"Another schyp was laden yet
With an engyne hyghte Robinet,
(It was Richardys o mangonel)
And all the takyl that thereto fel."
Twenty-four machines, captured from the Saracens by St. Lewis in his first
partial success on the Nile, afforded material for stockading his whole
camp. A great machine which cumbered the Tower of St. Paul at Orleans, and
was dismantled previous to the celebrated defence against the English,
furnished 26 cart-loads of timber. (Abulf. Ann. Muslem, V. 95-97;
Weber, II. 56; Michel's Joinville, App. p. 278; Jollois, H. du Siege
d Orleans, 1833, p. 12.)
The number of such engines employed was sometimes very great. We have
seen that St. Lewis captured 24 at once, and these had been employed in
the field. Villehardouin says that the fleet which went from Venice to the
attack of Constantinople carried more than 300 perriers and mangonels,
besides quantities of other engines required for a siege (ch. xxxviii). At
the siege of Acre in 1291, just referred to, the Saracens, according to
Makrizi, set 92 engines in battery against the city, whilst Abulfaraj says
300, and a Frank account, of great and small, 666. The larger ones are
said to have shot stones of "a kantar and even more." (Makrizi, III.
125; Reinaud, Chroniques Arabes, etc., p. 570; De Excidio Urbis
Acconis, in Marlene and Durand, V. 769.)
How heavy a mangonade was sometimes kept up may be understood from the
account of the operations on the Nile, already alluded to.
