Zara in 1346, their Engineer, Master Francesco delle Barche, shot into the
city stones of 3000 lbs. weight.[8] In this case the unlucky engineer was
"hoist with his own petard," for while he stood adjusting one of his
engines, it went off, and shot him into the town.
With reference to such cases the Emperor calculates that a stone of 3000
lbs. weight might be shot 77 yards with a counterpoise of 36,000 lbs.
weight, and a shaft 65 feet long. The counterpoise, composed of stone shot
of 55 lbs. each, might be contained in a cubical case of about 5-1/2 feet
to the side. The machine would be preposterous, but there is nothing
impossible about it. Indeed in the Album of Villard de Honnecourt, an
architect of the 13th century, which was published at Paris in 1858, in
the notes accompanying a plan of a trebuchet (from which Professor Willis
restored the machine as it is shown in our fig. 19), the artist remarks:
"It is a great job to heave down the beam, for the counterpoise is very
heavy. For it consists of a chest full of earth which is 2 great toises in
length, 8 feet in breadth, and 12 feet in depth"! (p. 203).
Such calculations enable us to understand the enormous quantities of
material said to have been used in some of the larger mediaeval machines.
Thus Abulfeda speaks of one used at the final capture of Acre, which was
entrusted to the troops of Hamath, and which formed a load for 100 carts,
of which one was in charge of the historian himself. The romance of
Richard Coeur de Lion tells how in the King's Fleet an entire ship was
taken up by one such machine with its gear: -
"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. The King was
trying to run a dam across a branch of the river, and had protected the
head of his work by "cat-castles" or towers of timber, occupied by
archers, and these again supported by trebuchets, etc., in battery. "And,"
says Jean Pierre Sarrasin, the King's Chamberlain, "when the Saracens saw
what was going on, they planted a great number of engines against ours,
and to destroy our towers and our causeway they shot such vast quantities
of stones, great and small, that all men stood amazed. They slung stones,
and discharged arrows, and shot quarrels from winch-arblasts, and pelted
us with Turkish darts and Greek fire, and kept up such a harassment of
every kind against our engines and our men working at the causeway, that
it was horrid either to see or to hear. Stones, darts, arrows, quarrels,
and Greek fire came down on them like rain."
The Emperor Napoleon observes that the direct or grazing fire of the great
arblasts may be compared to that of guns in more modern war, whilst the
mangonels represent mortar-fire. And this vertical fire was by no means
contemptible, at least against buildings of ordinary construction. At the
sieges of Thin l'Eveque in 1340, and Auberoche in 1344, already cited,
Froissart says the French cast stones in, night and day, so as in a few
days to demolish all the roofs of the towers, and none within durst
venture out of the vaulted basement.
The Emperor's experiments showed that these machines were capable of
surprisingly accurate direction. And the mediaeval histories present some
remarkable feats of this kind. Thus, in the attack of Mortagne by the men
of Hainault and Valenciennes (1340), the latter had an engine which was a
great annoyance to the garrison; there was a clever engineer in the
garrison who set up another machine against it, and adjusted it so well
that the first shot fell within 12 paces of the enemy's engine, the second
fell near the box, and the third struck the shaft and split it in two.
Already in the first half of the 13th century, a French poet (quoted by
Weber) looks forward with disgust to the supercession of the feats of
chivalry by more mechanical methods of war: -
"Chevaliers sont esperdus,
Cil ont auques leur tens perdus;
Arbalestier et mineor
Et perrier et engigneor
Seront dorenavant plus chier."
When Ghazan Khan was about to besiege the castle of Damascus in 1300, so
much importance was attached to this art that whilst his Engineer, a man
of reputation therein, was engaged in preparing the machines, the Governor
of the castle offered a reward of 1000 dinars for that personage's head.
And one of the garrison was daring enough to enter the Mongol camp, stab
the Engineer, and carry back his head into the castle!
![The Travels Of Marco Polo - Volume 2 Of 2 By Marco Polo And Rustichello Of Pisa
- Apiece.[7] Stella relates
that the Genoese armament sent against Cyprus, in 1373, among other great
machines had one called - Page 84](../images/travel.jpg)
