Antiquity of Balistas and Catapults
author writes : ' At the siege of Rhodes in 1480, the Turks set up a
battery of sixteen great cannon, but the Christians successfully opposed
the cannon with a counter-battery of new invention.1
'An engineer, aided by the most skilful carpenters in the besieged town,
made an engine that cast pieces of stone of a terrible size. The execution
wrought by this engine prevented the enemy from pushing forward the work
of their approaches, destroyed their breastworks, discovered their mines
and filled with carnage the troops that came within range of it.'
At the siege of Mexico by Cortes in 1521, when the ammunition for the
Spanish cannon ran short, a soldier with a knowledge of engineering undertook
to make a trebuchet that would cause the town to surrender. A huge engine
was constructed, but on its first trial the rock with which it was charged
instead of flying into the town, ascended straight upwards and falling
back to its starting-point destroyed the mechanism of the machine itself.2
Though all the projectile engines worked by cords and weights disappeared
from warfare when cannon came to the front in a more or less improved form,
catapults—if Vincent le Blanc is to be credited—survived in barbaric nations
long after they were discarded in Europe.
This author (in his travels in Abyssinia) writes 'that in 1576 the Negus
besieged Tamar a strong town defended by high walls, and that the besieged
had engines composed of great pieces of wood which were wound up by cords
and screwed wheels and which unwound with a force that would shatter a
vessel, this being the cause why the Negus did not assault the town after
he had dug a trench round it.3
1 Called a new invention because the old siege
engine of which this one (probably a trebuchet) was a reproduction had
previously been laid aside for many years.
2 Conquest of Mexico. W. Prescott, 1843.
3 Vincent le Blanc, Voyages aux quatre parties
du monde, redige par Bergeron, Paris, 1649. Though the accounts given by
this author of his travels are imaginative, I consider his allusion to
the siege engine to be trustworthy, as he was not likely to invent so correct
a description of a catapult.
Fig. 185. - Criticism. - A stonebow of vast size. A
and B represent two kinds of lock. In A, the catch of the lock over which
the loop of the bow-string was hitched, was released by striking down the
knob to be seen below the mallet. In B, the catch was set free by means
of a lever. C, shows the manner of pulling back the bow-string. By turning
the spoked wheels, the screw-worm revolved the screwed bar on which the
lock A, travelled. The lock, as may be seen, worked to or fro in a slot
along the stock of the engine. In the illustration the bow is fully bent
and the man indicated is about to discharge the engine. After this was
done, the lock was wound back along the screw-bar and the bow-string was
hitched over the catch of the lock preparatory to bending the bow again.
Besides being a famous painter, Leonardo was distinguished
as an inventor of and exact writer on mechanics and hydraulics.
' No artist before his time ever had such comprehensive
talents such profound skill or so discerning a judgment to explore the
depths of every art or science to which he applied himself.' JOHN GOULD,
Dictionary of Painters, 1839.
From the above eulogy we may conclude that the drawings
of ancient siege engines by Leonardo da Vinci are fairly correct. |