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The trebuchet was the king of
all medieval siege weapons, and in many ways the perfection
of such. It would take the invention and military use
of gun powder and cannons to make the trebuchet obsolete.
The trebuchet had two primary uses: one to batter masonry,
or other fortifications, and one to hurl projectiles
over a wall. Since warfare was a common way of life
from the early Medieval ages, this made the trebuchet
a major asset to any invading army.
It is generally believed the
trebuchet was invented in China in centuries BC, but
it never showed in Europe until around 500 AD. In Europe
trebuchets were first used in Italy in the 1100s, and
were introduced to England in 1216 during the Siege
of Dover. During the siege of Stirling Castle in 1304,
Edward Longshanks ordered his engineers to make a giant
trebuchet for the English army, named "Warwolf."
No details of its design survive.
A trebuchet works by using weight
and counterweight. The weapon is loaded, and the counterweight
helps to launch the stone, or whatever is used as a
projectile. When the projectile is close to a 45°
angle with the horizontal, the free end of the sling
slips from a hook, and if all goes well, the missile
flies towards its target.
The trebuchet was used by invading
Mongol hordes, who taught the Europeans about germ warfare.
When the Mongols had corpses infected with the plague,
they would launch the bodies over the castle walls until
the disease ravaged the besieged city. Trebuchets could
be used to launch stones into walls, or firey projectiles
into the towns themselves. Trebuchets were used by all
invading armies on fortified cities: the Spanish used
them on the Moors, the English on the French (and vice-versa),
the Crusaders against the Muslims.
 Firing a trebuchet was not a
safe job in battle, though. Because of the time required
to load the sling and to raise the counterweight, a
large trebuchet's rate of fire was very slow: often
not more than a couple of shots an hour. Stones were
normally used, but there were many objects thrown: dead
animals, beehives, the severed heads of captured enemies,
small stones burned into clay balls which would explode
on impact like grapeshot, barrels of burning tar, or
even unsuccessful negotiators, prisoners of war, and
spies catapulted alive. The psychological effects could
be as powerful as the stones themselves.
Trebuchets were powerful weapons,
with a range of up to about 300 yards. The range of
most trebuchets was actually shorter than an English
longbow in an archer’s hands, making it somewhat
dangerous to be a trebuchet operator during a siege.
This meant that sieges could be long drawn-out affairs,
sometimes lasting for years at a time. Even with wheels
to make them mobile, the trebuchets are so heavy as
to still not be very movable. A trebuchet crew too close
to the castle were sitting ducks.
Still, there was no weapon that
could bring down a castle like a trebuchet, and this
weapon still lives in the minds of gamers, as anyone
who has played Age of Empires, or Medieval Total War
can attest, and those games demonstrated how much easier
it was to bring down a gate with a siege weapon then
without, and the trebuchet was the king of all siege
weapons. |
