My Wildly Cathartic Experience Firing a Trebuchet

[justaprogressive]

The trebuchet was the most fearsome weapon of medieval times, a giant catapult that could lay waste to any fortress by battering its walls with boulders. It’s funny to think, then, that in terms of the physics, trebuchets (“treh-​byu-​shays”) were little more than children’s seesaws: You raised a counterweight on one end, let it drop, and used that force to fling a projectile from the other end.

Of course, trebuchets differed from seesaws in a few ways. Instead of the pivot being in the middle of the beam, it was shifted toward the weighted arm. This lengthened the opposite, throwing arm for more leverage and speed. A sling attached to the throwing arm added extra juice by lengthening the arm even more. Modern re-creations of trebuchets have hurled boulders 125 miles per hour.

History’s biggest trebuchets, from the 1300s, took months to build. They stood over 60 feet tall, used counterweights of 33,000 pounds, and could toss a 300-​pound boulder 300 yards. At times, however, generals got creative and flung other things. By aiming above a wall, they could pelt the town behind it with beehives, scorpions, snakes, flaming pitch, rotten vermin, or excrement. One historian told me in an interview that, for a small trebuchet, “a good size projectile is, morbidly, a human head.”

Sadly, zero medieval trebuchets survive today. (One turned up in 1890s Prussia, when people unearthed it during the demolition of an old church. After spending several minutes marveling, they hacked it up for firewood.) The best way to study these fearsome weapons, then, is through a field called experimental archaeology.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/07/trebuchet-catapult-meaning-difference-define-work.html

[mitch96]

1. "Punkin Chunkin" Using a Treb to throw Pumpkins to a distance.. This looks way cool!!

The good stuff starts at 1:50 This brings out the little kid in me!!

The science..