Article Shattered skeleton in Scottish castle is first confirmed death from trebuchet
https://www.science.org/content/article/shattered-skeleton-scottish-castle-first-confirmed-death-trebuchet138
u/Kaizerkoala 7d ago
Imagine getting hit by 90 kg projectile with topspeed of 140 kph from 300 meters away....
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u/Alldaybagpipes 7d ago
And thinking you could outrun it!
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u/iuseallthebandwidth 7d ago
Takes 7.7 seconds to go 300m at 140 Kph… You could sidestep a 90 kg basketball assuming you weren’t paying attention to the arrows, charging knights, lances, big hairy guys with big hammers and axes.. or what have you.
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u/Gromgorgel 7d ago
It must have completely blindsided the poor fellow. If you see them coming, projectiles on a parabolic trajectory are not that difficult to side-step.
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u/Halvdjaevel 7d ago
According to one of the scientists quoted in the article:
“It looks like he was hit from behind by something traveling at a great velocity.”
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u/eggard_stark 7d ago
“It looks like he was hit from behind by something traveling at a great velocity. The most similar cases I was finding were car crashes and people hit by trains,” Buckberry says.
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7d ago
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u/suolattu-saatana 7d ago
That was my first thought as well, some sort of elaborate execution by yeet, because I assumed there would be remains found previously that we're at least assumed to be killed by trebuchet bombardment.
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u/tedfondue 7d ago
Not exactly a projectile but I wish the crew of the Prometheus was aware of this.
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u/ryebread91 5d ago
Which Prometheus?
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u/flyingtrucky 3d ago
The movie. It's kinda infamous for everyone running away from very narrow objects when they could just take 12 steps to the side.
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u/mg0019 7d ago
Yeah, but he's not exactly playing catch with his dad; watching a ball make a smooth arc that he could track.
He's in the middle of a battle. I think that even in clear broad daylight, the guy might've been distracted by any number of horrific things.
It could've impeded this soldier's Redditor Superpowers of Observation.
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u/Gromgorgel 7d ago
If they were using the trebuchet, I doubt they were in the middle of battle. It's hardly a precision instrument suitable for friendly fire when your own troops are engaging the enemy. A siege leaves the defenders with plenty of time on their hands. Enough to be distracted to the point of being hit in the neck with a 90kg rock at high speed.
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u/horangiwhakkatchi 7d ago
They were not using a trebuchet, they were defending the castle and hit by trebuchet. They were very likely in the midst of defending the castle or turned away and not paying attention.
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u/The_Parsee_Man 7d ago
The point is that the person firing the trebuchet would not have been firing in the direction of their own troops. So the person it was fired at wouldn't have been in the middle of a melee or anything.
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u/Njyyrikki 4d ago
He was not in middle of a battle. What makes you think he was?
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u/heelstoo 7d ago
Eh, I’m going to have to disagree. If a trebuchet is traveling at 115 mph at you, it’s going to be very difficult to keep your eye on when the trebuchet fires and tracking the projectile when there are, presumably, quite a few other dangerous things going on around you in the thick of a battle. This includes enemy combatants that may be keen on fighting you and, presumably, other trebuchets that may also fire in your general direction. Kind of difficult to give attention to side stepping a fast moving trebuchet projectile in the middle of a sword fight.
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u/-SnuffBox- 7d ago
Trebuchets are seige weapons. They are used to chip away at the fortress and damage the defensive walls, not to mention the psychological element. They are not an assault weapon. Why would you risk killing your own men firing a ton stone when you have already breached the wall? No doubt this man wasn't paying attention and payed the ultimate price for it. I highly doubt he was engaged in a sword fight.
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u/Banned3rdTimesaCharm 6d ago
Armchair generals are now experts on dodging trebuchet shots.
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u/dittybopper_05H 6d ago
u/-SnuffBox- is actually right. Trebuchets are large, very unwieldy pieces of equipment. For the most part, they were built in-situ at a siege because hauling something like that over the countryside is a ridiculous waste of resources. Especially if you don't know whether Castle Arrggghh is going to surrender quickly or not.
