Trebuchet Snobbery

Trebuchet Snobbery and the Return of the King

A common misuse of the trebuchet in cinema is the siege weapon's combative use against ground troops. As any trebuchet hobbyist will tell you, the easiest way to explain a treb to someone is to refer to it as a catapult and yet the two have very little in common aside from their basic hurling purpose. A catapult (onager, mangonel, what have you), generally perceived properly, is a tension mounted device used to hurl heavy objects for moderate distances... It's target is pretty much up to chance, so a catapult is most effective against large groupings of enemy forces and large or light structures. A trebuchet, however, is a long-range sling-based weapon known for its precision; it can not fire as quickly (changing trajectory and distance are also a more involved process) as a catapult nor can it carry multiple ammunitions in one firing. The trebuchet was/is used against heavy, preferably stationary fortifications; it can hit these with more force and accuracy than a catapult would ever be capable of. While a trebuchet is certainly capable of firing on ground forces, the excess power and precision is superfluous (a giant boulder does not have to be moving too fast to flatten a human), the sacrifice of speed and area-of-effect of shots would be too great to be effective.

That said, one has to wonder what the defenders of Middle Earth's Minas Tirith (P. Jackson version) were thinking when installing trebuchets along its walls for city defense. Ye gods! The only way such a thing would be worth while is if Sauron's tower sprouted hen's legs and began marching on the city itself. In Return of the King, we watch as a few boulders crush a few targets but against half the army of Mordor such scattered shots are inconsequential. If only onagers had been installed along the front and secondary walls! Or ballistae along the fortress' gates! So many lives would have been saved. Case in point, it took legions of the dead devouring all in their path to tilt the battle towards the human side in the movie version of Return of the King, while the books' army of man (presumably, armed with proper knowledge of siege warfare) needed the dead only to tangentially capture Mordorian ships in order to succeed.

What a difference a siege makes.