The 6 Craziest Sieges in History

When you're sieging a tower, you have three choices: climb the wall, knock it down or hang out until everyone inside starves to death. But when the besieged have a bridge that leads to food and tower-building equipment, well then shit. So after two months of watching the tower get taller and the people inside it get fatter, the Vikings came up with a very Viking plan: fill the river with dead bodies so they could attack from every side. I assume everyone here has tried building an island out of cadavers, but I'm still going to list all the reasons this was a bad idea: screaming ghosts.

Plan B was slightly better. The Vikings lit a few of their boats on fire and aimed them at the bridge. With cheers raised to their Norse gods, the flaming Viking boats crashed into the bridge and ... and it was OK? Goddammit. If you ask me, the fact that the bridge didn't explode is thermodynamic proof that Thor is gay.

The Vikings went back to ramming the tower while hot oil melted them, until several days later when a heavy rain raised the river and destroyed the fire-ball weakened bridge supports with a flood of dead bodies. Holy crap! I take it back, Thor. Awesome!

With only 12 men left in the tower and no access to supplies, the Franks spent their last days huddled in a Middle Age zombie movie. It was also going pretty badly for the people inside the Paris walls. I'm not a virologist, but when you have thousands of Viking armpits in your river and no place to bury your dead, you're going to catch a sniffle.

While Paris festered, most of the Vikings went north. History books aren't completely clear on what they did up there, but it rhymes with rape. The pillaged French people finally got word to Charles, who I'm sure you remember was Fat, that they broke the fourth rule of European war: dropping hot oil on Vikings and then losing. Charles sent the French army, and with perfect military precision, they gave the Vikings 700 pounds of silver to leave. It was such an act of unmanliness that from that day forward, fat people were cursed to never again see their own cocks. It might be difficult to explain in modern terms how politically suicidal this ransom was, but it would be like Obama digging up Arlington cemetery to get parts for a Nicolas Cage wax figure museum.

Five thousand Mexican soldiers surrounded the Alamo and started bombarding the 150 men inside. Low on gunpowder and impossibly far from reinforcements, the Texans only had one thing going for them: They are really good at shooting people crossing borders. Texans might not look good in bathing suits, but they hit what they're aimin' at. Santa Anna kept his men back as far as possible, but his cannons weren't doing much and there were huge gaps in his lines. William Travis took advantage of this and sent riders in the night who came back with 30 men. Not regular men, but the kind of hardasses who would sneak into a circle of Mexicans to stand where their cannonballs are landing. Now with 180 men, the Americans' odds went from impossible to stupid. And we fuckin' like those odds.

For 13 days, the cannons beat away at the Alamo until Santa Anna finally decided to suck it up and charge. The Americans knew that once this happened, the best they could do was go out big, and they stuck to that plan. The men at the Alamo died so hard that San Antonians can still hear their spirits at night, punching the ghosts of bears. The restless dead of the Alamo forced Parker Brothers to completely redesign Texas Ouija boards.

Speaking of tactics, a Zulu army forms up like a buffalo -- the "head" attacks first while the "horns" circle around and flank the enemy. The "loins" stay back to cut off the enemy's escape and communications. I'm not sure if they're called the loins because they fuck you or if that's only a happy coincidence. At the ass-kicking of Isandlwana, the Zulus didn't even need their 4,000-man loins corps. The British were too busy leaking from assegai holes to escape, so the 4,000 bored Zulus went looking for a fight. They jogged 20 miles to attack a mission station called Rorke's Drift because that's what you do when you're a division made up entirely of loins.

The 150 troops at Rorke's Drift knew the Zulu were coming, and they also knew their walls were mostly made out of grain bags. Their first plan was to ditch the mission and escape, but the only thing dumber than trying to fight 4,000 Zulus is trying to outrun 4,000 Zulus.

The Zulu impi got to Rorke's Drift after their 32K and charged in full force. The British kept them off the wall as long as they could with rifles, then fell back in a shrinking perimeter defense when that failed. The Zulus took heavy casualties as they constantly climbed over more things, which goes to show that if you kill a couple thousand of their men with spears, the British suddenly have enough respect for you to not be retarded.

Reports from the fight were unkind to the accuracy of Zulu riflemen, but after 11 hours of hard fighting the British soldiers shot 19,100 bullets and killed less than 300 men. Hey, British, those are Stormtrooper numbers. Three-hundred deaths is what you expect from 19,100 rollerblade rentals, not 19,100 bullets. Still, their wanton A-Teamery was good enough to hold back the onslaught of Zulu warriors while only suffering 15 deaths.

