distance between towers VS range of infilading weapons

[Goffredo]

Hi guys
looking at nice pictures of roman (saxon) shore forts of a recent thread I ask:

Has anyone made a survey and obtained statistics of roman walls with projecting towers and compared the distance between them and similar towers in medieval forts and castles? AND also compared these typical distances with the effective ranges of faithful reconstructions of defensive weapons used for infilading enemy approaching walls?

[Goffredo]

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Strange.

[M. Demetrius]

Well, the historians haven't entered anything, and for the most part, we who are not don't like getting our ears pinned back.

Beyond the obvious, that one tower should be in bowshot of the next, what's to say? It's a pretty involved question, for which a factual answer would take considerable research into many different forts and castles spanning at least 2000 years of architectural changes. Probably someone, somewhere, has done such a study.

Just because I'm curious, what prompted the question?

[Robert Vermaat]

Well, I could answer but it's such a large question I would be out of my depth.
'Towers' - what towers? Gates, bastions? 'Walls' - what sort of walls? Wood, stone, 1st c. BC, 4th c. AD?

I'm a bit stretched for time so that's another reason why I can't go into such a question like this one.
If it weren't you Goffredo I'd thought this question were from a student who did not want to look this up in his books.. :twisted:

[D B Campbell]

Has anyone made a survey and obtained statistics of roman walls with projecting towers and compared the distance between them and similar towers in medieval forts and castles? AND also compared these typical distances with the effective ranges of faithful reconstructions of defensive weapons used for infilading enemy approaching walls?

The quick answer is "not that I know of".

It sounds like the kind of thing that Eric Marsden would have been interested in (but for Greek fortifications, rather than Roman). His Greek and Roman Artillery (Oxford, 1969) has a discussion of "fields of fire", but he was starting from fixed ideas about catapult ranges (rather than starting from the archaeological evidence of tower spacing).

It would certainly be a fruitful area for new research, if anyone's interested!

[Goffredo]

Well the issue it was in my mind for some time. I've walked a couple of time the Aurelian walls about Rome, I've seen photos of "saxon" shore forts in England, of Lugo in Spain, and "I've seen fire and I've seen rain".

I always wondered if the distance between protruding towers from stretches of walls (those are the towers I am speaking of) was standard reflecting a uniform and reproducible effective range in roman artillery throughout the vast empire. As medieval castles were commissioned and built by a richly varied assortment of groups and peoples and not by imperial (universal) professional army engineers with a strong tradition, I wonder if medieval artillery and hence tower distances was as uniform as the roman ones. I am indeed like a lazy student that asks without looking for himself. But then there are so many experts in the forum... :wink:

[Eleatic Guest]

You may want to start with this article (PDF): Dietwulf Baatz: Town walk and defensive weapons.

For firing fields in early modern fortresses, I can recommend: John Lynn: The Trace Italienne and the Growth of Armies. The French Case, in: The Journal of Military History, Vol. 55, No.3, 1991, pp. 297-330

The article is good at showing how artillery revolutionized siege warfare and the construction of fortresses, away from the medieval castle to the star-shaped bastion with no dead angles.