THE SİEGES İN LEO VI'S TACTİCA

In a time span that transcends the ages, The Roman Empire, which existed and succeeded in creating a civilization began to shrink towards its eastern territories as other power centers began to have a say on the stage of history, and entered into a struggle for existence that was quite difficult from time to time. However, through a solid defense strategy, the empire managed to overcome this difficult period and sustain itself into the 15th century. Within this strategy, which was fundamentally designed to preserve what already existed, fortified settlements came to the forefront, leading to battles often transforming into sieges around these centers. With this transformation, siege procedures, which embodied an ancient tradition, experienced significant development within the Eastern Roman military system.Medieval warfare, which predominanatly took place in the style of sieges, had a complex structure as they required the development of multidimensional military strategy and tactics, whether in offensive or defensive positions. Moreover, achieving victory required fundamental and advanced engineering expertise, such as designing war machines, performing mathematical calculations, possessing knowledge of materials, developing tunneling techniques, and understanding the relationship between statics and mechanics. When additional fields such as finance, psychology, sociology, and intelligence were incorporated into this sophisticated structure, the need for considerable knowledge and expertise emerged. In this context, the fundamental dynamic determining the outcome of sieges relied on achieving proficiency in many areas.Chronicles, which recorded the events of the past, provide valuable information about the progression of events by describing the sieges in which the Eastern Roman Empire was involved. In addition to these, another type of writing utilized in the study of military history is instructional military handbooks, such as taktika, strategika, poliorkétika, strategema and naumachiká. Among these, poliorkétika in particular present strategic and tactical information to be followed during sieges, both for besieging and defending, in the form of directives. Rather than an analysis, this text seeks to describe the narrative on sieges found in the taktika. This study is expected to form an opinion on the anthropology of the battles that took place around fortified positions.