The battering-ram, which was probably well known from the remotest periods, is described, in the documents of the Middle Ages, pretty much as we see it figured on the monuments of Nineveh. “On Easter day,” says the anonymous author of the chronicle of the “Albigeois,” “the _bosson_ (the southern name of the battering-ram) was placed in position; it is long, iron-headed, straight, and pointed, and it so hammered, and pierced, and smashed, that the wall was broken through (Fig. 65); but they (the besieged) lowered a loop of rope suspended from a machine, and in this noose the _bosson_ was caught and retained.” [Illustration: Fig. 65.--Battering-ram.--From a Miniature in Manuscript 17,339 in the National Library of Paris.] Generally speaking, the battering-ram was a long, heavy beam, suspended in the centre from a kind of massive trestle. The end which battered the wall was either covered with an iron hood or pointed with brass. The beam was swung backward and forward by the besiegers, and by dint of striking a wall always in the same spot it often succeeded in shattering or overthrowing it. At other times the ram, instead of being suspended in an oscillating manner, was mounted on wheels, and ran forward with great rapidity against the wall to be battered. The chronicle of the “Albigeois,” just quoted, alludes to the head of the ram being caught in a noose; besides this manœuvre, the garrison would hurl stones and pieces of timber upon it, in order to break it or to put it out of trim; or else they would strive to deaden its blows by interposing a thick mattress of wool covered with leather between it and the stonework of their stronghold. [Illustration: Fig. 66.--Catapult.--When the lever revolves rapidly on its axis, the centrifugal power causes the loop C to slip off the hook D, when the barrel held on the fork E E is liberated and projected to a distance. F represents the end of the lever when held down by the windlass A, and loaded with a barrel of combustible matter or iron. B, rings of stone, iron, or lead.]