Explosive Cats Imagined in a Strange, 16th Century Military Manual

Paw prints and feline urine stains on a medieval scribe’s man­u­script, per­haps they weren’t entire­ly out of the ordi­nary in the 15^th cen­tu­ry. But cats strapped to mini-pow­der kegs, bound­ing off to burn down a town — now that’s pret­ty unusu­al.

The incen­di­ary feline fea­tured above (and else­where on this page) comes from a dig­i­tized ver­sion of an ear­ly 16^th cen­tu­ry mil­i­tary man­u­al writ­ten by Franz Helm. An artillery mas­ter, Helm wrote about a broad and imag­i­na­tive set of destruc­tive ideas for siege war­fare. Although my Ger­man is some­what rusty, I got the sense that he was awful­ly fond of explod­ing sacks, bar­rels, and var­i­ous oth­er recep­ta­cles, and even­tu­al­ly decid­ed to com­bine these ideas with an unwit­ting ani­mal deliv­ery sys­tem. These ani­mals, accord­ing to Helm’s guide, would allow a com­man­der to “set fire to a cas­tle or city which you can’t get at oth­er­wise.”

The text was orig­i­nal­ly dig­i­tized by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, and a UPenn his­to­ri­an named Mitch Fraas decid­ed to take a clos­er look at this strange explod­ing cat busi­ness. Accord­ing to Fraas, the accom­pa­ny­ing text reads:

“Cre­ate a small sack like a fire-arrow … if you would like to get at a town or cas­tle, seek to obtain a cat from that place. And bind the sack to the back of the cat, ignite it, let it glow well and there­after let the cat go, so it runs to the near­est cas­tle or town, and out of fear it thinks to hide itself where it ends up in barn hay or straw it will be ignit­ed.”

That’s the mil­i­tary strat­e­gy in a nut­shell. Seems like a great idea, apart from the fact that cats are noto­ri­ous­ly unpre­dictable. In any case, here are more illus­tra­tions of weaponized cats to round out your work week.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cats in Medieval Man­u­scripts & Paint­ings

What Peo­ple Named Their Cats in the Mid­dle Ages: Gyb, Mite, Méone, Pan­gur Bán & More

Cats Migrat­ed to Europe 7,000 Years Ear­li­er Than Once Thought

Cats in Japan­ese Wood­block Prints: How Japan’s Favorite Ani­mals Came to Star in Its Pop­u­lar Art