Ralph Payne-Gallwey

“ Though, at the time of the siege of Syracuse, Archimedes gained a reputation for divine rather than human knowledge in regard to the methods he employed in the defence of the city, he left no description of his wonderful engines, for he regarded them as mere mechanical appliances which were beneath his serious attention, his life being devoted to solving abstruse questions of mathematics and geometry. ”

“ Remarkable and conclusive testimony confirming the truth of what we read in Josephus is the fact that my largest catapult—though doubtless much smaller and less powerful than those referred to by the historian—throws a stone ball of 8 lbs. in weight to a range of from 450 to nearly 500 yards.
It is easy to realise that the ancients, with their great and perfect engines fitted with skeins of sinew, could cast a far heavier stone than one of 8 lbs., and to a longer distance than 500 yards. ”

“ The Turkish bow, being so short, necessitates a great effort of strength on the part of the archer to bend it between his legs and, at the same time, stoop down to fit the bow-string. From constant practice, the Turk of former days knew exactly how and when to apply the muscular force of leg and arm necessary to string his bow—a performance that no modern archer could accomplish with a bow of any strength.
Leg and manual force combined is the only possible method of stringing a strong reflex bow, unless mechanical power is utilised: it was the hereditary custom of the Orientals. ”

“ Though many nations formerly used composite bows of horn and sinew, no people attained such dexterity in their manipulation, or constructed them of such marvellous power and efficiency, and at the same time so small, elegant and light, as did the Turks. ”

“ Rope skeins, with which we are obliged to fit our models, cannot possibly equal in strength and above all in elasticity, skeins of animal sinew or even of hair.
The formation of the arm or arms of an engine, whether it is a catapult with its single upright arm or a balista with its pair of lateral ones, is another difficulty which cannot now be overcome, for we have no idea how these arms were made to sustain the great strain they had to endure. ”

“ But, Plutarch tells us, ‘Archimedes soon began to play his engines upon the Romans and their ships, and shot against them stones of such an enormous size and with so incredible a noise and velocity that nothing could stand before them. ”

“ I can find no allusions or pictures to show that during this period any engine was used with a sling except the trebuchet, a post-Roman invention. All evidence goes to prove that the secret of making the skein and other important parts of a catapult was in a great measure lost within a couple of centuries after the Romans copied the weapon from their conquered enemies the Greeks, with the result that the trebuchet was introduced for throwing stones. ”

“ In a Turkish bow the handle is in its exact centre of length, and the projecting point, or lip, of the thumb-ring engages the bow-string close to its centre.
For these reasons the bow is equally strained, each of its limbs doing its proper share of work in driving the arrow, an advantage that is very noticeable in flight-shooting, and would probably also be at the target. In the method of loosing used in modern times the bow-string lies across the three middle fingers, its outline, where the arrow is nocked on the string, taking the form of two angles connected by a straight line 21⁄2 to 3 in. ”

“ Another historian explains that to shoot a man from the sling of an engine he must first be tied up with ropes, so as to form a round bundle like a sack of grain.
The engine with which such fiendish deeds were achieved was the trebuchet.
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A catapult was not powerful enough to project the body of a man. ”

“ We know this, but we do not know the secret of making a light and flexible arm of sufficient strength to bear such a strain as was formerly applied to it in a catapult or a balista.
Certainly, by shaping an arm of great thickness we can produce one that will not fracture, but substance implies weight, and undue weight prevents the arm from acting with the speed requisite to cast its projectile with good effect.
A heavy and ponderous arm of solid wood cannot, of course, rival in lightness and effectiveness a composite one of wood, sinew and hide. ”

“ It should be remembered that many years ago flight-shooting was a very popular recreation of the Turks, that every able-bodied man was a practised archer, and that every male child was trained to use a bow from the earliest possible age.
The origin of Turkish and other highly finished composite bows, and the approximate date when they were first used in sport and warfare, it is now impossible to determine. ”

