Trebuchet vs. Longbow

Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and I'm back with the trebuchet again but it's going to be slightly different today because I'm working with the guys from History Hit, putting together a video for them and we're doing one for me at the same time and so what we're doing is we're looking about at the role of the longbow and the trebuchet in warfare. Now the trebuchet was not really an open battlefield weapon, not in western Europe, the thing is though it was used on sieges at the same time as longbows so both were used against fortifications so we're basically going to play a game today where we're going to shoot at the fortification and we're going to see who wins it. Is it Joe? Is it the trebuchet? So here's our teams today, I'm working with Louis, Luke is working with Joe and we're going to find out what happens. So what we got with the trebuchet is our bowling ball here, our rock. Now with crenellations on a castle it's just going to go straight through them and the result on the other side is going to be devastating and this ball is likely to go straight through these pallets. Maybe it'll take out one guy, maybe two of them, maybe three of them or if you're familiar with this channel you'll know I'll probably completely miss because that's what the trebuchet seems to do and so it's all a bit of a game, it's all a little bit of fun today but we've got our guy in the middle at 25 points, his bodyguard going at 10 points and any other guy that they hit at five points. What do I think is going to happen? Well I think Joe is going to absolutely trounce the trebuchet because we know it just doesn't work for hitting these guys, they are invulnerable but let's go find out. How do you rate our chances against a long bow today? Well you've got a few things going on but basically ours are much heavier, much less prone to wind and there's quite a lot of wind today and so when they do hit they will really hit hard. Yeah. The problem is it's not that accurate, it's against fortifications, it's not against individual people which is what we're trying to do today really. I mean if we get one shot to land then yes it should be really good especially if it lands on the right part so if we hit in the middle of the pallet we'll probably just go through. If we hit on the edge where the reinforcement is then it'll probably just whack a whole load of pallets out there and that'll take out a bunch of guys. So quality over quantity. Yeah I think so. And how do you feel going up against the trebuchet? It's a big machine isn't it? It is but you should have more control but I mean it's about a football size difference away. I reckon I've got a pretty good chance of getting a few of the men at arms down there. Yeah. Definitely yeah. What about the king? Sniping the king, that would have been amazing back in the day. Yeah. Can you try and recreate that for me? I'm going to do my best. That's a good shot of me getting him I reckon. Yeah. So this is a proper warbow, would have been used in medieval times, this draw weight. So because it's a high draw weight you need a big arrow. So big half inch diameter tapered down to three eighths, a big nasty head, some big feathers to stabilise it in the air. And how long did it take to really get used to that draw weight of 140lbs? So I've been shooting since I was sort of 13, 14 so I'm 36 now so a long time. So to work up something like this and to shoot it accurately, yeah, at least five years. Five years, okay. You can understand why they banned sports so it made people just focus on this. Yeah so five years of sort of two, three times a week. If you don't do it you can't do it. Well I've got a lot of faith in you. Thank you. Let's see how we do. Right Todd let's get ready for our first shot. How do we load this thing? Yeah well it's not instant I'll tell you that. Okay. Because as I said at the beginning we've got to charge it up. Yeah. And there's half a ton there that we've got to charge. So really the first thing is that we've got to start pulling this rope down which as you can see I can do it a little bit and that has got to go all the way down. So we do that with a winch here. Off you go. So that goes in and you can do as much of this as you want because it's really quite tiring. Excellent. So you do this for about the next five minutes and at the moment it's easy. So what you want to do just I'll just talk you through one more. Yeah. So I'm pulling it I'm moving my whole weight because really it needs some. Yeah. And you pull back and then rather than just letting go you just make sure that the ratchet there binds. Got it okay. So just bring So pop this. Yeah. In there if it comes. Okay yeah so it needs a fair bit of force. It does and for one or two winches like this it's fine. You know but if you're doing this hour after hour you are going to get very tired doing it. But of course the big ones would have you know manpower labor it was never a problem many times. No that's true. So you know there would be rounds of men doing And what do we know about how these things would have been transported to the battlefield? I mean that's a that is a really good question because this machine is relatively small but these timbers are six meters long. Now if we imagine three times up that's an 18 meter timber. Yeah you can split them down but we're talking massively long massively heavy timbers that might weigh several tons for the main ones. Those are difficult things to move around the countryside. I suspect what was going on was that the trigger system the winch system the things which were critical maybe the big pivots all of those big bits of ironwork that are difficult to do on site you take those with you. But actually the main timbers which you can source something locally. Just do that. Well we can see exactly how this working this arm is gradually So I'm just going to step around now and we need to just thank you for doing all this work for me. Oh not a problem. So we now need to get this trigger into position so it's going to go into that loop there and we're in. So now in fact what