posted 03-03-2001 01:17 AM
Trebuchet seem to be one of those things that Europeans picked up from the Arabs. In Medieval Warfare: A History edited by Maurice Keen (Oxford University Press 1999) Peter Edbury writes that the Muslims used counterweight trebuchets and that Saladin employed trebuchets in his campaigns of 1187 and 1188. I seem to recall reading elsewhere that the arabs got the trebuchet from the east but I can't find a reference to that. The Mongels certainly used Chinese seige engineers in there invasion of Persia so perhaps thats a route for in dispersal of the idea.Certainly it is often suggested that Chateau Gaillard was designed to resist trebuchet attack (the notable scalloped wall of the inner bailey for example) so counterweight trebuchet's must have been known of in the West when that castle was built.
There appear to be numerous references to trebuchets being used from about 1200 onwards both in the Muslim reconquest of the Levant, in Albigensian crusade (1209-29) and elsewhere.
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And the astronomyours beheldyne the constellacions of hys bryth by thare castle, and foundyn that he sholde bene wyse and curteyse, good of consaill
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Castle Quest
posted 03-02-2001 03:11 PM
posted 03-03-2001 01:17 AM
