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which were employed to throw stones and darts in the sieges of days long 
before gunpowder was known. 1 2 
Unquestionably before the use of gunpowder as an agent of propulsion, 
fiery substances were thrown in or from tubes; and tubes holding fire were 
attached to lance or pike heads. In time these or similar tubes were used 
for the projection of missiles by the force of powder, and about the date of 
their first employment for this purpose, they appear to have been called in 
the Latin of the period canones ”; a word which, spreading universally 
in slightly modified forms, has kept its hold to this day. This word is 
apparently derived from the Latin “ canna,” a reed or tube. In speaking of 
“ cannon 93 in this paper, the word must always be understood in the sense in 
which we now employ it. 
As to when and where these “ cannon ” were actually used for the first 
time there exists no information of value; that is to say, no contemporary 
document. Indeed, the authorities on which we may depend for any account 
of their early history are very restricted in number. There does not exist, as 
far as is known, the figure of a cannon in any illuminated manuscript of 
earlier date than the beginning of the fifteenth century; and it is almost 
entirely among the accounts of payments for provisions and stores of all 
kinds, that any mention of cannon is found at an earlier time. The loose 
statements of historians of a later period, and the anachronisms of the 
illuminators of the MSS. of the fifteenth century w^ould lead us far astray 
as regards dates, were we to place confidence in their information regarding 
the employment of cannon in times anterior to their own. Trorn the 
illuminators we should gain such information as that Gideon used field pieces 
on wheeled carriages with shafts, when he fought against the Midianites, as 
in a MS. in the British Museum. 3 Among the chroniclers and historians we 
should have difficulty in choosing a guide. Many of them make unsupported 
assertions; some, confusing the fiery projectiles of the ancient engines with 
the fire of the later cannon, date back the latter to far too early a period; 
while others again assign their first employment to a period at least sixty 
years after we have clear proof of their use. Some again confound the 
projectile and the cannon, and tell us quaint tales, as where Lenfant, in 
his history of the Hussite war, says that Ziska, the famous Hussite chief, 
became blind at the siege of Baby, because a “bombard” fell into his 
eye; while by far the greater number of those who have endeavoured to 
give us sound information, neglect to state the source from whence it is 
derived, and so to the antiquary or careful investigator their statements 
are worthless. 
It is through such a tangled maze of misstatements and contradictions 
that the student of the early history of cannon has to make his way; 
neither rejecting, nor too credulously accepting any statement, till he has 
traced it back to its origin, and read it as far as possible by the light of 
contemporary facts and documents. 
Of late years the spirit of enquiry has spread abroad. The long 
1 Thus Valfcurius, writing in tlie middle of the 15th century, calls the crossbow and the cannon 
alike “ Balista.” 
2 MS. Royal 18 E.Y. fol. 54 b. 
