The Bowmen of England, The Story of The English Longbow, Donald Featherstone, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., publisher, 1967, Library of congress Catalog Card Number 68-11983 (First published in the United States in 1968, 200 pages. - I found this book through my local library system. It is long out of print. This is a very interesting book covering the rise and glory days of the English long bowmen in the wars of the English and the French, from the late 13th Century to 1513. Through a somewhat patriotic view of the mastery of the battlefield by English archers, there is a great deal of valuable information about the longbow, its development, use and tactics. There are descriptions of the English archers in battles from Falkirk in 1298, to Flodden Field in 1513.
Castaway Arts, P.O. Box 7599, Cairns QLD 4870, Australia, Phone/Fax (+61)(07)40412079, E-Mail castawayarts@ozemail.com.au - This is a "Down Under" manufacturer of "25mm miniatures for Wargamers and Collectors." Castaway Arts web site catalog includes a listing of figures for Ancients - Old Kingdom Egyptian and Sumerian, and Colonials - The Ashanti War and Colonial Egyptian. There is a picture of a Sumerian Chariot on their web site. Their web site offers FREE STUFF - a range of supplementary materials, that you are welcome to make personal use of including: The Green Hell - Colonial Warfare in West Africa. Simple Rule System, and painting guides for the Ashanti Wars - Native & British, Sumerian, Old Kingdom Egyptian, and Colonial Egyptian. Ordering information includes: -Minimum order $5.00 Australian. -All orders dispatched via first class air mail. -Postage and Packaging for credit card orders is at cost. For other orders, please add the following rates: Australial0% of order, New Zealandl5% of order, Rest of the World 35% of order.
Wargaming Ancient and Medieval Periods, Donald Featherstone, David and Charles, Hippocrene Books, Inc., publisher, 1975, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 75-7009, 143 pages. - I also found this book through my local library system. It too is long out of print. The libraries are a good source for these old, musty volumes about wargaming from the other side of the pond. Fifteen battles are covered in this book with diagrams for the tables and scenario suggestions, from Kadesh - 1288 BC, to the first Battle of St. Albans - 1455. The appendices cover rules, terrain and figures (somewhat dated at this point, but fascinating to compare to the range of ancient figures available today). For each battle there are sections covering "Reconstructing the Battle," "Commander's Classifications," "Number and Quality of Men," "Morale," Terrain," and "Military Possibilities,"
Wargamers Handbook of the American War of Independence Donald F. Featherstone, Model and Allied Publications, Argus Books, Ltd., publisher, 1977, ISBN 0 85242 544 9, 107 pages. Another out of print book through my local library system. This gives a very good coverage of most aspects of wargaming in the AWI (American War of Independence) period. Recommended.
The address is 7047 North Barry Street, Des Plaines, Illinois. Can anyone guess from appearances what this cleverly camouflaged building contains? What would you expect to find in this building located in a scruffy light industrial area, just north of the Rosemont Horizon "car park", and just east of the 1-90 toll way? This building is the new location of The Emperor's Headquarters.
After contacting them by telephone (847-768-7800) for directions, I was easily able to find this building. However, parking is a problem, since this is a light industry area. The Rosemont Horizon parking lot is a block or so south.. Be sure to call first to see if they are open. This shop has a large stock of wargame materials, books, and figures, especially the Old Glory line. I was told they do a lot of mail order business from this location.
Society of Ancients web site http://www.soa.org.com.uk/main/links/links - suppliers.htm This web site has a comprehensive list of wargame figure and paraphernalia suppliers, all over the world provided as a service, including address, telephone numbers, web sites and e-mail in many cases. For many listed suppliers, they also list other "See also:" sites, usually vendors such as the likes of Brookhurst Hobbies, etc. I found this web site listing very useful for locating just the right place to order figures and other wargames materials. The sponsors of this site have provided a great service to surfing wargamers with this resource.
