ARTILLERY. 



ARTILLERY. 



when not only stones and dart* were discharged from the machines, 

 but pots of Urwk Are, quick lime, and other combustible materials. 

 Robert of Bruce (in Peter Langtoft'a < Chronicle '). speaking of 

 the Saracens, says, that in his Urges and 



Richard 1.'. wan _ 



galley* he had mffla. which were turned by the wind, and by force of 



the sails threw not only An. but (tones which were teken from the 



It would be tedious to enumerate all the arU and all the machines 

 which were employed in the middle ages in assaulting and defending 

 towns and castles, Indeed, few sieges of great importance occurred 

 nUhmii the invention of some new engine. Grose, in the preface to 

 his Antiquities of England and Wales,' has given the names and 

 figures of a considerable number. Some of these were distinguished 



by the appellation* halisU, catapults, eepringal, trebuchet, mangona, 

 mangonel. briooUa, petrary, matafunda, berfrey, and war-wolf. Pi-re 

 UanU alsu mentioni a machine called engiue-a-virge, iued )>y the 

 Kngliah in France, at late a* the reign of Charles VII. Of the 

 TMt force of thine machine* surprising stories are related in our 

 chronicles. The nnginm used by Edward I. at the aiege of Stirling 

 Castle in 1803, according to Heiningford, threw (tones of 300 pounds 



Thie ancient artillery continued to be used in sieges for a considerable 

 time, in aome in*tnin*irT for two centuries, after the invention of gun- 

 powder and cannon. (See Fere Daniel, ' HUtnire de la Milice Francoiae,' 

 unn. L, p. 319.) Greek Are continued aim to be employed ill war lone 

 after the introduction of fire-ann*, |rticularly in the attack and 

 defence of strong place*, a* at Ypree and Burburgh in France, in 1 383. 

 (Wabingh., edit ( aui.l.. pp. 303, 303.) 



The invention of gunpowder however by slow degrees brought about 

 a total alteration ill the art of war. Colonel Chesney states, in his 

 work ' OWrvatiuiw on Fire- Arms ' (published in 1852), that the fact of 

 cannon-balls having been propelled by gunjiowder as early as A.D. 1200 

 in India, in established by the following passage in the Hindoo poet 

 Chosed : " Oh ! chief of Oaqutf, buckle on your armour, and prepare 

 your fire-machine* ; " the fire-machine* alluded to being described in 

 mnfAfr passage in the following words : " that the culivers and can- 

 nons made a loud report when they were fired oft", and the noise of the 

 ball was hoard at a distance of 10 ooss, or nearly 1445 yards." There 

 is no reason for believing that this is the first or even an early instance 

 of the use of cannon in the east, where gunpowder had probably been 

 known for a long time, and the mention of the use of incendiary projec- 

 tiles amongst the natives of China and India at an earlier date is often 

 met with. Colonel Chesney, in the same work, thus proceeds to trace 

 tin- introduction of artillery into Europe : " The Moors, according to 

 Condi, used artillery against Zaragossa in 1118; and in 1182, a culvcrin 

 of 4 lU. calibre, named Saloruonica, was made. In 1157, when the 

 Spaniards took Niebla, the Moors defended themselves by machines 

 which threw darts and stones by means of fire; and in 1157, 

 Abd'almumen, the Moorish king, captured Mohadia, a fortified city 

 near Bona, from the Sicilians, by the same means. In 1280 artillery 

 was used against Cordova, and in 1306 or 1308 Ferdinand IV. took 

 OibnlUr from the Moon by means of artillery. Ibn Noaan ben Bin, 

 <>f Grenada, mentions that guns were adopted from the Moors and used 

 in Spain in the 12th century, and that balls of iron were thrown by 

 means of fire in 1331." 



Barbour, in his Metrical Life of Robert Bruce,' tells us that cannon 

 (which he calls " crakys of war") were used by Edward III. in his first 

 campaign against the Scots in 1327. Du Cauge, in the article ' Bom- 

 barda,' shows that the French used cannon at the siege of Puy Cnil 

 laume in 1338 ; and that Edward 111. used them at the battle of Crecy, 

 as well as at the siege of Calais in 1346, seems agreed. Four pieces 

 planted on a little hill at the battle of Crecy did great execution among 

 the French troops, and having been before unheard of in France, con- 

 tributed as much by the surprise as the slaughter to the success of the 

 day. (See Raptn, vol. i , p. 425.) This seems to have been denied by 

 some authors, in consequence of the supposed silence of Froiasart. 

 The Emperor Louis Kapoleon, however, in his work on Artillery, 

 alludes to a passage in a manuscript of Froissart, preserved in the 

 library at Amiens, which proves that he was neither ignorant nor 

 silent of the fact. Another ancient manuscript mentions the pay of 

 the artillerymen that Edward III. had in 1346, when he landed at 

 Calais, " masons, carpenters, engineer*, Ac., gunners and artillerymen, 

 some at !., 10d., 6rf., and Srf. per diem." It is clear, however, that if 

 cannon were uaed by the French at Puy Guillaume in 1338, they could 

 not have been the absolute novelty asserted at Crecy in 1346. By 

 rtsyees, the use of cannon became more and more common. Petrarch, 

 in his ' Dialogues " on the Remedies of Good and Bad Fortune, written 

 in 1358, describes cannon as no longer rare, or as viewed with astonish- 

 ment and admiration. 



