The Larger Ones Are
Said To Have Shot Stones Of "A Kantar And Even More." (Makrizi, III.
125; Reinaud, Chroniques Arabes, Etc., P. 570; De Excidio Urbis
Acconis, In Marlene And Durand, V. 769.)
How heavy a mangonade was sometimes kept up may be understood from the
account of the operations on the Nile, already alluded to.
The King was
trying to run a dam across a branch of the river, and had protected the
head of his work by "cat-castles" or towers of timber, occupied by
archers, and these again supported by trebuchets, etc., in battery. "And,"
says Jean Pierre Sarrasin, the King's Chamberlain, "when the Saracens saw
what was going on, they planted a great number of engines against ours,
and to destroy our towers and our causeway they shot such vast quantities
of stones, great and small, that all men stood amazed. They slung stones,
and discharged arrows, and shot quarrels from winch-arblasts, and pelted
us with Turkish darts and Greek fire, and kept up such a harassment of
every kind against our engines and our men working at the causeway, that
it was horrid either to see or to hear. Stones, darts, arrows, quarrels,
and Greek fire came down on them like rain."
The Emperor Napoleon observes that the direct or grazing fire of the great
arblasts may be compared to that of guns in more modern war, whilst the
mangonels represent mortar-fire. And this vertical fire was by no means
contemptible, at least against buildings of ordinary construction. At the
sieges of Thin l'Eveque in 1340, and Auberoche in 1344, already cited,
Froissart says the French cast stones in, night and day, so as in a few
days to demolish all the roofs of the towers, and none within durst
venture out of the vaulted basement.
The Emperor's experiments showed that these machines were capable of
surprisingly accurate direction. And the mediaeval histories present some
remarkable feats of this kind. Thus, in the attack of Mortagne by the men
of Hainault and Valenciennes (1340), the latter had an engine which was a
great annoyance to the garrison; there was a clever engineer in the
garrison who set up another machine against it, and adjusted it so well
that the first shot fell within 12 paces of the enemy's engine, the second
fell near the box, and the third struck the shaft and split it in two.
Already in the first half of the 13th century, a French poet (quoted by
Weber) looks forward with disgust to the supercession of the feats of
chivalry by more mechanical methods of war: -
"Chevaliers sont esperdus,
Cil ont auques leur tens perdus;
Arbalestier et mineor
Et perrier et engigneor
Seront dorenavant plus chier."
When Ghazan Khan was about to besiege the castle of Damascus in 1300, so
much importance was attached to this art that whilst his Engineer, a man
of reputation therein, was engaged in preparing the machines, the Governor
of the castle offered a reward of 1000 dinars for that personage's head.
And one of the garrison was daring enough to enter the Mongol camp, stab
the Engineer, and carry back his head into the castle!
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