[Elio Pestana]

Hello, and sorry for the big period of inactivity ; i've been quite the busy man these days and couldn't really find the time to find pertinent stuff to actually post or ask about.

While reading about some of the battles of the Great War, i've always found the contrast between fighting on open fields versus fighting in some of the bigger cities interesting, as it always asked armies of the day to change their strategies and use otherwise unconventional tactics in order to advance, on top of making most of the standard weaponry of the era - be it rifles, artillery pieces or even armored vehicles - awkward to use and letting less common pieces of weaponry steal the spotlight.

However, while the British soldiers at Amiens and the Italians at Gorizia could rely on carefully set up machine gun nests, pistols & grenades to gain an edge, when you think about, say, carefully organized ranks of legionnaires, renaissance-era batallions of pikemen, Greek phalanxes or even just norse raiders coming into the bigger cities, you kinda start wondering... well, how exactly did they handle such situations ?
Since stuff like pikes and the good ol' 2-meter long Spanish muskets are obviously very unwieldy for that kind of terrain, did stuff like short swords or dagger take over ?
Were some military forces simply lacking any sort of options in that departement ?
Was there some special troops involved for these situations ?
In short, do any of you know how they handled urban warfare (without sieges) before the Modern era ?

[Jean Henri Chandler]

In much of the pre-industrial period, very, VERY broadly speaking, warfare somewhat favored the defense. This was especially true where the defenders had stone walls. There was a period after the dissimilation of the Roman Empire when forts were mostly of wood, but during much of the Classical era and the High to Late Medieval periods and later, the defenders had an advantage. So usually there was a siege involved and it often was very costly for the attackers. There were exceptions to this, such as when the fortifications were old and the attacking army had a lot of cannon or some other highly effective siege weapons.

There also were battles, skirmishes and fights inside cities without any siege happening, sometimes due to internal disputes, sometimes an enemy just surprised them and got inside before they could close the gate (and sometimes with help from the inside).

Towns often had internal fortifications as well, so getting inside a city didn't necessarily mean the end of the game. Towns even back into Classical times often had a citadel. The acropolis in Athens was originally a citadel for example. In the middle ages the city of Prague had a citadel on Vyšehrad hill. In medieval towns, the different neighborhoods or quarters were often walled off from each other, and may have multiple well fortified buildings and towers within the town. Different sections of town were also routinely divided by canals, which were used both as defense and as a means of moving heavy goods.



You can get an idea of that from this map of Riga by Braun and Hogenberg. You can see a much higher resolution version of that image here


Sometimes invading armies got into a city but were defeated in detail and / or forced back out again. Towns were also built either with cavalry and large scale troop movement in mind, or the opposite. Some medieval towns had broad streets so that ruling nobles or internal factions that relied on heavy cavalry could better control the town. In these places, an invading army was sometimes hit with a cavalry charge on the cobbelstones and if they had lost unit cohesion, they might get annihilated. Other towns were intentionally made with very narrow streets and also often had warrens of hidden tunnels under the streets which could be used for defense. Defenders could wait for invading soldiers to pass them and then come out behind them and attack, and set ambushes at known choke points using artillery and firearms.

Fortifications were always important because it meant that troops were blocked from reaching defenders, and meanwhile defenders could rain stones and javelins, arrows, crossbow bolts and by the late medieval period, bullets and cannon shot down on them. Also nasty things like molten glass and brutal pyrotechnic devices.

So the focus was often more on the fortifications than on the individual weapons. That said, weapons were important too of course, and broadly speaking could be divided into four categories: Crew served 'artillery', high velocity missiles (heavy crossbows, bows and guns), lower velocity missiles (rocks, javelins, pyrotechnic devices), and hand-to-hand weapons (spears, swords, axes, maces). Armor was also very important because armor could protect against most weapons most of the time. Though the ratio was a lot different, (missiles had a much lower rate of fire than a machine gun or a bolt action rifle, so hand weapons were still very important in pre-industrial as compared to modern warfare) they were used in a manner in some ways not that different from early 20th Century weapons.

For crew served weapons, the Romans had their various torsion based devices which could hurl stones, lead balls, or darts. Some people here like Matthew Amt could probably elaborate more on these, though I can say that the Romans did use them effectively in many battles and particularly in sieges. The Roman Legions were in general very good at engineering and this applied very much to their siege warfare methods, which were highly sophisticated and disciplined. One method they used quite a bit was tunneling or mining, such as was also done quite a bit during WW1.

By the 14th Century gunpowder weapons were introduced, and you can find many parallels to modern weapons, especially with crew served weapons.

A couple of examples - a seven barrel pintle mounted volley gun, which were around from the 15th Century, functioned a lot like a gattling gun or a machine gun, just a bit slower preparation between shots.

https://youtu.be/0mKVdMNcG48?t=142

15th Century field artillery being brought up to the battlefield in pieces, assembled, and shot by a trained crew

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk_bNFUqzo4

This type of field gun, called the Houfnice by the Czechs, dates back to the 1420s. They could be used with ball or shot. These had removable breeches so as you can see, an experienced crew could get a shot off about every 30 seconds. If their position was under threat of being overrun, they could tow it away or dismantle it and carry it away. In many respects not that different from a 'French 75' or some other field gun except no explosive shells, just solid shot.