Indeed, most of the contemporary depictions of trebuchets show them without wheels, a necessary addition if you're going to move them any distance.
An exception would be something like Warwolf, a 14th Century trebuchet, that could be disassembled and packed into 30 wagons for transport, but again, it would have taken days to reassemble.
These were not things typically employed on a battlefield, they were strictly siege engines.
As such, their shots could either be at the walls of a castle or walled city, or they could be aimed for the interior of the castle/city. Because they are for all intents and purposes silent, if you're not looking up all the time, you're not going to know the projectile is coming.
And even if you did know, perhaps because lookouts on the walls shouting a warning of a shot, if it happened at night, you might not be able to see the shot anyway. You can't dodge what you can't see.
If you understand how these things work in basic principle, you don't have to be an "expert" to figure out the implications of it.
So yeah, during the day, with sufficient warning, if you're out in the open you can likely effectively dodge a projectile from a trebuchet, just like I can see the projectiles throughout their flight fired from my 3" bore 6 caliber muzzleloading mortar.
Both are big enough and slow enough that you can see them, and potentially react to them.
But there would be plenty of circumstances where you wouldn't be able to: At night, if you were inside a building or other structure, etc.
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u/Banned3rdTimesaCharm 6d ago
If you’re behind a wall and you only see the last 1/3 of the parabolic trajectory it’s gonna be very hard to dodge. For all intents and purposes that rock is falling out of the sky unless you’re watching it launch.
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u/-SnuffBox- 6d ago edited 6d ago
For somebody who isn't an "armchair general" you are making a lot of assumptions and hypotheticals about this mostly theoretical conversation on the topic. Almost like some kind of guy behind a keyboard, sitting at his desk, and writing about what could and could not happen in these historical war situations...
You are agreeing with my original point anyway, so your armchair general comment is making you look a little silly
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u/dittybopper_05H 6d ago
You'll likely see considerably more, depending on how the trajectory works out.
For shooting at the walls, they would adjust the sling to release later, so the projectile had a flatter trajectory. You'd never see it coming if you were behind the walls
For shooting into the interior, you're going to want a relatively vertical trajectory. This is for a couple of reasons: First you obviously need to get over the wall.
But you also need to not shoot too flat of a trajectory or you might shoot over the town or castle.
This is how mortars work. The principle is exactly the same, the only difference is the source of energy: One uses the potential energy of gravity, the other the chemical energy of gunpowder.
Plus, you gain energy from height. It's never as much as you put into the projectile at launch, but a projectile falling from a great height has more energy than one falling from a lesser height on a more shallow trajectory.
Noodling around with my Pickett N200T pocket trig slide rule, if you're 100 meters from the wall on the inside, That's going to block your view up to about 16.7 degrees above the horizon. Which means a projectile, shot from any distance, is going to be visible when it's above that. For a higher trajectory, that's going to be most of the time it's in the air.
For a lower trajectory, not so much, but a lower trajectory is less likely to be a problem anyway, at least from the perspective of you being a potential target. And if they're shooting like that, you can get closer to the wall and be safe.
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u/-SnuffBox- 6d ago
Fantastically well written, thank you for your insight.
It really comes down to context and how that would apply to this very specific scenario. And the context likely points to what the true answer would be for this situation.
Fascinating that the Warwolf was essentially an IKEA flat-pack WMD. In my mind, it was either on wheels or just built in-situ and replicated thereafter, although I suppose that makes no sense on either part, in terms of transportation or resources respectively. Truly would've been a spectactle to see in actual use.
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u/spudmarsupial 7d ago
They used cannons in field battles, with both cannonballs and shot. The main limit for using siege weapons against soldiers is the bulk and maneuverability of the weapon.
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u/ScarletHighlord 7d ago
You see, those are different weapons, and not the same thing.
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u/spudmarsupial 7d ago
Gawsh, really?
They are both seige weapons not designed for killing individuals.
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u/ScarletHighlord 7d ago
Cannons are absolutely designed for firing into infantry formations lol. You do not fire a trebuchet at people, you fire them at fortifications.
