Carcassonne and Monty Python - it's official

[mjharper]

Well, okay, not that official, but I was recently watching the directors' commentary to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and in relation to the French taunters catapulting a cow at Arthur and his knights, Terry Gilliam says:

It's not an extraordinary idea, because the Romans used to do that. They would take animals, what they used to do was fire animals, like, into castles, diseased animals to try to create infections. I remember, though, at the battle of Carcassonne in the south of France, the town had been under siege for, I don't know, an incredible long period of time - a year or something - and to try to break the siege the Lady - in fact it was a Lady who actually ran the town - and to fool the besiegers into thinking that they weren't in trouble food-wise, they took the last remaining pigs and they had and they stuffed them with the last remaining bits of grain, and they fired them out to the besiegers to show, "We've got plenty of food, we can afford to fire this stuff out," and I think that actually the besiegers decided to give up and go home. So the idea of catapulting animals in and out of castles was not our invention. It was the kind of animals [that was] our invention - I don't think cows ever were fired!

I can't find out on Wikipedia which battle he's talking about, so if anyone has more concrete dates that would be good.

But to my mind at least, this confirms the need to get to work on a Monty Python total conversion ;-)

[Tobias]

Hehee - indeed!

[Gantry]

Gutsy move by the defenders, they deserved to win after that!

Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a classic!  I remember the first time I watched that, I had rented it on VHS tape, someone forgot to rewind it and I sat there for 5 minutes watching the post-credit circus music. Great, now I have that silly tune stuck in my head!