The Flaws In The Movie Kingdom Of Heaven

In response to the use of castles and fortresses, siege weapons were created. Siege weapons ranged from short range weapons such as the battering ram to longer range ones like the trebuchet or the ballista. The battering ram was usually a big shed with an armored roof and wheels to protect the men inside operating a thick beam with an iron head hung from the roof that was swung into enemy walls to bring them down. The siege tower, a wheeled tower filled with men that would be used to get over the walls, also saw its use during this time. The trebuchet was used for longer range, the missiles launched by the trebuchet ranged from using dead bodies of animals or people to spread disease, a primitive example of biological warfare, to using large boulders to take down fortress walls. In response

By the fourteenth century, improvements in the range and power of the crossbow had made it an indispensable tool of war, and arguably the weapon of the cites and the seas. Time and time again in the Crusades, the crossbow, and not force of the knight in mêlée, proved the decisive factor. However, although mounted crossbowmen were used extensively in Spain, crossbowmen could not maneuver quickly while shooting, and this meant that they were vulnerable while used, for example, (by the Ottomans at Necropolis and the English at Aginour but the archer simply could not hold open ground against a well-performed cavalry charge.

Castles were extremely important during 1066 – 1500 and they changed overtime to get more protection. A castle is a fortification that was used in the middle ages to protect territory against an invasion. They were important during these times because many kings and lords wanted to show off how wealthy they are and they used them as bases, controlling their land and people from a higher point.

The invention of the powerful artillery guns would change man 's role in warring engagements. The artillery guns at first were very limited by their own design. The guns were very heavy and had to be transported by water, which meant that only towns and fortresses that were close to a body of water could be attacked with artillery also known as the cannon. There were also some fortresses that were impervious to the early cannon attacks based on strong designs or natural defenses. The French were able to penetrate the round shaped castles and large walls during the late 1400s by using concentrated fire of several small guns instead of a few large ones.

These past few weeks, everyone in the tenth grade has been learning about the crusades. The people, weapons, food, diseases, and technological advances (or disadvantages since it was the Dark Age) were all taught to us and now it is time to put it to the test. We learned that the crusades affected all three religions that have ties to Jerusalem, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. We watched Kingdom of Heaven, a historical fiction movie based on the crusades. The time of the story that we see is based between the second and third crusade. Although the movie had many historically correct parts, there were also a lot of inaccuracies. My job is to show you the inaccuracies and what would have actually happened during that time if that crusade had actually happened. I will be touching the topics of weaponry and how they used it, who Balian actually is, and what people actually knew during that time period.

The first records of counterweight trebuchets began appearing in the 12th century. Proving to be an excellent siege weapon, many militaries began using this. Though stone-throwing artillery had been employed by both the Greeks and Romans, they were usually powered by torsion or tension; the trebuchet was the first war machine to use gravity and leverage to fire projectiles. They were used widely during the Crusades, in which the European militaries, especially the French, used the trebuchet to lay siege to Muslim cities in the hopes of capturing the “holy land.”

There are many ways that kingdoms defended themselves with things like moats, bridges, walls. (Morris & Exploring-Castles, n.d.). Luckily for the attackers there are ways to get pass defences such as battering rams for heavy doors. Also mining was used to go under a defensive wall. If you thought that chemical warfare was a new thing then you are wrong. In medieval times if a castle had wooden structures you were in grave danger of having it set on fire. Biological warfare was also used in medieval times. Diseases were a very dangerous way

Castles began to be built with stone instead of timber and became stronger to withstand sieges. For example, castles included drawbridges and other features such as ditches, rivers and moats were built to encircle the castle. As the construction of castles improved and new innovations were integrated, concentric circle castles emerged in the 12th century. These were castles with an inner wall and an outer wall, hence the name, concentric, which means a circle inside another circle. The inner wall was higher than the outer wall which allowed archers to shoot over the outer walls and the outer wall was thicker to have a strong first line of defense. More important structures were built within the inner wall and the multiple walls construction made the castle more durable during the event of a siege or an attack. When an attack occurred, the concentric design of the castle resulted in many attackers getting struck in the middle of the inner and outer walls. The soldiers defended the castle took advantage of the situation and the attacker would be bombarded with traps, hot liquid and murder