Dixon Miniatures web site http://www.wargames.co.uk/Dixons/Dacw.htm - here you can view and print your own copy of the Dixon ACW figure listings by number and description. Several photos of groups of these figures are at this site also, but the individual figures are not pictured. The copy of the list I printed goes to ACW384 for infantry figures. This site also has listing for the other Dixon lines, Wild West, Pirates, F&IW, etc.
Essex Miniatures web site http://www.essexminiatures.co.uk - Same thing as Dixon site above for the Essex lines. This site also has some color photographs of nicely painted individual figures.
Historical Miniature Gaming Society - Midwest Journal - January 2000 issue.
These individuals are the new administration of the HMGS Midwest. They are working to put on the April 14 - 16 Liftle Wars event in Lincolnshire, Illinois. Be there or be square. We must all support these events to keep them alive.
- Bill Krieg President 519 Kelly Court Lombard, IL 60148
Randy Giesey Secretary 1774 Ashford Circle Wheeling, IL 60090
Mike Cosentino Vice President 5461 Rutherford Chicago, IL 60638
See their web site located at http: //user.aol.com/littlewars/lwmain.htm for more Little Wars information and the latest HMGS news.
The Castle Works Company, 14 Ellis Street, Freehold, NJ 07728, Telephone 732-431-0458. http://www.monmouth.com/-tvawter/casl02O.htm -This is a mail order only company with aweb site that offers a large number of castles and states ". All of our castles are perfect for displaying your figure collections. Extremely well-made. Built strong enough to hold up to heavy wargaming action too." This site advertises the castles are for use with 15mm to 40 turn scale figures and siege equipment. From the photos of the various castles on this site, they look very nice. The Stonehurst Castle for example is 32" wide, by 22" deep and 21 tall, for a mere $500 dollars, plus $40 shipping(add $40 for landscaping with grass, vines and bushes).
British Wargames http://www.britishwargames.force9.co.uk/site - index.htm - This site states, "Coming Soon - an exciting new section dedicated to the wonderful world of miniature wargaming from Ancient Persia to Space Marines you'll find it here. Here you'll find comparative reviews of the major (and many of the minor) rule sets, convention news, competition news, club meets, figure guides, our own house rules and much more."
A preview is provided on this site of the first few sections of Martin J Blows "Getting Good" painting tutorials. Martin is a professional miniature figure painter and photographs from his portfolio are used here to illustrate his tutorials. This site contains a large listing of the articles about wargaming for your review, files by category.
Siege Equipment - Building your own for fun and prorit - The TREBUCHET - So, we were all sitting around the crenelation cutter drinking mead after a hard day of "throw out your dead!"... and talking about our favorite pieces of siege equipment, and where we were when we first became interested in these useful machines. Then there is that crazy Englishman, Hew Kennedy of Shropshire, ( ... build it and they will come - see the article below titled Giant Medieval War Machine Is Wowing British Farmers And Scaring the Sheep below) who built a device with a 60 foot long arm to chuck dead farm animals, flaming drums of gasoline, pianos and small cars through the air with the greatest of ease. But crazy uses for a trebuchet occur even on this side of "the Pond," as they say. The difference is that the early Europeans were doing the trebuchet thing a very long time ago. It is clear from some of the materials, they still haven't gotten it out of their system yet (jolly old Hew, and the guys in kilts in Scotland mentioned below).
As you all know, a trebuchet is not a catapult. I have been fascinated by this device since I first saw a representation of one as a child, in an old movie about a siege, and pictured in some of the Classic Comic Books. It is a device that uses a weight, sling and arm to throw projectiles. This device is a clever use of mechanical energy. It was the heavy artillery of period, able to knock down stout masonry walls, and wreak havoc on the defenders of a fortifie d town, etc. There is a certain elegance as the throwing arm and sling pivot on the fulcrum, pulling the projectile along the trough, and then accelerating it through the air in an arc until the sling cord pulls off the hook on the end of the arm and the projectile is released towards the battlements to create a breach. This is not an ugly balista, or an oranger, a torsion catapult or a sling, but a mechanical marvel, the trebuchet.
