against the English cavalry) were scattered, to lacerate the feet of the advancing enemy. The whole circuit of these works was fourteen miles, and a similar series protected the troops from attack from without.[17] To come down to a period more interesting to modern readers, we find, in the middle ages, the same principles of operation followed, but in a ruder way, since neither men, nor money, nor science were so abundant among the nations who established kingdoms on the ruins of the western empire, as among the Romans; and, moreover, the turbulent independence of a feudal army, whose term of service was usually limited to a certain time, was unfitted for the severe labour, or the patient and continued watching, which the Roman legionaries cheerfully underwent. Still such skill as our ancestors of the middle ages had was borrowed from the Romans; they employed the same species of machines, towers, rams, and moveable galleries called cats, and the same or similar projectile engines, mentioned under the same names of catapultæ, onagri, scorpiones, &c., in the Latin authors of the eleventh and twelfth centuries; and mangonels, trebuchets, war–wolfs, &c. in the vernacular tongue. The first defence of a castle or city was usually a strong wooden palisade called the barriers; and at these many of the most obstinate contests and remarkable feats of arms recorded by Froissart and other chroniclers of the times took place. These being carried, the next step was to level the ground, drain or fill up the ditch, and prepare for bringing up the battering–rams or towers, or scaling–ladders, if it were thought fit to attempt an escalade. In the first crusade the headlong valour of the Christian knights endeavoured in vain to overleap the walls or force the gates of Jerusalem: time was required to construct two moving towers, and on the difficulty of procuring wood the fiction of the enchanted forest of Armida, in Tasso’s poem, is founded. The leader of the Genoese, one of the great maritime states of Italy, was the architect. This man begunne with wondrous art to make Not rammes, not mighty brakes, not slings alone, Wherewith the firm and solid walls to shake, To cast a dart, or throw a shaft or stone; But, framed of pines and firres, did undertake To build a forteresse huge, to which was none Yet ever like, whereof he clothed the sides Against the balles of fire with raw bulls’ hides. In mortisses and sockets framed just The beames, the studdes, and punchions joyned he fast; To beat the cities wall, beneath forth burst A ram with horned front; about her wast A bridge the engine from her side out thrust, Which on the wall, when need required, she cast; And on her top a turret small up stood, Strong, surely armed, and builded of like wood.