32 
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
three new not attached to bombards. 1 2 The canones were the chambers 
for the bombards, in some cases, if not in all, distinct and separate from the 
bombards, though attached before firing; it is not improbable that they 
could be used independently of the bombards, if necessary. They are found 
not only with the bombards, as above, but in separate items of the account 
we meet with four, one of copper without a cepus , three with iron cippi ; 
and another of copper weighing 361 lb. 
These cepi or cippi 2 were probably blocks of wood, stocks in which the 
canones were placed when used separately from the bombards. They are again 
mentioned in an inventory of a later date, as used with bombards, and we 
will notice them again in that place. The cocones } of which there were 326 
of different sizes, were the wooden plugs used to close the breech ends of 
the canones , after the latter were loaded; and a new plug was required after 
each discharge. 
The whole operation of loading, and the form of the bombard and cannon 
are described in plain language by Andrea Redusio. This author in the 
“ Chronicon Tarvisinum,” writing of that which had come to his own know¬ 
ledge during his lifetime, and describing the attack of the Yenetian army on 
Quero in 1376, speaks as follows :—“ After the occurrence of these events, 
the army of the Venetians passed by Quero and manfully attacked both forts, 
by means of bombards, which had never before been seen or heard in Italy, 
but which the Venetians had caused to be constructed in a most wonderful 
manner. The bombard is an iron instrument, of great strength, with a wide 
tube ( trumba ) in front, in which is a round stone of the size of the tube; and it 
has a cannon (< cannonem ) joined to it at its rear end, twice as long as the tube, 
but narrower, in which a black powder, made of saltpetre, sulphur, and 
willow charcoal, is inserted through the opening [foramen) of the cannon 
towards its mouth ( buccam ). This opening is then closed with a wooden 
plug which is pressed in; and when the round stone has been inserted and 
adjusted against the mouth of the cannon, fire is applied through a smaller 
opening in the cannon, and the stone is projected with great impetus by the 
force of the lighted powder ; nor can any walls, no matter how strong, with¬ 
stand it, as was found out by experience in the following wars. And when 
these bombards thus belched forth stones, the people thought that God was 
thundering from above ” 3 
1 A later inventory (1397) will shew even more distinctly what these teleria were, see p. 35; 
2 Cipjpus. The rough stem of a tree, a horse block, &c. 
* “Quibus sic peractis exercitus Yenetorum Querum pertransit, et ambas bastitas viriliter impug- 
nat, vi tamen bombardarum, quae ante in Italia nunquam visae nec auditae fuerant, quas Veneti 
mirabiliter fabricari fecerunt. Est enim bombarda instrumentum ferreum fortissimum cum trumba 
anteriore lata, in qua lapis rotundus ad formam trumbae imponitur habens cannonem a parte posteriori 
secumconjungentemlongum bis tanto quanto trumba, sed exiliorem, in quo imponitur pulvis niger 
artificiatus cum salmitrio et sulphure, et ex carbonibus salicis, per foramen cannonis praedicti versits 
buccam. Et obtuso foramine illo cum concono uno ligneo intra calcato, et lapide rotundo praedictae 
buccae imposito et assentato, ignis immittitur per foramen minus cannonis, et vi pulveris accensi 
magno cum impetu lapis emittitur. Nec obstant muri aliqui, quantumcumque groSsi. Quod 
tamdem experientia compertum est in guerris quae sequuntur. Quibus quidem bombardis tunc 
ldpides eructantibus homines putabant desuper Deum tonare.”—Muratori,Rer.Ital. Script. Tom. 19, 
p. 754; 
