Oliver of Paderborn and his siege engine at Damietta

by Dominic Francis

Nottingham Medieval Studies

v.37 (1993)

In the hot weeks of August 1218, the soldiers of the German and Frisian contingents involved
in the Fifth Crusade laboured hard to build an innovative siege engine. They hoped that this,
with God's intercession, would enable them to capture the chain tower of Damietta. This
strong fortress guarded one end of an iron chain that stretched across the Damietta branch of
the Nile. Until then, situated as it was on an island, it had prevented the full investiture of the
city. Several attempts to capture it had been made from the river already but had failed as no-
one had been able to bring scaling-ladders to bear on the walls. In response to this problem
Oliver of Paderborn, although too self-effacing to take the credit himself, designed a siege
engine that had not been seen before in medieval warfare:

we joined two ships which we bound together sturdily by beams and

ropes ... We erected four masts and the same number of sail yards, setting
up on the summit a strong fortress joined with poles and a network
fortification. We covered it with skins about its circumference ... and over
its top as a defence against Greek fire. Under the fortress was made a ladder,
hung by very strong ropes and stretching out thirty cubits beyond the prow.

[1]

Although this sounds unwieldy, the resulting opus ligneum as Oliver terms it could be

propelled as vessels from the crusader states had oars as well as sails - thus the outside rowers
could still function. In addition, steering boards were usually fixed to the side of a ship - a
clear advantage in this case.

[2]

With ships of the time pulling a draught of only three to four

feet, the crusaders were able to place the scaling ladder on the tower and, after some ferocious
fighting, capture it.

Despite the assumption that this was an original invention, it is reminiscent of similar
engines used in the Ancient World, most notably by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. At the
siege of Tyre, facing comparable problems to the crusaders at Damietta, Alexander had two
ships joined together, and used them as a base to breach or scale the walls. Unfortunately, the
sources do not make it clear which was intended. Such engines were also known in the
Hellenistic and Roman worlds, and were most famously employed at the siege of Syracuse in
214 B.C. where it took the inventive genius of Archimedes to keep them at bay. The ships
used at Tyre and Syracuse were of a broadly similar design to those used in the Fifth Crusade
- that is, with oars and steering boards on the sides. The fact that these engines were used in
the Ancient World, and that their use was reported in the writers of the period prompts the
idea that Oliver had read of them in some Classical account and employed this knowledge in
the field.

Of the histories of Alexander's life extant in the Middle Ages it is certain that Oliver

had read Quintus Curtius' as he tells us so himself.

[3]

However, Curtius' description of the

engines Alexander used to capture Tyre is disappointingly vague. He says only:

For the Macedonians had joined Quadriremes together in pairs in such a way that

while their prows were united, the sterns were as far apart as it was possible to
have them: the space between the sterns they had filled with yards of ships and
strong beams bound together, and upon them had built platforms as a standing
place for soldiers.

[4]

This is unlikely to have prompted Oliver's invention at Damietta. Looking at other accounts of
the siege of Tyre, it becomes clear that Oliver cannot have gained inspiration from these
either. There are three other major accounts. Arrian II 23.3, Diodorus XVII 43.3 and
Plutarch's „Life of Alexander‟. These are unlikely to have formed the basis for Oliver's idea as
they are all in Greek, a language he almost certainly would not have had. The same is true of
Polybius‟ „The Rise of the Roman Empire‟, Plutarch‟s „Life of Marcellus‟, and Appian's
„Mithridates‟. These all describe sambucae which is the Latin name for floating siege engines.

Polybius‟ excellent description is worth quoting for the light it may throw on the way the
siege engine at Damietta was constructed:

he had eight quinqueremes grouped in pairs. Each pair had half of theiroars removed,

the starboard bank for one and the port for the other, and on these sides the vessels
were lashed together. They were then rowedby the remaining oars on their outer sides,
and brought up to the walls the siege engines known as sambucae. A ladder is made,
four feet in width and high enough to reach the top of the wall from the place where its
feet are to rest. Each side is fenced in with a high protective breastwork, and the
machine
is also shielded by a wicker covering high overhead ... After this the oarsmen on the
two
outer sides of the ships row the vesselsclose inshore, and the crews then attempt to
prop
the sambuca against the wall. At the top of the ladder there is a wooden platform
which is
protected on three sides by wicker screens; four men are stationed on this to engage
the
defenders ... As soon as the attackers have got it into position, and are thus standing on
a higher level than the wall, they pull down the wicker screens on each side of the
platform
and rush out onto the battlements or towers.

