DUC IN ALTUM

It’s funny to do some research over a long period of time. You assimilate information, then when you revisit a source, you pick up details that evaded you before.

And then sometimes you just notice details on who is writing what in contrast with other sources.

For example:

Wikipedia has a page for “trebuchet” in french. There’s another independant page on Wikipedia in english.

I was certain that the war machine had been renamed this way by the French when it first appeared in France. From what I’m reading, this is a probably a fact. BUT it was not named after the verb “trébucher” (to lose balance, to trip) as I expected.

Trebuchet comes from the occitan (europeen latin) word “trebuca” or “trebucca”, which means “trouble ahead”, or “that which brings trouble”.

This isn’t too far from the British trebuchet which was named “Bad Neighbor”. And indeed they were.

Le trébuchet fait partie des pièces d’artillerie médiévales dites à contrepoids. Introduit en France au courant du XIIe siècle, son utilisation a perduré jusqu’au XVIe siècle.

Son nom vient de l’occitan (langue romaine d’europe) trebucca qui signifie : « qui apporte des ennuis ». Il est fait d’un assemblage liant une verge à un contrepoids articulé appelé aussi huche. À l’autre extrémité était attachée une poche dans laquelle était placé le projectile, généralement un boulet de pierre taillée.

This site confirms it:

Le mot trébuchet vient de l’occitan ” trebuca ” (qui apporte des ennuis) mais dans l’Occitanie médiévale la trebuca était aussi une balance de précision.

That site offers a couple of very nice pictures too.

Now although this is all very interesting, what comes to my mind is that when I read the french Wiki page, all I see is an arrogant frenchman writing the merits of France, nothing more.

Wikipedia in ENGLISH has no mention of the origin of the name but delves much, much deeper into the true history of the war machine.

The counterweight trebuchet appeared in both Christian and Muslim lands around the Mediterranean in the twelfth century. It could fling three-hundred-pound (140 kg) projectiles at high speeds into enemy fortifications. On occasion, disease-infected corpses were flung into cities in an attempt to infect the people under siege—a medieval variant of biological warfare. Trebuchets appear in China in about the 4th century BCE and in Europe in the 6th century CE, and did not become obsolete until the 16th century, well after the introduction of gunpowder.
(…)
The first clearly written record of a counterweight trebuchet comes from an Islamic scholar, Mardi bin Ali al-Tarsusi, who wrote a military manual for Saladin circa 1187. He describes a hybrid trebuchet that he said had the same hurling power as a traction machine pulled by fifty men due to “the constant force [of gravity], whereas men differ in their pulling force.” (Showing his mechanical proficiency, Tarsusi designed his trebuchet so that as it was fired it cocked a supplementary crossbow, probably to protect the engineers from attack.).
He allegedly wrote “Trebuchets are machines invented by unbelieving devils.” (Al-Tarsusi, Bodleian MS 264). This suggests that by the time of Saladin, Muslims were acquainted with counterweight engines, but did not believe that Muslims had invented them.

So if you don’t read both pages of Wikipedia, the one in english and the page in french, you get only part of the story.

This next page mentions the trebuchet and the origins of it’s name, and hints to the scientific approach the europeens had for their design and constuction. But they vaguely mention “the” engineers, no specifics on their origins.

Les ingénieurs pensent à articuler le contrepoids (pouvant aller jusqu’à 18 tonnes), créant une machine nommée la biffa mais aussi bride, brède, et plus couramment trébuchet.
Les rapports géométriques pythagoriciens sont appliqués de manière plus systématique à la construction de ces machines, et le génie militaire médiéval peut enfin considérer comme la « science exacte ».

No doubt that these efforts put in the design of the machine transformed the machine into something different which had never existed before. Perhaps this is why the french sites look at it as a stand alone machine, while other sites place it in a long line of inventions.

Incidently, the english page from Wikipedia is the only page to mention the FAT (Floating Arm Trebuchet). The FAT still has no Wiki page of it’s own. I’ll do more reading and bring you my results.

It seemed to me that a good machine would let the counterweight fall absolutely vertically, the way gravity works best. The solution- Rather than swing the counterweight around the axle, let the axle move out of the way so the counterweight can fall straight down.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 9:42 and is filed under Trebuchet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.