we need to do is back this off a little bit so the trigger picks up the weight. Okay. So I need you to push down on the handle a little bit. Push down here? Yeah so that's it. Now if you lift up that uh ratchet bar nope this one here that's it and just slowly slowly with your right hand yeah being aware that obviously it's got some power just relax relax the right hand a little bit and let the arm go back up and that will put some power onto this trigger. So keep on coming you can see the chains are slack they'll need to go tight that's it that's it a bit more you can drop the ratchet bar back in now so move the that's it so in fact you can now see how this trigger works so what we've got here now so we're safe because we're on the ratchet but you've got what's called a slip hook so this curve here this slip hook is really important because if that came down there if you pulled the trigger you'd actually have to pull that arm downward to get the trigger out and it would be incredibly heavy if that comes out like that it ends up being a hair trigger a tiny movement here and it will go so actually that curvature there exactly is a radius around that point so what that means is just a little bit of pull on here to overcome the friction and the trigger will release. Great. So it looks scary it looks simple but it's really effective. Yeah and so now this arm has got that half ton of weight kind of yeah the pressure is cranked up so I guess the next thing is our projectile. Not quite okay not quite so safety safety and they did this too so there is in fact one system one trigger system that may have come off a trebuchet okay in Sweden it has a safety pin through it oh nice so they absolutely knew what it was all about they couldn't even escape health and safety in the medieval period so now obviously if we released it all of this system here is going to try and unwind the winch it's just not going to work so I'm just going to take the pressure off that so now we have everything on the trigger so the trigger should hold if it fails we've got our safety here but now what we need to do is unwind all this rope so that now needs to get walked up to the top so this basically just needs to be held out the way because of course you don't want it catching up on the system as it goes through exactly I've now got to get into the middle of this machine so we're leaving the safety in place at the moment makes sense to me yep so this is quite a long string that our trebuchet is going to attach to so again this I suppose it's the length of the arm is this is this to to increase the range the longer this uh this piece of rope is this sling it's one of those really difficult things I'd love to give you a simple answer yeah I can't the problem is everything is related to everything else so the angle the arm comes down the length of the of the arm the weight of the trebuchet how far the trebuchet spindle is to the main spindle the length of the sling the weight of the projector all these things relate to each other yeah and you change any one of them and the performance of the chain of the machine alters I can say that if you shorten the sling it will shoot a little bit flatter got it this is the pin we were talking about earlier I see yeah so the angle of that pin the length of the pin it all changes how this thing shoots so you can just hook that on there as you can tell my head is now in the workings so I'd rather you didn't get your head in but this is why we keep the safety on so now I'm just making sure that the sling is doesn't twist in midair so it's not tangled and we can now load up remove the safety ready to go all right Todd so now's the good bit right now is loading our first bowling ball yes so safety still we've got our safety line on uh but the ball goes in I'll do all this if you don't mind but do you want to shoot no problem I'd love to all right I'd love to then it shall be done red bowling ball yeah lucky color so I'm just making sure now that the lines are not tangled so we're all good now and that all feels good I think is it not quite I'm just going to stick a little bit of grass under it's just that's just basically to create a little lump stop it rolling forward got it there we go right safety off so if you pick up the rope okay I'm going to stand behind you remember if it goes up in the air keep an eye on it and then jump out of the way okay first shot shot one let's do this Todd all right fingers crossed giving this a big pull yep three two one go I love it every single time I love it goodness and it rolled and touched I think so just short just short oh it's a big splash in the moat but you know what I almost don't care because that was so good I've looked at the footage slow-mo footage before and you can make it go a little bit further by adjusting things like okay it actually releases at a really steep angle and if we dropped it a little bit then that would help it go that bit further but my other experience don't change it on the day so Joe that was very close to hitting the king actually I was getting a bit worried there so they've got the line right which puts a bit of pressure on doesn't it who are you gonna aim for are you just gonna aim in the sort of general direction I'm gonna aim for the for the king okay but obviously I've had no warm-up shots or anything so I'm going straight in cold and we'll see what we can do I heard a sound you reckon you hit one of the maybe the boards looked a bit long but um I've definitely hit something though you've got the line right you've got the line okay that bodes well for the next shot right Todd I'm slightly worried about Joe's first shot because we heard it clank into something it hit something yeah but we've got a trebuchet we can't lose with a trebuchet we need one good one come on let's do it let's right let's go for shot two so this time I've gone that fell short so I've gone for a slightly lighter ball now got it uh so we're 300 grams lighter and we'll see what this does so this should go a bit further all yours again thank you very much all right shot two shot two come on cross those