When The Garrison Of Dehli Refused To Open The Gates To Alauddin Khilji After The Murder Of His Uncle, Firuz (1296), He Loaded His Mangonels With Bags Of Gold And Shot Them Into The Fort, A Measure Which Put An End To The Opposition.

Ibn Batuta, forty years later, describes Mahomed Tughlak as entering Dehli accompanied by elephants carrying small balistae (ra'adai), from which gold and silver pieces were shot among the crowd.

And the same king, when he had given the crazy and cruel order that the population of Dehli should evacuate the city and depart to Deogir, 900 miles distant, having found two men skulking behind, one of whom was paralytic and the other blind, caused the former to be shot from a mangonel. (I.B. III. 395, 315.)

Some old drawings represent the shaft as discharging the shot from a kind of spoon at its extremity, without the aid of a sling (e.g. fig. 13); but it may be doubted if this was actually used, for the sling was essential to the efficiency of the engine. The experiments and calculations of Dufour show that without the sling, other things remaining the same, the range of the shot would be reduced by more than a half.

In some of these engines the counterpoise, consisting of a timber case filled with stones, sand, or the like, was permanently fixed to the butt-end of the shaft. This seems to have been the Trebuchet proper. In others the counterpoise hung free on a pivot from the yard; whilst a third kind (as in fig.

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