Talk:Trebuchet

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[edit] Which is it?

At first the article states that the trebuchet was developed from the Roman onager. Later however, it says that the trebuchet is thought to have been invented in China, between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC (which, according to the article on the Roman Empire lasted between from 31. BC to 476 AD). I may be incorrect, but I don't believe China has ever produced a time machine :) Even if we skip the problem of time, I find it hard to believe that the Chineese imported a Roman onager, improved on it, and then exported the idea seven centuries later. Niffux 17:19, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Range

A quarter of a mile throwing range seems rather excessive (previous revisions of the document even state half a mile, which is out of the question). Maybe somewhere between 150-250 meters is beter, but I don't have good facts on this.

The new record for Pumpkin Chuckin set 2005-10-08 in Burlington, WA is 1670 feet.

If a trebuchet from the Middle Ages were to throw pumpkins, yes they might get them half a mile, but generally they threw rocks ranging from 200-400lbs. Same sources state they could throw rocks weighing up to a ton.

Anywhere from 150-300m is a reasonable distance, although it is generally said that English longbows could outrange trebuchets, and the longest range I have heard for a longbow is about 250m.

are you sure that, that is not just a saying? i have always been of the impression that a trebuchet had a longer rang, more in the area of 400m. though i could be mistaken.--Manwithbrisk 22:15, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Range calculation of half mile is correct

The weight of the projectile has a a great effect on the range, as can be seen by throwing a beach ball and basketball at the same initial speed.

Assuming the weight of the projectile is negligable compared to that of the counterweight, the initial velocity of the projectile would be the same regardless of the projectile weight.

Assuming a 10cm diameter pumpkin of 4 lbs (I assume they pick pumpkins that would go the farthest), and accounting for air drag in a ballistic simulator (online java versions are available) it would need to leave at 98 mph at 40 degrees to go 1670 ft (pumpkin record)

Now increase the mass to 15 lbs (a stone or cannonball as they would have thrown) with a 98 mph release the projectile will then reach 2520 ft = 0.48 miles Grandthefthippo 19:43, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Angle

Question: The text states "The pfect release angle is when the missile will fly at roughly 45 degrees, because this optimizes range.", but from physics we know that the optimal ballistic release angle is actually 40 degrees, in order to counter wind resistance (by having a larger horizontal velocity vector when launched). Should the text be updated to allow for this fact, or is it too much of a nuance?

You seem to know more about this than I do. If you feel the text is currently inaccurate, then by all means edit it. -- EagleOne 20:39, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

I agree, trebuchets are know to shoot at most 1,350ft with an excellent shot, but a quarter mile to half mile is indefinitly wrong. In the Punkin chunkin contest, a trebuchet set a world record of 1394ft using todays technology. -- Mat Walter March 11, 2005

Can an English-Longbow really shoot three-hundred-yards? Truman Thompson 04/15/06

Can somebody please do the math? Pumpkin chunkin records of 1600 plus ft easily puts it in the range 1/4 to 1/2 half mile (440 to 880 yards, with 3ft per yard). Theoretical maximum range depends in part on the mass of the projectile, so a 15kg cannoball will go further than a rotting pig. Remember we are only playing with these machines today, whereas the Medieval engineers had centuries of arcane knowledge at their disposal and real lives were at stake; imagine what the Pentagon could do with this technology. Yes, an English longbow can really shoot 300+ yards, and at close range has the power to penetrate shields and armour - see great 100 Years War battles such as Crecy, Poitiers and of course Agincourt. The Count 21/04/06

Again, throughing a pumpkin, or even a 15kg cannon ball at a castle will not do much. You may get it to go half a mile, but the best you can hope for is that it hits someone in the head.

There is historical evidence that Edward 1 of England made the effort to transport a large one and used it on the Scottish castles to great effect. A few years ago a replica was made as part of a TV program. If my memory is correct it easily demolished a thick stone wall target. It was also found that it could be aimed quite well both in direction and distance e.g it could hit the same spot thus inflicting repeated damage. One thing found in the experiments was that the design of the sling is critical, I think a long one was found to work best. --Dionysious 09:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Catapult

Shouldn't there be a reference (with a link) to the catapult? On catapult's page it says that trebuchet is the most sophisticated catapult...

The trebuchet isn't a catapult, it's a slingshot... -- ChrisO 10:54, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I'd say that the trebuchet is more of a combination of the two. It has the arm and counterweight of the catapult, as well as the sling from the slingshot attached at the end. The trebuchet article ought to explain this and link to both articles, the catapult and the slingshot. --Ash211 03:53, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

if you are suggesting that a catapult is the long wooden arm with a cup on the end, and the arm is bent back to provide force, then I am sorry to say you are mistaken. the closest thing to the hollywood catapult is the roman onager, which had a sling, like trebuchets do, and the onager, nor the hoolywood catapult had counterwieghts. If anything, a trebuchet should be called a gravity-powered catapult.

