Assedi e macchine da guerra nel Mezzogiorno normanno, XI e XII secolo

Abstract

The establishment of Norman authority in southern Italy and Sicily was the result of an unprecedented effort that would substantially alter the future political order of the Mediterranean. The most effective military action adopted by Norman commanders was siege warfare, carried out against the main fortifications and major urban centers. This technique, very much related to Byzantine military traditions, consisted in surrounding with the army the place to be conquered with one or more small "counter-castles", preventing supplies from the outside, and at the same time engineering some powerful war machines, built for the occasion by the doctissimi artifices, which hammered the walls with intensity forcing it to surrender. The sophisticated lignorum machinae presented different types: mobile towers equipped with battering-rams, petrary, ballistae in addition to the well-known trebuchets with rope or counterweight devices.Starting from the written sources of the period, the essay aims to describe the salient phases of the main sieges conducted by the Normans between the 11th and 12th centuries, in which they experimented with singular warfare tools and strategies to get the better of the Lombard, Byzantine and Muslim armies.