Fig. 48.—Principle of the Ballista.
Fig. 49.—Staff and Club Weapons, etc.
The earliest firearms were only adapted for throwing fire into fortified places by means of a hollow tube, such as those described by the Princess Anna Comnena in the Alexiad, “tubes fixed to the prows of the Emperor’s galleys for throwing Greek fire,” and cannon discharging missiles by the agency of detonating gunpowder were probably not invented before the fourteenth century. All guns made in this century were of the crudest description, fastened on to blocks of wood, and were of wrought iron, loaded at the breech, and used principally in sieges.
There is frequent mention of firearms in German and Italian “chronicles” late in the first half of the fourteenth century, but these references are invariably characterised by extreme vagueness. Froissart frequently alludes to cannon, and says that these weapons were used by the besieged at Cambray in 1339;[47] his remarks concerning them are quite casual, and convey the impression that he attached very little importance to them. A French MS. of about 1338, in the Republican Library at Paris, mentions ordnance. This occurs in an account of the war treasurers, “To Henri de Vaumechon for buying powder and other necessaries for cannon;” and a year later reference is made to cannon in the Archives of Bruges, “niewen enginen di men heet ribaude.” The statement of Villani, so often repeated, that artillery was in operation at the battle of Creçy, in 1346, is open to very considerable question, as it is tolerably certain that there were no field-pieces so early, or indeed any cannon whatever that could be moved about to any useful purpose in a battle. Froissart makes no mention of any used in campaigning; but he refers to a bombard at the siege of Oudenarde, “the noise of its discharge could be heard five leagues away,” and he also states that bombards and cannon were in operation at the siege of Quesnoy in 1340—“Those of Quesnoy let them hear their cannon,” when huge bolts were used as missiles; and that artillery was in use at the siege of Vannes, both by the besieged and the attacking English.[48] What gave rise to the tradition, if it be one, is probably the fact that Edward III. had established an ordnance factory, for siege guns, two years before the battle. Artillery of this date was quite unsuitable for field operations, and was only employed with other engines, as these examples show, in the reduction of fortified places. Demmin gives a drawing of a breech-loading cannon, open at both ends, strengthened by iron coils, which he states came from the field of Creçy, but we know not on what authority. This weapon was of forged iron, like all the earlier ordnance. Grose, in his History of the English Army,[49] cites a MS., which has already been referred to in these pages, giving the force constituting the English army in Normandy and before Calais, in the twentieth year of the reign of Edward III., in which items appear for payments to gunners and artillerymen; but it would seem that their duty consisted in serving siege guns before Calais. Still, why should there be mention of what would appear to be two classes of gunners?
There was a gun foundry in France in 1346, Germany in 1378, in Switzerland in 1371. The first mention of any guns cast in England was, we believe, in 1521, when, according to Stone, brass cannon were first “cast” there; the founder’s name was Hugget, of Uckfield, in Sussex, and there are some specimens of about this date at Woolwich. Early cannon were fired by a live coal; later, by a slow match. There is nothing to indicate the date of the wooden cannon strengthened with iron coils, brought from Cochin China, and now in the Musée des Invalides at Paris. There is a mortar in the arsenal at Vienna, made in several layers of coiled hempen rope, with an outside covering of leather, which is said to have been captured from the Turks. There are also mortars made of paper, covered with leather, in the arsenal at Malta, but without any reliable record concerning their origin—doubtless they also came from the East. In Johnes’s version of Froissart, vol. ii., p. 252, is an account of a sea-fight between the English and Spanish fleets off Calais, King Edward commanding in person. It is there stated that the Spanish ships were amply provided with artillery, and a later passage specially mentions “cannon,”—this was probably the year after the battle of Creçy;[50] but in 1340 these weapons are referred to in connection with the naval battle of Sluys.
In 1372 some of the French ships undoubtedly carried ordnance at the battle of Rhodes; and the Venetians used bombards a few years later at the battle before Chioggia, when some of the guns burst on the first discharge; one of these weapons, which is made of leather, is still preserved at the Vienna arsenal. Leathern cannon were also used at the siege of Hohensalzburg in 1525, and by Gustavus Adolphus in 1631. We may take it that some time before this both artillery and hand-guns were regularly used in battle, but side by side with catapultæ and other engines of war, thus clearly showing that they were at this time largely experimental. They were still but sparingly found at sea in the middle of the fifteenth century, when an English war vessel sometimes carried only one gun, and the largest ships never more than eight; and each piece of ordnance was then only provided with thirty rounds of ammunition for a month’s cruise. After this time, however, the progress was rapid, and some of the Mediterranean galleys of late in the sixteenth century were armed with as many as two hundred guns. In 1377, Thomas Norbury was directed by King Richard II. to provide “two great and two less engines called cannon,” to be sent to the castle of Bristol. The first reliable mention of field guns is on the occasion of a battle between the forces of Bruges and Ghent in 1382.
The first piece of ordnance was probably a mortar, the earliest form of which was a hollow tube, like an inverted cone, the butt-end being blocked with wood—they were short pieces of large bore.
The earliest artillery was breech-loading and called bombards, and some of these, towards the end of the century (the fourteenth), were capable of throwing two hundredweight shot, describing a parabolic curve of a radius of only three hundred yards, showing that the powder must have been very weak. In 1388, a stone shot, weighing 195 pounds, was discharged from a bombard called the “Trevisan.”[51] Drawings of these engines may be seen in MSS. 851 and 852 in the Nat. Lib., Paris. One is on a flat wooden stand, the other on a low platform with small solid wheels. [Fig. 50] exhibits one of these weapons. These guns, at first without trunnions, were made of bars of wrought iron, in overlapping coils or sections, welded together on a mandrel, and then hooped—in fact, similar in principle to the “Armstrong” gun. There is a breech-block in which the charge was previously laid, and fitted into the body of the piece by means of a wedge, but no apparent arrangement for sustaining the recoil. The Scottish cannon, “Mons Meg,” is forged in this fashion, and a rent near the breech is instructive in laying bare the system of construction. It is of fifteenth century date, and is said to have been wrought at Mons in Flanders, but there is no evidence of this being the case—indeed, it was probably made in Scotland about the middle of the century. The calibre is 20 inches, and length 13 feet 6 inches. The projectiles used were stone shot, weighing 330 lb. The powder-chamber is less in diameter than the barrel.