MILITARY ENGINES. 115 



great distances, very soon completely superseded all projectile engines 

 before employed. It must not be supposed, however, that the firearm 

 received at once the form in which we find it at present. At first they 

 dreaded the enormous force of the powder, whose limits they knew not, and 

 believing it impossible that tubes so thin as the barrel of a musket could 

 offer sufficient resistance, they employed only great pieces, and made these 

 of unwieldy strength. After Berthold Schwarz had observed accidentally in 

 1280 the explosive force of powder, of which the composition had been 

 made known by Roger Bacon as early as 1219, it soon began to be 

 employed for military purposes, and already, in 1328, they had cannon in 

 France. These first cannon were called Bombards {pi. 34, figs. 18, 19), 

 or, when very short, and with a very wide mouth, mortars {figs. 15, 22). 

 Bombards were at first of wood, bound with iron hoops, and lay upon a 

 roller-carriage {fig. 19) ; then they were lined with iron-plate, strengthened 

 with bars of iron running lengthwise the barrel, and bound with iron hoops. 

 But, as even this could furnish no abiding resistance to the force of the powder, 

 they constructed them entirely of forged iron, of cast iron, and at last cast 

 them of bronze. Gustavus Adolphus, during the Thirty Years' War, had very 

 light pieces constructed of iron plate, strengthened with bands and bound 

 with hoops of iron, and covered with leather, whence arose the fable of the 

 king's leathern cannon. Mortars were made at first of wooden staves, like 

 casks {fig- 15), and fixed immovable upon the bed, as even now, at sieges, 

 stone mortars are made, by hooping casks with iron, burying them in the 

 earth, and kindling the charge from the muzzle. The bombards lay either 

 upon fixed beds {fig. 17), upon roller-carriages {fig. 19), or, after they were 

 made by casting, and became less unwieldy, upon a kind of frame especially 

 for that purpose, which permitted changes in their elevation {fig. 18). All 

 these bombards or mortars shot only stone balls or fragments of iron, and 

 not until the year 1400 were iron balls used. Sforza had, before Piacenza, 

 in 1447, three bombards ; each of which discharged, in the twenty-four 

 hours, sixty stone balls, and with which, in thirty days, he battered down 

 two towers and the wall between them. In the year 1553, stone balls were 

 still employed. The first bronze cannon were cast in 1418, and they have 

 still, at Toulouse, a cannon cast in 1438, which throws a seven-pound ball, 

 and weighs 1,356 pounds (our present six-pounders weigh, on the average, 

 900 pounds). Cannon were made at first disproportionately strong at the 

 breech, as the 45-pound battering-gun represented on pi. S4, fig. 20, shows. 

 Subsequently the pieces were made weaker and disproportionately long, 

 from a belief that the longer the gun the more effective and certain was the 

 shot. About this time also the movable carriage (the stock carriage) {fig. 

 21) was invented, by which the gun could be aimed in any direction, and on 

 which it could more easily be served and transported. In this manner a kind 

 of field-artillery was formed, of as small calibre even as two pounds, and 

 with iron balls ; while the huge wide-mouthed cannon, throwing stone balls, 

 were used for sieges as late as the sixteenth century. It had been found 

 out meanwhile that for stone balls a less charge was required, and that this 

 was most effective when closely confined ; whereupon, the part in which the 



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