bombed it in the first place. Off an SS. It's fine. Is it like that? It's fine. The model damage, the Monte Cassino. Like the thing about Monte Cassino is like when St. Benedict comes up with the rule of St. Benedict, which is when they're like, guys, we're going to start like you can't just like you can't just go into a cave in the desert

and not wank for a couple of years and call yourself a monk. That doesn't cut it. That they're like St. Benedict's like to have fun police. There's got to be some fucking rules. And then they all go to Monte Cassino and like Monte Cassino is like the original monastery of monks. So it like it's it's really fucking meaningful from a medieval standpoint and really interesting.

And it's just like fucking priceless. You know, it's it's one of those things. So, you know, it hurts my heart, but on the other hand, not as much. It was also full of 49. Yeah, it's like 6th century was also full of was also full of looted art, thanks to, again, the Nazis. The Nazis. Yeah, like, I mean, I believe what happened is that Eisenhower ordered them not to bomb it.

And then Mark Clark, who, like, was subordinate to him, ordered them to do it anyway. And that's what won out. Yeah. And, you know, and it was a mistake because, yeah, it was more defensible and blah, blah, blah. And it sucks. And it's just kind of like on the other hand, you know, I'm pro killing fascists, so it's fine.

But, you know, it just sucks that sometimes you got to like, you know, they could have they could probably could have sieged it. Yeah, probably, but they didn't want to. Like, that's that's characteristic of the whole Italian campaign is the like it was this sort of like ego driven race northwards, which really got into some into some bad shit. Also, this is the battle which has a Polish bear fighting in it. Vojcek, who was adopted in Syria by members of the Polish army

and carried ammunition for artillery during this battle. It's better to say our Polish bear. That's me. Happy pride. I do. I do believe this is the the first monastery to be to be partially destroyed by a bear. I mean, fair enough, fair enough. I don't know. I think a bear probably could have if you had like a small

monastery, a bear probably could have fucked it up. Now, he just became a monk, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's that's that's brother Stephen. Yeah, absolutely. What are you looking at? Translating ancient bear. He's trying to do it with his little paws. I love brother Stephen. Oh, draw us a bear, monk, please, fan artist.

Yes, I want. Oh, I love him. He's spilling it all over the page, but they love him anyway, because it keeps all the other vermin away. Yeah, I have another. I have another more modern castle. Remember, as you're waking up, brother Stephen. No, remember, you just let him go. Remember a hot tour, a crack to Chevalier?

Yeah. Remember how it's in Syria? Yeah. How is a civil war in Syria? What war? Yeah, that's the Syrian air force blowing the absolute fuck out of it because rebels were in it and well, now they're not. Now it's I believe it's even reopened. But castles that survived are still a useful fortification. If like there's war in the area, mostly because they occupy

a strategic position, you can use them for like sniping out of. You can use them for artillery observation. And so, yeah, yeah. So we're not we're not rid of the castle because we're not rid of war and we're probably never going to be rid of it. So you're just going to be fighting over like various ruins for, you know, that's just in the topography now. So that's quite a bleak note to end on to be like, are we?

Yeah, if you're getting killed right now, you're probably getting killed on the ruins of some guys hill for because it's the same planet and well, this war never changes or whatever. I mean, we like we like to think, you know, we like to talk about humanity and like things like this is some kind of grand march forward. But on the other hand, walls, good, blowy up, blah, blah, blah. Four people die. Basically, you know, that's put too fine a point on it.

Let's go back to the brother Steven bit. We liked brother Steven. Oh, come on. Brothers, they they shave his they cut his hair like he's a monk, too. You wouldn't bomb, brother Steven. Everybody be like, oh, no, guys, we just got to go. We got to go. All right. Back it up. Back it up. Back it up.

Bears dumping like hot pitch on you, talking to you. It's like boiling honey making the bear noise. Very serious podcast. Very serious. That's right. That's right. I think he's like a yogi bear or is he like, hey, boo, boo, let's see what we got in the sea. Judged. I think he's more like a like a gentle Ben kind of bear, you know, like, yeah, he's.

Yeah, you know, he's always like breaking into the cellar. They're like, ah, brother Steven, get out of there. Oh, we'll be hijinks. Yes. I love this for us. Love this imaginary. Absolutely. Yeah. OK, great. Look, we're ending on that. I'm telling you. I know.

But actually, what we're ending on is segment we have in this podcast called Safety Third. Oh, shake hands for danger. Now, yes. Hello to the well, there's your problem crew. Hello. Hello. Hi. For today's story, I bring you back to two thousand seven. OK, the economy is amazing.

Yes. Nothing's going wrong here. I'm going to I'm going to mortgage a house to a hangar full of private jets. Well, that's my favorite kind. Yes. I was a new airframe and power plant mechanic or A&P for short. Recently graduated from the finest community college in rural Minnesota. Congratulations. Well done. Yes. On this day, we were performing a pressurization check on a LearJet 45.

Which requires a large diesel powered air compressor. We hooked up to the aircraft and pressurized the the the air compressor air compressor pressurized the inside of the fuselage to eight PSI. Then mechanics both inside and outside will check the aircraft for leaks. Using high tech tools like spray bottles full of soapy water and following the smoke from burning incense. Wow. Here we go.

We got we got this done by upgrading all of our monks to aircraft mechanics. I too. I don't know what the proper medieval architectural construction for a hangar is. It's giant stone doors closing, you know. I was on the outside of this aircraft under the left hand engine looking for bubbles in my soapy water. When I heard an eardefening bang and turned to see the main cabin door had been blown open.

