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Warmatrix

War Matrix - Catapult

Iron Age 1100 BCE - 550 BCE, Weapons and technology

Mangonel
Mangonel
A catapult was an artillery weapon that fired projectiles, usually overhead. Like the ballista it used torsion strength to build up firepower. Unlike the ballistae projectiles were not fired straight, but catapulted in an arc.
Most catapults had a range of only 200 - 300 meters, though fired at a high arc, so could lop things over high walls. Catapults were less accurate than ballistae, but more powerful. They mostly fired stones. A sturdy mangonel could easily fire loads of 100 kilograms, enough to seriously damage stone castle or city walls. Armies sometimes loaded them with firepots to start fires, or with garbage or rotting carcasses to spread disease among the enemy. A weakness of torsion-powered siege engines was that the ropes or sinews tended to slack in wet weather. Also, each shot caused wear and tear, so the machine demanded a lot of maintenance.
The Chinese and Greeks invented catapults more or less simultaneously, around the 7th - 4th century BCE. The Romans used a catapult called an onager ("wild ass"), which earned its name by the wild backlash that followed after a shot. In the Middle Ages a type of catapult called mangonel was popular.
Catapults were mostly employed in sieges. In the late Middle Ages they were made obsolete by bombards, which had more power. But catapults did occasionally see use after that; they were used as late as World War I by the French army to hurl grenades.