Once they would reach the wall they would dig under the foundation and replace foundation supports with wooden beams. In this type of mining armies would employ skilled miners to build a tunnel starting at their camp and ending just below the enemy’s castle wall. They would try to collapse the walls like in sapping but would use tunnels like the first. The most effective type of siege mining was a mixture of the first two. The other disadvantage of sapping was that the sapper would be completely exposed to enemy fire and could be shot before they could collapse the wall. Later on castle began to be built with rounded edges to prevent sapping. The corners were the weakest part of the wall and the easiest to collapse by sapping. Sapping was most effective when used to collapse the corners of castles. Under certain conditions it could be quite effective. Then the would undermine the foundation and hopefully collapse the wall. Sappers would go directly up against the castle wall and begin digging down against the wall until they got before the foundation. Sapping was a viable way to attack a castle. This usually didn’t work well because there would be a whole army waiting on the inside that would kill the miners with ease. Digging tunnels all the way under the walls and into the castle was probably the least effective way of mining. The least popular of the 3 types of mining that I mentioned was the first. The third way was called sapping, which was digging directly around the walls and collapsing them. The second way was to dig a tunnel below the walls and then collapse the tunnel which would collapse the walls. This provided access to the inside but usually led to a sword battle where the defendants would have the upper hand. One was to build a mine that went all the way under the castle wall and surfaced inside the castle. There were a couple different ways to mine an enemy castle. Mining attempted to destroy castle walls from beneath. All of the siege weapons that I have talked about so far consisted of destroying castle walls from above. Siege mining, if used correctly, was one of the most effective and successful ways to attack a castle.
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