Counterweight Trebuchet

Timeline

1. 1341–1344Western Europe · Western EuropeIn the early 1340s, the counterweight trebuchet was already a common heavy engine in Western European sieges, inherited from an invention of the late 12th century in the Mediterranean and widely spread on the eve of the Hundred Years' War. Trebuchets required teams of craftsmen weeks to months to assemble, bombarding battlements and defenders' morale with stone projectiles.
2. 1345–1346Caffa · CrimeaMongol forces used counterweight trebuchets in the 1345–1346 siege of Caffa in Crimea. According to accounts such as those of Gabriel de Mussis, the besiegers threw plague victims' corpses into the city; this event is linked to narratives of the Black Death spreading into the Mediterranean via Genoese trade routes, and also shows trebuchet use on non-Western-European battlefields.
3. 1346–1350Northern France · Hauts-de-FranceIn Hundred Years' War campaigns such as the 1346–1347 siege of Calais, both attackers and defenders might deploy counterweight trebuchets to bombard fortresses. Trebuchets usually needed to be combined with mining, starvation, and infantry assaults to take a city, and their deterrent and destructive power remained central to mid-14th-century siege systems.