What does trebuchet really mean in French? I ask my (partially) French speaking wife (a year in Paris, at the Catholic Institute and three months at the Sorbonne no less), but she says it is not in her Larousse en Couleurs dictionary (the "really big" French Dictionary). She has been a lot of help though with French sites on the F&IW, couer de bois, La Reine, La Sarre, French forts and flags, etc., but confesses these is some trouble with the translation of military terms in some of these documents. In Cassell's New French Dictionary (copyright 1930), trebuchet is defined as 1.) verbstumbling, noun-bird-trap, snare. 2.) to entrap someone (used in a phrase "Prendre quelqu'un au trebuchet."). Below are several trebuchet and siege equipment related sources and internet sites about these devices. Take heart you who fancy the trebuchet, because I have found many sites about these devices on the internet, complete with photos. One site even had photos of the author launching himself, his buddy and his girlfriend (one at a time of course) from the banks of a river with his homemade trebuchet.
The Crossbow, Mediaeval and Modern Militia and Sporting, Its construction, History and Mangeement, with a treatise on the Balista and Catapult of the Ancients, and an appendix on the Catapult, Balista & the Turkish Bow (sic) - Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey -Bt., Bramhall House, New York, 328 pages. 1958 - This is a great source on the mentioned subjects, but of particular interest along our present line of inquiry was chapter LVIII "The Trebuchet" There are also chapters on the catapult and the balista, etc. This book is available from Barnes and Noble in paperback for approximately $18.00.
Trebuchets
January 2000 issue of Smithsonian Magazine, volume 30, Number 10, contains an article titled "Ready Aim, Fire!"pages 78 - 87. - This wonderful, entertaining article (my wife says I am "odd") documents the efforts of two NOVA teams (wearing kilts) in Scotland constructing two different designs of trebuchets to demonstrate how these giant war machines revolutionized the medieval siege. This article was written by Evan Hadingham, with photographs by Patrick Ward.
http://www.fyi.net/-kordite/gifs/smtreb.gif Several pages of detailed plans for a 20" long throwing arm model trebuchet can be found in gif files at this site. The illustration seen here is the first page of the plans for the "do-it-yourselfer."
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/matthewk/book.html Another site documenting the construction of a trebuchet can be found at this address. This site even refers to a book written on the subject with the chivalrous name of "The Holy Book of Trebuchets." This book is a 24 page booklet written by the four individuals that built Deimos. It explains how to design build and properly maintain an operational trebuchet.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/6461/trebuch.htmI This site is evidently material developed for a school project for a Physics class. I have copied some of the text found at this site which was authored by Filip Radlinski.
"The trebuchet was the most advanced of all the catapults used in the ancient world. Ae functioning of it is relatively simple yet quite a few interesting facts can be discovered while trying to unravel its workings in detail. For a machine to be a trebuchel, it has to abide by certain conditions: It must be powered only by a counterweight and must he on a self-supporting structure made of wood."
This site is has a wealth of information on the trebuchet. For those interested in the meatier details of the physical science of the trebuchet, this site provides a good overview.
http://www.apocalypse.org/pub/u/zonker/fpp/html/trebuchet.htmI This site contains the article which was copied from The Wall Street Journal that is titled "A Scud It's Not, But the Trebuchet Hurls a Mean Piano - Giant Medieval War Machine Is Wowing British Farmers And Scaring the Sheep." This article was written by Glynn Mapes, Staff Reporter of the Wall Street Journal.
- ACTONROUND, England--With surprising grace, the grand piano sails through the air a hundred
feet above a pasture here, finally returning to earth in afortissimo explosion of wood chunks; ivory keys and piano wire.
Nor is the piano the strangest thing to startle the grazing sheep this Sunday morning. A few minutes later, a car soars by - a 1975 blue two-door Hillman, to be exact -following the same flightpath and meeting the same loud fate. Pigs fly here, too. In recent months, many dead 500- pound sows (two of them wearing parachutes) have passed overhead, as has the occasional dead horse.