[5]

However, as has been said Oliver could not read Greek, and so if he did receive inspiration
from a Classical text it had to be in Latin. Two that Oliver could have read mention sambucae
- and Oliver's idea may have come from one or a combination of both. First, there is Vegetius
who wrote his treatise on military matters around 400 A.D. This work was well known before
Oliver's time. Geoffrey Plantagenet had used it in 1147 during the siege of a castle in the
Loire valley and the same copy may have belonged to his Greatgrandfather, Fulk the Black, in
the tenth century.

[6]

By the thirteenth century, Vegetius had become the most popular and

widely read work on the theory of military matters. Although many medieval copyists
augmented the text with stratagems of their own, the original text does give advice on how to
conduct sieges. In this section Vegetius gives his description of a sambuca:

The sambuca is so named from its similarity to a harp: for just as there are strings on a

harp,

so on a beam which is joined to the tower there are ropes which let down a bridge
from
above by means of pulleys. So that soldiers go out from the tower, and crossing over
the
bridge invade the walls of the city.

[7]

Clearly there is no reference here to the sambucae being mounted on ships and then

used to attack the sea-walls of cities. Despite this Vegetius must have been aware of this
aspect of their use as he knows the name sambuca and this is only used in ancient authors in
connection with sea-borne siege engines. But another writer, Vitruvius, does make such an
explicit reference. This work became most widely read during the Renaissance, but was
known before 1200 and may have been read by Oliver. One can see how by combining the
two references Oliver might have developed his own sambuca. Vitruvius says:

At Chios also when the enemy had constructed sambucae on

board ships, the Chians overnight heaped up earth, sand and
stones into the sea before the walls.

[8]

But there is a far more likely route for the transmission of this knowledge. It is a Latin
account of the siege of Syracuse and thus of sambucae and it is to be found in Book XXIV of
Livy's Ab Urbe Conditur. In this he describes how the Roman general Marcellus, in an
attempt to scale the seaward walls of Syracuse joined pairs of Quinqueremes together and
built towers on the masts:

Other Quinqueremes paired together, with the inner oars removed,

so that side was brought close to side, were propelled by the outer
banks of oars like a single ship and carried towers of several stories,
and in addition engines for battering the walls.

[9]

Although differing in a few points of detail from Oliver's description, the two are so similar as
to give rise to the idea that Oliver was not inventing a new engine, but recreating one that he
had read about previously. This is encouraged by looking at the manuscript history of Book
XXIV of Livy.

The first pentad of the third Decade, that is Books XX to XXV, existed in at least six

manuscripts before the start of the thirteenth century.

[10]

For Oliver to have seen any of them

two factors will have needed to combine - inclination and opportunity. The first of these may
safely be assumed from what he says in his own work - he was clearly interested in reading
Ancient works. Opportunity is harder to determine. Although manuscripts can be placed in
certain locations at certain times the intervals in between are, necessarily, lost to us. Thus,
what follows must be based on a certain amount of speculation.

Four of the extant manuscripts were in France at some point before the thirteenth

century. The oldest of these, and the archetype for all the manuscripts now in existence, is the
Codex Puteaneus (B.N. Ms. lat. 5730). Originally written in the first half of the fifth century,
it made its way, via the court of Charlemagne, to the library at Corbie. Here it was copied in
the third quarter of the ninth century into a manuscript now in Florence (Florence, Laur.
63.20). When this manuscript left France is not known. Another French copy was made from
the Puteaneus in the early eleventh century (B.N. Ms. lat. 5731), however its subsequent
history is not known until it was acquired by Colbert in the seventeenth century. Thus these

three, together with the Bamberg manuscript (see below), were in France for some time
before the late twelfth century. In addition, there is no reason to suppose that either the
Puteaneus or B.N. lat. 5731 moved far from the Corbie / Paris area. Given Oliver's interests he
may well have visited Corbie or found a manuscript in Paris in order to read Livy. The
opportunity for such an exercise would have presented itself when he was a student at the
University in Paris.