“ The increase of power conferred by the addition of a sling to the arm of a catapult is surprising.
A small model I constructed for throwing a stone ball, one pound in weight, will attain a distance of 200 yards when used with an arm that has a cup for holding the ball, though when a sling is fitted to the arm the range of the engine is at once increased to 300 yards. ”

“ The ground mentioned is covered with marble pillars erected in honour of those archers who have succeeded in shooting arrows to any remarkable distance. Each pillar is inscribed with the name of the person whose dexterity it records, together with some complimentary verses to him, and the exact range which he attained with his flight arrow.
‘The Ottoman emperors, from ancient times, have always been supposed to live by their manual labour and in consequence of this supposition they have each learnt some art or profession, most of them having preferred the art of making bows and arrows. ”

“ There is no doubt that the closer to the nock the feathers of an arrow can be fixed, the farther and steadier it will travel.
The handle of an English bow, or of any other bow that is loosed with the fingers, is placed below its centre so that the arrow can be fitted to the middle of the bow-string, a point which is just above the hand of the archer as he grasps the bow.
A bow held below its centre can never be pulled really true, the limb below the handle being shorter than the one above it.
Fig. 9.—
The Turkish Thumb-ring. (Scale, half full size.) ”

“ When the arm is fitted with a sling, it is practically lengthened by as much as the length of the sling attached to it, and this, too, without any appreciable increase in its weight.
The longer the arm of a catapult, the longer is its sweep through the air, and thus the farther will it cast its projectile, provided it is not of undue weight. ”

“ The successful attack or defence of a fortified town often depended on which of the armies engaged had the more powerful balistas, catapults or trebuchets, as one engine of superior range could work destruction unimpeded if it happened that a rival of similar power was not available to check its depredations.
Froissart relates that ‘at the siege of Mortagne in 1340, an engineer within the town constructed an engine to keep down the discharges of one powerful machine in the besieging lines. ”

“ The bark of the cherry-tree, or thin leather or skin, was next glued over the sinew to preserve it from injury and damp. The horn parts, or inner face of the bow when it was strung, were not covered with bark or skin, a feature of the Turkish bow that, together with its small size, distinguishes it from the bows of India and other Oriental countries.44
44 Though the horn strips which form the belly, or inner surface when it is strung, of a Chinese or a Tartar bow, are neither covered nor decorated, the great size of these weapons easily distinguishes them from those of Turkish manufacture. ”

“ If the skein of my largest catapult is fully tightened up by the winches, three strong men are unable to draw the arm back with a rope even an inch from the cross-beam, though the windlass has to pull it down from six to seven feet when the engine is made ready for action. ”

“ One inch = one foot.
Fig. 14.
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Though the range of the Turkish bow—whether with a flighting or with a war arrow—far exceeds that of the other bows depicted, yet the Persian and Indian weapons are capable of shooting to a long distance, certainly much farther than any European longbow.
The great Chinese or Tartar bow requires a very long arrow, which from its length is, of necessity, a heavy one with a thick shaft. It cannot be propelled, as a result, farther than from 250 to 260 yards. One distinctive feature of Chinese, Tartar, Persian or Indian bows is the formation of their bow-strings. ”

“ The component parts of a Turkish bow, consisting of a thin strip of horn, one of wood and another of sinew (fig. 3, p. 106) , are so pliable when separated that they can almost be coiled round the fingers, though if the same pieces are glued together they form a bow of unrivalled strength and elasticity. ”

“ As a catapult or a balista was required not only to cast its missile among the soldiers on the ramparts of a fortified place, but also to send it clear over the walls amid the houses and people within the defences, it is evident that the9 engines must have had a range of from 400 to 500 yards, or more, to be as serviceable and destructive as they undoubtedly were. ”

