THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
15 
The editor (M. Buchon) says in a note to the word " ribaudeaux,” 
“ Je lis dans un autre manuscrit 4 Iceux ribauldequins sont trois ou quatre petits 
canons ranges de front sur hautes charrettes en maniere de brouettes devant sur 
deux ou quatre roues bandees de fer, atout longs piques de fer devant en la 
pointe.” 1 
But while the Flemings were thus employing the smaller natures of 
cannon, they had not neglected to take the same step forwards in the 
manufacture as their French neighbours. At the siege of Audenarde in 
the same year, by Philip van Artevelde, the besiegers, in addition to 
trebuchets and other large engines, made use of a 
“ bombarde merveilleusement grande, laquelle avoit cinquante trois pouces de 
bee, et jetoit carreaux merveilleusement grands et gros et pesants; et quand cette 
bombarde descliquoit, on l’ouoit par jour bien de cinq lieues loin, et par nuit de 
dix; et menoit si grand’ noise au descliquer, que il sembloit que tous les diables 
d’enfer fussent au chemin.” 2 
A most graphic description this of the great bombard, but antiquaries 
dispute as to the meaning of the “ cinquante trois pouces de bee.” If by 
the word “ bee ” we may understand the mouth or muzzle of the cannon, 
the fifty-three pouces, or sixty inches must represent the circumference and 
not the diameter of the circle. This would allow a calibre of nearly twenty 
inches, almost as great as that of the cannon made for the Duke of Burgundy 
in 1377, and, as already explained, no larger than other existing specimens. 
It has frequently been suggested that the great bombard now at Ghent, and 
which certainly dates from as early a period as the first half of the fifteenth 
century, was no other than this very cannon of which Froissart gives such a 
terrible description. It has a bore 2 ft. 2 in. in diameter, and is 16 ft. 4 in. 
long; and we can well imagine that when a shot was propelled from such an 
engine, with so large a charge of powder as must have been used, it may well 
have seemed to the bystanders as if tous les diables d’enfer fussent au 
chemin. 
We know how the approach of the army of Charles VI. compelled Philip 
van Artevelde to raise the siege of Audenarde, and the sad end of the fatal 
day of Bosebecque, on the 29th November, where Philip himself and 15,000 
Flemings are said to have been slain. We are told by Froissart 3 that at 
this battle the Flemings advancing “ commencerent a traire et a jeter des 
bombardes et des canons gros carreaux empennes d'airain; ainsi se commenqa 
la bataille.” 
The effect of this discharge was to make the French army recoil “ one pace 
and a half.” But this army differed greatly from that which the Flemings had 
encountered at Bruges ; it was composed of the flower of French chivalry. 
1 Monstrelet describes them in 141 Pas having mantlets before them and carrying one or two large 
cannon {veuglaires). A design apparently made from these descriptions appears in a work by Jean 
Appier Hanzelet Lorrain, published at Pont a Mousson in 1630, called “ Le Livre de Pyrotechnic.” 
The Emperor Napoleon (Vol.“I. p. 38), considers this as a reproduction of a figure from a rare and 
old manuscript, and copies it; but there is no interior evidence of this in Hanzelet’s work, and 
we cannot therefore accept the figure as an authority, although Napoleon does so without hesitation. 
2 Froissart, Vol. II. ch. 161. p. 214. 
3 Ibid. Vol. II. ch. 197, p. 260. 
