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Comment by simonebrunozzi | Hacker News Reader

So, is this because Trebuchet are not particularly lethal, or because they were not used much?

Trebuchet were used primarily to hammer the walls of the castle to break them down. Not really possible to aim at a person; the soldiers clambering over the broken walls will do that.

People didn't really bother recording cause of death for every casualty on medieval battlefields

This is the only man known to have died in a medieval siege of a medium-sized boulder falling on him.

Trebuchets were used for a variety of purposes in siege warfare, from (uniquely) breaching walls with large boulders to (less uniquely) setting things on fire to (probably) suppressing massed formations of archers with smaller shot. But smaller shot would not leave a characteristic trebuchet injury, it would leave a generic blunt-force trauma injury.

In some cases they’d hurl dead cattle, people’s heads, and flaming projectiles over the walls to damage morale and potentially damage infrastructure.

And to spread disease.

> they’d hurl dead cattle

I learned that from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I would not want to hurl dead cattle ("Valuable beef primal cuts") across the walls onto a starving populace.

the key word is "known"

More like ‘named’. There are accounts of trebuchets causing hundreds of deaths, but individual casualties in medieval battles are rarely identified.

This person is not named, unless you consider Skeleton 150 a name. 'known' is the appropriate word here.

They typically weren't trying to hit people with them.

Trebuchets crushed their victims so hard that they were erased from history.

Clearly you guys have never played medieval ii total war!

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