What do you picture when you think catapult? Probably something like this.
Well, if you did, you’d be wrong. Not only is thing not even a historically accurate catapult (the ballista-like crosspiece was never used on catapults), but it is WAY too big. An actual catapult looked more like this.
Shorter than a person, and mesnt to throw stones easily smaller than a human head.
“But if that’s true, then it could never knock down castle walls!”
True, and that would be because catapults were never meant to knock down castle walls, they were meant to be fired into lines of infantry. Before cannons, the only things that could knock down castle walls were the very largest of trebuchets (basically just catapults but better), and even then, why would you want to knock down castle walls? You wouldn’t be able to charge through the breach, it would be filled with rubble, and you’d just have to rebuild the wall if you ever wanted to use that castle again.
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