The Travels of Marco Polo
Chapter 135 : In some of these engines the counterpoise, consisting of a timber case filled with sto

In some of these engines the counterpoise, consisting of a timber case filled with stones, sand, or the like, was permanently fixed to the b.u.t.t-end of the shaft. This seems to have been the _Trebuchet_ proper. In others the counterpoise hung free on a pivot from the yard; whilst a third kind (as in fig. 17) combined both arrangements. The first kind shot most steadily and truly; the second with more force.

Those machines, in which the force of men pulling cords took the place of the counterpoise, could not discharge such weighty shot, but they could be worked more rapidly, and no doubt could be made of lighter scantling. Mr.

Hewitt points out a curious resemblance between this kind of Trebuchet and the apparatus used on the Thames to raise the cargo from the hold of a collier.

The Emperor Napoleon deduces from certain pa.s.sages in mediaeval writers that the _Mangonel_ was similar to the Trebuchet, but of lighter structure and power. But often certainly the term Mangonel seems to be used generically for all machines of this cla.s.s. Marino Sanudo uses no word but _Machina_, which he appears to employ as the Latin equivalent of _Mangonel_, whilst the machine which he describes is a Trebuchet with moveable counterpoise. The history of the word appears to be the following. The Greek word [Greek: magganon], "a piece of witchcraft," came to signify a juggler's trick, an unexpected contrivance (in modern slang "_a jim_"), and so specially a military engine. It seems to have reached this specific meaning by the time of Hero the Younger, who is believed to have written in the first half of the 7th century. From the form [Greek: magganikn] the Orientals got _Manganik_ and _Manjanik_,[6] whilst the Franks adopted _Mangona_ and _Mangonella_. Hence the verbs _manganare_ and _amanganare_, to batter and crush with such engines, and eventually our verb "to mangle." Again, when the use of gunpowder rendered these warlike engines obsolete, perhaps their ponderous counterweights were utilised in the peaceful arts of the laundry, and hence gave us our substantive "the Mangle" (It. _Mangano_)!

The Emperor Napoleon, when Prince President, caused some interesting experiments in the matter of mediaeval artillery to be carried out at Vincennes, and a full-sized trebuchet was constructed there. With a shaft of 33 feet 9 inches in length, having a permanent counterweight of 3300 lbs. and a pivoted counterweight of 6600 lbs. more, the utmost effect attained was the discharge of an iron 24-kilo. shot to a range of 191 yards, whilst a 12-1/2-inch sh.e.l.l, filled with earth, ranged to 131 yards.

The machine suffered greatly at each discharge, and it was impracticable to increase the counterpoise to 8000 kilos., or 17,600 lbs. as the Prince desired. It was evident that the machine was not of sufficiently ma.s.sive structure. But the officers in charge satisfied themselves that, with practice in such constructions and the use of very ma.s.sive timber, even the exceptional feats recorded of mediaeval engineers might be realised.

Such a case is that cited by Quatremere, from an Oriental author, of the discharge of stones weighing 400 _mans_, certainly not less than 800 lbs., and possibly much more; or that of the Men of Bern, who are reported, when besieging Nidau in 1388, to have employed trebuchets which shot daily into the town upwards of 200 blocks weighing 12 cwt. apiece.[7] Stella relates that the Genoese armament sent against Cyprus, in 1373, among other great machines had one called _Troja_ (_Truia_?), which cast stones of 12 to 18 hundredweights; and when the Venetians were besieging the revolted city of Zara in 1346, their Engineer, Master Francesco delle Barche, shot into the city stones of 3000 lbs. weight.[8] In this case the unlucky engineer was "hoist with his own petard," for while he stood adjusting one of his engines, it went off, and shot him into the town.

