It has been heard recently, that the Chinese constructed their cannon of prepared paper, lined with copper.
Field cannon to keep up with army, 1380.
As early as 1380 it is said the French were able to procure for the invasion of Italy, a great number of brass cannon, mounted on carriages, and drawn by horses, instead of oxen; these pieces threw balls of from 40lbs. to 60lbs. in weight and could always keep pace with the army. ([Plate 18], fig. 1, 3, and 4.)
Large cannon 1400.
A cannon taken at the siege of Dien in 1546, by John de Castro, and now in Lisbon, is 20 feet 7in. in length, 6 feet 3in. in diameter in the middle, and threw a ball of 100lbs. A Hindostani inscription on it states that it was cast in 1400.
Bolts and quarrels shot, 1413.
Bolts and quarrels were shot from cannon in the reign of Henry V.; these were succeeded by stones, as he ordered in 1418, “labourers to make 7,000 stones for the guns of different sorts from the quarries of Maidstone.” Red-hot iron balls used at Cherbourg, 1418.We learn from Elam’s life of Henry V., that when an English army, commanded by the Duke of Gloucester, besieged Cherbourg in 1418, the besieged discharged red-hot balls of iron from their cannon into the English camp, to burn the huts. Slow to discharge.So much time elapsed between the loading and discharging the great guns, that the besieged had sufficient time to repair at their leisure, the breaches made by the enormous stones, &c., thrown from them.
Cannon at Meaux, 1422.
Five wrought-iron bombards are preserved in the “Musée de l’Artillerie,” at Paris; which were, it is said, abandoned by the English, at the town of Meaux, in 1422.
Cannon cast, 1450.