When the Zulus finally broke off their attack at 4 a.m., 500 wounded men were left behind. This gave the British troops the same idea people get when they see a cheerleading competition: 500 murders. They got to stabbing, but unknown to the fine gentlemen, a different group of Zulus was approaching Rorke's Drift. They'd been marching for almost a week straight, hadn't eaten in two days, and promptly left when they saw a bunch of half-dead white people mutilating 800 corpses with bayonets. And

By this point, 70 percent of Crete's population had been killed, there were only about 3600 soldiers left, no supplies and their own boats were committing suicide. After 21 fucking years of eating artillery and rats, Candia surrendered without even waiting for authorization from the Venitian Senate. The news was so sad that everyone still blames it for the death of Pope Clement IX. I don't know what everyone did as they fled from Candia, but I imagine it was tough for 20-something Venetians to get a job when their only education and job experience was "trying not to die."

The Tyrians sent out boats to attack the bridge builders, and Alexander fought them back by constructing huge catapult-armed siege towers. As the bridge got closer to their city, the Tyrians came up with some genius of their own. They filled a ship with oil, lit it on fire and rammed it into Alexander's towers. It turned months of hard work into a bonfire, and a pissed off Alexander knew he'd need boats.

Luckily, all the cities he conquered on the way there had boats, so once he had those all he had to do was fit them with ramps, cranes and battering rams and invent the very concept of amphibious warfare. He did, because he was Great, but unfortunately the six months he spent building a pointless bridge under constant harassment made him bitter. Instead of welcoming the conquered Tyrians into his army he crucified them and sold tens of thousands of the rest into slavery. And he didn't seem to cheer up at all after his victory in Gaza which turned into a post-apocalyptic rapefest. By the next year, Alexander was killing prisoners and naming cities after himself all across Asia and became convinced he was directly descended from Apollo. I hope the Tyrians are happy -- that stupid little unconquerable island city of theirs managed to turn a guy from Alexander the Great into Alexander the Douchebag.

Shooting at the ATF showed a surprising lack of foresight from the man whose goal in life was having 140 wives. Oh, if only women had qualities that would make being married to 140 of them seem like an absurd idea! It would really help me write a joke if that many women syncing their cycles together caused every wolf for 50 miles to run straight for their house. Man, I really think I'd have something to go on if the sex life of a man with 140 wives was getting halfway in before 139 people needed jars opened.

After the initial shooting, the FBI started their 50-day siege. They set up loud speakers and blasted bad pop music and the sounds of dying rabbits to fuck with the cultists. David Koresh was himself a musician and he turned the siege into the world's worst battle of the bands when he played his own songs right back at the FBI. His music, coincidentally, was exactly like a mix of bad pop and dying rabbits. David Koresh's songs are less tough than dildo chafing. After hearing him sing, I think the only reason he wanted 140 wives was so he lived in a house with a handbag for any outfit.

The siege of Waco dragged on and on. The FBI had 25 fucking negotiators, and none of them spoke Crazy. Every day, the news told us how many hundreds of thousands of dollars it was costing taxpayers to stand outside a lunatic's home and play Nancy Sinatra songs at him. It was the perfect example of how we'll never see another classic siege. Never again will someone build a tower and roll it up to a parapat to brain a man dropping burning pitch on a battering ram. We have thermal imaging, bunker buster missiles and Seal Team Six (© Disney 2011). The only thing keeping Waco from being wiped off the map was the fact that it was filled with pregnant women and children, because neither of those things can be held responsible for their actions.

Finally, on April 19, 1993, tanks smashed holes in the walls and filled the place with tear gas. The FBI did this for six hours and still nobody came out. This was impressive because six hours in tear gas time is like seven, maybe eight hours in regular time. No one knows exactly what went on inside, only that it was insane and everything started catching on fire. I take back some of the things I said about David Koresh. This wasn't just a guy that managed to deal with multiple wives, he managed to deal with multiple women stubborn enough to burn alive in tear gas rather than admit they were wrong. The fact that his nuts survived one day into that relationship is the craziest part of this whole story.

Seanbaby draws Nintendo graphics and writes jokes. You can enjoy him on Twitter, Facebook, and Seanbaby.com.

For more Seanbaby, check out The 10 Most Butt References Per Second in Music History and 7 Super Powers That Steven Seagal Actually Believes He Has.