So what you're saying is that if you gave a bunch of freshman physics students a bunch of materials and tools, that without making any calculations not one of them could figure out how to build a working trebuchet?
It certainly helps. Especially if you want to build something in one go, and pre-design it. But it is not necessary.
What ever happened to Trial and Error? Are you saying someone couldn't figure out over time? What happened to Scientific Method? What about simple Problem Solving?
To do so efficiently and quickly is a skilled task. To do so perfectly requires masterful knowledge (and masterful design, brought about by mathematics and early physics). However, to simply build a working engine takes nothing more than an idea, materials and experimentation. Simply put, the process of invention.
Just about every one of us here could build a working small trebuchet given the knowledge of what one is, the materials, the tools, and the time to experiment with different methods. Assuming some of us didn't give up in frustration of failed attempts.
I'm sure modern University Freshmen could probably make a working Trebuchet in a few months or so if they had enough resources, it probably wouldn't be a very good Trebuchet, but it would probably fire in the right direction most of the time.
But we're not dealing with modern University Freshmen, we're dealing with 14th century men, probably peasants, since you don't have enough nobles to operate all your siege engines and learning how to be a siege engineer isn't considered a very glorious occupation; most nobles were knights and therefore 'squad leaders' so to speak; siege mechanics such as sapping and the construction and operation of siege engines wasn't really very glorious and was quite difficult, so it wasn't commonly picked up by nobles.
What ever happened to Trial and Error? Are you saying someone couldn't figure out over time? What happened to Scientific Method? What about simple Problem Solving?
14th century, nobody knew what the scientific method was, and trial and error didn't work because if your catapult broke the general would flog you for screwing up. And hell be upon you if the damn thing hit your own troops, then you'd be in the shit.
And of course lets say one person does figure it out over time; there's no real formal education nor means of transferring technical information from person to person; such information transfer relies on literacy, but many siege engineers hid their inventions and ideas behind layers of code or simply never wrote anything down because they didn't want anyone stealing their ideas. The Trebuchet is actually an excellent example; they were re-invented about four times over the course of about 120 odd years as each engineer worked out how they worked and then was either unable or unwilling to tell anyone else.
I see what the problem is now; you're looking at this from a modern perspective. From a modern perspective yes it's pretty easy, but from the perspective of a man in the 14th century siege engineering, mathematics, ballistics, these were the Quantum Physics and String Theory of their time; wierd, incomprehensible and a little scary. I remember reading an excerpt from a record of a (French i think) King in the late 13th century talking about how a hired siege engineer demonstrated his skills by putting together a small catapult and hitting a haystack at 300 yards on the first try. To the King this was an
amazing feat, to the man ovbiously it was a matter of mathematics and experience, he probably had a basic understanding of ballistics too, but the idea that all these numbers and lines on a paper could somehow result in a catapult planting a rock on target on the first shot was completely alien to these people.
Basically; you're seriously overestimating the level of knowledge and ability the average 14th century man had.
We keep coming back to "expensive and slow". If you're a king facing a war, you generally are going to be spending money to keep your assets. Namely to keep your kingdom and your title as King. It's a worthy investment. At least I think so. Money should not be the biggest issue here.
I did also say, and I quote: "If time is an issue, then it's a different matter. To build a working engine from raw materials efficiently and quickly would be a rather skilled task, and would be difficult."
I meant more the time it takes to
train the siege engineers, although the time it takes to build the engines themselves is pretty important. It's kind of hard to make a fortified city surrender when all your siege engines keep falling apart.
As for 'money should not be the biggest issue'? You're either vastly overestimating how much money your average European King had access to, or vastly underestimating how much money it costs to fund a war, or both.
Wars were
expensive, hell they
still are. More than one country was bankrupted by war, i think France was, i know Rome was,
twice, and Alexander would have bankrupted his empire to fund his war machine if he hadn't died before then.
It costs an inordinate amount of time and money to train and equip tens or hundreds of thousands of soldiers and an even more inordinate amount of upkeep. Why do you think so many kings palmed the responsibility to supply men, arms or weapons onto their vassals? Because they couldn't afford to fund an entire army on their own without bankrupting themselves.
Can i just add that these problems aren't neccessarily unique to 14th century lords? When America went to war in Iraq their Generals ran into a rather large problem; they did not have enough troops to take and hold Iraq and maintain a military presence elsewhere. The problem of troops is not unique to medieval times; maintaining a large enough army to meaningfully invade somone is too expensive to do for any reasonable length of time, but increasing the size of your army takes too long and costs too much to make it feasible to invade somone on short notice. It's a bit of a catch 22 actually; you can't afford to maintain a large army because it costs too much, but you can't afford to make your small maintainable army bigger during wartime because it takes too long.
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Topic: Bigger Siege Engines (Read 11171 times)