And my massive 300 pound six foot six inch co-worker lying on his back unconscious on the concrete floor with his thumb hanging on by a tiny flap of skin, bleeding profusely. Oh, come on, man. About 15 feet away from the main cabin door of the Learjet. No, thank you. I ran over and wrapped his hand in blue shop towels and raised his hand above the rest of his body to minimize the bleeding.

Well, a second co-worker checked it that he was breathing and that he didn't swallow his tongue while lying on his back. After a couple of minutes, the company's first response team showed up and these fine folks are made of employees such as volunteer firefighters and former NAMI Korsman and some people with EMT training, which allowed the company to respond to emergencies without actually paying anyone extra, right?

Well, yes, they came over and took over from us. He regained consciousness a few minutes after the responders showed up, but was still heavily concussed and too in shock to really do anything beyond moaning. After maybe 20 minutes of flight for life helicopter touchdown in front of the hangar and took him to a hospital where the doctors were able to reattach his thumb and he made a full recovery and was back to work six months later

with some wicked scars on his hands. So eight PSI may not sound like much, but when multiplied by the roughly 3,000 square inches of this door, it means this man was hit by thousands of pounds of force. Now, aircraft are equipped with sensors to show a cabin door is properly locked, including the Learjet 45, usually indicated by a green light above the cabin door and inside the cockpit. However, because this aircraft was in for maintenance,

the batteries were disconnected. So the mechanic inside had no way of knowing that the door locking mechanism wasn't fully engaged. Perfect. Fail deadly. Fail deadly, yeah. Meanwhile, I was laid off about nine months later when the CEOs of GM and Chrysler flew to Washington, DC

to beg for bailout money and had to become bad PR to be seen flying around in these grotesque symbols of capitalism. I ended up going back to rural Minnesota, working on a small SNES SNS at a flight school for a fraction of the pay I was getting for working on the Learjets. This facility almost single handedly turned me into a socialist and I still get angry at the times thinking about the Gulf Stream with the five hundred thousand dollar gold paint job.

And if every one of these jets is melted down and turned into high speed trains, I will die a happy person. Hell, yes, Comrade. Yes. Anyway, I love the show and keep doing what you're doing. P.S. Shout out to Alice. Go team can't be bothered with voice training. The podcasting world needs more of you. Well, thank you.

Very sweet. Well, that was horrifying. Thank you. Well, well, I'm going back to Brother Stephen in my head just to deal with that. Thank you. Thank you for coming on. Yes, thank you for coming on. Where can people find you for medievalist content? Oh, yeah, for medievalist content. A check me out on Twitter.

I'm at going medieval. I've got a blog which is going hyphen medieval dot com where I talk about medieval shit all the time. Check out my Patreon. I'm broke as shit. Well, yeah, check out the page on it. So it's Patreon slash going medieval and you get some cool stuff every month. A lot of good content, a lot of I get a lot of other good

medievalists to come through and get drunk with me. And that's fun. So oh, and yeah, the last thing. Sorry, I'm plugging a lot of stuff. I got a book out next week. Congratulations. Yes. So it's called the Middle Ages, a graphic history. It's like a like a comic book, like so it's it's all illustrated.

It's really beautiful. I worked really closely with an illustrator who was very good at mimicking medieval art forms, very, very cool. And if you want to learn more about the medieval period in you can do. It's essentially like the classes I teach as surveys for like first years in one hundred seventy six pages. So it's real real easy pictures. And it's out June 3rd.

That is the Middle Ages, a graphic history. Please help. I'm very broke. And if you do a sequel now, you know that you can put a bear who is a monk in it. I will. Yes. I'm just like, I'm going to start writing my brother, Steven Fanfic. That's what's up. That's what's up. Now, next episode is the Thomas Narrows Bridge disaster.

It's the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Shout out to town two five three. What's up? What's up? What's up? Holy shit. That's right. That's right. My daddy built the second one, like not the second one after the one that collapsed, but now there's two Narrows Bridges because too many people live out on the peninsula and there's no jobs out there.

So my dad, who is the carpenter, built the second one that we've got there now. That's right. Well, that's right, Tacoma come through. Yes. Oh, I have a thing to plug down. Go for it. Oh, yes. Hello. I listen to Lions led by Donkeys, which I'm co-hosting for nine months, starting in a couple of weeks with their bonus episodes because Nick is fucking off to Korea for nine months.

So that's right. If you hated me on one podcast, you could hate me on another one. Oh, yeah. Liam, thank you for your service. Yes, you're welcome. It's right. You're a military podcaster now. Yeah. This is where I say our war crimes even bad.

Just nine hundred times. Depends on who's doing them and for what reason. Eddie Gallagher could suck my dick. All right. Well, I think Alice, don't you want to plug your podcast? It's called Kill James Bond. There you go, girl. Also from Future.

Jesus Christ. I was playing Ascension. I'm here. I'm present. All right. I think we did a podcast. Perfect. Good. Well done.

All right. Bye, everybody. Bye. Off be the Zen. Hello. OK. Hey, it's Justin in post production here to say that the kinetic energy equation is actually kinetic energy equals one half mass times velocity squared. Now, I would like to point out before you get very mad

that I would like to point out before you get mad that velocity is the second order term here. So even though I got it wrong before, the basic sentiment still stands. Right. So please feel free to get really mad in the comments, but you're still wrong and I'm right. OK.