154 DANA— NOTES ON CANNON. [April 20. 



The first mention of cannon by Froissart, who is as " faithful 

 as an eye witness," is in the year 1340 at the siege of Quesnoy, on 

 the northeast border of France, not very far from Valenciennes. 

 " Those of Quesnoy let them hear their cannons and bombards, 

 which flung large iron bolts in such a manner as made the French 

 afraid of their horses. "- 



The earliest English use of this word bombard given by Dr. 

 Murray, is in a quotation from John Lydgate, 1430-. The noun has 

 left us, but the verb, to bouihard still lingers. 



It is usually asserted that the first field-guns were used at the 

 battle of Crecy, August 26, 1346. The Florentine chronicler, Gio- 

 vanni Villani, remarks, in the somewhat florid manner of the time, 

 " the bombards of the English made balls of iron to leap with fire, to 

 frighten and drive off the horses of the French. . . . That the roar 

 of the bombards made such a trembling of the earth, such a noise, 

 that it seemed as if God thundered, with great slaughter of men 

 and beating down of horses." 



This terrible slaughter must have been produced by three small 

 toys somewhat like blunderbusses, the charge for each of which was 

 an ounce, more or less, of very bad powder. Cause and effect do 

 seem disproportionate. 



The " Grandes Chroniques de St. Denis " assert that it was the 

 three cannons of the English that spread panic amongst the Genoese 

 cross-bowmen and made them indulge in the singular antics by 

 which they sought to frighten the English archers. In only one 

 known copy of Froissart is there any mention of cannon at Crecy; 

 this happens to be that in the library of the city of Amiens, not far 

 from the battlefield ; there is some reason to believe that the words 

 in question are an interpolation ; when one remembers that from 

 Falkirk (1298) to Flodden (15 13) — Bannockburn excepted — the 

 •English archer, firing ten or more armor-piercing projectiles a min- 

 ute, with an effective range of 250 yards, was always victorious, it 

 does appear possible that French writers, with more patriotism than 

 truth, introduced these terrible cannon into their accounts of the 

 battle as an excuse for the crushing disaster to their arms. 



Edward III. took with him several cannon when he entered 



= Chap. IV., Book I., p. 40. 



