Weaponry: The Trebuchet
By Scott Farrell

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The counterpoise design elevated the trebuchet’s destructive power. At the siege of Castelnuovo Bocca d’Adda in Northern Italy in 1199, attackers used trebuchets that could fire stones weighing between nineteen hundred and twenty-five hundred pounds. European engineers who built these machines gave them nicknames such as ‘God’s stone thrower,’ ‘the daughter of the earthquake,’ ‘big mother,’ ‘war wolf,’ and the ‘bad neighbor’ that de Montfort used to attack Minerve. Islamic chroniclers who saw these trebuchets being used, described them simply as ‘manjaniq ifiranji‘ — Frankish war machines.

The improved firing capability of the counterpoise trebuchet came at a price, however. Such machines needed elaborate block and tackle systems to raise the heavy ballast box; they could only be fired three or four times per day, according to contemporary accounts. However, the power of the counterpoise design gave these war machines a new role in battle. Smaller trebuchets had been relegated to the tasks of supporting troops scaling castle walls or targeting structures within a walled city; counterpoise trebuchets could actually be used against the walls themselves, thus sparking an architectural arms race that would continue well into the gunpowder age.

Not until modern times did the cannon eclipse the trebuchet. The strategist Christine de Pizan, in her book Fais d’armes et de chevalerie written for the Duke of Burgundy in 1410, explained that even an army equipped with sizable ‘gonnes’ should still have ‘four entirely new trebuchets, completely equipped, each one with two cables and four slings to change when needed.’

Moreover, trebuchets were not limited exclusively to use outside castle walls. In 1218, while preparing for an assault on the city of Toulouse, France, Simon de Montfort, the victor at Minerve, was struck down by a rock falling from the sky — a stone fired from a trebuchet inside the city. Even the most skilled general was not immune to the wrath of a bad neighbor.

This article was written by Scott Farrell and originally published in the Autumn 2006 edition of MHQ. For more great articles, subscribe to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History today!

Tags: Ancient-Medieval, Historical Conflicts, Military Technology, Weaponry

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