Lay Siege to the Infidels!

Projectiles used throughout history: beehives, decapitated heads, dead animals, burning tar, unsuccessful diplomats, and spies.

I recently caught a PBS special on the Trebuchet and I thought it deserved a little more air time.

As powerful and destructive as the trebuchets were, their attendants spent most of their time within longbow range which sort of negated their detached bomb-from-a-safe-distance-approach so readily used by today's "modern" warfare.


Of course the first trebuchets are attributed to the Chinese. I am pretty sure Europe would be a mass of third world nations without borrowing the innovations and domesticated animals and plants from the East and Middle East. For more on this subject please read an excellent theory proposed on the geographic formula that allowed Europe to lead colonialism and globalism, titled Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

To end this short, but completely incorporated mix, I'd like to offer that Cortes was the last recorded person to employ the trebuchet in combat, due to gunpowder shortages in his siege of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. The most interesting point of fact here is that the trebuchet lobbed the projectile up instead of forward and the rock or tar or dead pig, or combination thereof landed on the bloody thing, destroying it and causing much laughter, I suppose.

Perhaps, the Aztecs thought up some witty cut-downs for the gold-crazed Spaniards after this display of modern stupidity.
Maybe they lobbed more effective insults like:

"If you'd quit making smoke and loud noises, perhaps we could show you where we keep our crazy people."
"I think I saw the bearded one kiss his four-legged girlfriend"
"That's not all they did last night!"
"And his pudgy friend watched!"