On the question of the date at which the discovery of gunpowder took place writers have held the most divergent views. The opinion of the majority has been that its properties were known in the remote ages of antiquity, and this opinion has been formed and confirmed by the accounts given of its origin by most of the medieval writers. The Chinese claim to have known it long before the Christian era. And from hints in classical literature, and on the broad ground of probability, it has been inferred by some authorities that the explosive properties of gunpowder were known to the ancients. The wonderful property of saltpetre, they argue, must certainly have been known to the wise men of old: its extraordinary combustive power when mixed with other substances. Melted alone over a hot fire saltpetre does not burn; but if a pinch of some other substance is added, a violent flame results. In many fortuitous circumstances, they say, saltpetre must have been found in contact with that other essential ingredient of gunpowder, charcoal. And such a circumstance has been pictured by one writer as occurring when camp fires, lit upon soil impregnated with nitre (like that in parts of India), were rekindled; the charred wood converted into charcoal forming with the nitre a slightly explosive mixture.

Other investigators maintain that gunpowder, which claims a spurious antiquity, is really an invention of the Middle Ages. Incendiary compositions—Greek fire, and other substances based on the properties of quicklime, naphtha, phosphorus, etc.—were undoubtedly known to the ancient world. But explosive compositions, based on saltpetre as the principal ingredient, were certainly not known in all their fearful power. The silence of history on the subject of the projection of missiles by explosive material, says a recent authority,38 is eloquent; the absence of its terminology from such languages as Chinese and Arabic, conclusive.

Whichever of the two views may be correct it is certain that a knowledge of gunpowder was possessed by the great alchemist, Roger Bacon, who in A.D. 1249 committed to paper an account of its properties.39 To Berthold the Black Friar is given the credit for its application to military ends; whom legend, in an impish mood, has hoisted with his own discovery.

In a learned work on the early days of artillery an English writer has described the difficulties encountered in tracing the first stages of the evolution of guns and gunpowder. Confusion was caused by the fact that, after gunpowder had been introduced, military engines were still known by the same generic names as those borne in pre-gunpowder days. No contemporary pictures of guns could be discovered. The loose statements of historians, the license of poets, and the anachronisms of the illuminators of the medieval MSS., all tended to lead the investigator astray and to make his task more difficult. The statements of the historians are indeed whole hemispheres and centuries apart; as for poets, our own Milton assigned the invention of artillery to the devil himself; and “from the illuminators we should gain such information as, that Gideon used field pieces on wheeled carriages with shafts, when he fought against the Midianites, as in a MS. in the British Museum.”40

Of all the clues which throw light on the origin of artillery the most important yet discovered lies in some MSS. belonging to the city of Ghent. After a list of municipal officers for the year 1313 occurs the entry: “Item, in this year the use of bussen was first discovered in Germany by a monk.” And there is evidence that in the following year “guns” were manufactured in Ghent and exported to England.41 The same century was to witness a wonderful development of the new-found power.

It was but natural that the first application of gunpowder to warlike purposes should have been, not only to strike terror by violent explosion and thus obtain an important moral effect, but to project the missiles already in military use: arrows and ponderous stones. Two distinct types of artillery were thus foreshadowed. The first took the form of a dart-throwing pot or vase, a narrow-necked vessel from which, in imitation of the cross-bow, stout metal-winged arrows were fired; while, for projecting stones of great size and weight in imitation of the ancient siege-machines, large clumsy pieces made of several strips of iron fitted together lengthways and then hooped with iron rings were eventually developed.

In the first half of the fourteenth century the guns manufactured were of the former type. In The Origin of Artillery a reproduction is given of an illuminated MS. belonging to Christ Church, Oxford, dated 1326, showing an arrow-throwing vase: the earliest picture of a gun which is known. And, from a French document quoted by Brackenbury, it appears that in 1338 there was in the marine arsenal at Rouen an iron fire-arm—pot de fer—which was provided with bolts (“carreaux,” or quarrels) made of iron and feathered.

