And this is not a mangonel (though the website says it is), though I thought it was when I wrote the post a few days ago:
Nor is this a mangonel (though the website says it is):
Nor is this, plainly a trebuchet, but included on the Dutch wikipedia site as a mangonel:
Nor this, though I'm sure the artist thought this was a very clever title:
This is not a mangonel, though someone has gone to great lengths to draw the picture and include it on this educational site:
As you might guess, this is very, very frustrating. This is the best picture the English wikipedia page could come up with:
Which, as it turns out, is accurate, but in fact totally useless because it does not explain how the instrument works. It took me a while to find a somewhat realistic depiction:
 |
| Actually a mangonel. |
I have now found enough examples to feel confident that I've nailed down the engine accurately. And what's depicted above, first, doesn't weigh 3 tons (though I did find a website that gave that weight for a "mangonel" that was probably for a trebuchet) and second, is way, way to tall for a ship.
So, apologies to Homer, who may have known what an actual mangonel looked like, and was therefore scratching his head at my comments - sorry, Homer, I was misinformed. I'm quite prepared to keep the correct mangonel in my world and as an existing siege engine ~ but not aboard ships (which is a pity, as this reduces the options to fill hardpoints). So those changes will be incorporated into the wiki, though I'll leave the blog post as it is.
Your confusion is understandable. From "The Traction Trebuchet: A Reconstruction of an Early Medieval Siege Engine" (Tarver, 1995; doi:10.2307/3106344)
ReplyDelete"""The mangonel has been interpreted as almost every type of pregunpowder artillery ever known, from ancient torsion machines to fixed-counterweight trebuchets.... The proliferation of equivocal references such as these renders the term mangonel all but useless without lengthy qualifications."""
To avoid confusion, the term "traction trebuchet" is generally preferred. There's no confusion about what traction trebuchet means, and the term correctly groups the engine within the trebuchet family. After all, a traction trebuchet is simply a trebuchet where the counterweight is human beings.
"Traction trebuchet" is how I nailed down what it was.
ReplyDeleteI always thought the mangonel was the "educational site" one. I have no idea how I knew that... Maybe age of empires? Or am I mistaking that for an onager?
ReplyDeleteAt least now I know that I don't know nearly enough about siege weapons.
Since Mangonel has been interpreted as many different types of machines, leave the name and change the description to be a large torsion ballista that throws iron or stone balls. The other two ballista would be based on tension having crossbow like arms and throwing bolts.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that hundreds of pseudo-scholars can't do their research shouldn't influence the way that legitimate scholarship defines terms. I dislike this notion that somehow scholarship is responsible for providing public relations for stupid people.
ReplyDeleteWant to know what it is? Do your research. This is why academics ultimately become ivory tower elitists; it is exhausting to always have to kowtow to the lazy who are crying out, "It's too hard!"
There is a correct definition for the term; the English Wikipedia page seems to have that correct definition, AND notes the mangonel is the traction trebuchet. The page I've built on my wiki does the same. I don't see any reason to dispense with either name, since both are accurate to the original meaning of the term.