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Trebuchet

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For the font, see Trebuchet MS.

A trebuchet (Template:IPA2, /tɺɛbjə'ʃɛt/ or /tɺɛbjə'tʃɛt/), also sometimes called a trebucket (Template:IPA2) is a medieval siege engine, a weapon employed either to batter masonry or to throw projectiles over walls.

Trebuchet at Château des Baux, France.
Three-quarter view of a trebuchet

The trebuchet is thought to have been invented in China between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC. The trebuchet was a development of the Chinese traction trebuchet, where a large crew of men pulled down on ropes to propel the missile.

The device reached Europe around 500 AD, where men were replaced with a large fixed or pivoting counterbalance weight.

Trebuchets are often referred to as a variety of catapult, though it would be more correct to describe them as a scaled-up sling.

Action of the trebuchet

A trebuchet is moved by a counterweight on a lever. The axle of the arm is near the top of a high strutted vertical frame. The shorter arm of the lever carries the counterweight and the longer arm carries the sling that carries the shot. The counterweight might accommodate up to 20 tons of ballast consisting of stones, sand, or lead, and the pieces of ammunition might weigh as much as 300 kg. The sling is usually braided from rope, and has a captive end attached to the arm, and a free end whose loop slips from a hook. A trigger, usually a toggle in a chain, holds the arm down after the trebuchet is cocked. Cocking is often performed with windlasses. The cocking sometimes was assisted by removing some or all of the stones or sand that acted as the counterweight. Because of the long winding time, a trebuchet's rate of fire was extremely slow, often not more than a couple of shots an hour. Yet some of the smaller types of trebuchets could fire a couple of times a minute.

In operation the long, unweighted end is pulled toward the ground, and held by a trigger. When the trigger is released, the arm pulls the sling out of a channel in the base of the frame. When the ball moves close to the top of its arc, the free end of the sling slips from the hook, and the missile flies free. The trebuchet's arm and frame then oscillate for several cycles.

The efficiency of a trebuchet can be improved by helping the weight to fall more nearly straight down or perpendicular to the arm. One method is to place the weight in a swinging or jointed bucket. The sand or stones in the bucket can also be less expensive than fixed metal weights, as well as being easier to gain access to on site. Another trick is to place the supporting frame of the trebuchet on wheels. These improvements may improve overall throwing distance.

 
Side view.

Aiming a trebuchet is best practiced with a scale model. Usually small adjustments in elevation can be made by changing the angle of the hook holding the free end of the sling, a process which requires a heated forge on a full-scale engine. For larger, quicker adjustments, the length of the sling can be altered. The release angle will normally be chosen to optimise range, and depends on the elevation of the target. After the desired range is achieved, the trebuchet can be moved toward or away from the target. Small adjustments from side-to-side can be made by moving the channel in which the missile and sling slide in the base of the frame.

Trebuchets were formidably powerful weapons, with a range of up to about 300 yards. Castle designers often built their fortifications with trebuchets in mind; for instance, Caerphilly Castle in Wales was surrounded by artificial lakes to keep besiegers and their siege weapons at a distance. The range of most trebuchets was in fact shorter than that of an English longbow in skilled hands, making it somewhat dangerous to be a trebuchet operator during a siege. This meant that sieges could be long drawn-out affairs, sometimes lasting for years at a time.

The payload of a trebuchet was usually a large rounded stone, although other projectiles were occasionally used: dead animals, the severed heads of captured enemies, barrels of burning tar or oil, or even unsuccessful negotiators catapulted alive. Various types of ammunition were used with the trebuchets. Stone shots have already been mentioned, but they also used beehives, small stones burned into clay balls which would explode on impact like grapeshot bullets, casks of tar and oil on fire, dead animals for introducing plagues and diseases, and finally prisoners of war and spies. It was said that one knew when they had landed - when the cries stopped.

The largest trebuchets could weigh dozens of tons. Not surprisingly, they were not readily transportable and instead had to be built on the spot where they were to be used.

Uses

Trebuchets were first used in Italy at the end of the 12th century, and were introduced to England in 1216 during the Siege of Dover.

Due to the popularity of gunpowder, the trebuchet lost its place as the siege engine of choice to the cannon. The most recently recorded military use may be by Hernán Cortés, at the 1521 siege of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán. Accounts of the attack note that its use was motivated by the limited supply of gunpowder. Accounts are not definitive as to whether it was a trebuchet or a catapult which was actually built. Regardless, the attack was reportedly unsuccessful: the device's first projectile landed on the device itself, destroying it.

Today, people still build and use trebuchets as a hobby. For example, the Punkin Chunkin competition, an annual competition to throw pumpkins for distance, has a trebuchet category. Modern hobbyist trebuchets sometimes replace the counterweight with banks of springs.

The United States organization, Science Olympiad, hosts a "Storm the Castle" event for middle and high school students involving the trebuchet. The competitors build a small trebuchet (maximum one meter long, 75cm wide, 75cm high) and fire projectiles at targets of varying distances.

Variants

If instead of using a counterweight, the shorter arm is pulled by two or more people, the trebuchet is called a traction trebuchet or perrier. Descriptive terms, such as a "witch with ropes for hair" were used by some sources to describe how a traction trebuchet looks.