But the unsuitability of the arrow for use in conjunction with gunpowder as a propellant was, even at this date, realized. There was obvious difficulty in preventing the powder gases from escaping through the windage space between the arrow-shafts and the neck of the vase, even with the aid of leather collars. So the arrow almost immediately evolved into a stone or metal sphere; the narrow neck of the vase increased to the full diameter of the vessel. And as early as 1326, the date of the picture of the arrow-throwing vase, cannon of brass, with iron balls, were being made at Florence for the defence of the commune. The use of the new weapons quickly spread. By 1344 the cannon is mentioned by Petrach as “an infernal instrument of wood, which some think invented by Archimedes,” yet “only lately so rare as to be looked on as a great miracle; now, ... it has become as common as any other kind of weapon.” By 1412, according to unquestionable testimony supplied by public documents, cannon were employed in English ships: breech-loading guns with removable chambers.42 In 1346 Edward III fought Cressy. Whether or no cannon were used in this decisive battle has been a matter of considerable controversy. According to Villani, an old Florentine chronicler who gave an account of the campaign, they were; but no mention of them was made by Froissart, who wrote some years later. The silence of Froissart has been attributed, however, to a desire to avoid offending our court by implying that the victory was due to other than the prowess of the Prince of Wales; or tainting our success with any mention of “devilish machines which were universally regarded as destructive to valour and honour and the whole institution of chivalry.” Though English chronicles contain no mention of gunpowder till some years after Cressy, yet evidence exists that artillery—“gunnis cum sagittis et pellotis”—was extensively used in this campaign. “But the powder was of so feeble a nature and the cannon so small, that the effect of a few of them, fired only a few times, could not have been very noticeable compared with the flights of arrows.”43

Cannon in the first half of the fourteenth century were indeed feeble weapons compared with the huge mechanical engines of the period; yet their moral effect was very great and their physical effect by no means negligible. They were destructive of chivalry, in a quite literal sense. The value of cavalry as an arm was greatly reduced by their adoption in the field. They took from the horseman cased in complete armour all the advantage he possessed over other troops. Instead of forming the nucleus of the fighting strength of an army, the armour-clad nobles and their mounted retinues became somewhat of an encumbrance, and a change in the composition and strength of armies from this time ensued. Tournaments went out of fashion, chivalry declined.

Against material, cannon proved even more effective. As the arrow-throwing gun gradually disappeared, giving place to small cylindrical cannon firing lead and iron balls, other ordnance, designed for projecting large stones against the gates and walls of forts and castles, grew rapidly to an enormous size. Made usually of forged iron bars welded and strengthened circumferentially by coils of iron ribbon or rope, and using a weak gunpowder, these giant “bombards” began to play an important part in land warfare, especially in those internecine wars which were constantly being waged in Flanders and in Northern Italy. Two peoples were conspicuous at this period for their wealth, culture, and energy: the Lombards and the Flemings. The former, by their contact with the East, had drawn into their hands most of the commerce of Europe; the latter, welded together in the Hanseatic League, were in the van of northern civilization. It was in Italy, probably, that cannon were first employed, and in Italy where they developed most rapidly. Their use had an immediate effect on land warfare; the defensive value of masonry was suddenly depreciated, and town-gate, fort, and campanile, which had for centuries defied the old mechanical engines, could no longer be considered impregnable.44

In the following century the development of the bombard continued. The Lombards cast them in bronze, adorned them with elaborate mouldings and furnished their ends with swellings like capstan-heads, of equal diameter, to facilitate rolling and parbuckling. In the hands of the Flemish artisans this type reached a remarkable degree of perfection in a famous bombard called “Dulle Griete,” which was made at Ghent about A.D. 1430. The bombard of Ghent consists of two parts, a larger part to form the barrel for the stone sphere of 25 inches diameter, a smaller part, of much thicker metal, to form the chamber in which the powder charge is placed. These two parts are screwed together, screw threads being formed on a boss on the front end of the chamber and in a hole in the rear end of the barrel. This is thought to be the piece described by Froissart as “une bombarde merveilleusement grande, laquelle avoit cinquante trois pouces de bec, et jetoit carreaux merveilleusement grands et gros et pesants; et quand cette bombarde descliquoit, on l’ouoit par jour bien de cinq lieues loin, et par nuit de dix; et menoit si grand’ noise au descliquer, que il sembloit que tous les diables d’enfer fussent au chemin.”

