Herald of Steel

Like catapults, there existed basically two kinds of trebuchets.

There was the much simpler torsion trebuchet which was basically a larger hand drawn version of the simple catapult and the counterweight trebuchet.

In the case of the torsion trebuchet, historically that was not too effective as siege engines, rather, most accounts describe them as light artillery weapons, being used as efficient anti-personnel weapons in supportive positions alongside archers and slingers, while actual penetration of defenses was the result of mining or siege towers.

For instance, at the Siege of Kamacha in 766, Byzantine defenders used wooden cover to protect themselves from the enemy artillery while inflicting casualties with their own stone throwers

Or at the siege of Manzikert (1054), where the Seljuks’ initial siege artillery was countered by the defenders’ own, which shot stones at the besieging machine. In response, the Seljuks constructed a torsion trebuchet weighing three and a half tons and requiring 400 men to pull and throw stones weighing 20 kg.

The counterweight trebuchet made its appearance much later, anywhere from five hundred to a thousand years, depending on the region.

This was because there were quite a few technologies that needed to be mastered right before the behemoth of a weapon could be built.

The very first of these was the concept of moments and the use of levers.

Basically, the arm that was used to fling the stone had to be hinged at a certain ratio- ideal 4 to 1, i.e.- the part of the arm holding the stone had to be four times longer than the part holding the counterweight.

Then came the building of the wooden arm itself.

Many might not know this but wood directly taken from the tree has to be treated before it can be made into furniture or else the raw green wood would start to be invaded by various bugs and insects and begin to rot.

So the moisture in them had to be driven out by either drying them under the sun or steaming them among many other processes, and it had to be done in a way that did not bend or buckle the piece.

And typically in the case of a trebuchet’s arm, multiple such smaller pieces had to first be treated which were then glued, screwed, and fastened together to form the much longer arm because it was not easy to find ash or ebony trees of the required height out in the wild.

This created the challenge of seamlessly joining multiple wooden pieces that would not snap under the weight of the huge forces.

A lot of techniques, such as glue, nails, and ropes, needed to be used.

Even if that challenge was overcome after the construction of the arm came the matter of making the hook and release mechanism holding the sling to the arm.

The sling that carried the stone would have to be attached to a hook and pin mechanism at a precise angle so that it stayed securely in place while loaded, but smoothly slipped off once let go.

In movies, they usually skipped this part and rather had someone, preferably the protagonist, cut the rope with a dramatic swing of the sword for artistic flair, but there was no way that happened in real life.

Rope was precious and quite expensive, and not even the richest empires would be able to be such a wastrel.

And lastly, there came the need for a mechanism to hold the winch in place as the arm was being loaded.

This meant that even if the winch was let go during loading, it would not simply unfurl by letting the counterweight fall under its own weight but keep itself in place with the aid of some kind of mechanism.

Minus the smaller, less notable ones, these were the four great barriers that Alexander could think of which needed to be overcome for the trebuchet to become viable.

And he did already try to circumvent some of them.

For instance, in the case of demand for a strong frame and arm, iron and steel could be used instead of wood.

Alexander was even confident he would be able to forge the huge pieces necessary using giant watermills to power the huge hammer, beating the metal into shape.

The problem however came in the form of weight.

Steel was roughly eight times the density of wood and although Alexander thought he would be able to shave off some of the dimensions during to steel being the stronger material, there was still a limit.

If the entire trebuchet was made of solid steel, he would have a very hard time transporting such a bulky thing anywhere useful, the thing slowing his march to perhaps a literal crawl.

The only time he could think a huge steel trebuchet would be useful was using a naval siege since he could put the heavy machine on ships without any of the drawbacks.

Of course, if he had modern manufacturing techniques, such a problem would be trivial to solve.

For instance, he could have made the steel structure hollow, which would have roughly the same properties with a fraction of the weight.

But making hollow cylinders, especially huge steel ones was surprisingly hard.

You needed to either have a machine that could fold a sheet of steel into shape just like you would fold paper and then weld it, or you use a method called extrusion, where one pushed a mass of material through a die to get an object with a fixed cross section.

These energy intensive processes needed at the bare minimum a steam engine, alongside many gears and clanks to transfer that power smoothly into the operating mechanical machine.

So Alexander decided to make only the arm of steel and the rest out of wood.

As for solving the rest of the problems…. well know that during the siege of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán, Hernán Cortés, motivated by the limited supply of gunpowder had decided to use a trebuchet.

The however attempt reportedly ended in a spectacular failure as the very first projectile that was launched landed on the trebuchet itself, destroying it.

This went to show that even in the 16th century, when technology was much more mature, building trebuchets still required a lot of very skilled men.

There was a reason why catapults were invented in 400 B.C. and it took the next fifteen hundred years to make any meaningful leaps.

And at the end of the day, even if Alexander successfully made that leap, even if he learned to easily break down walls, well that did not mean the siege was over then and there.

Many times the defenders did not surrender just because a wall fell.

Many would instead funnel towards the breach, so now the attackers had to climb through the rubble, and then fight their way through that very narrow chokepoint to pierce into the enemy’s heartlands.

This was a very dangerous maneuver and there were many instances of attackers successfully taking down the wall but being repulsed by the garrison yet, thus failing to win the melee inside the city.

The same challenges lay for Alexander as well, who would have to deal with the 20,000 men plus any recent militia even after the wall was taken down.

Alexander was lost in all such thoughts about the coming days when suddenly he heard a scout asking for an audience from outside his tent.

"My lord, the enemy has started to sally out. Our men are shadowing them!" The man could hardly contain himself as he burst out the report without even proper introductions.

"Really!" And hearing this great news, Alexander was hardly in the mood to nitpick. Your next chapter awaits on NovelBin.Côm

Immediately standing up in excitement, he then quickly urged the man for details.

According to the messenger, nearby scouts had noticed a huge train of boats and ships exit Caira by the river around dawn, heading south or southeast, their decks full of finely clad soldiers.

’South? What are they doing there?’

The observation however made Alexander furrow his brows a bit, decreasing a lot of his enthusiasm.

He would have thought the Heeats and Margraves would form up to give him battle outside the city’s walls, something he was quite eager for.

When he expressed his skepticism to the scout, the man too found it weird now that he thought about it.

"Perhaps they are abandoning the city knowing they cannot hold it?" The man then posed after ruminating for a bit, finding that to be the only logical explanation.

"...." Alexander did not say either yes or no to this.

He found the theory highly doubtful because the city did not seem close to falling for at least another month. And even if it was imminent, the opponents would still have the best chance of defeating him by staying inside the city.

But he also could not outright deny it.

Because he too had done something similar just some time ago.

’Reinforcements!’ The recount immediately made him shudder a bit, and thus he at once snapped to his feet and ordered the scout, "Order the army to get ready to march at once! The enemy is most likely trying to rendezvous with a relief force, from either the local nobles or worse the Straus family!"

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