fingers I think that's the wind I that's got to be the wind surely it's it's wind or it's just all the chaos of those variables I was talking about so that was six seven meters to the right hand side we're gonna need a bigger castle you feeling confident yes it's slightly more windier but it shouldn't affect them too much it's such a low trajectory for me that it shouldn't really be catching the wind a great deal so I'm just gonna do the same things I did last time cool and it is so does the wind affect the trebuchet more because we saw their their bowling ball sort of veer off to the right a bit or should it technically affect you more it should affect me more right okay my arrows are a lot lighter but um it's hard to say whether it's affecting the trebuchet or not right Todd third time lucky it's gotta be it's gotta be no it hasn't we're gonna try a different tactic there right a different kind of ball we're gonna go a little so if you have a look at this one here so this is a little bit lighter than the first one we threw so it should go a tiny bit further yeah but it's also cracked as heck ah yes so uh this is just from hitting stones previously or something I'm expecting that it will land and it will break up and maybe some of these bits you know it's cheating but who cares yeah some of these bits will go on to take out some other chaps yeah what we really need is a fuse in here so it explodes mid-air but we probably can't do that right that's a different okay let's okay let's load this thing up go for shot three right ready to go shot three shot three this one's gonna do it goodbye come on nice oh I love it every time I love it it's looking good that line is good oh stayed in one piece as well so everything didn't work so even even the lightness of the ball didn't necessarily care I think it's the wind it's well the wind can't help I mean it's windy here but it's not windier up there but and here's the big but it's going to affect joe a lot more than it'll affect us this is what has been infuriating me about this machine for months that ball there is lighter than that one and it's gone 10 meters less and it's that variability every single shot has got so many variables in it you get kind of accuracy it kind of goes down here but it doesn't do that pinpoint accuracy that you need for a frustrating isn't it let's go see let's go see shot two so shot two was a lighter ball you'd expect it to go further it did go further but importantly uh well in fact you can see here that's where it struck okay you can see the impact yeah that's a good that's a good distance to be fair so that's that's a little bit misleading isn't it ending up over there because it's rolled on but in fact had this been online yeah it may or may not have gone through one of those those walls could have come down they could have come down yeah and then shot one yeah well best of the lot ultimately this is this is definitely my favorite it's it's kind of sad that the momentum ran out sufficiently that it it kind of just just tapped the wall right rather than rather than smashing through but we had cause for optimism at that point we did i mean you know i've been doing this for a while i know not to get too excited i love the shot and the result less exciting but here we are so this was the uh the first arrow so it's just gone a little bit too far a little bit too wide uh possibly wind conditions a bit of wind i may have just pulled it on the on that third shot yeah now this one i mean there would have been people around here we're just unlucky that there hasn't been a target put up in this place if you follow the the angle of that it's just would have just clipped you know just literally coming over the king's head now speaking of the king now when i came over here i saw this was the first arrow we have and man i thought this has got to be really really close yeah and if we come around here let's have a look you can see right here i believe oh yes you've managed to hit on your first go because that that's the only one that it could have been because that was the only one we heard the noise as fresh target as well so fresh target no warm-up and you've hit the king in the head sniped him yep 25 points so i'm just going to make the sling a little bit longer 30 centimeters a foot and that should make them cast further should so let's just do this one come on then jenny let's yeah if you start to untangle that one i always like to just put the end cords through the weave of the rope it's not really technically a very good thing to do but it weakens the rope in fact but the kind of loads we're putting through it which is significant but much less than the breaking strain of the rope it doesn't worry me sailors on the other hand will be looking at this and having a heart attack right about now there is a danger as that ball comes through now that it could end up hitting the winch system okay because everything's changed now clearances are changed so we need to be aware of that so we'll go to the end of the rope this time got it do you know what todd i'm gonna just just for the change just for the change in in in tactics i know what's coming you're gonna pull it this time no problem desperate times desperate measures it just feels great every time come on a bit right yes oh is that a hit that's a hit that's a hit that's a hit it's a thank you sir the first time ever all right joe pressure's on they've somehow managed to hit one of the targets only five points though so not too much pressure you you were saying the bow's a little bit wet now there's been some rain in the meantime has that affected anything will that affect anything it just makes it a little bit slippery um but yeah not really it should be all right nothing on you man yeah that's fine right let's try and get some more points do it right joe for entertainment purposes we're going to actually take our final shot before they take their final shot yeah now i'm getting a bit worried but if you hit anything here we wipe them out of the game okay yeah that's it so uh so should we give it a go yeah i'm gonna i'm just gonna do the