Mangonel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Model of a mangonel with a shell

The Mangonel was a maneuverable medieval throwing or catapult machine .

Surname

The word mangonel comes from the ancient Greek manganon and roughly means "tool / machine of war".

use

French soldiers with a mangonel in a trench

It worked like a one-armed torsion gun, which means that its energy was stored in the twisted ropes at the bottom of the machine. The limb was pulled back and tensioned by means of a cable winch. Small boulders or flammable materials such as hot clay balls, vessels filled with Greek fire, etc. were usually placed in the shell at the end of the arm . The structure is similar to the onager ("wild donkey") used earlier . They were available both with a sling rope and with a spoon as a shell. It was also used in variations for throwing hand grenades during the First World War .

history

Medieval depiction of a mangonel inside a castle

The mangonel was used as a catapult in the early Middle Ages. It was a smaller artillery weapon, mainly used to attack less fortified settlements or to set them on fire with combustible materials. When attacking a stronghold, it was mainly in demand because of its maneuverability and its high mobility compared to the Trebuchet . However, the precision of the bullet was less than that of a trebuchet or ballista . The mangonel has been used less often since gunpowder was invented .

literature

  • Renaud Beffeyte: Les Machines de guerre au moyen âge. "Ouest-France", Rennes 2000, ISBN 2-7373-2713-X .
  • Marin Brice: castles and fortifications. From antiquity to the end of the 20th century. Weltbild-Verlag, Augsburg 1991, ISBN 3-89350-351-X .
  • W. Gohlke: The guns of antiquity and the Middle Ages , in Volume 6 (1912-1914) of the magazine for historical weapons, publisher: Association for historical weapons, Dresden, 1915, pages 12 to 22. (online digitized)
  • Peter Purton: The myth of the mangonel: Torsion artillery in the Middle Ages. In: Arms & Armor Vol. 3, No. 1, ISSN  1741-6124 , 2006, pp. 79-90, doi : 10.1179 / 174962606X99155 .
  • David Stevenson: The First World War. 1914-1918. Artemis and Winkler, Düsseldorf 2006, ISBN 3-538-07214-0 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Mangonel  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hegesippus 4:20 and Augustine's Letter 8