Meatbag catapult - historic reference

Kelces

This is not supposed to be any critic, just my personal thoughts on the original development based on concepts from reality.

I came across a medieval story, that affirmed my suspicion, that the meatbag-catapult could have been named differently. But in the end they decided to give it the name we all know, just to conform to some standards, that will become obvious to you after you read this.

So the story goes as follows:

I know of a battle, that was won between two of the most mighty forces on the planet at some time. One of those forces got tired of losing all their men. The commanding officer looked at his men and says: "Who has a good idea, how we can win this without everybody dying?"
Some slithery person in the back says: "I have an idea!" "Come on up here, share it with me." The commander repiled. They talked for a couple of minutes until the commander agreed: "Hmm. You know, that might just work!" "It's worth a try sir."

So, what did they do? Well, there are expletive deletables, that people utter at certain times in their lives, when something is about to wipe them out. And this is the main one, the number one pick of everybody, just before the train hits you head on you go: "Oh s**t..."

They built some catapults and similar devices, after that they passed a huge pig farm. Guess, what they sent the enemy...
Everybody went over there with something, filled it up with apples and they commenced to bombard the enemy with these apples. Now these ain't just like your usual road-apples, reasonably solid and what not. These were a little bit on the juicy side and extraordinarely sticky. Imagine getting hit by one of those, talk about ruining somebody's day...The other side fled in disgust after being bombarded for about 3 hours. After that the battle was over...

We know, the effect of meatbags are disease. But wouldn't it be also applicable to the other version described in this story? What are your thoughts on it?

Nestor

The original Meatbags were the first forms of Biological Warfare. During a Siege of a city, they would put rotting corpses on catapults and launch them over the walls to make people in the town sick and die. They would also kill livestock and drop them down the wells to poison those too. Sieges would last months so these tactics had time to work.

As for throwing sticky soft disgusting things over the wall to drive the enemy away, I don't know about the effectiveness of that. I mean, people were used to walking down the street in ankle high feces and eating off of tables (no plates) that had never been cleaned, meals of meat, grains and whatever vegetables might be around that had been sitting at room temperature for weeks at a time in the stock room that was infested with rats and bugs. Also, have you ever smelled a street person who has not showered in months, that was what everyone smelled like. So, gross stuff was probably not as much a deterrent back then as it would be today with everyone running home to shampoo and blow dry their hair.

Kelces

Indeed, @Nestor. But you run out of dead bodies at some point, that is what I thought. Further would it be quite wasteful to purposely rot flesh, that was grown through hard labor...If they actually did this. I doubt, that would have been considered an efficient way of warfare for a long time.

Nestor

Kelces wrote: »

Indeed, @Nestor. But you run out of dead bodies at some point, that is what I thought. Further would it be quite wasteful to purposely rot flesh, that was grown through hard labor...If they actually did this. I doubt, that would have been considered an efficient way of warfare for a long time.

Well, of course it has not, when was the last time there was a protracted siege in warfare*? Canons and explosives basically eliminated the need for that. As humans develop more efficient ways to kill other humans, they abandon the old ways and technologies. And, as for corpses, they had plenty. Invading armies would pillage and kill off the farmers and serfs and small towns folks that did not make it back to the keep in time. Corpses were not hard to find. If anything, they would call a truce so everyone could clean up the corpses on the battlefield, and then they could get back to killing each other with alacrity and in a clean disease free environment without tripping over dismembered arms and heads and whatnot.



*Leningrad could be considered a Siege, but that was more a year of city fighting than a classic siege

Forestd16b14_ESO

First off Yay for knowledge

Second off if enemies started to throw apples at me I throw down my weapons and eat the apples. Who throws away perfectly good apples ?! They're delicious.

Kelces

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

First off Yay for knowledge

Second off if enemies started to throw apples at me I throw down my weapons and eat the apples. Who throws away perfectly good apples ?! They're delicious.

Well, I didn't simply mean "apples", perhaps the story wasn't explicit enough. The gist of my OP was, that they wouldn't call them "road-apple catapult" or even worse...

AmalgamousPrime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8jGqdE2iw

The French were notorious for their use of this technique to repel would-be English invaders.

Forestd16b14_ESO

Kelces wrote: »

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

First off Yay for knowledge

Second off if enemies started to throw apples at me I throw down my weapons and eat the apples. Who throws away perfectly good apples ?! They're delicious.

Well, I didn't simply mean "apples", perhaps the story wasn't explicit enough. The gist of my OP was, that they wouldn't call them "road-apple catapult" or even worse...

I know I know they tossed dead bodies at enemies or pig shite but statment still stands.

ALL HAIL APPLES !!!!!

Thelon

History is gross

Waffennacht

@Nestor is absolutely right, well documented this information is.