involved in the Construction of Artillery. 319 



Napoleon's work, " Passe ct I'avenir d'Artillcrie." Charles is said to have possessed pieces 

 of 7, 10, 20, and 30 livres' weight of ball (probably of lead) upon this construction, which 

 was well fitted to give a large range with the slow-burning powder then in use, before the 

 invention of granulation. 



The bombard was usually a much shorter piece, often of immense caliber, but formed 

 of wrought-iron much in the same way, except that the inner bars were separate longitu- 

 dinal ones, in place of an united cylinder, the external rings being common to both ; it was, 

 in fact, an immense howitzer, the chase being generally in length from five to eight calibers, 

 and used for throwing stone balls. The chamber, also of wrought-iron, was at first sepa- 

 rate from the chase, socketed into and secured to the latter by rings and lashings ; but in 

 later examples the chamber and chase are united into one mass. The former construction 

 is that of the great bombard recovered from the bed of the Bahgretti, at Moorshedabad, in 

 Bengal ; the latter, that of the Mons Meg, of Edinburgh Castle, and of the great bombard 

 of Ghent, all about to be described. In either case, the only carriage used for the gun was 

 a long trough-like sleeper of timber, often of the rude construction shown in the annexed 

 figure ; the change of elevation being produced by blocking up in front; and the stone shot 

 being rolled into the muzzle, up a sort of movable inclined trough of wood, by hand- 

 spikes. The whole recoil was borne by a firm blocking of timber fixed in rere of the 

 breech, between which and the blocking a stufied pad of leather seems to have been sonic- 

 times interposed as a bufler. 



The velocity of recoil was not great, and the mass of the chamber-piece was considerable, 

 so that, when made separately, the tendency of the latter, and of the chase, to part off' from 

 each other at the moment of recoil was not very great with this mode of mounting. In 

 smaller and longer pieces of wrought-iron of this early period, as in those recovered from 

 the " Mary Rose," wrecked in 1 545, one of which has a caliber of about 6-^ inches, and a length 

 of about 8 feet, though formed and mounted much in the same way, the chamber-piece is 

 cither in one solid piece with the chase, or separate and movable chambers were dropped 

 in between jaws projecting backwards and in one piece with the chase, and were there 

 secured by a coin wedge behind, in precisely the same manner as the Oriental gingals. 

 It will be thus already remarked, that the construction of these largest and earliest cannon 

 is identical in Europe and in India and China. It will be better, however, to reserve 

 further observations until we have described a few of the most striking examples. 



Great Gun of Ghent, or Gand. — In various works the great cannon of Ghent is men- 

 tioned, as, — Dlericx, " Memoires sur la Ville de Gand," vol; ii., p. 144; P. Seiiz, 

 "Nouvelles Archives Historiques, Philosophiques, et Litteraires," vol. ii., p. 607; Voisin, 

 " Guide des Voyageurs dans la Ville de Gand," p. 300; F. De Vigne, " Sur TUsage des 

 Armes a Feu ; le Messager des Sciences et des Arts :" a collection published by the Society 

 of Fine Arts and Letters at Ghent, vol. v., pp. 101, 128. 



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