Forget tanks. Forget fighter jets. If you were attacking a castle 800 years ago, what you really wanted was a ridiculously oversized wooden contraption that could yeet a 500-pound boulder through someone’s living room from hundreds of feet away. Medieval warfare was wild.
In this video, The History Guy explores the fascinating history and physics behind the trebuchet, the ultimate siege weapon of the pre-gunpowder era. You’ll learn how gravity, leverage, and some seriously clever engineering turned these giant machines into castle-crushing monsters capable of launching everything from stones and flaming debris to beehives… and, because humans have always been weird, the occasional diseased animal carcass.
It also tells the story of the legendary Warwolf, a trebuchet so absurdly enormous that a castle surrendered the moment its defenders saw it. Unfortunately for them, the king insisted they go back inside so he could fire the thing anyway. That’s commitment to quality assurance, medieval style.