Fig. 66.—Catapult.—When the lever revolves rapidly on its axis, the centrifugal power causes the loop C to slip off the hook D, when the barrel held on the fork E E is liberated and projected to a distance. F represents the end of the lever when held down by the windlass A, and loaded with a barrel of combustible matter or iron. B, rings of stone, iron, or lead.
The machines which they employed to hurl their projectiles seem to have corresponded in nearly every respect with the catapults of the ancients. It was often merely a species of gigantic sling, worked by several men, and throwing pieces of rock and round masses of stone. The mangonneau, bricole, or trabuch, was a kind of square wooden platform, made of thick planks laid crosswise; a long beam, fastened at its lower end by a revolving axis to the platform, was supported at an angle of about 45° by an elevated crosspiece resting on two uprights. The distance between the revolving axis and the point of support was about one-half of the length of the beam. The latter was then secured in this position by long cords fastened to the front of the platform. The men who managed the bricole then lowered the beam backwards by a windlass fixed in the rear, till it (the beam) formed an obtuse instead of an acute angle with the platform, and till the cord securing it in front was stretched to its utmost tension. While it was in this position the projectile they wished to cast was placed in the spoonshaped extremity of the beam. A spring, termed déclic, then released the tension of the windlass and the beam, obeying that of the cord fastened to the front of the platform, swung rapidly forward, and hurled the projectile to great distances and to some considerable height (Fig. 66). These bricoles were sometimes employed to throw into besieged strongholds the dead bodies of horses and other animals, fire-balls, and cases of inflammable matter; but they were generally used to shatter the roofs of the buildings inside the walls, and to crush the protecting wooden sheds constructed on the ramparts.
Their use was still continued long after the invention of gunpowder. In the wars of the fourteenth century, particularly in the sieges of Tarazonia, Barcelona, and Burgos, bricoles were made use of side by side with cannons discharged with gunpowder. It was not until the close of the fifteenth century that the rapid progress of the new artillery, which enabled besiegers to breach a wall from a considerable distance, and with a smaller expenditure both of time and men, caused the whole paraphernalia of the old-fashioned ballistic machines to fall into disuse. Thenceforward a new era commenced in the science of attack and defence—an era of which the immense results do not belong only to the period of the Renaissance.
Fig. 67.—Ballísta.—From a Miniature in Manuscript 17,339, in the National Library of Paris.
NAVAL MATTERS.
Old Traditions: Long Vessels and Broad Vessels.—The Dromon.—The Galéasse.—The Coque.—Caracks and Galleons.—Francis I.’s Great Carack.—Caravelles.—The Importance of a Fleet.—Hired Fleets.—Poop Guards.—Naval Laws.—Seaport Tribunals.—Navigation in the open Seas.—The Boussole.—Armament of Men-of-War.—Towers and Ballistic Engines.—Artillery.—Naval Strategy.—Decorations and Magnificent Appointments of Vessels.—Sails and Flags.—The Galley of Don Juan of Austria.—Sailors’ Superstitions.—Discipline and Punishments.
Ships from the most remote ages have been divided into two classes, namely, long vessels, those propelled by the oar, or by the wind, sometimes by the two combined, and vessels of greater beam, which trusted to their sails alone. The Middle Ages conformed to these traditions; they possessed galleys which answered to the long vessels of antiquity, and ships which corresponded to the larger class.