same as before same as no change of tactic i mean they've had a bit of a change of tactic here but nope nope same as they were worried they changed it ah that's it okay we're in their heads we're in the head show go on go for it oh i heard a ping there i heard a ping they're looking worried over there right then todd the rain is pouring it's time for our dramatic final shot we've got our lucky red bowling ball what can go wrong everything right now what we've got to do and we can win we can win of course we can so if we get the king or get king and one of the bodyguards which is possible yeah then we're in honing in on that red pad yeah so a little bit of finger crossing might be handy but the the last one the range was brilliant range was brilliant so our little sling adjustment was exactly what we wanted the line wasn't quite right no but now is our this is it this is it okay this is going to be a big moment for history here and todd's workshop come on this is nice oh lovely that's good go on bit right bit right oh oh it touched it again ah listen todd that was we've hit their castle twice ah man once yeah it's actually for this thing it's a pretty good day out right guys i'm not sure if we've learned anything of historical importance today but we've certainly had fun haven't we yeah i'll tell you what i was very very surprised that you managed to hit one of those one of those nights with the trebuchet i mean you were getting very close each time as well just a little bit extra even with that adjustment i think you would have knocked the whole thing down it was good i mean the adjustment was definitely worth doing there's no doubt about that because it did take it a little bit further but i think actually i'll probably give it a little bit more actually on that and make the ropes a bit longer but i think the other thing that we have learned is we didn't see the devastation of the balls hitting but you you know that seven kilos dropping from 40 meters in the air is going to do something absolutely so you can see that joe's weapon is an individual weapon it's shot by one man at one man this thing is shot by crew of men and a bunch of men and and that is the fundamental difference of it he has accuracy we clearly didn't wow well yeah let's three out of five hits something that's true and and the other thing is in my head it was spectacular in my dreams reality nothing good well i think we should talk about that shot very first shot without any practice managed to snipe the king straight in the head so it just shows a combination of this weapon and archers i mean i'm just going to chime in there actually because people don't realize i'm picking you up here joe they just don't realize how good he is i'm telling you now joe did not do a single test shot today he went there he picked up his bow he shot and he put it through the guy's head i mean a guy with a sniper rifle would be proud of that shot they actually would and i'll tell you what louis it was a lot better than we could have done yeah yeah let's let's forget about that video joe is that is that one of the best shots of your life it's a good shot i wouldn't say the best shot but it is a decent shot that's a hole-in-one that's a hole-in-one it is good right well cheers todd thank you for today absolutely pleasure it's been great fun thanks guys and joe thank you joe thanks very much cheers mate all right so we're here this is our final shot yeah it's not bad it's not bad at all it's just a bit of adjustment i mean it looks it's not that great but they're both there they're against the wall they're fairly close together actually a little bit more length on the sling and we would have been coming in there it's not the grouping is is not too bad at all i mean we've knocked we've knocked the wall in i mean maybe not if it's a stone wall but i wouldn't show off too much about that i think it's i think it's nearly nearly falling down there let's have a look at our our sort of pièce de résistance the the actual the one we actually got yeah i mean we took the ball away for our last because it was our lucky ball but i mean it seems like it's it's hit the pallet and moved it backwards we'll have to look at the football no no no have a look ah red mark so we did hit him i guess we hit him on a bounce but it's gonna well it's gonna break your knee definitely he's he's taken out he's taken out of action a five pointer not quite enough to win the game but yeah but at least it's no not no points yeah it's uh and a first and a first for your trebuchet yeah sorry i forgot about that big enthusiasm yes yeah it is the first yeah so i've hit these guys with arrows i've hit them with darts and spears and a plumbata and all sorts this is the first of me hitting them with the trebuchet i think what you need todd is just loads more of these guys and then there's probably i think they're cheating i think they're cheating but one day i will land a ball straight straight through the head yeah unfortunately king cam over there didn't see that that epic shot of the ball coming towards him but never mind one day just not this day yeah so it's it's a thanks to louis and luke and joe here for well let me play again because it's always good but this was just an extraordinary shot from joe first one of the day first shot of the day 140 yards basically through the guy's face now this of course was representing the king and you shoot the king on a battlefield morale falls apart so that really would have been first shot of the day a battle winning moment but coming back to the trebuchet and the arrows shooting here obviously the arrows are an independent weapon from one man to one target trebuchet much more crew served and crew received really because the damage is going to be well much bigger again my trebuchet fails to hit anything it never hits anything but that's not the machine it's not the technology it's the trebuchet master who's got some learning to do but there we are arrows fantastically accurate fantastically devastating trebuchets equally so just not demonstrated this day anyway thank you very much we'll see you again