The conventional strategy against the fortress was to scale or breach its walls, using siege engines and battering rams. Often that meant first besieging it, creating around it circles known as “lines of circumvallation and contravallation” that would prevent supplies and reinforcements from coming in and the defenders from leaving. The city’s inhabitants would slowly starve and weaken, making it possible eventually to breach the walls and take the castle. These sieges tended to be quite long and bloody.