With reference to such cases the Emperor calculates that a stone of 3000 lbs. weight might be shot 77 yards with a counterpoise of 36,000 lbs.

weight, and a shaft 65 feet long. The counterpoise, composed of stone shot of 55 lbs. each, might be contained in a cubical case of about 5-1/2 feet to the side. The machine would be preposterous, but there is nothing impossible about it. Indeed in the Alb.u.m of Villard de Honnecourt, an architect of the 13th century, which was published at Paris in 1858, in the notes accompanying a plan of a trebuchet (from which Professor Willis restored the machine as it is shown in our fig. 19), the artist remarks: "It is a great job to heave down the beam, for the counterpoise is very heavy. For it consists of a chest full of earth which is 2 great toises in length, 8 feet in breadth, and 12 feet in depth"! (p. 203).

Such calculations enable us to understand the enormous quant.i.ties of material said to have been used in some of the larger mediaeval machines.

Thus Abulfeda speaks of one used at the final capture of Acre, which was entrusted to the troops of Hamath, and which formed a load for 100 carts, of which one was in charge of the historian himself. The romance of Richard Coeur de Lion tells how in the King's Fleet an entire s.h.i.+p was taken up by one such machine with its gear:--

"Another schyp was laden yet With an engyne hyghte Robinet, (It was Richardys o mangonel) And all the takyl that thereto fel."

Twenty-four machines, captured from the Saracens by St. Lewis in his first partial success on the Nile, afforded material for stockading his whole camp. A great machine which c.u.mbered the Tower of St. Paul at Orleans, and was dismantled previous to the celebrated defence against the English, furnished 26 cart-loads of timber. (_Abulf. Ann. Muslem_, V. 95-97; _Weber_, II. 56; _Michel's Joinville_, App. p. 278; _Jollois, H. du Siege d Orleans_, 1833, p. 12.)

The _number_ of such engines employed was sometimes very great. We have seen that St. Lewis captured 24 at once, and these had been employed in the field. Villehardouin says that the fleet which went from Venice to the attack of Constantinople carried more than 300 perriers and mangonels, besides quant.i.ties of other engines required for a siege (ch. x.x.xviii). At the siege of Acre in 1291, just referred to, the Saracens, according to Makrizi, set 92 engines in battery against the city, whilst Abulfaraj says 300, and a Frank account, of great and small, 666. 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 quant.i.ties 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 hara.s.sment 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 bas.e.m.e.nt.

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!

Marino Sanudo, about the same time, speaks of the range of these engines with a prophetic sense of the importance of artillery in war:--

"On this subject (length of range) the engineers and experts of the army should employ their very sharpest wits. For if the shot of one army, whether engine-stones or pointed projectiles, have a longer range than the shot of the enemy, rest a.s.sured that the side whose artillery hath the longest range will have a vast advantage in action. Plainly, if the Christian shot can take effect on the Pagan forces, whilst the Pagan shot cannot reach the Christian forces, it may be safely a.s.serted that the Christians will continually gain ground from the enemy, or, in other words, they will win the battle."

The importance of these machines in war, and the efforts made to render them more effective, went on augmenting till the introduction of the still more "villanous saltpetre," even then, however, coming to no sudden halt.

Several of the instances that we have cited of machines of extraordinary power belong to a time when the use of cannon had made some progress. The old engines were employed by Timur; in the wars of the Hussites as late as 1422; and, as we have seen, up to the middle of that century by Mahomed II. They are also distinctly represented on the towers of Aden, in the contemporary print of the escalade in 1514, reproduced in this volume.

(Bk. III. ch. x.x.xvi.)

(_Etudes sur le Pa.s.se et l'Avenir de l'Artillerie_, par _L. N. Bonaparte_, etc., tom. II.; _Marinus Sanutius_, Bk. II. Pt. 4, ch. xxi. and xxii.; _Kington's Fred. II._, II. 488; _Froissart_, I. 69, 81, 182; _Elliot_, III. 41, etc.; Hewitt's _Ancient Armour_, I. 350; _Pertz, Scriptores_, XVIII. 420, 751; _Q. R._ 135-7; _Weber_, III. 103; _Hammer, Ilch._ II.

95.)

