10 
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
ON TWO LARGE ENGLISH CANNON OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY, 
PRESERVED AT 
MONT S. MICHEL IN NORMANDY, 
BY BRIGABIER-GENERAL LEEROY, R.A., E.R.S. 
Readers of the learned Utucle 1 sur le passe et VAvenir de VArtillerie of 
the Emperor Napoleon will recollect an allusion in YoL III. p. 119 to 
“ deux bombardes prises sur les Anglais au siege de Saint Michel, en 1423, 1 
et qui sont encore actuellement dans cette ville.” A drawing of these guns 
on a very small scale is given by Colonel Eave in PL v; a larger drawing, 
but by no means an accurate one, will be found in the Recueil des Bouches h 
feu les plus remarquables by General Marion and Captain Martin de Brettes, 
Plate Ixxxi; and as we have no pieces in England of that early period whose 
date is so well established, they possess to the English military archeologist 
a very peculiar interest'. In point of size the larger one is very little inferior 
to that “ mickle-mouthed murtherer” Mons Meg, of whose history, however, 
nothing authentic is known before her first employment in 1489 ; 2 and it 
may be reasonably conjectured that like her they are the workmanship of 
those sturdy Blemish artizans who so early maintained their struggles for 
municipal independence, by their great mechanical skill. 
The story of Eroissart, as it is,hardly necessary to say, does not extend to 
the year 1423; but it is remarkable that Monstrelet who relates the events 
of that year at some length, is silent as to the reverses of the English before 
Mont St Michel, although he relates the attempt of the Brench to take 
Avranches from the English by a coup de main, in which they were unsuc¬ 
cessful (Book n. eh. xiii.). It might lead one to suppose that guns of 15 or 
even 19 inches calibre were not of such extreme rarity in the 15th Century 
as to make their loss or their acquisition felt as a matter of great importance, 
did not Richard Grafton 3 assure us that such was not the case. The 
English had then, as they have usually had since, an advantage over their 
rivals in the mechanical perfection of their artillery, and the capture must- 
have been a notable event. Thus, speaking of the siege of Maune (Le 
Mans) in 1424, he says:—“The Englishemen approched as nighe to the 
walles as they might without their losse and detriment, and shot against 
their walles great stones out of great Goonnes whiclie ldnde of enginnes before 
that tyme, was very little seene or hearde of in Fraunce, the strokes whereof 
1 “ A la fin du mois d’Octobre, 1423.”— Recueil, Part II. p. 3. This is however the date of the 
commencement of the siege, not of the end of it. 
2 Mr Hewitt in Archceological Journal, No. 37. 
3 A chronicle at large and meere history of the ajfayres of JEnglande, 1569. 
