Leonardo da Vinci's application letter

Re:Leonardo da Vinci's application letter by rodionos on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @10:28AM (#10980492)

  Also, I will make covered vehicles, safe and unassailable,   
  which will penetrate the enemy and their artillery, 
  and there is no host of armed men so great that they would not break through it. 
  And behind these the infantry will be able to follow, quite uninjured and unimpeded.

I assume this covers tanks?

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Re:Leonardo da Vinci's application letter by VLM on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @11:43AM (#10981032)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_tower

Really the only thing that made defensive walls useful for sieges in that era was the fact no one had any decent portable fireproof siege towers, so most towers ended up burnt down, unless the city under siege literally ran out of things to light on fire and toss into the (wooden) tower.

Also see "moat".

Defensive troops on the walls were pretty good at tipping towers over with ropes or whatever, too.

You'll note like a good engineer he promises all the easy stuff like logs being pretty good at stopping arrows, and doesn't mention the unfixable parts like "it'll burn" or "it'll tip over".

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Re:Leonardo da Vinci's application letter by seren on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @10:34AM (#10980536)

Probably something like :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo%27s_fighting_vehicle

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