At the battles of Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415), English armies killed and pushed through dozens of troops with the longbow as their main weapon of defense. Giant barrages of arrows are fired from the archers that fill the skies with giant dark clouds of arrows raining on the enemy troops. The longbow helped the english win and conquer many wars and battles. The most famous of the battle, the 100 years war, was actually not won by the english but the longbow helped them control the battlefield. Although the longbow had about the same firing speed as the crossbow, The amount of speed and accuracy the longbow could put out was way more superior than that of the french troops.

Parker states, during the Hundred Year’s War, that major states of western Europe could reduce the vertical defense of a fortress to rubble within days, whereas a similar siege without gunpowder-backed artillery could take up to 6 months. It wasn’t until almost 100 years later when Niccolo Machiavelli, using his third technique of installing modern fortifications, provided an adaptation to bombardments that would allow fortresses to defy even the largest armies of the day. Machiavelli called for a fortress that reduced its height and increased the depths of existing walls, which would allow for them to absorb incoming fire more effectively.

They came up with poles with hooks at the end that would hook on the rider's armor and pull them or make him fall off. They also made the halberg which was a axe, spear, and hook all in one. They would use the hook to pull riders off of there horse or stab them on the horse.("Medieval Weapons."). There was attacks that they would go for a castle. They would need special weapons, they were called siege weapons. They were the mongole, battering ram, siege tower, catapult, and trebuchet. The mongole was like the catapult in the sense it launched projectiles but they were different in their design. The mongole was a giant crossbow. The siege tower was used to cross walls of castles they would make it the same height or even taller than the wall they had to go over and it would protect anybody inside with ladders for the attack. The battering ram is simply a tree truck held up by rope or chain to a frame covered in wooden or sometimes steel in spots. It was used to protect the multiple soldiers inside that would work the trunk back and forth to hit doors or castle gates down so they could get in. The trunk would have a spike

The Siege of a Castle was a guarantied victory, but it took a long time of patience. Patience was the key to victory with this strategy, however it was scarce in the battlefield, because of the angry, impatient soldiers waiting to get home to their families. The city walls were suppose to be fortifying a position that could not be easily overrun, and that it could be strong enough to enable the defense to maintain that position for a long period of time. Siege of a fort, castle, or city walls had four basic concepts. The Sieging technique was directly directed towards these four. In order for the attackers to get inside they would have to go over the wall, tear a passage through the wall, dig a tunnel underneath it, or just wait until the defenders surrendered.

2017). From there, the Moors and the Ottoman Turks created their own forms of firearms. The Moors fought the Europeans in Spain for control of the area, and not even a year after that war the first firearms were finished in Italy. Soon after that the first cannons began to appear, the earliest to appear was from the Turks, they created the bombard. Which were these huge cannon, bigger than one could imagine. The bombards would blow down castle wall this was one of the key weapons that caused the city to fall. With it, fell the recipe of another type of gunpowder, which was mostly used as an early form of flame thrower (Sammon, J. 2012).

The Kingdom of Heaven is an epic film directed and produced by Ridley Scott, and written by William Monahan, filmed in Morocco. The story of the Kingdom of Heaven is set during the Crusades of the 12th century, and is basically about the life of Balian, a French blacksmith, who defends the Kingdom of Jerusalem against the Muslims and reclaims the city from the Christians. In this story, I could travel back in time to experience life during the era of the Crusades and learn more about the perspective of duty between the Christians and Muslims.

“Children of Heaven” is a film that portrayed a story mainly about a brother and sister in Iran and a missing pair of shoes. The plot brought into perspective a different culture both within the family environment and between the rich and poor neighborhoods. In addition, the film described a variety of people’s attitudes when they encounter setbacks. The most significant aspects of the film were the social factors that distinguished fate, and the embodiment of the family value that displayed precious love. Moreover, the effect of environment, which depicted the different aspects of the community.