A fine example of the built-up bombard is “Mons Meg,” the piece which now lies at Edinburgh Castle, and which was made at Mons about A.D. 1460: formed of longitudinal wrought-iron bars welded and hooped circumferentially, of 20 inches in the bore, and designed to fire a stone ball of over three hundred pounds’ weight.

It was in the hands of the Turks, then at the zenith of their power, that medieval ordnance achieved its greatest development, and it is thought probable that Flemish pieces served as the model on which the Ottoman artillery was based. The siege of Constantinople, in the year 1453, was notable for “the reunion which it presented of ancient and modern artillery—catapults, cannon, bullets, battering rams, gunpowder and Greek fire.” And it was especially notable from the power of the modern artillery there assembled, an artillery which represented a climax of size and military value. Gibbon has given us a vivid description of the Ottoman ordnance and its capabilities. “Mahomet studied with peculiar care the recent and tremendous discovery of the Latins; and his artillery surpassed whatever had yet appeared in the world. A founder of cannon, a Hungarian, a deserter from the Greek service, was liberally entertained by the Sultan. On his assurance a foundry was established at Adrianople; the metal was prepared; and at the end of three months Urban produced a piece of brass ordnance of stupendous and almost incredible magnitude; a measure of twelve palms is assigned to the bore; and the stone bullet weighs above six hundred pounds. A trial was held, a proclamation having warned the populace. The explosion was enormous and was heard one hundred furlongs off, and the ball, by the force of the gunpowder, was hurled above a mile.”

“A stranger as I am to the art of destruction,” continues the historian—who, we may note in passing, had been through his courses at Hilsea and was a major in the Hants Militia—“I can discern that the modern improvements of artillery prefer the number of pieces to the weight of metal; the quickness of fire to the sound, or even the consequence, of a single explosion. Yet I dare not reject the positive and unanimous evidence of contemporary writers; nor can it seem improbable that the first artists, in their rude and ambitious efforts, should have transgressed the standard of moderation.... The great cannon, flanked by two fellows of almost equal size, was set up. Fourteen batteries thundered at once against the walls, one of which contained 130 guns! Under a master who counted the minutes, firing could take place seven times in a day.”

Interesting corroboration of Gibbon’s account has since been discovered in a MS. by a contemporary Greek writer, found at Constantinople in the year 1870.45 According to this chronicler the cannon are actually cast on the field of action. Mahomet summons the gunmakers and discourses with them on the kind of ordnance required to beat down the walls of the city. They reply that larger cannon are necessary than any they possess; and they suggest melting down the pieces available to form others of sufficient size and power. The Sultan commands the thing to be done. Quantities of plastic clay are kneaded, linen and hemp and threads being mixed with it to stiffen it for forming gigantic moulds. Furnaces are erected, and charged with copper and tin. Bellows are worked for three days and three nights, and then, the metal being ready, the molten mass is poured. Within sight of the beleaguered city huge cannon are cast which, placed on wooden sleepers on the ground with their butts supported to prevent recoil discharge stones weighing nearly 700 pounds against the walls.

