Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum. Here. In the year thirteen o four CE,
Speaker 1: King Edward, the First of England, laid siege to Sterling Castle,
Speaker 1: home of the last holdouts of a Scottish rebellion. Behind
Speaker 1: the castle's thick walls, Sir William Oliphant and his Scottish
Speaker 1: loyalists endured months of aerial bombardment from perhaps the greatest
Speaker 1: collection of siege engines the world had ever seen. Edward
Speaker 1: had ordered all Scottish churches stripped of their lead, which
Speaker 1: was used to build powerful catapults called trebishes, the largest
Speaker 1: of which could hurl boulders weighing over three hundred pounds
Speaker 1: that's over a hundred and forty kilos. The greatest of
Speaker 1: edwards trebishes was christened Ludgar, or the war Wolf. The
Speaker 1: war Wolf required five master carpenters and fifty workmen to build,
Speaker 1: and was so terrifying in scale that Oliphant had no
Speaker 1: choice but to surrender. But not so fast, said Edward.
Speaker 1: He wanted to fire the war Wolf first, and even
Speaker 1: built a special viewing platform so ladies of his court
Speaker 1: would have a good view of the destruction it wrought.
Speaker 1: But we spoke with William Gerstell, a science journalist and
Speaker 1: author of the Art of the Catapult. He explained, Edward
Speaker 1: almost bankrupted himself building all these trebishes, and by God
Speaker 1: he was going to use them in a theatrical display
Speaker 1: of domination. Edward pulled the trigger on the war Wolf,
Speaker 1: sending its massive projectile arching through the sky and crashing
Speaker 1: through the castle's twelve ft thick walls. That's about three
Speaker 1: and a half meters of stone. The rebellion was officially over,
Speaker 1: and Edward had earned himself a new nickname, the Hammer
Speaker 1: of the Scots. Before gunpowder was popularized in the mid
Speaker 1: fourteenth century, there were no cannons to launch heavy lead
Speaker 1: balls through enemies and their walls, but that didn't stop
Speaker 1: creative warfarers from devising ways to toss stuff at each other.
Speaker 1: One of the most effective was the catapult, a device
Speaker 1: that uses a spring loaded arm or a heavy counterweight
Speaker 1: to hurl large objects over great distances. There are three
Speaker 1: general types of catapults. The first, called a ballista or
Speaker 1: tension catapult, looks like an oversized crossbow and works on
Speaker 1: the same principles generating force from the tension of the
Speaker 1: bow arms. The ballista was invented by the Greeks around
Speaker 1: three b c E. The second, known as the monitor
Speaker 1: or torsion catapult, gets its power from a ropelike bundle
Speaker 1: of animal sinew and hair. The rope is twisted tightly
Speaker 1: to create torsion, which when released, generates enough force to
Speaker 1: launch a small projectile from a catapult arm. The Romans
Speaker 1: named the monitor after a wild donkey that delivered an
Speaker 1: especially strong kick. The third type of catapult is the trebishe,
Speaker 1: perhaps the simplest yet most powerful catapult of all. The
Speaker 1: arm of a trebishe is actually a long lever that
Speaker 1: swung into motion by pulling downward with ropes or dropping
Speaker 1: a heavy counterweight. While trebishe is a French word, the
Speaker 1: technology is believed to have originated in China in the
Speaker 1: first couple of centuries c. The very earliest trebishes, unlike
Speaker 1: those first used in China and later in Europe in
Speaker 1: the early Middle Ages, were people powered, meaning the lever
Speaker 1: arm of the catapult was swung by a group of
Speaker 1: soldiers pulling on a rope. But the real innovation in
Speaker 1: trebische technology came in the twelfth century with the advent
Speaker 1: of the counterweight trebische. We also spoke with Michael Fulton,
Speaker 1: a history professor at Langara College in British Columbia an
Speaker 1: author of siege warfare during the Crusades. He explained that
Speaker 1: an elevated basket is weighted with hundreds or even thousands
Speaker 1: of pounds of rocks. That's the counterweight. When the basket
Speaker 1: is dropped, it pulls down on a rope connected to
Speaker 1: the short end of a long lever arm that swings
Speaker 1: on an axle. He said, as the short end of
Speaker 1: the lever is pulled down, the long end rises at
Speaker 1: a proportionally light or rate. When you add a sling
Speaker 1: at the end of the arm, you force the projectile
Speaker 1: to travel even farther during the same amount of time,
Speaker 1: which adds to your rate of acceleration. It's all really
Speaker 1: basic physics at a fundamental level. Gristell has built plenty
Speaker 1: of trebiches, including a d I Y design using wood
Speaker 1: and PVC that he named Little Ludgar after Edwards Trebiche.
