Inside the Plague Trebuchet: When Mongols Threw Corpses Into Caffa in 1346 (Full Process)

Step inside a Mongol siege camp on the Crimean coast in 1346 and discover how Khan Jani Beg of the Golden Horde turned the largest siege engine of the medieval world — the counterweight trebuchet — into the first documented biological weapon in European history, launching plague-infected corpses over the walls of the Genoese trading colony of Caffa and unleashing a chain of events that may have killed half of Europe within five years.

This full-process historical documentary explores the engineering, the dark battlefield logic, and the catastrophic legacy of the Mongol counterweight trebuchet used at the Siege of Caffa — a moment when one of the most sophisticated war machines of the Middle Ages was turned to a purpose so horrifying that medieval chroniclers struggled to describe it. Built using massive timber A-frames, hardwood throwing arms, hemp-rope slings, and tons of stone-and-iron counterweights, the trebuchet was the most powerful artillery piece on earth in 1346 — capable of hurling 100-kilogram stones, fire pots, and, in this single horrifying instance, the diseased bodies of Mongol soldiers killed by the Black Death.

Explore every major stage of medieval trebuchet construction and the Siege of Caffa, including:
- Building the massive timber A-frame from seasoned oak and pine beams
- Crafting the long throwing arm with a short counterweight side and long sling side
- Loading the wooden counterweight box with stones, iron, and ballast
- Weaving the hemp rope sling and pouch that cradled the projectile
- Calibrating release timing to launch projectiles up to 300 meters with precision
- Setting up the Mongol siege lines around Caffa's Genoese stone walls in 1345-1346
- Transferring plague-infected corpses from the Mongol camp to the trebuchet pouch

Blending medieval siege engineering, the physics of counterweight projectile motion, and one of the darkest moments in military history, this video reveals how Khan Jani Beg's army turned siege technology into an instrument of biological warfare. The Mongol Golden Horde had besieged Caffa — a Genoese trading colony on the Black Sea, today the Crimean city of Feodosia — for more than a year. When the bubonic plague swept through the Mongol camp, killing soldiers faster than the Genoese defenders could, Jani Beg made a choice that would echo across centuries. According to the Italian notary Gabriele de' Mussi, who recorded the event in his chronicle Historia de Morbo, the Mongols loaded the corpses of their plague-dead soldiers into the trebuchet's sling and launched them over the walls of Caffa.

The Plague Trebuchet was not only a siege weapon but possibly the catalyst for the worst pandemic in human history. The Genoese defenders, terrified and surrounded by infected bodies, abandoned Caffa and fled by ship across the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. By 1347, the Black Death had appeared in Messina, Sicily. By 1348, it was tearing through Italy, France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire. By 1351, somewhere between thirty and fifty million Europeans were dead — roughly half the continent's population. Historians today debate exactly how much the Caffa incident contributed to the spread of plague into Europe — bubonic plague travels primarily through fleas on rats rather than through corpses, and the Black Death had multiple routes of transmission along the Silk Road and Mediterranean shipping lanes. But Caffa remains one of the earliest documented attempts at biological warfare in recorded history, and it stands as a terrifying example of what happened when the most powerful siege engine of the medieval world was put to the darkest possible use.

If you enjoy medieval history documentaries, the Mongol Empire, the Black Death, military engineering, the history of biological warfare, or full-process explorations of historical events that changed civilizations, this cinematic walkthrough reveals the engineering and the dark logic behind one of the most disturbing siege weapons ever deployed.

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Видео Inside the Plague Trebuchet: When Mongols Threw Corpses Into Caffa in 1346 (Full Process) канала THE ARCHAIC METHOD