Engines of war | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 2019-07-10

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_engine


00:01:32 1 Antiquity
00:01:40 1.1 Ancient Assyria through the Roman Empire
00:05:17 1.2 Ancient China
00:06:27 2 Middle Ages
00:08:23 3 Modern era



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Speaking Rate: 0.8539814466308432
Voice name: en-AU-Wavenet-C


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SUMMARY
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A siege engine is a device that is designed to break or circumvent heavy castle doors, thick city walls and other fortifications in siege warfare. Some are immobile, constructed in place to attack enemy fortifications from a distance, while others have wheels to enable advancing up to the enemy fortification. There are many distinct types, such as siege towers to allow attacking soldiers to scale walls and attack the defenders, battering rams to break walls or gates, to catapults (such as ballistae, trebuchets and other similar constructions) used to attack from a distance and fire a projectile; some complex siege engines were combinations of these types.
Siege engines are fairly large constructions—from the size of a small house to a large building. From antiquity up to the development of gunpowder, they were made largely of wood, using rope or leather to help bind them, possibly with a few pieces of metal at key stress points. They could launch simple projectiles using natural materials to build up force by tension, torsion, or, in the case of trebuchets, human power or counterweights coupled with mechanical advantage. With the development of gunpowder and improved metallurgy, bombards and later heavy artillery became the primary siege engines.
Collectively, siege engines or artillery together with the necessary soldiers, sappers, ammunition, and transport vehicles to conduct a siege are referred to as a siege-train.