Other names for counterweight (or counterpoise) trebuchets include bricole or brigola, which translates as two-testicle and refers to trebuchets with a a split counterweight, and couillard, which translates as testicle and refers to a trebuchet with a single counterweight.

Recent modern developments include: the floating arm trebuchet, where the counterweight drops down vertically; the F2K trebuchet, in which the counterweight drops vertically and the arm has an extra set of rollers for smoother transition of energy from the counterweight to the arm; scissor-jack [1], "whipper" [2] and MRT, or Multi-Rotational Trebuchet. These designs have typically been developed to compete in pumpkin chucking or Science Olympiad competitions and are both more efficient, and much more complex, than the traditional types.

History and First Uses

Trebuchets were used almost all over Europe, in great parts of the Mediterranean and in Asia. It is believed that the first trebuchets were used in China as early as in the 5th century BC. From there this technology spread westwards and reached the Arab countries through Persia and Byzantium.The first trebuchets - or the art of building trebuchets - arrived in the Nordic countries by way of Northern Germany, where engines of war are regularly mentioned in the books of the Hanseatic cities. There is some doubt as to the exact period in which these devices or knowledge of them reached Scandinavia. The Vikings may have known them at a very early stage, as the monk Abbo de St. Germain reports on the siege of Paris in his epic "De belle Parisiato" dated app. 890 A.D. that engines of war were used. Another source mentions that Nordic people or "the Norsemen" used engines of war at the siege of Angers as early as 873 A.D. This type of trebuchet was a smaller, shorter range and more portable machine that was "human powered", and therefore, was much easier to construct and move from place to place and siege to siege. Instead of a massive counterweight, the "Traction Treb" employed a group of people pulling down on ropes attached to the rear or short end of the Virga (throwing arm) to provide the weapon's throwing power. The mechanical action was the same; but the weight of the projectiles was much less and the rate of discharge was much faster, up to several shots a minute, as opposed to several minutes to "tens" of minutes per shot with a large counterpoise type machine. The smallest Traction Trebuchets could be powered by the weight and pulling strength of one person using a single rope; but most were designed and sized to utilize from 20 to 100 men and/or women, generally two per rope, using their combined weight and pulling strength to power the weapon. These Teams would frequently be local non-combatants (women, children, older men) assisting in the siege or in the defense of their town. Traction Trebuchets had a range of from 200 to well over 300 feet (60 to 100+ meters) casting weights up to 130 pounds (60kg).

Chinese counterweight trebuchets were called the Huihui Pao (回回砲) or Xiangyang Pao (襄陽砲). ("huihui" means muslim) because they were first encountered in China at the siege cities of Fangyang and Xiangyang when the Mongol army, unable to capture the cities despite besieging the Song defenders for years, brought in 2 Persian engineers who built hinged counterweight trebuchets and soon reduced the cities to rubble and forcing the surrender of the garrison.

There was an order to make a giant trebuchet for the British army. This trebuchet was called "WarWolf". This legendary trebuchet built by the English Army to destroy Castle Urquhart, which was located in the Highlands of Scotland, on the shores of the also infamous Loch Ness

Chinese Siege Warfare

Chinese Siege Warfare: Mechanical Artillery & Siege Weapons of Antiquity - An Illustrated History http://authors.history-forum.com/liang_jieming/chinesesiegewarfare

Etymology of the word

Trebuchet is Old French, from trebucher "to throw over" < tres "over, beyond" and buc "torso" < Latin trans and a Germanic word.

Pop culture trivia

Recent depictions of trebuchets in pop culture include:

  • Northern Exposure two 1992 episodes ("Burning Down the House" and "Heroes") featured a trebuchet, used to fling a piano and a coffin, respectively.
  • In the 1999 computer game Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, a trebuchet is the ultimate siege unit and is produced only from castles.
  • The 1999 film The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc by Luc Besson, a trebuchet was built and put into action for several war scenes, related to the siege of the city of Orléans by English invaders during the Hundred Years' War.
  • In the 2003 film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the defenders of Minas Tirith fired their trebuchets from the top of the city's walls, using the debris of their city made by the trebuchets of Mordor's army. Trebuchets were in fact used in this way as their recoil is less than that of a comparably sized torsion weapon.
  • In the official game for the 2003 film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, you have to launch 1 fireball from 2 seperate trebuchets to progress through the level "The Southern Gate" .
  • In the 2003 film Timeline, during the battle of Castlegard, the French army used a trebuchet to launch fire at the English castle.
  • In the 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven, the army of Saladin uses trebuchets to launch fireballs at the city of Jerusalem.
  • In the television series Lost, the first-season episode "Deus Ex Machina" features a lesson about the construction and use of the trebuchet, as the survivors build one in an attempt to gain entry into a mysterious hatch on the island. The trebuchet used in this scene had no sling or projectile but instead had a striking blade at the end of the arm, designed to hit the hatch door on the ground with the full force of the counterweight. Although this could be a practical application of trebuchet technology, the device shown in Lost was structurally flawed and would not have worked as shown.
 
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