Cannon, or, as they were then called, bombards, were the most 

 ancient fire-arms. The first cannon were clumsy and ill-contrived, 

 wider at the mouth than at the chamber, and so like a mortar that 

 Dr. Henry supposed the idea of them might have been suggested by 

 that in which SchwarU, a chemist of the beginning of the 14th century, 

 who is *aid by the German, to have discovered gunpowder, pounded 

 his materials. They were all made of iron, without any mixture of 

 other metals; and consisted usually of bars or pieces of iron fitted 

 tnfpUitr lengthways, and hooped with iron rings. Seme of them were 



too long, and others of them too short In a word, the art of making 

 cannon was still imperfect. 



Both gunpowder and cannon were made in England in the 14th 

 century. This appears from a commission given to Sir Thorns.- 

 wich by Richard II., in 1378, to buy two great and two small cannon in 

 London, or in any other place, and also to buy certain quantities of 

 saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal, for making gunpowder. (Kyin. Fax!. 1 

 torn. vii. p. 187.) From the same commission, as well as from 

 evidence, it appears that cannon-ball* were at first made of aton< 

 the same person is therein commanded to pui-cliane six hundred balls of 

 stone, for cannon, and for other engines. 



Besides great guns, which are still named cannon, a smaller kind of 

 ordnance called kaiui-faiuum came into use at this peritxl. 'I'll- 

 so small and light that one of them was carried by two men, and fired 

 from a rest fixed in the ground. (Pore Daniel, t.-m. i. hi.. \ i. ; 

 The. 400 cannon, or the greater port of UK-ID, with which .-in I 

 army besieged St. Malu, in 1378, mentioned by Froiioart (Lord 

 Berner'a Tranxl. chap, cccxxxii.), must have been of this kind : 

 though Dr. Henry conjectures that these hand-cannon were first 

 brought into Britain by the Fleming* who accompanied rxlwai.l I V 

 in his return to England in 1471. The Scots, he adds, hod a kin.l <! 

 artillery at this period peculiar to themselves, called carte of mrr. 

 They are thus described in an Act of Parliament in H.'.ii : " It i< 

 thocht speidfull, that the king mak requeUt to certain of the great 

 barrons of the land that are of ony myglit, to mak carts of weir, and in 

 ilk cart twa gunnU, and ilk ane to have twa chuluierx, with the rema- 

 nent of the graith that effeirs thereto, and an cunnand man to shute 

 thame." By another Act, in 1471, the prelates and barons ore com- 

 manded to provide such cart* of war agaiiwt their old . n.-r 

 English. (Henry, 'Hist. Brit.' from Black Acts, James II. . 

 .lanu-s III. act 55.) 



The instruments of artillery of the middle of the 15th eentuiv, 

 though all called by the general name of cannon, were of very lUlli-reni 

 kinds, shapes, and sizes, and distinguished from each other by JMI 

 ticular names. The letters which Edward IV. addressed to diflVivm 

 persons in 1481, for the resistance to invasion from Scotland, speak 

 of "bumbordos, canones, culverynes, foweleru, serpentynes, et alio* 

 canones quoscumque, oc pulveres sulphureos, saltpetre. jH'tnx*, ferrmii, 

 plumbum, et omnimodos alias stuffuroa pro eudem canonibus neces- 

 sarian et oportunas." (Rym. ' Ficd.' torn. xii. p. 140.) 



A French translation of 'Quintus Curtius ' by Vosqua <!. I 

 a Portuguese, written in 1468, preserved in the British Museui: 

 which formerly belonged to 1'hilip de (.'luys, a Knight ami Com- 

 mancler of the order of St. John of Jerusalem, has one or two early 

 representations of the larger sort of camion, which are here exhibited. 



Monstrelet illustrates the clumsy form as well as the clumsy manage- 

 ment of ancient cannon. l'n<l. T the year 1459 he says, " while Km.- 

 James (of Scotland) was observing the effect of his artillery (at the 

 siege of Roxburgh Castle), one of the rudely contrived cannons of that 

 age, consisting of bars of iron girded with circles of metal, mi<l*l> nl\ 

 burst : a fragment struck his thigh, and the great effusion of blood 

 produced a death almost instantaneous. The Earl of Angus, who stood 

 next to James, was wounded." Under 1478 he says, "A great bom- 

 bard, that had been cast at Tours, was brought to Paris the Monday 

 before Epiphany to be proved, and was for this purpose drawn out 

 into the Held* in front of the hostile of Saint Anthony. It was pointed 

 towards Charenton, and when first fired threw the ball as for as the 

 gallows on the bridge of Charenton ; but as those present did not think 

 it hod discharged til the powder that had been put into the chamber, 



