334 Anciejit and Medimval Weapons. [May 29, 



dead soldiers, and even dead horses, into besieged towns as a means of 

 starting a pestilence. Froissart tells ns that at the siege of Auberoche 

 an envoy was sent to treat for terms with the besiegers, bnt that the 

 enemy treated his mission with contempt, seized him, placed him in 

 the sling of an engine, and shot him back again into the town, and 

 to make it more serious his letters were taken from him and hung 

 round his neck. Froissart quaintly adds that the varlet arrived dead 

 before the knights in the town, who were much astonished and 

 discomfited when they saw him return in this dreadful manner. 



I should mention that these old siege-engines varied in size. The 

 smallest catapult weighed about a ton and was able to cast a stone of 

 from 8 lb. to 10 lb. to a distance of from 400 to 450 yards. 



The large catapult weighed from 4 to 5 tons and more, and was 

 capable, as Josephus and other reliable authorities tell us, of throwing 

 a stone a talent in weight, or 58 lb., to a range of from 400 to 500 

 yards. 



With a model catapult, one of many I have constructed, which 

 weighs a ton and a half, I have projected a stone weighing 7 lb. to 

 a range of 400 yards. 



With a balista, a hundred pounds in weight, I have shot heavy 

 arrows weighing half a pound to a range of 350 yards. 



The balista, though it shot heavy javelins, was not nearly so 

 cumbersome as the catapult, and was often so portable that, when 

 mounted on wheels, it could be employed in the field of battle as 

 light artillery, or else placed on a parapet or tower for use against 

 besiegers. The trebuchet was, however, always of great size, and, 

 with its towering arm and massive frame-work, weighed very many 

 tons, as was imperative when we consider it cast stones of a size 

 sufficiently heavy to destroy towers and breach walls. 



At the evacuation of Damietta in 1629, Louis IX. captured 

 twenty-four trebuchets of such vast dimensions that they afforded 

 timber for stockading his entire camp, and a single engine of this 

 kind, used at the capture of Acre by the Turks in 1291, formed a 

 load for a hundred carts. 



The intricate and more valuable parts of these engines, such as 

 the winches and metal fittings, were brought to the vicinity of the 

 town to be attacked with other military stores, and the huge baulks 

 of timber necessary to complete them Avere usually obtained from 

 trees growing in forests in the district. 



As an example of the amount of material that must have been 

 required to form the coil or skein of cordage fitted to a large ancient 

 catapult, a coil perhaps a foot and over in diameter and twelve to 

 fourteen feet in length, I may remark that in my comparatively small 

 model of a ton and a half in weight, the skein within which the arm 

 Avorks consists of just a mile of cord a quarter of an inch thick. 



Cord, I may add, is a poor substitute for the hide, sinew, or 

 hair, from which the Greeks and Romans derived the motive force 

 pf their catapults and bahstas. [R.P.-Gr.] 



