10 Medieval Battle Tactics So Brutal Even Commanders Refused to Use Them

10 Medieval Battle Tactics So Brutal Even Commanders Refused to Use Them Number ten: Hurling the Living, Using Prisoners as Projectile Ammunition. In the winter of thirteen forty-six, a Mongol commander named Janibeg Khan stood outside the walls of Caffa, a fortified Genoese trading port on the Crimean peninsula, and made a decision that would change the course of history. His army had been camped outside the city for months, grinding through a siege that showed no sign of ending. Then plague arrived in his camp. Soldiers began dying in enormous numbers, and Janibeg Khan, rather than retreating, saw an opportunity. He ordered his engineers to load the plague-dead bodies of his own soldiers into the trebuchets and hurl them over the city walls.