Petrary (from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

"petra", "stone") is a generic term for

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

stone-throwing

siege engine A siege engine is a device that is designed to break or circumvent heavy castle doors, thick city walls and other fortifications in siege warfare. Some are immobile, constructed in place to attack enemy fortifications from a distance, while oth ...

s such as

mangonel The mangonel, also called the traction trebuchet, was a type of trebuchet used in Ancient China starting from the Warring States period, and later across Eurasia by the 6th century AD. Unlike the later counterweight trebuchet, the mangonel o ...

s and

trebuchet A trebuchet (french: trébuchet) is a type of catapult that uses a long arm to throw a projectile. It was a common powerful siege engine until the advent of gunpowder. The design of a trebuchet allows it to launch projectiles of greater weight ...

s, used to hurl large rocks against the walls of the besieged city, in an attempt to break down the wall and create an entry point. Catapult, trebuchet, mangonel are all types of petrary, but

ballista The ballista (Latin, from Greek βαλλίστρα ''ballistra'' and that from βάλλω ''ballō'', "throw"), plural ballistae, sometimes called bolt thrower, was an ancient missile weapon that launched either bolts or stones at a distant ...

style armaments, which shot bolts or arrows, would not fit into this category. Petraries are sometimes considered smaller versions of mangonels. In 1159, Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor made a distinction between petraries, which were small artillery, and mangonels, which were large artillery. The opposite is also true and sometimes the petrary is considered the more powerful weapon, whereas mangonels were the smaller artillery, as was the case in 1185, when the French set up light "Turkish mangonels" and heavy petraries, and 1195 when Baldwin V, Count of Hainaut laid siege to

Huy Huy ( or ; nl, Hoei, ; wa, Hu) is a city and municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Liège, Belgium. Huy lies along the river Meuse, at the mouth of the small river Hoyoux. It is in the ''sillon industriel'', the former industrial ...

References

Bibliography

* Medieval siege engines {{Artillery-stub