NOTE 4.--Very like this is what the Romance of Coeur de Lion tells of the effects of Sir Fulke Doyley's mangonels on the Saracens of _Ebedy_:--

"Sir Fouke brought good engynes Swylke knew but fewe Sarazynes-- * * *

"A prys tour stood ovyr the Gate; He bent his engynes and threw thereate A great stone that harde droff, That the Tour al to roff * * *

"And slough the folk that therinne stood; The other fledde and wer nygh wood, And sayde it was the devylys dent," etc.

--_Weber_, II. 172.

NOTE 5.--This chapter is one of the most perplexing in the whole book, owing to the chronological difficulties involved.

SAIANFU is SIANG-YANG FU, which stands on the south bank of the River Han, and with the sister city of Fan-ch'eng, on the opposite bank, commands the junction of two important approaches to the southern provinces, viz. that from Shen-si down the Han, and that from Shan-si and Peking down the Pe-ho. Fan-ch'eng seems now to be the more important place of the two.

The name given to the city by Polo is precisely that which Siang-yang bears in Ras.h.i.+duddin, and there is no room for doubt as to its ident.i.ty.

The Chinese historians relate that Kublai was strongly advised to make the capture of Siang-yang and Fan-ch'eng a preliminary to his intended attack upon the Sung. The siege was undertaken in the latter part of 1268, and the twin cities held out till the spring [March] of 1273. Nor did Kublai apparently prosecute any other operations against the Sung during that long interval.

Now Polo represents that the long siege of Saianfu, instead of being a prologue to the subjugation of Manzi, was the protracted epilogue of that enterprise; and he also represents the fall of the place as caused by advice and a.s.sistance rendered by his father, his uncle, and himself, a circ.u.mstance consistent only with the siege's having really been such an epilogue to the war. For, according to the narrative as it stands in all the texts, the Polos _could not_ have reached the Court of Kublai before the end of 1274, i.e. a year and a half after the fall of Siang-yang, as represented in the Chinese histories.

The difficulty is not removed, nor, it appears to me, abated in any degree, by omitting the name of Marco as one of the agents in this affair, an omission which occurs both in Pauthier's MS. B and in Ramusio. Pauthier suggests that the father and uncle may have given the advice and a.s.sistance in question when on their first visit to the Kaan, and when the siege of Siang-yang was first contemplated. But this would be quite inconsistent with the a.s.sertion that the place had held out three years longer than the rest of Manzi, as well as with the idea that their aid had abridged the duration of the siege, and, in fact, with the spirit of the whole story. It is certainly very difficult in this case to justify Marco's veracity, but I am very unwilling to believe that there was no justification in the facts.

It is a very curious circ.u.mstance that the historian Wa.s.saf also appears to represent Saianfu (see note 5, ch. lxv.) as holding out after all the rest of Manzi had been conquered. Yet the Chinese annals are systematic, minute, and consequent, and it seems impossible to attribute to them such a misplacement of an event which they represent as the key to the conquest of Southern China.

In comparing Marco's story with that of the Chinese, we find the same coincidence in prominent features, accompanying a discrepancy in details, that we have had occasion to notice in other cases where his narrative intersects history. The Chinese account runs as follows:--

In 1271, after Siang-yang and Fan-ch'eng had held out already nearly three years, an Uighur General serving at the siege, whose name was Alihaiya, urged the Emperor to send to the West for engineers expert at the construction and working of machines casting stones of 150 lbs. weight.

With such aid he a.s.sured Kublai the place would speedily be taken. Kublai sent to his nephew Abaka in Persia for such engineers, and two were accordingly sent post to China, _Alawating_ of Mufali and his pupil Ysemain of Huli or Hiulie (probably _Ala'uddin_ of _Miafarakain_ and _Ismael_ of _Heri_ or Herat). Kublai on their arrival gave them military rank. They exhibited their skill before the Emperor at Tatu, and in the latter part of 1272 they reached the camp before Siang-yang, and set up their engines. The noise made by the machines, and the crash of the shot as it broke through everything in its fall, caused great alarm in the garrison. Fan-ch'eng was first taken by a.s.sault, and some weeks later Siang-yang surrendered.

The shot used on this occasion weighed 125 Chinese pounds (if _catties_, then equal to about 166 _lbs. avoird._), and penetrated 7 or 8 feet into the earth.

