![]() The Romans so christened the device owing to its tendency to rear up its back end when fired. The word “onager” or “onagrus” is actually the latin word for a donkey (literally, a “wild ass”). When the slip hook was tripped, the sudden, violent release of energy sent the throwing arm rocketing back into its upright position while the sling sent the payload hurtling toward the target. The arm was then secured with a slip hook and the sling was loaded-usually with a large rock. A winch and ratchet were used to ensure that the rope was wound tightly, then a windlass (and a considerable amount of elbow grease) supplied the final measure of tension, pulling the throwing arm tightly back until it was nearly plumb with the ground. The throwing arm of the onager was placed between strands of thick, sinewy rope that had been coiled and twisted to create a rotational force. ![]() Constructed entirely of wood, the Roman onager consisted of a kind of chassis set on four wheels upon which was mounted a long wooden “arm” with a large sling on the end of it. From Onager to Catapult A trebuchet launches “Greek fire” at a medieval castle.Īs siege engines go, however, the catapult (from the Greek “Katapultos” or “shield piercer”) that struck such terror into the besieged defenders of Nicaea was actually an inferior imitation of a much more accurate and efficient torsion weapon of the ancient Greco-Roman period known as the onager. For the Turks at Nicaea, it was enough that they had already come face to face with the most potent weapon in the European arsenal: the medieval catapult. So great was their dread that they begged to be allowed to give the city back to the Byzantines rather than meet their fearsome new enemy, the Crusaders, face to face. On June 19, thoroughly traumatized by their ordeal, the Turks surrendered. The Crusaders had lopped off the heads of the Turkish corpses that lay in heaps around Nicaea and were now sending them flying over the walls of the city. To the horror of the besieged, a torrent of severed human heads began raining down upon the defenders of Nicaea. then, after butchering two Turkish relief columns in fierce hand-to-hand fighting, the Crusaders began to ratchet up the misery index yet another notch. Suddenly, huge rocks were sailing through the air, slamming into the walls and towers of the city, terrifying its inhabitants. Amid the unmistakable sounds of hammers striking wood, the Turks could only listen apprehensively as the Crusaders’ company of carpenters and engineers went to work constructing their most formidable weapon. Sheltered behind Nicaea’s thick walls, the Turks within were certain that they could hold out against the Europeans. The floor of the Dracon Passage was still littered with their sun-bleached bones half a year later, when, in May of 1097, a mighty host of Christian Crusaders arrived on the scene and promptly laid siege to the city. On November 21, 1096, at the Dracon passage, a Turkish army caught up with Peter’s wild-eyed amateurs and, in an orgy of slaughter and annihilation, proceeded, with great relish, to cut them to pieces. Unfortunately for the Hermit’s disciples, the Turks were not in the mood for a theological debate. In its glory days, the city had sponsored two landmark ecumenical councils instrumental in formulating much of the teachings of the early Christian church. Whipped into a suitably religious frenzy, a ragtag mob of peasant zealots led by one Peter the Hermit, had set out on foot from northern France on a Christian jihad to do just that they had actually succeeded in walking all the way to Asia Minor where, at Nicaea, their fool’s luck had run out. It was a decidedly Moorish brand of “manifest destiny” that even the Pope in Rome seemed unable to thwart.ĭriven to fits by the thought that the Holy Land was in the hands of the Mohammedans, Urban II had nearly shouted himself hoarse exhorting the faithful to drive them out. Now it belonged to them, fueling their belief that the whole of Byzantium’s ever shrinking domains was preordained to become theirs as well. The fabled fortress city of Asia Minor had, up until very recently, been a jewel in the crown of Byzantine Christian Emperor Alexius. It was the spring of 1097 and the Turks guarding the walls of Nicaea were in a confident mood.
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