Catapult Destruction

In today’s vast array of weaponry we have things like mortars and rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) that can wreak havoc on their intended targets. However, ancient societies were able to cause a lot of damage both to their enemies themselves as well as their buildings and towns without these sorts of weapons. Ancient societies used a weapon that is well-known to achieve these desired effects: the catapult. There are three different societies and people who are known for their catapults and they are the ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans, and the Medieval Europeans. Out of these three societies, the Medieval Europeans’ catapults were the best in design, purpose, and ease of transportation.

The ancient Greeks built a catapult that was very similar to the modern day crossbow. Their intended purpose for the catapult was to increase the amount of power behind a projectile as well as increase the distance that said projectile could travel, which was a couple hundred yards. They would shoot things like spears or arrows from their catapults and were meant more for dealing harm to the enemy rather than the enemy’s surroundings. They weren’t too big in size, so they were able to transport them from battle to battle with somewhat ease. However, these weapons weren’t overly destructive in nature. As stated above, they were geared towards the harm and incapacitations of the enemy.

The ancient Romans also built catapults. One type of catapult that they used was very similar in design and purpose as the ancient Greeks’ catapult, but the Romans also had a catapult known as a ballista. The ballista’s development was based off of the catapults that the Greeks used, however, its mechanics are different. The ballista used a torsion spring which allowed the projectiles to go a much longer distance (500 yards) with a higher speed than the Greek catapults. This catapult also allowed other projectiles like rocks to be used rather than the fairly small options of projectiles that the Greek catapults used. The downside to this weapon is that it was too big to simply transport from one place to the next, so they would have to dismantle it and take any parts that weren’t made of wood, carry them to the next place that they were going to have a battle, and reassemble it with the wood of that area.

Finally there were the catapults of Medieval Europe. During this time period many different versions of the catapult were used, but the most common ones were the mangonel catapult, the onager catapult, and the trebuchet catapult. The mangonel catapult and onager catapult were very similar in their designs and purposes. The main difference between these two catapults were that the mangonel catapult used a bowl shaped mechanism to shoot the projectiles which allowed for much larger variety of projectiles such as small boulders and garbage. Its range was up to 500 feet, the same as the Roman ballista but with the benefit of causing great destruction to the surroundings and the enemies. The onager catapult did almost the same thing as the mangonel, but the difference was that the onager used a sling to shoot the projectiles rather than the bowl shaped mechanism. Then there’s the trebuchet catapult. This catapult is the best in dealing damage to the surroundings and the enemies because they could shoot the same projectiles as the other two but with the added element of fire. They were more accurate than all of the other catapults, and though the distance of the projectiles was rather small (about 200 yards), the fact that these projectiles could weigh up to 350 pounds more than makes up for the decrease in distance. These catapults were also generally easier to transport because they typically had wheels on the bottom of them so that they could be pushed around.

Overall, the Medieval Europeans’ catapults were the most reliable in transportation and best in design and transportation. They greatly outweighed any of the other catapults’ benefits with their ability to use much larger and more destructive projectiles. However, don’t count the other catapults out. They all are impressive for their time periods, and they all helped out their soldiers on the battlefield.