Trebuchet Essay

History of the Trebuchet This was an enormous weapon capable of throwing immense boulders over two hundred and fifty meters. This was not achieved on the first try. It took a thousand years of experimenting and modifications to accurately create the machine. The agent of mass destruction and fear was called a trebuchet.
The trebuchet was a weapon used during siege warfare. It would hurl heavy stones to smash castle or city walls. Cities, castles, and fortresses could turn to rubble from the force of one. The trebuchet was named multiple ways such as Medieval Trebuchet which is derived from the Old French word ‘Trebucher’ meaning to throw over. It is also called Ingenium coming from the Latin word ingenium meaning ingenious device.
Trebuchets

Stones were mostly what they would launch. They also used sharp wooden poles and darts if they ran out of stones. But a trebuchet can release up to two thousand stones in a day. To create madness, they could launch fire missiles. To launch missiles over a castle or city wall, Medieval Trebuchets could shoot hundreds of yards. Other items that were often launched were burning sand, pots of Greek fire, dung, dead bodies, disease ridden bodies, body parts, and dead animals. Greek fire was a powerful burning liquid weapon that could not be put out with water. Most of the items were used to humiliate the enemy, spread death and disease, and taint their water supplies rather than to destroy walls. In the fourteenth century, Mongols fired dead bodies that contained the Black Death into the city of Kaffa. The disease spread quickly across the Mediterranean and into European port since Kaffa was a port

Using large stones or other materials creates great power during the medieval times. These are the most common types of trebuchets. They could shoot about three hundred meters using fifty to one hundred kilograms of weight. The counterweight provides automatic force to fire and is very heavy. To increase the distance the projectile goes, the throwing arm needs to be long compared to the counterweights arm and a large weight compared to the object being thrown. The proper ratio for the counterweight to the projectile is about one hundred to one while the ratio of the throwing arm to the short arm is about four to