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Updated: June 9, 2025
Thus, would I attack a city, I do it modo et forma: first, I set up my mantelets for my archers, and under cover of their swift shooting I set me up my mangonels, my trebuchets and balistae: then, pushing me up, assault the walls with cat, battering-ram and sap, and having made me a breach, would forthwith take me the place by sudden storm." ROGER. "Ha, bowman! here is overmuch of thee, methinks!
Some lives were lost at this, but not many; for a strong force of crossbowmen, including Denys, rolled their mantelets up and shot over the workmen's heads at every besieged who showed his nose, and at every loophole, arrow-slit, or other aperture, which commanded the particular spot the carpenters happened to be upon.
Sometimes, under cover of the mantelets, which advanced on wheels, and through the loopholes of which the Carthaginian bowmen shot, they managed to get the battering-rams to the foot of the wall, but while that part of the city was the most exposed to attack, the ramparts which in the upper portion of Saguntum were of adobe had here a stony rock base, and in vain the bronze rams'-heads which formed the ends of the beams, pounded and pounded, operated by hundreds of arms.
Here the lever at work, there the winch and pulley, here the balance, there the capstan. Everywhere heaps of stones, and piles of fascines, mantelets, and rows of fire-barrels. Mantelets rolling, the hammer tapping all day, horses and carts in endless succession rattling up with materials.
They abandoned their mantelets, and, deaf to every command, swarmed out like bees upon the open field, leaped, shouted, shrieked their war-cries, and shot off their arrows; while the Iroquois, yelling defiance from their ramparts, sent back a shower of stones and arrows in reply.
They bring forward mantelets and pavisses, and the archers muster on the skirts of the wood like a dark cloud before a hailstorm." Reginald Front-de-Boeuf also looked out upon the field, and immediately snatched his bugle; and, after winding a long and loud blast, commanded his men to their posts on the walls.
Ever as they clomb, the path grew more difficult, until at last they were come to a parapet or outwork with mantelets of osiers beyond, cunningly wrought, above which a pike-head glimmered and from beyond which a voice challenged them; but at a word from Eric the sentinel stood aside and behold, a narrow opening in the parapet through which they passed and so up another path defended by yet another parapet of osiers.
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