“ The engines could not be seen at a great distance and so what was thrown by them was hard to be avoided; for the force with which these engines threw stones and darts made them wound several at a time, and the violence of the stones that were cast by the engines was so great that they carried away the pinnacles of the wall and broke off the corners of the towers; for no body of men could be so strong as not to be overthrown to the last rank by the largeness of the stones.... ”

“ Notwithstanding many difficulties, I have succeeded in reconstructing, though of course on a considerably smaller scale, the chief projectile throwing engines of the ancients, and with a success that enables them to compare favourably, as regards their range, with the Greek and Roman weapons they represent.
Still, my engines are by no means perfect in their mechanism, and are, besides, always liable to give way under the strain of working.
One reason of this is that all modern engines of the kind require to be worked to their utmost capacity, i.e. ”

“ If they are correct, they can only be accounted for by the use of a light short arrow, a very powerful bow, great strength and skill, and above all else by the horn appendage which the Turkish archer attached to his left hand, and without which he could not shoot so short an arrow from his bow.
Even if we accept the shortest range recorded on the columns as correct—i.e.126 625 yards—it is an extraordinary distance for any arrow to be propelled, and is 285 yards beyond what has ever been achieved, as far as we know, by an English bowman with a longbow, p. ”

“ Agesistratus,3 a Greek writer who flourished B.C. 200, and who wrote a treatise on making arms for war, estimated that some of the engines shot from 31⁄2 to 4 ‘stades’ (700 to 800 yards) .
3 The writings of Agesistratus are non-extant but are quoted by Athenæus.
Though such a very long flight as this appears almost incredible, I can adduce no sound reason for doubting its possibility. From recent experiments I am confident I could now build an engine of a size and power to accomplish such a feat if light missiles were used, and if its cost were not a consideration. ”

“ If the limbs of the bow are given110 the slightest lateral twist as they are being bent, the horn parts are certain to splinter, and the bow is then useless and damaged beyond repair.45
45 The only safe method for a modern archer to adopt in order to string a powerful reflex bow is to use strong upright pegs, the size of tent pegs, inserted in smooth ground or in holes in a board, the bow resting during the process flat along the ground or board. ”

“ An interesting model can be constructed that has an arm 3 feet in length, and a skein of cord about 4 inches in diameter. It can be worked by one man and will throw a stone, the size of an orange, to a range of 300 yards.
The sling, when suspended with the stone in position, should be one third the length of the arm, as shown in fig. ”

“ As the skein of cord is being twisted by the very powerful winches, the arm will gradually press with increasing force against the cross-beam between the uprights. The arm should be so tightly pressed against the fender, or cushion of straw, attached to the centre of this beam, that, whether large or small, it cannot be pulled back the least distance by hand. ”

“ Bows that are undoubtedly of this kind and which are of excellent shape and design, are depicted on some of the most ancient pottery existent, and are also referred to in some of the oldest writings we possess. ”

“ As shown in III, the projecting ends of the length of sinew which forms the loop are cut off to within a third of an inch of the knot. They are singed at their extremities, so as to form small burrs which prevent the short length of strong silk, which lashes them together, from slipping off. ”

“ The missile of the balista consisted of a huge metal-tipped wooden bolt which, although of far less weight than the great ball of stone cast by a catapult or the far larger one thrown by a trebuchet, was39 able to penetrate roofs and cause great destruction in ranks of soldiers. Cæsar records that when his lieutenant Caius Trebonius was building a movable tower at the siege of Marseilles, the only method of protecting the workmen from the darts of engines35 was by hanging curtains woven from cable-ropes on the three sides of the tower exposed to the besiegers.36
35 Balistas. ”

“ Criticism.—In this picture the balistas are fairly correct, but the catapults are too small.
From Polybius. Edition 1727.
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It is, indeed, impossible to find a complete working plan of any one of these old weapons, a perfect design being only obtainable by consulting many ancient authorities, and, it may be said, piecing together the details of construction they individually give.
* * * * *
We have no direct evidence as to when the engines for throwing projectiles were invented. ”