But there is no need of documentary evidence to attest the power of the Ottoman artillery of this period; cannon built on the above model have guarded the Dardanelles for centuries, and, what is more, have proved sufficiently effective in modern engagements. In 1807 Sir John Duckworth’s squadron was struck repeatedly by stones of enormous weight, discharged from these cannon in an attempt to prevent its passage. And it is known that some of them were made shortly after the taking of Constantinople. These cannon, says General Lefroy, were cast on their faces, “the dead-head being left at the breech-end and hewn off with axes, probably while the metal was hot.” In one of them brought home to England “the axe marks are plain; similar marks may be observed on other early guns which have the breech cut off square.” The similarity of design between this Turkish gun and the Flemish bombards is too close to be accidental; their construction is of peculiar interest and has the main features in common. “The external form of the gun is a cylinder, the muzzle being as large as the breech; but either half is relieved by a boldly projecting moulding at each end, which is divided transversely by sixteen cross-bars into as many recesses: thus serving to give a purchase to the levers used in screwing the two parts together.” How the screw threads were cut is not known, but “we can suppose that moulding pieces were first cut in wood and nicely fitted and then applied to the clay moulds.” The charge of powder used with this type of piece was as much as a hundredweight. In spite of the weakness of the squib-like powder its physical and moral effect was undoubtedly important. “Thus inconceivable and incredible,” writes the chronicler of 1467, “is the nature of this machine. The ancient princes and generals did not possess and had no knowledge of such a thing.... It is a new invention of the Germans or of the Kelts made about one hundred and fifty years ago, or a little more. It is an ingenious and happy discovery, especially the powder, which is a composition made of saltpetre, of sulphur, of charcoals, and of herbs, from the which composition is generated a dry hot gas....”

The founding of these enormous cannon on the field of action is in itself a tribute to the energy and resourcefulness of the nation who have been described as being, at that time, the finest engineers in the world. Of the effectiveness of the Ottoman artillery there is evidence in the results achieved. Constantinople fell to the giant bombards. And in the early part of the following century Rhodes, the last outpost of the Knights, fell to the same great power. The invention of the Christians46 was, in fact, the weapon which gave supremacy to the Infidel in the eastern part of Europe. In the meantime the evolution of artillery was taking a new direction. The large and relatively feeble ordnance of the Turks was, in the circumstances, not entirely unsuitable for the purpose for which it was intended: the smashing of masonry and the breaching of gates and walls. The maximum of effect was obtained from a missile of enormous mass projected with a low velocity. Nevertheless its disadvantages were obvious. Large cannon cast in bronze were necessarily of great expense and weight, their discharges were few and far between, they wore rapidly and were thus short-lived, and they possessed the dangerous property of becoming brittle when heated. An increase in power and a reduction in weight were required for the achievement of a portable artillery, and the progress of mechanical science pointed to wrought iron as the material of which such an artillery might be made.

The extraction of iron in small quantities from ferruginous ore was a comparatively simple operation, even in primitive times. With the aid of bellows and a plentiful supply of wood charcoal the smith was able to make his furnace yield small masses of metallic iron of the purest quality. This iron, wrought on an anvil, could be drawn out into plate or bar as desired, the resulting metal being, by reason of the purity of the charcoal used in its extraction, of great toughness, homogeneity, and strength. In Spain and Italy were mines which had long been famed for their iron. In England the Roman had made good use of the metal found in the Sussex mines, and all through the middle ages the wealds of Kent and Sussex were the centres of the English iron trade. In the fourteenth century improved methods came into use; the adoption of water-power for driving the bellows, for crushing the charcoal, and for operating the tilt-hammers, had its effect on the development of the iron-smelting industry; higher temperatures obtained and larger masses of ore could now be treated; the iron, produced in larger quantities by improved methods, was perhaps purer and stronger than before. In wrought iron, then, a material was available which almost alone was suitable for the manufacture of the more portable sorts of gun. By its use guns could be made strong enough, without being of an excessive weight, to withstand the increasing stresses thrown on them, first, by the use of iron bullets instead of stone, and secondly, by the discovery of an improved gunpowder. Artillery underwent a dual development. On the one hand, for use with the weak cannon powder, was the large stone-throwing ordnance, made of cast bronze or of hooped bars of iron; on the other, for use with iron shot and a stronger propellant, were various denominations of small portable and semi-portable wrought-iron guns. These two distinct types developed side by side until the middle of the sixteenth century.