I i agree with Ash211 that a trebuchet is a combination. it is a variation or advancement on the catapaults used in the past just as catapaults have changed in desing and gradualy got better with every model made Mr Gerkin 09:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)Mr Gerkin

[edit] The self-destructing trebuchet

I seem to recall reading somewhere about Napoleon constructing a trebuchet during some campaign (Egypt?) more for his own amusement than any practical use. I can't quite remember the details, but what struck me after reading about Cortés' usage at Tenochtitlan of it was the exact same tragic outcome; the hook that realeased the sling was not angled properly, the contraption was fired once and the result was the projectile firing straight up and crashing back down on the wretched thing and destroying it.

Now am I the only one who finds this to seriously smack of historical myth? That two seperate generals on two separate occasions managed the extremely unlikely feat of managing to get a trebuchet, a contraption that was hardly acclaimed for it's accuracy, to fire a projectile in a straight vertical arc, making it come down in the same exact spot does not seem plauible. On the first try no less! It wasn't until I read the story of Cortés that I got to thinking that this might just be a tall tale of trebuchet lore that probably has been attributed to more military leaders and other occasions.

I'm not 100% sure about my own memory of Napoleon and his trebuchet, but I think the feat of just firing a trebuchet so accurately is just too unlikely on it's own. I'm gonna dispute the article 'til someone finds som credible evidence for that (albeit amusing) andectode. - karmosin 04:26, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)


Here's the evidence you guys have been looking for:

Legion XXIV states "The last recorded use of a large siege trebuchet was in 1521; when the Spanish "conquistador" Hernando Cortez besieged Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, in his campaign to subjugate the Aztec Empire."

The Grey Company Trebuchet Page quotes a book (Bernal Diaz, "The Conquest of New Spain" from Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-044123-9 Translated and introduced by J M Cohen) that has a first-person acccount of Cortes's treb.

Hern�n_Cort�s also confirms that Tenochtitlan was destroyed in 1521. --Ash211 06:31, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the sources, Ash, but as one those links points out, it seems to leave uncertainty about what the contraption actually was. Trebuchet or catapult? That the machine destroyed itself is completely plausible, but in the manner described in the article here? Doesn't fit with the text.
"So they placed a suitable stone in the sling, but all it did was to rise to the height of the catapult and fall back to its original place."
The article text makes it sound as if flew up in high arc and came back down. The text seems to imply that the catapult, or whatever it was, didn't have enough power to shoot the stone and simply collapsed backwards or something. How about rephrasing? --karmosin 09:42, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)
Rephrasing seems like the thing to do. I'll change it. Ash211 15:23, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I took the sign down, but I also added two sentences about the nature of the device. I might've read the sources wrong, but it just didn't seem as if it actually was a trebuchet or not. Do edit it back if I've simply missed the reference somewhere. --Peter Isotalo 09:49, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] trebuchet

--169.204.222.249 18:50, 23 January 2006 (UTC)Bold textYou guys need to put more information on the website like how far they can throw or the weight they can handle. We need more facts!!!

[edit] "Big Bucket"

I thought there was a (humorous) mistranslation of the word Trebuchet. When spelled "Tres Bucket" the meaning shifts to "big bucket," referring to the Trebuchet's large counter-weight.

[edit] History or Anachronology?

