Page 16 - COLLAGE

2.3. MIDDLE AGES

During the Middle Ages, pontoons were used alongside regular boats to span rivers during
campaigns, or to link communities which lacked resources to build permanent bridges.

The Hun army of Attila built a bridge across the Nišava during the siege of Naissus in 442

to bring heavy siege towers within range of the city. Sassanid forces crossed
the Euphrates on a quickly-built pontoon bridge during the siege of Kallinikos in 542.

The Ostrogothic Kingdom constructed a fortified bridge across the Tiber during the Siege
of Rome in 545 to block Byzantine general Belisarius' relief flotillas to the city. The Avar

Khaganate forced Syriac-Roman engineers to construct two pontoon bridges across
the Sava during the Siege of Sirmium in 580 to completely surround the city with their

troops and siege works.

Emperor Heraclius crossed the Bosporus on horseback on a large pontoon bridge in 638.

The army of the Umayyad Caliphate built a pontoon bridge over the Bosporus in 717 during

the Siege of Constantinople (717–718). The Carolingian army of Charlemagne constructed
a portable pontoon bridge of anchored boats bound together and used it to cross the Danube

during campaigns against the Avar Khaganate in the 790s. Charlemagne's army built two
fortified pontoon bridges across the Elbe in 789 during a campaign against the

Slavic Veleti. The German army of Otto the Great employed three pontoon bridges, made
from pre-fabricated materials, to rapidly cross the Recknitz river at the Battle on the Raxa in

955 and win decisively against the Slavic Obotrites. Tenth-Century

German Ottonian capitularies demanded that royal fiscal estates maintain watertight, river-
fordable wagons for purposes of war.

The Danish Army of Cnut the Great completed a pontoon bridge across the Helge
River during the Battle of Helgeå in 1026. Crusader forces constructed a pontoon bridge

across the Orontes river to expedite resupply during the Siege of Antioch in December
1097. According to the chronicles, the earliest floating bridge across the Dnieper River was

built in 1115. It was located near Vyshhorod, Kiev. Bohemian troops under the command
of Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor crossed the Adige in 1157 on a pontoon bridge built

in advance by the people of Verona on orders of the German Emperor.

The French Royal Army of King Philip II of France constructed a pontoon bridge across

the Seine to seize Les Andelys from the English at the Siege of Château Gaillard in 1203.

During the Fifth Crusade, the Crusaders built two pontoon bridges across the Nile at

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