Ras.h.i.+duddin also mentions the siege of Siangyang, as we learn from D'Ohsson. He states that as there were in China none of the _Manjaniks_ or Mangonels called _k.u.mgha_ the Kaan caused a certain engineer to be sent from Damascus or Balbek, and the three sons of this person, Abubakr, Ibrahim, and Mahomed, with their workmen, constructed seven great Manjaniks which were employed against SAYANFU, a frontier fortress and bulwark of Manzi.

We thus see that three different notices of the siege of Siang-yang, Chinese, Persian, and Venetian, all concur as to the employment of foreign engineers from the West, but all differ as to the individuals.

We have seen that one of the MSS. makes Polo a.s.sert that till this event the Mongols and Chinese were totally ignorant of mangonels and trebuchets.

This, however, is quite untrue; and it is not very easy to reconcile even the statement, implied in all versions of the story, that mangonels of considerable power were unknown in the far East, with other circ.u.mstances related in Mongol history.

The Persian History called _Tabakat-i-Nasiri_ speaks of Aikah Nowin the _Manjaniki Khas_ or Engineer-in-Chief to Chinghiz Khan, and his corps of ten thousand _Manjanikis_ or Mangonellers. The Chinese histories used by Gaubil also speak of these artillery battalions of Chinghiz. At the siege of Kai-fung fu near the Hw.a.n.g-Ho, the latest capital of the Kin Emperors, in 1232, the Mongol General, Subutai, threw from his engines great quarters of millstones which smashed the battlements and watch-towers on the ramparts, and even the great timbers of houses in the city. In 1236 we find the Chinese garrison of Chinchau (_I-chin-hien_ on the Great Kiang near the Great Ca.n.a.l) repelling the Mongol attack, partly by means of their stone shot. When Hulaku was about to march against Persia (1253), his brother, the Great Kaan Mangku, sent to _Cathay_ to fetch thence 1000 families of mangonellers, naphtha-shooters, and arblasteers. Some of the crossbows used by these latter had a range, we are told, of 2500 paces!

European history bears some similar evidence. One of the Tartar characteristics reported by a fugitive Russian Archbishop, in Matt. Paris (p. 570 under 1244), is: "_Machinas habent multiplices, recte et fort.i.ter jacientes_"

It is evident, therefore, that the Mongols and Chinese _had_ engines of war, but that they were deficient in some advantage possessed by those of the Western nations. Ras.h.i.+duddin's expression as to their having no _k.u.mgha_ mangonels, seems to be unexplained. Is it perhaps an error for _Karabugha_, the name given by the Turks and Arabs to a kind of great mangonel? This was known also in Europe as Carabaga, Calabra, etc. It is mentioned under the former name by Marino Sanudo, and under the latter, with other quaintly-named engines, by William of Tudela, as used by Simon de Montfort the Elder against the Albigenses:--

"E dressa sos _Calabres_, et foi _Mal Vezina_ E sas autras pereiras, e _Dona_, e _Reina_; Pessia les autz murs e la sala peirina."[9]

("He set up his _Calabers_, and likewise his _Ill-Neighbours_, With many a more machine, this the _Lady_, that the _Queen_, And breached the lofty walls, and smashed the stately Halls.")

Now, in looking at the Chinese representations of their ancient mangonels, which are evidently genuine, and of which I have given some specimens (figs. I, 2, 3), I see none worked by the counterpoise; all (and there are six or seven different representations in the work from which these are taken) are shown as worked by man-ropes. Hence, probably, the improvement brought from the West was essentially the use of the counterpoised lever.

And, after I had come to this conclusion, I found it to be the view of Captain Fave. (See _Du Feu Gregeois_, by MM. Reinaud and Fave, p. 193.)

In Ramusio the two Polos propose to Kublai to make "_mangani al modo di_ _Ponente"_; and it is worthy of note that in the campaigns of Alauddin Khilji and his generals in the Deccan, circa 1300, frequent mention is made of the _Western Manjaniks_ and their great power. (See _Elliot_, III.

75, 78, etc.)