THE EOYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
203 
AN ACCOUNT 
OF THE 
GREAT CAMON OF MUHAMMAD II. 
RECENTLY PRESENTED TO THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT BY THE SULTAN, 
WITH NOTICES OF OTHER GREAT ORIENTAL CANNON* 
ET 
BRIGADIER-GENERAL J. H. LEFROY, R.A., F.R.S. 
The great cannon of the Dardanelles have been a subject of wonder to 
travellers and of interest to artillerymen from the earliest period. There 
are no other examples of guns which have remained in use for four 
centuries, and are still, in a very real sense, effective pieces of ordnance. 
They testify to the former energy and power of the Ottoman race, as no 
other military monument does, and remind us of an event which has had a 
greater influence on the politics of Europe than almost any other within the 
same period—the fall of Constantinople. Monuments of the military genius 
of Muhammad II. they remind us also of “ the splendour and the havoc 
of the East ” by their prodigious size, and cost, and power. They form a 
class apart, and although there is reason to think that they are referable to 
a Flemish original, they bear the stamp of a national character and of an 
epoch of conquest of which European history presents scarce any other 
example. These cannon were formerly very numerous. M. Thevenot (1655) 
did not land at the Dardanelles, but as he passed he could “ privately 
discern, with a Perspective glass (on the European side) about twenty Port¬ 
holes level with the water, in which there are guns of such prodigious bore, 
that besides what I could observe by my glass, I was assured that a man 
might easily creep into them,” the other castle (on the Asiatic side) he 
remarked “ hath not so many gun holes.” Bishop Pococke, writing about 
1740, reckons about 42, viz. on the north side of the Dardanelles 22, on 
the south 20. His description of them is all the more interesting as there 
can be no doubt that the gun with the fleur de luces is the identical gun 
which we have lately acquired. It is as follows:— 
* Substance of a Paper read before the Archaeological Institute, June 1868, 
