content_output-055_2 (Q6277)

The battering-ram was the most important engine of war at sieges until the middle of the fifteenth century. Some of the larger rams were far more powerful than the largest of the early cannon: it has been computed that one worked by a thousand men had a force equal only to that from a 36-pounder at close range. In the Middle Ages the rams used were smaller, and other engines were used in conjunction with them to make breaches in the walls; some of these are shown in the accompanying illustration from Grose's "Military Antiquities."