It's the work of Hew Kennedy's medieval siege engine, ajour story tall, 30 ton behemoth that's the talk of bucolic Shropshire, 140 miles northwest of London. In ancient times, such war machines were dreaded instruments of destruction, flinging huge missiles, including plague-ridden horses, over the walls of besieged castles. Only one full-sized one exists today, designed and built by Mr. Kennedy, a wealthy landowner, inventor, military historian and - need it be said? - -full-blown eccentric.
A Pagoda Too - At Acton, RoundRall, Mr. Kennedy's handsome Georgian manor house here, one enters the bizarre world of a P. G. Wodehouse novel. A stuffed baboon hangs from the dining room chandelier ("Shot it in Africa. Nowhere else to put it, "Mr. Kennedy explains). Lining the walls are dozens of halberds and suits of armor. A full suit of Indian elephant armor, rebuilt by Mr. Kennedy, shimmers resplendently on an elephant-sized frame. In the garden outside stands a 50-foot-high Chinese pagoda.
Capping this scene, atop a hill on the other side of the 620-acre Kennedy estate, is the siege engine, punctuating the skyline like an oil derrick. Known by its 14th-century French name, trebuchet (pronounced tray-boo-shay), it's not to be confused with a catapult, a much smaller device that throws rocks with a spoon-like arm propelled by twisted ropes or animal gut.
Mr. Kennedy, a burly, energetic 52-year-old and Richard Barr, his 46-year-old neighbor and partner, have spent a year and 10,000 pounds ($17,000) assembling the trebuchet. They have worked from ancient texts, some in Latin, and crude wood-block engravings of siege weaponry.
The big question is why? - Mr. Kennedy looks puzzled, as if the thought hadn't occurred to him before. "Well why not? It's bloody goodfun!" hefinally exclaims. Whenpressedheaddsthatfor several hundredyears, military technicians have been tryingfruillessly to reconstruct a working trebuchet. Cortez built one for the siege ofMexico City. On itsfirst shot, itflung a huge boulder straight up - and then straight down, demolishing the machine. In 1851, Napoleon III had a go at it, as an academic exercise. His trebuchet was poorly balanced and barely managed to hurl the missiles - backward. "Ours works a hell of a lot better than the Frogs, which is a satisfaction," Mr. Kennedy says with relish.
How it works seems simple enough. The heart of the siege engine is a three-ton, 60-foot tapered beam made from laminated wood. It's pivoted near the heavy end, to which is attached a weight box filled with 5 tons of steel bar. Two huge A-frames made from lashed-together tree trunks support a steel axle, around which the beam pivots. When the machine is at rest, the beam is vertical, slender end at the top and weight box just clearing the ground.
When launch time comes, a tractor cocks the trebuchet, slowly hauling the slender end of the beam down and the weighted end up. Several dozen nervous sheep, hearing the tractor and knowing what comes next, make a break for the far side of the pasture. A crowd of 60 friends and neighbors buzzes with anticipation as a 30-foot, steel-cable sling is attached - one end to the slender end of the beam and the other to the projectile, in this case a grand piano (purchased by the truckload from a junk dealer). "If you see the missile coming toward you, simply step aside, "Mr. Kennedy shouts to the onlookers.
Then, with a great groaning, the beam is let go. As the counterweight plummets, the piano in its sling whips through an enormous arc, up and over the top of the trebuchet and down the pasture, a flight of 125 yards. The record for pianos is 151 yards (an upright model, with less wind resistance). A 112 pound iron weight made it 235 yards. Dead hogs go for about 175 yards, and horses 100 yards; the field is cratered with the graves of the beasts, buried by a backhoe where they landed.
Mr. Kennedy has been studying and writing about ancient engines of war since his days at Sandhurst, Britain's military academy, some 30 years ago. But what spurred him to build one was, as he puts it, "my nuttier cousin" in Northumberland, who put together a pint-sized trebuchet for a county fair. The device hurledporcelain toilets soaked in gasoline and set afire. A local paper described the event under the headline "Those Magnificent Men and Their Flaming Latrines."