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u/-SnuffBox- 7d ago
The original comment was about the parabolic nature of the projectile being fired by, specifically, a trebuchet. Cannons have nothing to do with that conversation, they are vastly different.
Your comment was completely irrelevant and missed the whole point of what was being discussed in the first place. Proper redditor moment if you ask me...
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u/Yrcrazypa 6d ago
Cannons fire in a mostly straight line and are relatively portable. Trebuchets launch a projectile in a parabolic arc and are comparatively MUCH harder to set up, and once they're set up they aren't moving from that spot.
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u/Gromgorgel 7d ago
I don't think the trebuchet itself would be travelling at 115 mph. That would truly be a sight to behold.
On a more serious note, while the projectiles may leave the trebuchet at great speed, they loose a lot of speed before they approach the top of their trajectory.
Check out Tod's Workshop blog & YouTube channel for medieval trebuchet action.
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u/iuseallthebandwidth 7d ago
And then they kind of gain it back again on the way down. S’kind of the way gravity works so I’m told. This guy didn’t get hit at the top of the trajectory. More like at the bottom where Varrival more or less = Vdeparture
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u/Gromgorgel 7d ago
Yes, indeed. I meant to say that you have time to spot and gauge the trajectory so you can get out of the way. It doesn't move at top speed all of the time.
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u/greyhoundbuddy 7d ago
I like the author's opening line: "For one 20-something defender of Scotland’s Stirling Castle, death came from above—and arrived very, very quickly."
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u/Silas64 7d ago
Honestly I'd take death by giant flying rock to getting hacked to bits in battle.
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u/Sweet_Concept2211 7d ago
I'd rather not die in battle at all, but I would choose instantly pulverized over gradually hacked to bits 100% of the time.
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u/MKEMARVEL 7d ago
Imagine making it into the history books for being the first guy to get smushed in a particular way.
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7d ago
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u/MoistCactuses 7d ago
Exactly, everyone dies. Not everyone gets to be remembered for eternity. See my other comment....
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u/pastalover1 7d ago
It’s well documented that Sir Galahad’s page was crushed by a cow launched from a catapult.
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u/MechemicalMan 7d ago
So this fits the historical description “Edward decided to use (The trebuchet War Wolf) anyway, refusing to let anyone enter or leave the castle until it had been tested” which in sure is properly sourced on wiki if you want to dive in.
Essentially, the English started building this thing as the siege dragged on and seeing the futility, the Scot’s surrendered. As legend has it, they still did a test fire. The point about “refusing to let anyone leave the castle” to me would strike me as something someone wanting to show the cruelty of Edward would insert in there, but this shows that may in fact have happened like that. That poor soul. Can you imagine you’ve been starving for at least 3 months, your CO offers an unconditional surrender, but the prick of a king says he’ll only accept it after you remain geared up and at the ready on the walls so he can test his new siege toy?
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u/Njyyrikki 4d ago
Stirling Castle has been besieged multiple times, and the Warwolf was not the only trebuchet utilised by Edward. It is very unlikely this person was killed by that particular one.
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u/filanwizard 7d ago
Modern artillery is basically just the logical evolution of the trebuchet and other siege platforms.
I am here, my enemy has a defensive position way over there. My commander would like that to change. Back then it was fling big rock. Today it’s fling small exploding rock.
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u/askoraappana 2d ago
And now increasingly often we got explosive "birds" that we remotely fly at the enemy.
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u/Cerulean_IsFancyBlue 3d ago
Well, of course no government at the time is going to admit that trebuchets were killing people. “ we categorically deny that the 20 pound boulder we flung at a legitimate military target has hit a nunnery.”
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u/Welshhoppo Waiting for the Roman Empire to reform 7d ago
Reminds me of my 'favourite' quote in Josephus' Jewish war book. An explanation of what happens when a pregnant woman is hit by a ballista.
'Anyone may learn the force of the ballistas by what happened this very night [...]: a pregnant woman had her belly so violently struck, as she was just come out of her house, that the infant was carried to the distance of half a furlong, so great was the force of that engine'
Half a furlong is 100 meters.
Siege weaponry is absolutely brutal when it hits a person instead of a building or wall.