166 DANA— NOTES ON CANNON. [April 20, 



March 2, 1476, was fought the battle of Granson ; Charles of 

 Burgundy had 20,000 men and his splendid train of field-artillery ; 

 both these he proceeded to post as badly as he conveniently could. 

 The Swiss always attacked in solid squares, impervious to cavalry 

 but just the food for cannon to devour. Nine thousand men, and 

 absolute silence, save the word of command ; instant death to who- 

 ever faltered. A few shots took elTect on that solid human mass, 

 as it moved slowly towards the guns, each ball mowing down ten 

 or a dozen men ; then a dip in the ground protected them, and the 

 balls passed over their heads. Now was the time for Charles to 

 have concentrated his artillery fire on the square and rent it to pieces, 

 for his cavalry to drive off the field. Instead, time and again he 

 launched his magnificent gendarmerie against that bristling wall of 

 steel, those 16-foot spears held by sturdy mountaineers who knew 

 not fear. Every attack failed, panic followed, and that splendid 

 Burgundian artillery now adds interest to a score of Swiss museums. 



Napoleon III. and General Fave consider the artillery of Charles 

 VIII. the beginning of that arm of the French service. Of course 

 guns of earlier days still lingered on, but the newer ones took on 

 almost the form they were to retain for three hundred years. 



Guns changed but little from 1500 until the astounding develop- 

 ment of today. Drake fought the Spaniard with almost the same 

 guns that Nelson used at Trafalgar. 



A better organization, and an improvement in tactics was made 

 by Charles of France, before his great Italian campaign of 1495. O" 

 the other hand he w^as opposed by very different foes from the 

 heroes who defeated Charles of Burgundy at Granson, Morat and 

 Nancy. One may safely say that France easily, almost pityingly 

 scattered before her powerful guns the very worst troops the world 

 contained at that time. Burgundy, on the contrary, had faced the 

 bravest and best fighters history tells of. Swiss tactics, the old 

 phalanx of Greece, steadily adhered to. soon became obsolete, and 

 the system of rushing the guns with such unwieldy squares, received 

 its death blow on the days of Marignano, 1515; when, cannon to 

 the right of them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front of 

 them, volleyed and thundered. Two days of carnage failed to 

 shake the Swiss ; but when Francis I., massed his artillery, and the 



