Cannon and Mortar.
Similar movable defences, variously constructed, continued to be used down to a very late period. For example, in some large plans of the array of the army of Henry VIII., preserved in the British Museum (Cottonian MS., Augustus III., f. 1 v.), the cannon are flanked by huge mantelets of timber, which protect the cannoniers. In the one engraved between pp. 454 and 455, we see a representation of the commencement of the battle, showing some of the mantelets overthrown by the assault of soldiers armed with poleaxes. In modern warfare the sharpshooter runs out into the open, carrying a sand-bag by way of pavis, behind which he lies and picks off the enemy, and the artillery throw up a little breastwork, or mantelet, of sand-bags.
Sometimes the besieging army protected itself by works of a still more permanent kind. It threw up embankments with a pallisade at top, or sometimes constructed a breastwork, or erected a fort, of timber. For example, in the Royal MS. 14 E. IV., at f. 14, we have a picture of an assault upon a fortified place, in which the besiegers have strengthened their position by a timber breastwork. It is engraved at p. 443; the whole picture is well worth study. Again, in the Cottonian MS., Augustus V., at folio 266, is a camp with a wooden fence round it.
An army in the field often protected its position in a similar way. So far back as the eleventh century the historians tell us that William the Conqueror brought over a timber fort with him to aid his operations. The plan of surrounding the camp with the waggons and baggage of the army is perhaps one of the most primitive devices of warfare, and we find it used down to the end of the period which is under our consideration. In the MS. already mentioned, Augustus III., on the reverse of folio 4, is a picture of an army of the time of Henry VIII. encamped by a river, and enclosed on the open sides by the baggage, and by flat-bottomed boats on their carriages, which we suppose have been provided for the passage of the stream.
The siege of Bedford Castle, as described by Roger Wendover, in the year 1224, gives a good historical instance of the employment of these various modes of attacking a stronghold at that period. The castle was being held against the king, who invested it in person. Two towers of wood were raised against the walls, and filled with archers; seven mangonels cast ponderous stones from morning to night; sappers approached the walls under the cover of the cat. First the barbican, then the outer bailey was taken. A breach in the second wall soon after gave the besiegers admission to the inner bailey. The donjon still held out, and the royalists proceeded to approach it by means of their sappers. A sufficient portion of the foundations having been removed, the stancheons were set on fire, one of the angles sank deep into the ground, and a wide rent laid open the interior of the keep. The garrison now planted the royal standard on the walls, and sent the women to implore mercy. But a severe example was made of the defenders, in order to strike terror among the disaffected in other parts of the realm.[381]
Cannon.
Among the occasional warlike contrivances, stinkpots were employed to repel the enemy, and the Greek fire was also occasionally used. A representation of the use of stinkpots, and also of the mode of using the Greek fire, may be seen in the Royal MS. 18 E. V., at f. 207 (date 1473 A.D.).
Those more terrible engines of war which ultimately revolutionised the whole art of warfare, which made the knight’s armour useless, and the trebuchet and arbalest the huge toys of an unscientific age, were already introduced; though they were yet themselves so immature, that for a time military men disputed whether the old long bow or the new fire-arm was the better weapon, and the trebuchet still held its place beside the cannon. In the old illuminations we find mediæval armour and fire-arms together in incongruous conjunction. The subject of the use of gunpowder is one of so much interest, that it deserves to be treated in a separate chapter.