Moreover, two other manuscripts existed and Oliver may have had a chance to read

these. The earlier one, the Romanus (Vatican, Reg. lat. 762), was copied at Tours around 800
A.D. The history of this manuscript is obscure and I have been unable to find the date when it
left Northern Europe and found its way to Rome. The most likely time seems to be when the
library at Corbie was sacked by the Huguenots in 1562. In the same year the monastery
library at Fleury was sacked and it was at this time that many of its manuscripts were
scattered-some of them ending up in the Vatican. Thus, it is fairly certain that the Romanus
was at Tours during Oliver's lifetime and so could have been seen by him.

The final manuscript is the Bambergensis (Bamberg Class. 35). Copied in the early

eleventh century, in France, from a hypothetical derivative of the Romanus, it found its way
to Bamberg where it had Book 30 added to it. This was done by the same scribe who copied
the fourth Decade at Bamberg and thus a latest date of 1100 can be deduced for its arrival. As
the manuscript has been at Bamberg since then Oliver may have seen it on a visit from his
own base at Paderborn which is only 150 miles away.

So where does this leave Oliver of Paderborn's invention? The evidence above is not,

of course, conclusive and it still remains a possibility that this is simply a case of different
people arriving at the same solution to similar problems. However, given the similarity of
Oliver's engine to the sambucae of the Ancient World and the number of ways he could have
read about them, it seems more likely that, in this case, he put his reading to good use. Of
course, if this is the case, he still showed great perspicacity in remembering Livy's description
of a sambuca and from it producing a viable piece of military hardware. It would be wrong to
belittle his achievement. Bernard of Chartres, in his famous metaphor, said that medieval
scholars were `but dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants.' of which it would be difficult
to find a better example.

[11]

Footnotes

1. Oliver of Paderborn, The capture of Damietta, trans. J.J. Gavigan, Philadelphia 1948,
reprinted in Christian society and the Crusades, 1198-1229, ed. E. Peters, Philadelphia 1971,
Chap. 12.

2. V. Norman, The Medieval Soldier, London, 1971. See especially Chap. 12.

3. Oliver of Paderborn, The Capture of Damietta, Chap. 10.

4. Quintus Curtius, History of Alexander, trans. J.C Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library 1948,

IV 3.14.

5. Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire, trans. W.R. Paton, Loeb Classical Library

1923, Book VIII 4.

6. See the chapter on Vegetius in A. Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages, Oxford
1978, pp. 127-30. In addition P. Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, trans. Michael Jones,
Oxford, Blackwell 1984, p. 211 mentions a device used by Charles the Bold at the siege of
Neuss in 1474-5. „It was a type of movable tower furnished with a ladder some sixty feet high
which „lowered like a drawbridge‟ and could be fastened onto the wall at the moment of
assault.‟

7. Vegetius, Epitoma Rei Militaris, trans. L.F Stelton, New York, 1990 IV 21.

8. Vitruvius, De Architectura, trans. F. Granger, Loeb Classical Library 1934, X 16.9.

9. Livy, Ab Urbe Conditur, trans. F.G Moore, Loeb Classical Library 1951, Book XXIV 34.
6-7.

10. I would like to thank Dr. J. Briscoe of the University of Manchester for his help with the
following. For a more detailed treatment see Text and Transmission, a survey of the Latin
classics, ed. L. D Reynolds, Oxford 1983.

11. For further information on ancient sambucae and how they were constructed see J.G
Landels, “Ship-shape and sambuca fashion”, Journal of Hellenic Studies, lxxxvi (1966), 69-
77.

From Nottingham Medieval Studies vol. 37 (1993). We thank the

Institute for Medieval

Studies, University of Nottingham

for giving us permission to republish this article.

http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/francis.htm