In Froissart, we next find that, in 1340, the inhabitants of Quesnoy, when repelling the attack of the French, made use of bombards and cannon which hurled huge bolts at the besiegers. But the statement of Villani, that the English were indebted to the employment of artillery for the victory of Crécy, in 1346, must be treated as a pure invention, because it is certain that the firearms which may have been in use at that time were in no way suited to field warfare; and that they were only employed with the older engines in the attack and defence of fortresses. Not only did their cumbrous weight and the rude construction of their carriages render them extremely difficult of transport, but, intended as they were to be employed as catapults, they were generally constructed for hurling heavy projectiles, by causing these to describe a curved line, like modern shells; and their shape is, in fact, much more like that of our mortars than of cannon ([Fig. 63]).
Fig. 63.—Bombards on fixed and rolling carriages. (From the MSS. 851 and 852, Bibl. Imp. de Paris.)
“It would seem,” says M. de Saulcy, “that, in loading them, hollow cylinders (manchons), or movable chambers, were used, in which the charge was previously laid; and these fitted, by means of a wedge, into the body of the piece. Sometimes these cylinders were at the side, and formed a right angle with the axis of the piece, but usually they fitted into the breech, of which they formed a prolongation.”
The name bombards, which we have just used, and which is derived, as we may conclude, from the Greek bombos (noise), was the first employed for designating cannon; but these engines were so imperfect in principle, and so feeble in power, that catapults, which had played so signal a part in sieges during the Middle Ages, were used in preference when very heavy projectiles had to be hurled ([Fig. 64]).
Fig. 64.—Mangonneau; an Engine of War of the Fifteenth Century. (Miniature in the MS. 7,239, Bibl. Imp. of Paris.)
Originally the piece rested, as it were, fixedly on a massive support; but soon the means of sighting had to be considered; thus we see depicted in early manuscripts pieces that could be moved up and down by means of trunnions; or which were elevated or depressed for firing by a sort of tail or long projection behind the tube; at other times the muzzle of the cannon is sustained by a fork more or less buried in the ground. This bombard, attached to a platform on wheels, received the denomination of cerbotana ambulatoria; this last word conveying the idea of the movability of the engine.
We have seen that projectiles were of stone, but there is no doubt that from the fourteenth century they were also made of metal; that was nothing new, for ancient engines of war, including the sling, threw leaden balls and masses of red-hot iron. No doubt it was with the object of giving the largest size possible to projectiles of artillery by means of powder that stone was used; which, in the state of the art at that time, was much better adapted than metal for large balls.
Christine of Pisa, who wrote in the time of Charles VI. the “Livre des Faits d’Armes et de Chevalrie,” has left us a collection of very interesting details of the condition of artillery used with powder, which, as early as the fifteenth century, had become much more extended than would be easily believed; moreover, in the descriptions this author gives of armaments, or of narratives of battles, we almost always still see catapults, the large cross-bows, &c., appearing by the side of cannon; a certain proof that the use of powder found its equivalent in more than one instance in the ancient means of the propulsion of projectiles.