In May 1097, during the siege of Nicaea, crusaders catapulted the severed heads of prisoners over the walls surrounding the city, with the aim of terrorising their enemy. The strategy worked. On June 19 of the year the crusaders captured the city.
However, only those who lived near the city walls would have felt the utter horror of seeing human heads flung through the air: the inhabitants of nearby cities would not have received the news of these awful events until weeks or even months later. Even then, they would only have heard accounts of the events, without images or videos to reproduce exactly what happened. Eleventh century technology meant that weaponised mass terror had its limitations.