Building a full-sized siege engine is a more daunting task. Mr. Kennedy believes that dead horses are the key. That's because engravings usually depict the trebuchet hurling boulders, and there is no way to determine what the rocks weigh, or the counterweight necessary to fling them. But a few drawings show dead horses being loaded onto trebuchets, putrid animals being an early form of biological warfare. Since horses weigh now what they did in the 1300s, the engineering calculations followed easily.
One thing has frustrated Mr. Kennedy and his partner: They haven't found any commercial value to the trebuchet. Says a neighbor helping to carry the piano to the trebuchet, "Too bad Hew can't make the transition between building this marvelous machine and making any money out of it. "
It's not for lack of trying. Last year Mr Kennedy walked onto the English set of the Kevin Costner Robin Hood movie, volunteering his trebuchet for the scene where Robin and his sidekick are catapulted over a wall. The directors insisted on something made out of plastic and cardboard he recalls with distaste. "Nobody cares about correctness these days. "
More recently, he has been approached by an entrepreneur who wants to bus tourists up from London to see cars and pigs fly through the air. So far, that's come to naught.
Mr. Kennedy looks to the US. as his best chance of getting part of his investment back: A theme park could commission him to build an even bigger trebuchet that could throw US.-sized cars into the sky. "Its an amusement in America to smash up motor cars, isn't it?" he inquires hopefully.
Finally, there's the prospect of flinging a man into space - a living man, that it. This isn't a new idea, Mr. Kennedy points out: Trebuchets were often used to fling ambassadors and prisoners of war back over castle walls, a sure way to demoralize the opposition. Some English sports parachutists think they can throw a man in the air and bring him down alive. In a series of experiments on Mr. Kennedy's machine, they've thrown several man-sized logs and two quarter-lone dead pigs into the air, one of the pigs parachuted gently back to earth, the other landed rather more forcefully.
Trouble is, an accelerometer carried inside the logs recorded a centrifugal force during the launch of as much as 20 Gs (the actual acceleration was zero to 90 miles per hour in 1.5 seconds). Scientists are divided over whether a man can stand that many Gsfor more that a second or two before his blood vessels burst.
The parachutists are nonetheless enthusiastic. But Mr. Kennedy thinks the idea may only be pie in the sky. "It would be splendid to throw a bloke, really splendid, " he says wistfully. "He'd float down fine. But he'd float down dead."
There, you really enjoyed that article, didn't you? It gives a whole new perspective to the concept of "a wealthy landowner, inventor, military historian and - need it be said? - - full-blown eccentric." I suppose we are indebted to this man for preserving the past, even if he is a bit unconventional in his choice of projectiles. With only a slight stretch, I can see our Warhammer playing friends using these devices in their games. These scaled-down devices could be used in games conducted in the style advanced by H.G. Wells, and described in his landmark book, Little Wars. I'd like to watch!
http://www2.csn.net/-bsimon/pngun.htm - PNEUMATIC SPUD SHOOTER - Evidently there is something about the physics of primitive projectile propellers that attracts a certain kind of individual. Many might view these individuals as eccentric, but I am sure you can appreciate the science and technology behind these seemingly crazy experiments. I included this site for those interested in lofting a few potatoes purposely picked for their projectile properties. (How many appropriate words starting with "p" can we find?) Although not about a trebuchet, I include this Spud Shooter device description for the sheer fun of it. This site tells how to build a working Spud Shooter out of common materials. And I quote:
PURPOSE - Ever seen those silly little hairspray powered spud guns that are all the rage? How'd you like to show up those guys with a cannon capable of launching spuds nearly 5 times farther? Read on... "
"Testing of hairspray spud guns revealed they can develop no more than 10-20 PSI chamber pressure. Most are buili from schedule 40 PVC pipe. 3" PVCpipe has a burst pressure of 260 PSI. People have suggested using other fuels to boost pressures higher, however this is much to dangerous. More volatile fuels can be very unpredictable and create pressures that would shatter the PVC pipe. Compressed air can be regulated to exact pressures making it an excellent propellant. ne trick is releasing a large volume of air at once to launch the projectile. Here's how it's done... "
For the rest of the directions point your browser to the address listed above, be careful and have fun.
http://www.middelaidercentret.dk/english/abouteenter.htm - This site describes a really interesting tourist living history attraction in Denmark. This text is taken from their site which also contains some goods photographs..
