the year ran 1346 when the Tatar-Mongolsin full siege of the Genoese city of Caffawere affected by a deadly epidemic of Black Death. get rid of the corpses to prevent the spread of the disease became as urgent as fighting the enemy, so they decided to kill two birds with one stone and load their bodies on catapults to launch them towards Caffa. It would therefore be one of the first cases of biological weapons that have been documented in history.
That military operation was narrated by the Italian notary Gabriel deMussiswho also assured that all this gave rise to the introduction of a black plague epidemic in other areas of Europe.
Over time, some analyzes of his story have been carried out in which it is concluded that it is coherent that the disease as a biological weapon. It squares with the records about her that were made later. However, they disagree that this contributed to the spread of the Black Death beyond the city of Caffa. Be that as it may, it seems that biological weapons are much older than we might think. As much as the evil of the human being.
History of biological weapons
Although the use of diseases as biological weapons is possibly even older, the first historical records in this regard come from approximately the year 90 after Christ. It was then that the Roman senator Sixth Julius Frontinus he published some writings describing the throwing of containers filled with poisonous snakes or decomposing animal meat towards enemy cities. He also recounted placing swarms of bees in the tunnels so that they would attack soldiers unexpectedly.
They are the first cases described and there are few more that were registered before the siege of caffa. This city, now known as feodosia and then belonging to the Genoese, it is located on the shores of the Black Sea, in what is now the Crimean peninsula.
Records from the 14th century relate that indeed in 1346 an epidemic of Black Death. And that this coincided with the Siege of the Tatar-Mongols. What is not so clear is that the pathogen actually arrived within its walls through the corpses launched in catapults. But the truth is that it makes a lot of sense. Let’s see how things happened.
The most abrupt arrival of the black plague
The black plague is known as a great plague pandemic that occurred in Europe and Asia. between the years 1347 and 1353.
It is not clear what was the real disease that caused the pandemic. The most accepted hypothesis is that it was bubonic plague, although there are also those who believe that it could be due to anthrax. Both are pathologies caused by bacteria, the first by Yersinia pestis and the second for Bacillus anthracis. Curiously, the latter has been used as a biological weapon long after Caffa. It was in 2001, when some letters were sent in the United States whose envelopes contained spores of said bacterium.
Whatever the bacteria that caused the black plague, what seems clear is that, after several days of besieging Caffa, the Tatar-Mongol army began to get sick at breakneck speed. Before long there were thousands of dead piling up in their ranks. If they didn’t get rid of the corpses, the disease would continue to progress until they were all killed. For this reason, as Mussis describes in his account of what happened, they chose to launch them towards Caffa with the help of catapults.
His goal was make them sick by the smell. But that was not the worst of it. Both bubonic plague and anthrax are transmitted, among other ways, by contact with the secretions of patients. If the dead piled up in its streets, it would be impossible not to succumb to the epidemic. In addition, anthrax is transmitted through the air, through spores. Y Yersinia pestis can be transmitted through flea bites. At that time, and in full siege, it is more than possible that the streets were infested, so the epidemic was served.
Mussis recounted that “an infected man could carry the poison to others, and infect people and places with the disease just by looking at it.” Logically it was not like that, but there were still many years to go before it was known How are these diseases really spread?. The only obvious thing was that the inhabitants of Caffa were succumbing and that the black plague, in the form of a biological weapon, had fallen on them.
Does all this make sense?
In 2002, the microbiologist Mark Wheelisfrom the University of California, published a Article in which the situation of the black plague epidemic in Caffa.
In it he addressed two possible forms of entry of the disease. On the one hand, it is possible that rats they would have carried the bacteria from the attacking army to them. And, on the other hand, what Mussis described could be true. But the truth is that in a siege, with the city closed to the ground, it would have been difficult for the rats to come out of their burrows and overcome all the obstacles necessary to reach the city. The catapult thing, while sounding far more outlandish, makes more sense to Wheelis, who describes it as one of the earliest recorded uses of biological weapons in history.
What he doesn’t quite agree with is that this attack was responsible for the spread of the black plague beyond Caffe. We’ll never really know for sure. We can only imagine how tragic it must have been for those who lived through the attack. The sad thing is that the mixture of pandemics and wars continue to be the order of the day after almost 700 years in which human beings should have had time to reflect on the consequences of violent acts. Perhaps there will never be enough years for that reflection.