Trebuchet

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A trebuchet or trebucket is a siege engine that was employed in the Middle Ages either to smash masonry walls or to throw projectiles over them. It is sometimes called a 'counterweight trebuchet' or 'counterpoise trebuchet' in order to distinguish it from an earlier weapon that has come to be called the 'traction trebuchet', the original version with pulling men instead of a counterweight. The counterweight trebuchet appeared in both Christian and Muslim lands around the Mediterranean in the twelfth century. It could fling up to three-hundred and fifty pound projectiles at high speeds into enemy fortifications. On occasion, disease-infected corpses were flung into cities in an attempt to infect or terrorize the people under siege-a medieval form of biological warfare. Traction trebuchets appeared in the Greek world and China in about the 4th century BC, and did not become obsolete until the 16th century, well after the introduction of gunpowder. Trebuchets were far more accurate than other medieval catapults.