[12] Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, cap. 22.—Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. Ilust. 6.
[13] Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, cap. 32, 41.—Zurita, Anales, tom. iv lib. 20, cap. 59.—Lebrija, Rerum Gestarum Decades, ii. lib. 3, cap. 5.
[14] Machiavelli, Arte della Guerra, lib. 3.
[15] Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. Ilust. 6.
According to Gibbon, the cannon used by Mahomet in the siege of
Constantinople, about thirty years before this time, threw stone balls,
which weighed above 600 pounds. The measure of the bore was twelve palms.
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 68.
[16] Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. Ilust. 6.
We get a more precise notion of the awkwardness with which the artillery was served in the infancy of the science, from a fact recorded in the Chronicle of John II., that at the siege of Setenil, in 1407, five lombards were able to discharge only forty shot in the course of a day. We have witnessed an invention, in our time, that of our ingenious countryman, Jacob Perkins, by which a gun, with the aid of that miracle- worker, steam, is enabled to throw a thousand bullets in a single minute.
[17] L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 174.—Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, cap. 44. Some writers, as the Abbé Mignot, (Histoire des Rois Catholiques Ferdinand et Isabelle, (Paris, 1766,) tom. i. p. 273,) have referred the invention of bombs to the siege of Ronda. I find no authority for this. Pulgar's words are, "They made many iron balls, large and small, some of which they cast in a mould, having reduced the iron to a state of fusion, so that it would run like any other metal."
[18] Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, cap. 51.—Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 82.
[19] Mendoza, Guerra de Granada, (Valencia, 1776,) pp. 73, 74.—Zurita, Anales, tom. iv. lib. 20, cap. 59.—Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. p. 168. According to Mendoza, a decoction of the quince furnished the most effectual antidote known against this poison.