architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...

, the talus is a feature of some late medieval

castles A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...

, especially prevalent in crusader constructions. It consists of a battered (sloping) face at the base of a fortified wall.

Feature

The slope acts as an effective defensive measure in two ways. First, conventional siege equipment is less effective against a wall with a talus. Scaling ladders may be unable to reach the top of the walls and are also more easily broken due to the bending stresses caused by the angle they are forced to adopt. Siege towers cannot approach closer than the base of the talus, and their gangplank may be unable to cover the horizontal span of the talus, rendering them useless. Furthermore, defenders are able to drop rocks over the walls, which will shatter on the talus, spraying a hail of

shrapnel Shrapnel may refer to: Military * Shrapnel shell, explosive artillery munitions, generally for anti-personnel use * Shrapnel (fragment), a hard loose material Popular culture * ''Shrapnel'' (Radical Comics) * ''Shrapnel'', a game by Adam ...

into any attackers massed at the base of the wall.

Feature

See also

References

Further reading