Anciantrock throughing machiens

Parker south of france 073
Originally uploaded by lorill vining

This is a very large trebusher which was used to defend castles, and to knock down giant castle walls. To load and fire this large anciant machien, you need six to eight men to do it properly. As you can see in this picture, there are two very large weels at the base of the trebusher. What happens is, four men, two on each weel, wind it around in a circle so that it spins toward them. Atachted to the weels is a thick rope while the other end is conected to the top of the tall poll. As the men turn the weel, it winds up the rope causing the huge weight at the back to lift up and the tall poll to lower. When a man gets tired spining the weel, the spair man behind him takes over. When the weight is raised up high as it goes, and the the tall poll is just about tuching the ground, someone will clip the tall pull down so that the weight stayes up in the aire. Then you put a water balloon inside the net. When it's loaded someone will pull the rope that's atached to the clip so the weight swings back causing the oposit end with the balloon to fly forward. With eight men working one machein, they will fire the trebusher five times in one houre.