BATTERING

, the attacking a place, work, or the like, with heavy artillery.

Battering-Ram, a military engine used for beating down walls, before the invention of gunpowder and the modern artillery. It was no other than a long heavy beam of timber, armed with an iron head, something like the head of a ram. This being pushed violently with constant successive blows against a wall, gradually shakes it with a vibratory motion, till the stones are disjointed and the wall falls down. There were several kinds of the battering-ram, the first rude and plain, which the soldiers carried in their arms by main force, and so struck the head of it against the wall. The second was slung by a rope about the middle to another beam lying across upon a couple of posts; which was the kind described by Josephus as used at the siege of Jerusalem. A third sort was covered over with a shell or screen of boards, to defend the men from the stones and darts of the besieged upon the walls, and thence called testudo arietaria. And Felibien describes a fourth sort of battering-ram, which ran upon wheels; and was the most perfect and effectual of any.

Vitruvius affirms, that the battering-ram was sirst invented by the Carthaginians, while they laid siege to Cadiz: yet Pliny assures us, that the ram was invented or used at the siege of Troy; and that it was this that gave occasion to the fable of the wooden horse. In fact there can be no doubt but that the use of some sort of a battering-ram is as old as the art of war itself. And it has even been suspected that the walls of Jericho, mentioned in the book of Joshua, were beaten down by this instrument, the rams horns there mentioned, by means of which they were overthrown, being no other than the horns of the battering-rams. Pephasmenos, a Tyrian, afterwards contrived to suspend it with ropes; and lastly, Polydus, the Thessalian, mounted it on wheels, at the siege of Byzantium, under Philip of Macedon.

Plutarch relates, that Marc Anthony, in the Parthian war, made use of a ram 80 feet long: and Vitruvius affirms that they were sometimes 106, and even 120 feet long; which must have given an amazing force to this engine. The ram required 100 soldiers to work and manage it at one time; who being exhausted, another century relieved them; by which means in was kept playing continually without intermission. See fig. 2, plate V, which represents the battering-ram suspended in its open frame; in which 3 denotes the form of the head, fastened to the enormous beam 2, by three or four bands (4) of iron, of about four feet in breadth. At the extremity of each of these bands was an iron chain (5), one end of which was fastened to a hook (6), and to the last link at the other extremity was firmly bound a cable, which ran the whole length of the beam to the end of the ram 7, where these cables were bound all together as fast as possible with small ropes. To the end of these cables was fastened another, that consisted of several strong cords platted together to a certain length, and then running single (8), at each of which were placed several men, to balance and work the machine. 10 Is the chain or cable by which the ram was hung to the cross beam (11), fixed on the top of the frame; and 12 is the base of the machine.

The unsuspended ram differed from this only in the manner of working it; as it moved on small wheels upon another large beam, instead of being slung by a chain or cable.