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. 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. 17) combined both arrangements. The first kind shot most
steadily and truly; the second with more force.
Those machines, in which the force of men pulling cords took the place of
the counterpoise, could not discharge such weighty shot, but they could be
worked more rapidly, and no doubt could be made of lighter scantling. Mr.
Hewitt points out a curious resemblance between this kind of Trebuchet and
the apparatus used on the Thames to raise the cargo from the hold of a
collier.
The Emperor Napoleon deduces from certain passages in mediaeval writers
that the Mangonel was similar to the Trebuchet, but of lighter structure
and power. But often certainly the term Mangonel seems to be used
generically for all machines of this class. Marino Sanudo uses no word but
Machina, which he appears to employ as the Latin equivalent of
Mangonel, whilst the machine which he describes is a Trebuchet with
moveable counterpoise. The history of the word appears to be the
following. The Greek word [Greek: magganon], "a piece of witchcraft," came
to signify a juggler's trick, an unexpected contrivance (in modern slang
"a jim"), and so specially a military engine. It seems to have reached
this specific meaning by the time of Hero the Younger, who is believed to
have written in the first half of the 7th century. From the form [Greek:
magganikon] the Orientals got Manganik and Manjanik,[6] whilst the
Franks adopted Mangona and Mangonella. Hence the verbs manganare and
amanganare, to batter and crush with such engines, and eventually our
verb "to mangle." Again, when the use of gunpowder rendered these warlike
engines obsolete, perhaps their ponderous counterweights were utilised in
the peaceful arts of the laundry, and hence gave us our substantive "the
Mangle" (It. Mangano)!
The Emperor Napoleon, when Prince President, caused some interesting
experiments in the matter of mediaeval artillery to be carried out at
Vincennes, and a full-sized trebuchet was constructed there. With a shaft
of 33 feet 9 inches in length, having a permanent counterweight of 3300
lbs. and a pivoted counterweight of 6600 lbs. more, the utmost effect
attained was the discharge of an iron 24-kilo. shot to a range of 191
yards, whilst a 12-1/2-inch shell, filled with earth, ranged to 131 yards.
The machine suffered greatly at each discharge, and it was impracticable
to increase the counterpoise to 8000 kilos., or 17,600 lbs. as the Prince
desired. It was evident that the machine was not of sufficiently massive
structure. But the officers in charge satisfied themselves that, with
practice in such constructions and the use of very massive timber, even
the exceptional feats recorded of mediaeval engineers might be realised.
Such a case is that cited by Quatremere, from an Oriental author, of the
discharge of stones weighing 400 mans, certainly not less than 800 lbs.,
and possibly much more; or that of the Men of Bern, who are reported, when
besieging Nidau in 1388, to have employed trebuchets which shot daily into
the town upwards of 200 blocks weighing 12 cwt.
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