The use of iron and lead balls, the superiority of which over balls of stone had doubtless been manifested in former centuries in connection with the projection of Greek fire, was practised by the Florentines soon after the invention of guns themselves. The discovery of “corned” gunpowder took place a century later.

In its original form gunpowder possessed many disadvantages as a propellant. Ground into a fine powder, and composed in the first instance of almost equal proportions of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal, it was peculiarly liable to accidental explosion, so that frequently the charcoal was kept separate from the other ingredients and mixed just prior to use. If kept mixed it easily disintegrated, in the shaking of transport, into three strata, the charcoal coming to the top and the sulphur sinking to the bottom. It was intensely hygroscopic, and quickly fouled the barrels of the pieces in which it was used. But, most important of all, the efficiency of its combustion depended to an inconvenient degree upon the density with which, after being ladled into the gun, it was rammed home. The greatest care had to be exercised in ramming. If pressed into too dense a mass the powder largely lost its explosive character; the flame which ignited the portion nearest the vent could not spread through the mass with sufficient speed; it quietly petered out. If rammed too loosely, on the other hand, the explosive effect was also lost. A great gain ensued therefore when, in place of the fine or “serpentine” powder, corned powder came to be used, about the middle of the fifteenth century. In this form the powder was damped and worked into grains, crushed to the requisite size and sieved for uniformity. These grains were finally glazed to prevent deterioration from the effects of damp; and the resulting powder proved stronger and more efficient in every way than the same mixture in its more primitive form.

Some time was to elapse before guns could be cast of sufficient strength to withstand the force of corned powder. “Chemistry had outrun metallurgy.” The larger species of ordnance were restricted to the use of serpentine powder until the middle of the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, cast ordnance as well as the lighter forged iron guns were developed continuously for service in the field. Named after birds and reptiles and clumsily cast of such shapes and weights as pleased the founders’ fancy, they were of use chiefly in demolishing by attrition the gates and walls of forts and cities. From the battle of Cressy onward, first in huge carts and then on their own wheeled carriages, they rumble across the pages of European history.

§

At sea the evolution of ordnance had to conform, of course, to the progress of naval architecture and the changing nature of the warfare. In the Mediterranean, where the oar-propelled galley remained for centuries the typical fighting ship, the bombard was planted in the bows, shackled to a deck-carriage upon the centre line, to give ahead fire and to supplement the effects of a powerful ram. As the galley developed, the main central gun became flanked by other bow-chasers; while on the beams and poop light wrought-iron breech-loading swivel guns formed a secondary armament whose double function was to repel boarders and to overawe its own slave-crew. In the Atlantic, where the typical fighting vessel was the lofty sailing ship, the same two different types of armament had vogue. But in this case their distribution was different; the sailing ship, with no recourse to oars for manoeuvring, could not always ensure an end-on attack or defence, and had to arm herself against an enemy from any quarter. Her freedom from oars, her height, and the invention of the porthole, enabled the early “great ship” to mount a sufficiently distributed all-round armament. While her sides were pierced for ponderous bombards, her poop and forecastle bristled with the same light secondary armament as figured in the Mediterranean galley. This artillery was almost entirely for defence. Before Elizabethan days (as we have already noted) sea battles were nothing more than hand-to-hand fights; the attacking vessel was laid alongside its enemy, sails were furled, and boarding took place. If, after being swept by spherical shot from the bombards and showers of stones and dice from the mortars and periers, the boarders could carry the waist of the defending ship, they still had to capture the barricaded forecastle and poop, from whose rails a multitude of the smaller ordnance—port-pieces, fowlers, serpentines—were trained upon them and behind whose bulkheads crossbow and harquebuss were plied against them in concealment.

