This shot of a trebuchet was taken at the same Chateau des Beaux that was the scene of yesterday's posted image. A wheeled mechanism can barely be seen in the bottom foreground (I was more interested in exploiting the effect of the dark silhouette against the sunset than revealing the details of the weaponry). For those interested in the history of the trebuchet, here's an excerpt from Wikipedia: A trebuchet is a siege engine that was employed in the Middle Ages. It is sometimes called a "counterweight trebuchet" or "counterpoise trebuchet" in order to distinguish it from an earlier weapon that has come to be called the "traction trebuchet", the original version with pulling men instead of a counterweight. Man-powered trebuchets appeared in the Greek world and China in about the 4th century BC. The counterweight trebuchet appeared in both Christian and Muslim lands around the Mediterranean in the twelfth century. It could fling projectiles of up to three hundred and fifty pounds (140 kg) at high speeds into enemy fortifications. Occasionally, disease-infected corpses were flung into cities in an attempt to infect and terrorize the people under siege, a medieval form of biological warfare. The trebuchet did not become obsolete until the 15th century, well after the introduction of gunpowder, which appeared in Europe in the second half of 13th century. Trebuchets were far more accurate than other medieval catapults.