Speaker 1: He said, the longer that lever and the heavier the weight,
Speaker 1: the farther the projectile goes. He noted that the counterweight
Speaker 1: has to weigh approximately a hundred times the object you're
Speaker 1: trying to throw. Gerstell once made a trebiche with a
Speaker 1: five pound or two hundred and twenty seven kilo counterweight
Speaker 1: that was still only powerful enough to launch a small cantelope.
Speaker 1: During the Middle Ages, the construction of fortified cities led
Speaker 1: to a new type of military campaign, the siege. Laying
Speaker 1: siege to a walled city required new war machines like
Speaker 1: battering rams for splintering thick doors and siege towers for
Speaker 1: reaching high balls, but one of the earliest and most
Speaker 1: powerful innovations was the trebishe. One of the first recorded
Speaker 1: uses of a trebische in battle was during the siege
Speaker 1: of Thessalonica in the late sixth century CE. Thessalonica was
Speaker 1: a Byzantine stronghold under attacked by the Avars, a collection
Speaker 1: of Central Asian tribes who used a people powered trebische
Speaker 1: that was likely inspired by ancient Chinese weaponry. But those
Speaker 1: primitive traction trebisches could only launch small projectiles and functioned
Speaker 1: as anti personnel weapons, not castle killers. Fulton explained traction
Speaker 1: trebishes were like an archer on steroids. You're definitely not
Speaker 1: smashing down solid walls in the early Middle Ages. That
Speaker 1: would happen in the thirteenth century, when counterweight trebishes were
Speaker 1: being built at larger and larger scales all across Europe.
Speaker 1: Those truly massive trebisches would be constructed off site and
Speaker 1: then assembled on the battlefield itself. While a counterweight trebisch
Speaker 1: a could toss a boulder over a castle wall, there
Speaker 1: were definitely trade offs. For one, it took a really
Speaker 1: long time to reload the counterweight. Fulton says that the
Speaker 1: smaller traction trebishes could fire up to four shots a minute,
Speaker 1: while the biggest trebishes were lucky to get off one
Speaker 1: shot every half hour. Catapults and trebishes were not limited
Speaker 1: to firing conventional projectiles like stones and lead balls. According
Speaker 1: to one Lurid fourteenth century account, the Mongols used their
Speaker 1: catapults to launch plague written corpses, an early type of bioweapon,
Speaker 1: into a medieval city in modern day Ukraine. Other stories
Speaker 1: tell of dead horses being slung by trebishe over castle
Speaker 1: walls to sicken the enemy with the stench. But Fulton,
Speaker 1: who has witnessed the forces unleashed during the throwing sequence
Speaker 1: of a large Trebishe is skeptical about the accuracy of
Speaker 1: such accounts. He said, if you try to put something
Speaker 1: organic into one of those slings, chances are it's going
Speaker 1: to be ripped apart before you can throw it effectively.
Speaker 1: Fulton has more confidence in the hals of human heads
Speaker 1: being logged back and forth by trebisches at the siege
Speaker 1: of Nicia in ten during the First Crusade. He said
Speaker 1: that was more psychological than biological. And when it comes
Speaker 1: to incendiary weapons like Greek fire, which was a sort
Speaker 1: of early napalm that involved pine tar, sulfur and naturally
Speaker 1: occurring petroleum, but the recipe for which is lost, Fulton
Speaker 1: says that he doubts that Edward or anyone else was
Speaker 1: launching Greek fire bombs from trebises with any regularity. It
Speaker 1: was more likely that castle defenders would try to fire
Speaker 1: incendiaries at the trebishe to burn the weapon to the ground.
Speaker 1: Though even if edwards legendary trebisch only launched rocks, there
Speaker 1: simply was no siege weapon that was as terrifying to
Speaker 1: the enemy and as entertaining to the troops. Fulton said
Speaker 1: at a fundamental level, You're not going to build these
Speaker 1: engines unless they have value, But there is value in
Speaker 1: that intimidation factor. In general, kings like to have big
Speaker 1: things they can show off. Today's episode was written by
Speaker 1: Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on
Speaker 1: this and lots of other topics, visit how stuff works
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