The sixteenth century witnessed the greatest strides in the evolution of sea ordnance. In the Mediterranean the decisive effect of gunfire, proved in the sea fight off Prevesa in the year 1538, was confirmed by the victory of the Christians over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571. In the Atlantic England began her long preparation for securing a sea supremacy and, under the masterful eye of King Henry VIII, adapted more and more powerful guns for service in the royal ships. Of the professional interest which the King took in the development of ordnance there is ample evidence. At the royal word French and Flemish gunfounders were induced to come to England to teach the technique of their craft, and to this puissant prince the Italian savant, Tartaglia, dedicated his classic treatise on the Art of Shooting. England now learnt to found, not only bronze, but cast-iron cannon. “Although,” says Grose, “artillery was used from the time of King Edward III and purchased from abroad by all our successive Kings, it seems extremely strange, that none of our workmen attempted to cast them, till the reign of King Henry VIII, when in 1521, according to Stowe, or 1535 (Camden says), great brass ordnance, as canons and culverins, were first cast in England by one John Owen, they formerly having been made in other countries.” And from Stowe’s Chronicle he quotes the following: “The King minding wars with France, made great preparations and provision, as well of munitions and artillery as also of brass ordnance; amongst which at that time one Peter Bawd, a Frenchman born, a gun-founder or maker of great ordnance, and one other alien, called Peter Van Collen, a gunsmith, both the King’s feedmen, conferred together, devised and caused to be made, certain mortar pieces, being at the mouth from 11 inches, unto 19 inches wide; for the use whereof, the said Peter and Peter caused to be made certain hollow shot of cast yron, stuffed with fire-works, or wild-fire; whereof the bigger sort for the same had screws of yron to receive a match to carry fire kindled, that the fire-work might be set on fire to break in small pieces the same hollow shot, whereof the smallest piece hitting any man, would kill or spoil him. And after the King’s return from Bullen, the said Peter Bawd by himself in the first year of Edward VI did also make certain ordnance of cast yron of diverse sorts and forms, as fawconets, falcons, minions, sakers and other pieces.”47 The casting of iron guns in Germany has been traced back as far as the fourteenth century.

According to another account the first English cast-iron guns were made at Buxted, in Sussex, by one Ralph Hogge in 1543. Peter Bawd, the French founder, was an assistant who had come to this country to teach him the method. But it seems that his connection with Hogge was not of long duration; for, “John Johnson, covenant servant to the said P. Bawd, succeeded and exceeded his master in this his art of casting ordnance, making them cleaner and to better proportion. And his son, Thomas Johnson, a special workman, in and before the year 1595 made 42 cast pieces of great ordnance of iron, for the Earl of Cumberland, weighing 6000 pounds, or three tons a-piece.”48

The advance made in the power of King Henry’s sea ordnance is unmistakably shown from trustworthy documents. There is a continuous progress during the reign, and ships which were rebuilt subsequently carried an armament entirely different from that which they originally had. The Sovereign, for instance, built about the year 1488, originally carried one hundred and eighty guns, mostly small serpentines. As rebuilt in A.D. 1509 she carried an armament which included four curtalls, three demi-curtalls, three culverins, two falcons, and eleven heavy iron guns. From an inventory of the armament of the Henry Grace À Dieu, of 1514, it appears49 that that historic ship was then armed with a miscellaneous collection of pieces, comprising 122 iron serpentines, 12 “grete yron gonnes of oone makyng and bygnes,” 12 ditto “that come owt of fflaunders,” all with separate chambers; 2 “grete Spanish peces of yron of oone sorte,” with chambers; 18 “stone gonnes apon Trotill wheles,” with chambers; “ffawcons of Brasse apon Trotill wheles”; one “grete bumberde of Brasse apon iiij trotill wheles”; two “grete culverynes of Brasse apon unshodd wheles”; as well as a “grete curtalle of Brasse upon iiij wheles,” a sling, vice pieces, and serpentines of brass on wheels shod with iron. Rebuilt at a later date the Henry carried a different armament, which included brass cannons, demi-cannons, culverins, demi-culverins, sakers, and cannon-periers.