The article says that the Chinese invented it in the 5th century BC. But then says that it was a defense against the Mongols, and used the word "huihui" which refered to Muslims. Yes the Mongols were Muslims, but isn't this off by 1200-1700 years? Someone more knowledgeable should look into this and find some citable sources. JesseRafe 01:15, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I've got to agree there are big problems with the history here. For a start, no distinction is made between the traction trebuchet and the, erm, actual trebuchet. Secondly other early dates are proposed which are completely ambiguous about the form of artillery used e.g. siege of Paris: so far as I know, De belle Parisiato only mentions war machines, and provides little description to hint what type they were (most scholars seem to think that they were mangonels). My take, unfortunately, is based largely on the non-academic "the Grey Company Trebuchet Page" which is, however, the best resource on the history of the subject I've seen anywhere (and is supported by Chinese Siege Warfare: Mechanical Artillery & Siege Weapons of Antiquity). It suggests:
  • The device the Chinese invented in the 3rd to 5th century BC is undoubtedly a traction trebuchet. They continued to use them and improve them into at least the 11th century (developing several subtypes), but never invented the true trebuchet. (Curiously, there seems to be no further technical development of advanced Chinese traction trebuchets between the early 11th century, and true trebuchets being introduced by the Mongols' Persian engineers in the late thirteenth.)
  • Knowledge of the traction trebuchet appears to have arrived in the Byzantine Empire with the siege of Thessalonika by the Avars in 597 AD, but there are few European records before the 12th century.
  • Sometime in the late 12th century, Europeans started making "augmented" trebuchets which were traction trebuchets plus a small counterweight to increase the power.
  • The trebuchet arms race took off at the siege of Acre in 1189 - 1191, making larger and larger augmented traction trebuchets and finishing up with large pure trebuchets. (It is not clear whether the Crusaders or Muslims were the first to go fully counterweight powered.)
  • The idea spread very rapidly from there, westward with returning Crusaders (first used in England by the French to attack Dover Castle in 1216) and eastward with the Muslims (Persian engineers building them at the Battle of Xiangyang 1268 - 1273).
  • However traction trebuchets remained in use alongside trebuchets until late in thirteenth century at least.
--Securiger 10:17, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
BTW, if anyone wants to try to track down St. Abbo's book, I believe the proper name is Bella Parisiacae Urbis. Latin, of course; a French translation was made in 1824. A copy of the French translation is available on-line from the Bibliothèque nationale de France at http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?O=NUMM-91454 My French is rather rusty but I am working my way through it; the only relvant part so far seems to be page 11, which says:
De toutes parts les traits volent, le sang ruisselle; de haut des airs, les frondes et les pierriers déchirans mêlent leurs coups aux javelots. On ne voit rien autre chose que des traits et des pierres voler entre le ciel et la terre. Les dards percent et font gémir la tour, enfant de la nuit, car, comme je l'ai dit plus haut, c'est la nuit qui lui donna naissance. ....
Ceux-ci tâchent de couper le mur à l'aide de la sape [machine sous laquelle les sapeurs travaillaient à couvert], mais lui les inonde d'huile, de cire, de poix; mêlées ensemble, elles coulent en torrens d'un feu liquide, dévorent, brûlent et enlèvent les cheveux de la tête des Danois, en tuent plusiers, et en forcent d'autres à chercher un secours dans les ondes du fleuve. Les nôtres alors s'écrient totu d'une voix: "Malheureux brûlés, courez vers les flots de la Seine; tâchez qu'ils vous fassent repousser une autre chevelure mieux peignée." Le vaillant Eudes extermina un grand nombre de ces barbares.
(There are some later references to war machines, but only rams and such like, not artillery.) Here's my attempt at translation:
Everywhere the [traits?] fly and the blood pours; high in the air, the slings and the [pierriers déchirans] mix their blows with the javelins. One sees nothing but [traits?] and stones flying between the sky and the ground. The darts bore into and made to groan the tower, "Child of the Night", (as I mentioned above, it is the night which gave it birth). ....
They tried to cut the wall with the help of a sap [a machine below which the sappers worked under cover], but they flooded them with oil, wax, and pitch; mixed together, they ran in torrents of liquid fire, devouring, burning and stripping the hair from the heads of the Danes, killing many, and forcing others to seek safety in the waves of the river. Our side all then exclaimed in one voice: "Unhappy burned, run towards the floods of the Seine; try to see if they will make you regrow another, better combed head of hair." The valiant Odo exterminated a great number of these barbarians.
The tower was being called "Child of the Night" because the defenders heavily reinforced the incomplete stone tower with timbers during the night. Now, I'm not sure what a pierriers déchirans is, (a plain old pierrier is a drain!), but the name suggest a stone thrower; on the other hand, it is listed alongside ordinary slings, while the machien which made the tower "groan" was a dart thrower. At any rate, while it is certainly a ripping yarn there is not a skerrick to suggest a trebuchet. -- Securiger 05:03, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spring trebuchet vid

I've just chopped a link to this for the second time. Sorry guys, but it's just not "encyclopedic content"--Snori 07:53, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] pop culture

in the treb pop culture section it lists the treb apearance in the lord of the rings: the return of the king on the same builet point it then goes on to say that the mounting of trebs on top of towers as shown in the movie was a common practice in medieval warfair quote: "Trebuchets were in fact used in this way as their recoil is less than that of a comparably sized torsion weapon."

when i was younger i took a great interest into castle building and also seige weapons, in my research i found, as i recall, that trebs could not be placed on top of towers as shown in the movie, and stated in the article, because they created too much vibration and would shake the tower to peices after several volleys, and that the only real weapon of this type that could be placed in such a way was the mangonel if it was properly braced to the tower and not too large.

as far as i know trebs on towers did not exist or were very rare, trebs in a courtyard throwing over the defenders wall towards the attackers, yes

can anyone cite a source other than the movie that threbs were on castle towers? again, as always, i maybe wrong which is why i am asking the comunity thanks--Manwithbrisk 22:52, 6 October 2006 (UTC)


