Footnotes
[7]the. MS. and P.
[8]avenues. P.
[For guarding several advenues to a Town.] This would appear to be no more than an extended application of the preceding invention. We can imagine that Caspar Kaltoff executed a very beautiful model of this piece of machinery, with its 50 little brass guns, 50 ramrods, &c., all worked simultaneously by a man below, “out of sight of the cannon;” but it is very unlikely that the Marquis would have recommended its adoption; it shows, however, how he persevered in endeavours to abridge human labour.
67.
A rare way likewise for musquettoons fastened to the Pummel of the Saddle, so that a Common Trooper cannot misse to charge them, with twenty or thirty Bullets at a time, even in full career.
When first I gave my thoughts to make Guns shoot often, I thought there had been but one only exquisite way inventible, yet by several trials and much charge I have perfectly tried all these.
[For Musquettoons on horseback.] The remark which forms a postscript to this article, naturally leads to the conclusion that the improvements in guns were among the later inventions of the Marquis, perhaps about or after 1641, when his own active services promised soon to be required in the field. His improved firearms are chiefly recommended for effecting rapid firing. It may have been one of the results of his experiments, that Caspar Kaltoff became engaged at Vauxhall in such manufactures for the government.
The Marquis would obtain little assistance from Vegetius, although he would find some extraordinary applications of “Mirabilis Machina.” We see there the “Tormentum,” with its great stone ball, and fire issuing from muzzle and touch-hole, manipulated after an extraordinary fashion, bristling down the sides of an angular frame; whirled round on a circular table like a capstan; eight placed crosswise; or two placed breech to breech, one horizontal, the other vertical, to be fired from behind a goodly target. But the Marquis went far beyond these ancient military weapons, for gunpowder was then beginning to be understood and applied with a degree of effect that startled and surprised the enemy, while it only disgusted the humane portion of our forefathers of that day, who, in case of dire necessity alone, favoured the use of balista, catapulta, bows, and pikes, in the conduct of military and naval engagements.
Musketoons were the same as the blunderbuss, being of large bore to fire with a charge of twenty or more pistol bullets, of from seven to seven and a half ounces of lead, among a multitude, to disperse the crowd.