The transition of armament is plainly marked for us in the case of the Mary Rose, rebuilt in 1536, which nine years later came to an untimely end off Brading. At the time of her oversetting she carried, in fact, both types of ordnance. In the Rotunda at Woolwich are to be seen some of the guns recovered from her wreck: a built-up wrought-iron breech-loading stone-throwing gun on its baulk-of-timber carriage, identical in character with a serpentine illustrated in Napoleon III’s Études sur l’Artillerie as having been taken by the Swiss from Charles the Bold in A.D. 1476; and a bronze cannon royal (with John Owen’s name on it), demi-cannon, culverin, and culverin-bastard, all of them finished specimens of the founder’s art, and of an offensive, instead of a merely defensive, value. “The system,” says Mr. Oppenheim of this growth of artillery armament, “was extended as the reign progressed, and in 1546 we find comparatively small ships like the Grand Mistress carrying two demi-cannon and five culverins, the Swallow one demi-cannon and two demi-culverins, out of a total of eight heavy guns; the Anne Galant four culverins, one curtall, and two demi-culverins,” etc. etc.

What were the dimensions of the various pieces? It is difficult to give an exact answer. Owing to the continuous development of ordnance throughout the century the pieces increased in size while they retained their class-names, and there is a wide variation between the table of ordnance of Tartaglia, for instance, compiled in 1537, and those drawn up by English authors at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Briefly, we may note that pieces could be grouped in four classes: viz. cannons, culverins, periers, and mortars. The cannons were large in calibre and of medium length; the culverins were of great length, to give them high ranging power; the periers, or stone-throwers, were a sort of howitzer; and the mortars, named probably from the apothecary’s utensil to which they bore a resemblance, were squat pieces used for projecting stones or iron balls at a high elevation. The old stone-throwing serpentine was a gun weighing about 260 pounds, which fired a stone “as big as a swan’s egg.” The curtall, or curtlow was (according to Mr. Oppenheim) a heavy gun of some 3000 pounds, hitherto only used as a siege-piece on land; “courtaulx” are mentioned by Napoleon III as having been, in A.D. 1498, fifty-pounders weighing 5500 livres. The slings were large breech-loaders, probably of the perier class.

With the adoption of a more powerful armament not only did the old pieces disappear, but a simplification of calibres ensued. France led the way in the standardizing of calibres; about the year 1550 the French king Henri II introduced his six “calibres of France.” In the English navy at this period several types were discarded, and a limit was set to the size of the largest ship gun. “The report drawn up in 1559 tells us that there were 264 brass and 48 iron guns, all of calibres down to falconets, on board the ships, and 48 brass and 8 iron in store.... The heaviest piece used on shipboard was the culverin of 4500 lbs.; throwing a 17? lb. ball with an extreme range of 2500 paces; the next the demi-cannon weighing 4000 lbs. with a 30? lb. ball and range of 1700 paces; then the demi-culverin of 3400 lbs., a 9? lb. ball and 2500 paces; and the cannon petroe, or perier, of 3000 lbs., 24¼-lb. ball and 1600 paces. There were also sakers, minions, and falconets, but culverins and demi-culverins were the most useful and became the favourite ship guns. A contemporary wrote, ‘the founders never cast them so exactly but that they differ two or three cwt. in a piece,’ and in a paper of 1564 the average weights of culverins, demi-culverins, and cannon periers are respectively 3300 lbs., 2500 lbs., and 2000 lbs.”50

So far, cast iron had not come into general use. The large iron guns were built up like the early Flemish bombards; the demi-cannons and culverins were all of brass. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign there seems to have been an attempt to replace the expensive brass by the cheaper cast iron, but later there was a reversion to brass, and it was not until the following century that cast iron was generally recognized as a material for heavy ordnance, and then only for the heaviest types. Some technical considerations may help to indicate the chief factors which determined the material and the dimensions of the Elizabethan ordnance.

