Siege warfare

In siege warfare invented after 350 BC by engineers of Alexander the Great of Macedonia were the battering ram and the famous movable tower (turns on wheel) (See Fig on p 39 of Ref 69). Other inventions were mantelet, telenon and mural hook (See Figs on p 40 of Ref 69)... 

As soon as catapult machines were adapted to siege warfare, larger and more effective incendiary missiles were developed. The first incendiary missiles consisted of large stones coated with flammable materials, such as pitch, tar, sulfur, etc... 

The deliberate release of chemicals to produce toxic trauma has been familiar in warfare for more than 2000 years. In civil life, although there may have been coincidental exposure (e.g. in siege warfare), most acute toxic trauma up to the twentieth century would have been due to ingested poisonous substances. Since that time, civilians have been increasingly at risk from exposure to both agents of chemical warfare and toxic industrial chemicals. 

In the Middle Ages, chemical warfare was put to similar use as at the siege of Delium and such usage continued through to the fifteenth century. In 1456 an alchemist who prepared a poisonous mixture saved Christian Belgrade from the attacking Turks. The Christians dipped rags... 

Chemical warfare began in prehistoric times with the use of such weapons as poisoned arrows. Later, during the siege of Athens in about 400 BC, the Athenians were attacked by the Spartans with irritating sulfur dioxide, produced by burning sulfur with pitch upwind of the city. 

During the Crimean War, there were several proposals to initiate chemical warfare to assist the Allies, particularly to solve the stalemate during the siege of Sevastopol. In 1854, Lyon Playfair, a British chemist, proposed a cacodyl cyanide artillery shell for use primarily against enemy ships. The British Ordnance Department rejected the proposal as bad a mode of warfare as poisoning the wells of the enemy. 4(p22) Playfair s response outlined a different concept, which was used to justify chemical warfare into the next century ... 

B.C. Spartans forces use an early form of chemical warfare (CW) by burning wood soaked with pitch and sulfur at the siege of Plataea, thereby choking defenders. 

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