I thought that the swinging counterweight, and especially the wheels, reduced the vibrations enough to not shake apart the tower. (Although Minas Tirith is supposed to appear as if it's 'carved out of stone', so maybe its towers are exceptionally strong anyway.) Nathan24601 03:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

the swinging counter weight helps the treb to throw farther by allowing the weight to drop as close to straight down as possible, it would have done relatively little to change the vibration. the addition of wheels to a treb would allow the weapon to do something with the vibrations it creates, whihc in theory could make it more viable to place on top of a tower, but a number of factors would make these an unattractive alternative. first, if the tower was now perfectly level the treb would be prone to roll in that direction more so than any other, this would change firing angles, could prove hazardus to the firing crew who would be working in very close quarters with the weapon from atop this tower, and could cause the treb to butt up into the battlements which after a second firing in that position would cause it to fall, break the weapon, break the battlement or more probably all three. secondly this would greatly limit the size of the treb seeing as if it were too large it would most likely have a movement wavelength that is larger than the tower is wide, creating problems similar to the last part above. and as to the tower itself, it really wouldn't matter if the tower was made of stone and mortor, or if it they were carved out of a single block of stone, niether structure would hold up to that kind of heavy vibration, stone and mortor would shake to peaces, while the carved out of stone method would most likely crack during construction, but asuming that it survived to completion, it would be strong and last longer but ston does not sway well, and without it's internal structure holding it together the vibrations of the treb would cause it to crack and bring the whole tower down. but then again, i wasn't alive back then, and i don't know everything, so if you find something that proves me wrong, then i will humbly bow to it, or if you build a tower to their specs, and then put a treb on top to their specs and fire it a few times and nothing bad happens, then i will send you and e-beer and call this one quits--Manwithbrisk 01:04, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pop culture references removed

Removal of a whole lot of unneeded cruft (and one ad). What is left is a dramatization of a historical figure, a popular myth and an anual event, a docu on NOVA and a show/movie (no idea) that replicates actual midevil tactics. I hope this is good enough to please everybody. --OrbitOne [Talk|Babel] 15:48, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Multi-rotational Trebuchet

The article describes a multi-rotational trebuchet as "less efficient than a floating arm trebuchet, but more efficient than a traditional trebuchet[citation needed]. Its arm makes one or more full rotations before launching the projectile." However, this description is vague and the comparison is very difficult to prove correct. This brings up two questions: what are multi-rotational trebuchet and are they really less efficient than floating arm trebuchets?

What is a multi-rotational trebuchet? After seeing them at Science Olympiad contests when I was in High School, I would describe one as trebuchet whose short throwing arm is rotated by a small wheel which is pulled by a falling counterweigh on a rope. In this configuration, the arm can rotate multiple times and the ball is kept in the device by centripetal acceleration. Often these devices have slings that move about freely during rotation.

Are multi-rotational trebuchets less efficient than floating arm trebuchets? The question is actually very difficult to answer. In floating arm trebuchets, both the sling and the path of the arm transfer most of the energy from the counterweight to the projectile, creating point where the counterweight stalls. In terms of energy, this is the most efficient release point, but it often occurs at a much greater angle than 45 degrees. The most efficient multi-rotational trebuchets have similar stall points, but these are created by the sling alone. This allows a trebuchet builder to choose a stall point at any location, regardless of the angle of the arm, by adjusting the length of the sling. Thus, unlike a floating arm trebuchet, a multi-rotational trebuchet can have its most efficient throw at the best angle. However, this does not necessarily mean that multi-rotational trebuchets are more efficient. At the Solon Science Olympiad Invitational in 2006, a multi-rotational trebuchet placed second after the first place floating arm trebuchet, but beat many other floating arm trebuchets. Rather than illustrating the superiority of either design, it suggests that the two designs have similar efficiencies.Durkinms 20:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation

Is it trebucket or are you supposed to soften the ch? 65.94.39.200 20:06, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I've always pronounced it as "tray-bue-shay" and you could probably get away with shortening the word to "treb." Snowmanmelting 01:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What is P in the diagrams?

What are the two strings marked P connecting the sling pouch to the lever arm? Could it be a release mechanism different from the sling-end-slips-from-the-hook type?

The absence of a hook and a second sling end seem to support this idea. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.181.90.131 (talk) 19:33, 19 February 2007 (UTC).

Yes, in those diagrams the strings P are in fact part of the release mechanism. See diagram http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Trebuchet4.png on how it's supposed to work. I managed to build a trebuchet using this kind of release mechanism, but haven't yet gotten around to shoot enough shots to determine if it's more accurate than the hook type. 194.29.198.121 08:15, 2 March 2007 (UTC)porky

[edit] Color

GaylordBumBum 22:48, 2 March 2007 (UTC)Can someone change the color of the arms in the animated pictures? They don't show up well on a color monitor.

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