By: Kay Slaney
One of the many iconic moments in our production of Spamalot is the catapulting of a cow from the French and is our wonderful act-one closer. But did opposing armies throw livestock and human beings at one another?
So, there are only two known moments in the medieval period where cadavers were lobbed at opposing forces, the first example and the one we will be discussing in this article is in the siege of Caffa where the Golden Horde, a group of Mongols catapulted plague victims at the occupants of Caffa. The second is in the siege to a castle in Thun l’Eveque in France allegedly hurled dead horses and the smell was so bad that the opposing army gave up.
The Siege of Caffa has been documented in a variety of well-respected academic journals and has been taken as fact by many reputable sources. One of these papers in the Journal of the American Medical Association claims that “there is every reason to accept the feasibility of hurling plague-ridden cadavers over the city walls” (Derbes 1966).
In another article, the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal claims that the testimony of the sole surviving account of the siege of Caffa was immensely accurate and helped to spread the plague. “His (the witness of the siege of Caffa) account of biological attack is plausible, consistent with the technology of the time, and it provides the best explanation of disease transmission into besieged Caffa. This thus appears to be one of the first biological attacks recorded and among the most successful of all time” (Wheelis 2002). However, when truly analyzing the account of the siege of Caffa, several holes are apparent in the scribe's testimony and it is unlikely that the Golden Horde utilized a catapult to throw plague-ridden cadavers at Caffa.
Image: Depiction of the Mongol Army using a Trebuchet, Source: Edinburgh University
Gabriele De Mussi
To begin, it is imperative that we first learn about the person who wrote this account, he was a notary in Piacenza. He was the writer of Historia de Morbo which allegedly detailed an eyewitness account of the siege of Caffa.
Already, before we given begin to talk about his account, there are holes in De Mussi’s story. The first is that we do not have an original copy of the Historia de Morbo. The surviving text could have been altered by someone other than De Mussi (Ditrich 26) and it is also important to note that De Mussi was not a direct eyewitness to the siege of Caffa! His report was written YEARS after the siege (Ditrich 26) and it is next to impossible for De Mussi to have been an eyewitness since it was known that he was in Piacenza during the siege. Even if he were to have gotten accounts from witnesses, he would have put himself with plague victims for about six months and it was more likely that De Mussi got accounts from sailors who survived the plague and heard from the victims of Caffa.
Image: First page of the 'original' Historia de Morbo
Now that we have gone over the already threadbare argument that De Mussi was a direct witness to Caffa, let’s analyze his testimony. According to De Mussi, the plague spread through miasma which is the now very much debunked theory that bad smells could carry diseases. Of course, we now understand that the origins of the plague came from when fleas that sucked the blood of plague-infested rats would hop onto a person and give them the plague.
“The dying Tatars (Mongols), stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about by the disease, and realizing that they had no hopes of escape, lost interest in the siege. But they ordered corpses to be placed in catapults and lobbed into the city in the hope that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside. What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city and the Christians could not hide or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could in the sea. And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply." (De Mussi, Historia de Morbo)
Catapult vs. Trebuchet
The first illogical point in his testimony is that the Mongols used a catapult to lob the victims. It was far more likely that a trebuchet was used. Now what is the difference between a Trebuchet and a Catapult? In lamest terms, a catapult primarily uses only the skein of the object to lob it while a trebuchet uses a counterweight to lob the projectile (Gamache & Hamilton 2005).
Image: Trebuchet from a fencing manual by Hans Talhoffer 1459. Image source: Royal Danish Library.
De Mussi implies that the Golden Horde used a catapult to throw the cadavers, but due to the distance of the alleged catapult and the weight of the cadavers, it would have been nearly impossible to launch a human body over such a great distance. It is far more likely that if this event even did occur, the Mongols used a trebuchet because they would have had a better distance for the payload.
Ethics of the Golden Horde
Another problem with De Mussi’s story is that the Mongols at this period would have been religiously opposed to purposefully infecting another human. In 1348, the Golden Horde of the Mongols already converted to Islamic teachings and were, on the whole, Muslims. In the Qur’an, it states that "There is no disease that Allah has created, except that He also has created its treatment" (Sahih Bukhari, Book 71, 582). This teaching says that if Allah is the one who creates diseases and their treatments, then man should allow Allah to take his course rather than intentionally go through an infected religion Ditrich 27) So why would the Golden Horde risk committing a violation against Allah so they can scare and infect their opposition? Ethically, this doesn’t make any sense.
Trebuchets Were Massive
Another important note about this account is that trebuchets were incredibly large, massive objects. It is alleged that “The most powerful trebuchets weighed tens of tons. Dismantling and moving them would have been a massive logistical operation.” (Field) So it would have been next to impossible for the Mongols to pack up all of their necessary equipment to Caffa. The next plausible thing to do would be that the Mongols must have made one when they arrived in Caffa. The problem with this theory is that there is no geographical evidence that there would have been enough trees in Caffa to provide the Mongols with enough wood for a trebuchet (Zanders).
Overall, due to De Mussi not being an eyewitness to the siege of Caffa, the lack of an original copy of Historia de Morbo and original testimony, documenting the incorrect machine the Mongols used, the Mongel’s religious code and the size of trebuchets, it is difficult to take De Mussi’s account at face value. Overall, the absurdity of the claim that there were flying plague cadavers used during the siege of Caffa is hilariously inaccurate and this adds even more to the absurdity of the French Taunters.