They did however use mortars. This beast was used in the siege of Rhodes in 1480, (successfully) to attack Ottoman ships.


It shot 260 kg granite balls that you can see next to it, and had a range of only about 200 meters. You wouldn't want to be there when the ball landed, (or on a ship that it landed on)

Medieval armies used wagons to carry crew served weapons, and as mobile field fortifications / cover for hand gunners and crossbowmen. Getting caught by a volley gun and / or a volley of handguns in a tight space in a city could be quite devastating to attackers.

For more details about siege warfare, I wrote a little blog post two weeks ago here you might find interesting getting into some Classical, medieval and early modern sieges, including the siege of Malta which involved urban warfare, and is probably the single most epic siege of the pre-industrial period.

Hope that helps a little.

[Jean Henri Chandler]

Couple of examples of some things I mentioned -

The first shows both war wagons (background) and a war-mantlet being used in a siege, both types bearing small cannon, from the late 15th Century Bern Chronik

The second shows a volley gun similar to the one in the video, but this one has 40 barrels. Below the gun is a towing harness and an ammunition box. That one was from the inventory of artillery by Emperor Maximillian I, circa 1505

[Matthew Amt]

[Anthony Clipsom]

As matthew remarked, the circumstaces of the fight varied, and what happened during the fighting following a successful escalade or breaching of defences might be different to, say, a faction fight where both sides might have bases of operation within the town.

This article on 15th century Castilian urban fights contains some useful insights on the tactics of combat in built up areas.

[Jean Henri Chandler]

[Sean Manning]

I think there are references from the 16th and 17th centuries to handing out targets to troops who were about to attack up a ladder, or keeping a rack of two-handed swords, targets, and short staff weapons in a bastion to defend it. But those are alternative to a long pike or a muzzle-loaded gun! Most troops had weapons which worked just fine in close quarters. The ancient writers describe Alexander's men carrying short general-purpose spears as well as their long pikes and using them in duels and attacks on fortifications. Polybius has a story of Romans trying to break into a breach in a wall with a Macedonian phalanx in it and failing miserably.

[Graham Shearlaw]

[Matthew Amt]

[Jean Henri Chandler]

[Ryan S.]

I imagine that in the days when city walls were the norm, that it would be practically pointless for an attacker to attack a force inside a walled city that would be of equal strength. The fortifications would give the defenders too much of an advantage. This reminds me of the seven years war, where the Prussian and Imperial army are described as trying to out maneuver each other, but as both sides usually had picked out strong positions, neither would attack. The armies, however, were mostly fighting outside the cities. The cities and fortresses were manned by garrisons. Often in accounts of sieges, the prospect of another army coming to relieve the city plays a role. Some cities, however, were not defended. Athens was abandoned after the battle of Thermopylae, and most of the city was razed. That might explain why some armies left the city to meet the attackers.

I get a different idea from the World Wars, where the focal point seems not actually to be cities, but rather lines of defence such as the Siegfried line and where trench warfare played a role. The biggest battles aren’t even named after cities. That is not to say that cities weren’t important, but they weren’t strongholds, like in earlier wars. Rather tactically, cities became a type of terrain that was more valuable, but also had unique challenges to fighting in it.

I think that so far so good points have been made. I think a big difference between medieval urban warfare and urban warfare in WWI, would be that in the Middle Ages, they wouldn’t have had to clear out the houses one by one. In WWI and WWII, a machine gun nest or even a concealed sniper could create a big problem for the attacking troops, and slow down the advance. In most cases, the medieval defenders would retreat to the next level of formal defences, and try to stick together. The walls, gatehouses, and towers are going to be the most important objectives to control. If the defence becomes disorganized and spread out, they will lose their advantage.

[William P]

[Ryan S.]

[Matthew Amt]

[Jean Henri Chandler]

[William P]

[Ryan S.]

I think that pikes aren’t just for big formations, however, bigger formations offer more advantages. A pike square can defend from all sides, and because pike allow the first few rows to fight, and not just the first row, the more depth one has the better. Two or three pike men can still fight effectively against a small group of men armed with other weapons. One can even duel with a pike. Lindybeige has some videos on spears vs. swords and demonstrates that spears have an advantage against swords, in many situations. The big exception is a sword with a large shield, however this advantage disappears once there are multiple spearmen. I don’t see why a pike would be any different, and as Jean said it was used as a self-defence weapon. Some medieval streets might be narrower than the pike is tall, and one is going to have trouble carrying a pike indoors, so a shorter spear would be more versatile. Which is probably why in the 16th century Swiss halberdiers were hired by rulers as guards, and not pikemen.

It has also just occurred to me, that when marching in columns, gaps could be left between ever 5 or so lines of soldiers. This way, if attacked from the side street, the soldier would have room to move and fewer soldiers would be attacked from the side.