The Ordinary Shot Consisted Of Stones Carefully Rounded.
But for these
were substituted on occasion rough stones with fuses attached,[5] pieces
of red-hot iron, pots of fused metal, or casks full of Greek fire or of
foul matter to corrupt the air of the besieged place.
Thus carrion was
shot into Negropont from such engines by Mahomed II. The Cardinal
Octavian, besieging Modena in 1249, slings a dead ass into the town.
Froissart several times mentions such measures, as at the siege of Thin
l'Eveque on the Scheldt in 1340, when "the besiegers by their engines
flung dead horses and other carrion into the castle to poison the garrison
by their smell." In at least one instance the same author tells how a
living man, an unlucky messenger from the Castle of Auberoche, was caught
by the besiegers, thrust into the sling with the letters that he bore hung
round his neck, and shot into Auberoche, where he fell dead among his
horrified comrades. And Lipsius quotes from a Spanish Chronicle the story
of a virtuous youth, Pelagius, who, by order of the Tyrant Abderramin, was
shot across the Guadalquivir, but lighted unharmed upon the rocks beyond.
Ramon de Muntaner relates how King James of Aragon, besieging Majorca in
1228, vowed vengeance against the Saracen King because he shot Christian
prisoners into the besiegers' camp with his trebuchets (pp. 223-224). We
have mentioned one kind of corruption propagated by these engines; the
historian Wassaf tells of another.
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