600 
WHO INVENTED THE LEATHER GUNS? 
29 November, 1666, which concludes as follows :— 
. . . “he” (i.e. Wemyss himself) “hath nothing from your 
“ Majestie in this his old age to maintain him with, which forceth him, 
“ with your leave and favour, to retire to a private life (how mean so- 
“ ever), where he shall daily pray for your Majesties long and prosper¬ 
ous raigne. 
“And remaine your Majesties 
most humble bot ruined servant 
.James Wemyss.” 1 
To teturn to the leather guns :—when we reflect that Wemyss pro¬ 
bably wrote, or assisted in writing, his uncle's epitaph, we feel how 
groundless is Bulstrode's assertion that Wemyss invented the leather 
guns. 
Did his epitaph simply state that Scott invented a leather gun, it 
would be perfectly intelligible and secure from criticism. As it stands, 
it could hardly be more misleading. By the juxtaposition of the two 
phrases “the King of Sweden” and “the leather ordnance,” as well 
as by the vagueness of the latter phrase, it appears to attribute de¬ 
liberately to Scott the invention of the Swedish leather guns, which 
he himself would have been the first to disclaim. The guns invented 
by Scott were used, notin the Thirty Year's War by the King of Swe¬ 
den, but by the Earl of Essex in the Great Rebellion. 
The majority of military writers seem to accept substantially the 
estimate of the leather guns formed by the Emperor Napoleon III:— 
“ ces canons . . . n'ont aucune interet au point de vue de l'his- 
toire^de l'artillerie.” 2 I venture to question the soundness of this 
judgment. In shooting power the leather guns were confessedly in¬ 
ferior to metal ones; but it was only when they appeared in the field 
that soldiers first realised, however imperfectly, the importance of 
another attribute of Field Artillery, mobility. These guns were short¬ 
lived, it is true; but when they disappeared their work was done. 
They had afforded the first faint indications of what might be achieved 
by a Field Artillery that could move quickly as well as fire effectively. 
Owing to the backward state of Chemistry and Metallurgy, the con¬ 
struction of such a system was impossible in the time of Gustavus 
Adolphus; and it was not, in fact, accomplished for more than a cen¬ 
tury after his death. The creation of Horse Artillery in the eight¬ 
eenth century by the great King of Prussia was the counterpart 
of the introduction of the leather guns in the seventeenth century by 
the yet greater King of Sweden. 
1 Sir William Fraser’s Memorials of the family of Wemyss, Edinburgh, 1880 ; II, 247. 
2 Etude sur le passe, etc., de V Art.; I., 339. 