- "Welcome to the Middle Ages! ne Medieval Centre is an experimental "living-
history" institution as well as an exciting award-winning attraction for adults,
children and archaeology professionals. Here you can come face to face with people
from a distant age - clever craftsmen, honest merchants, cheery ale sellers, burly
soldiers and gallant knights. (they even have trebuchets constructed with historical
techniques).
A village street and harbour is the selling for our authentic l4th century environment. Reconstructions of Danish medieval buildings house a number of typical craftsmen. Its exhibits include siege engines (in action), medieval ships and a functioning shipyard There are also blacksmiths and other craftsmen to be seen -plus performances of knightly tournaments
Our military display features the spectacular siege engines which can hurl stone missiles far out into the sea, and on our regular tournament days you can see man and horse armoured and caparisoned for a competition in arms, thrill to the sound of the shattering lance as knights do battle in the lists! Talk to the soldiers, try on a coat of mail armour, test your skill with a bow and arrow - how would you have fared in a battle 600 years ago?
Grey Company's Weight-Powered Trebuchet http://www.iinet.net.au/~rmine/treb.html Simple Counter-Weight Trebuchet Theory. (Some very basic theoretical information about "Real Trebs") I did not include all the illustrations from this site due to space lin-titations. Please visit this site to get the full effect.
- "Figure 1. This diagram shows a trebuchet . .........
shortly after the trigger has been released. The shot is in the
sling and is beginning to slide backwards along a launch
trough. The trough is put there to guide the sling and prevent
it from getting caught up in the trebuchet's framework In the
early part of the launch all the shot's motion is horizontal
and this speed will contribute to the rate at which the sling is
going to be around the end of the treb's beam later. The
trebuchet is designed so that the beam is pulled down as
nearly vertical as is practical This gives two benefits: 1. the
weight has the longest distance to fall this way and 2. the first
movement of the beam gives the most horizontal pull to the
sling. The sling has to bepicked up by the beam, so it can't be too long. (You wouldn't want the treb to be standing with its beam in the air and the shot still in the trough) Generally, this means a sling length something less than the beam's throwing arm length, although some medieval illustrations show longer slings. "
I have included the following site because I am a very serious student of the art of siege engines. I am sure some great ancient inventor must have started this way.
Cheesechucker! http://www.iinet.net.au/~rinine/cheese.htmI - STOP PRESS Experimental data just to hand! A model trebuchet with a 45cm beam and a 3.5kg weight can launch cheese cubes more than half the length of a banqueting hall Cheese and the occasional chunk of bread were seen tofly in graceful 15-20 metre arcs at the Grey Company's Mid- Winter Banquet The Table-Top Tossing attracted several enthusiastic participants, although such frivolous goings-on were brought to a serious end when the Jester began his act and demanded that "The siege ends now!". (n. b. No cheeses were hurt during these activities)
This is Cheesechucker. The little machine is powered by a 3.5 kilogram lead weight (yes, it's an old home-made diving weight - this model trebuchet was a simple prototype after all).
For the record, it has the following dimension: length of base - 39cm *max width of base - 38cm *Height to axle - 31cm *length of throwing arm of beam - 37cm *length of weight end of beam - 9cm between axles *length of sling (still subject to experiment) - 30cm from hook to pouch *vertical distance through which centre of gravity of power weight falls - 18cm.
The kind of projectile mass being thrown is about 15-35 grams, or approximately 1/200th to 1/100 th the power mass. One of the lighter projectiles (a glass marble) was tossed by this little machine and hit a fence 23.5 metres away ... not bad for a gravity-powered toy, and intriguing considering that our trebuchet with the 1.6 metre beam and a 70 kg weight has only been throwing about 55m.
Back to MWAN #104 Table of Contents
Back to MWAN List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Magazine List
© Copyright 2000 Hal Thinglum
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com