Writing in 1628, Robert Norton, in his book The Gunner, refers as follows to the early Tudor ordnance. “Gun-founders about 100 or 150 years past,” he says, “did use to cast ordnance more poor, weak, and much slenderer fortified than now, both here and in foreign parts: also the rather because saltpetre being either ill or not refined, their sulphur unclarified, their coals not of good wood, or else ill burnt, making therewith also their powder evilly receipted, slenderly wrought, and altogether uncorned, made it prove to be but weak (in respect of the corned powder used now-a-days), wherefore they also made their ordnance then accordingly (that is much weaker than now). For the powder now being double or treble more than it was in force of rarification and quickness, requireth likewise to encrease the metal twice or thrice more than before for each piece.” And, in fact, the weight of cannon increased in the period mentioned from eighty to two hundred times, the weight of culverins from a hundred to three hundred times, the weight of their shot. The slender large-bore built-up guns of the Henry Grace À Dieu could only be used with a weak slow-burning powder. At the same time this slow-burning powder required, for its complete combustion, a great length of gun. These guns, such of them as were breech-loaders, must have suffered from the leakage of gas at the joints of their primitive chambers; in the case of the smaller pieces a serious inefficiency was the excessive windage allowed between shot and gun. Until the end of the sixteenth century the windage bore no direct relation to the diameter of the shot or bore of the gun: it was a fixed amount, one quarter of an inch. The effect, therefore, of the leakage of powder gases past the shot, the loss in efficiency of discharge, was greatest in the smallest guns.

The lines along which improvement lay were those which were taken. First, an elimination of the smallest guns. Second, a return to muzzle loading. Third, a strengthening of the powder by corning. Fourth, a further fortifying and a general augmenting of the weight of the cast pieces, which had the double effect of giving the necessary strength to meet the stronger powders coming into use,51 and of giving the extra mass required to minimize the violence of their recoil. Cast iron could not yet compete with well-found brass for the guns required. Demi-cannon proved too unwieldy, and as Elizabeth’s reign progressed, gave place more and more to the long-ranging culverins, demi-culverins, and sakers, “which strained a ship less, were served more quickly and by fewer men, and permitted a heavier broadside in the same deck space.”52 As powder grew stronger the conditions improved; smaller charges were necessary, windage had less effect, and, owing to the quicker combustion, it was possible to shorten the pieces without detracting seriously from their ranging power; and this was done in the Queen’s Navy, the guns being thereby made lighter and more easily manipulated, while at the same time their projecting muzzles were less liable to entangle and interfere with the tackles of the sails.53

The substitution of the powerful, safe, and easily manipulated demi-cannon and the long-ranging culverin and demi-culverin in place of the old chambered ordnance of the first half of the century made possible a new form of naval warfare. The cannon at last became, in the hands of the Elizabethan seaman, the chief instrument of battle. Off-fighting was now feasible: a mode of action which largely neutralized the effects of an enemy’s superiority in size of ship or number of men, and which gave full scope and advantage to superior seamanship. Though no high standard of gunnery efficiency was then possible, yet it was the great superiority of the English gunfire, principally from the demi-culverins, the sakers, and the minions, over that of Spain, which conduced more than any other factor to the dispersal and subsequent flight of the Invincible Armada. The gun was the weapon on which the English seaman had learnt to rely. It was the gun, plied with rapidity just out of pistol-shot of his lofty ships, which in the year 1588 harassed and put to confusion the Spaniard, the haughty fighter who still maintained a quixotic contempt for the use of cannon and esteemed artillery “an ignoble arm.”54 What a volume of fire was poured against him may be seen from a letter written by the admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham: “All the world,” he writes, “never saw such a force as theirs was; and some Spaniards that we have taken, that were in the fight at Lepanto, do say that the worst of our four fights that we have had with them did exceed far the fight they had there; and they say that at some of our fights we had twenty times as much great shot plied as they had there.”

By this time the founding of guns in cast iron had made progress. Cast iron was cheap, and of a greater hardness and endurance than bronze, but more like to crack and fly and endanger the crew, and requiring an enormous expenditure of wood-charcoal for its production. The use of mineral coal for iron smelting was not discovered until the following century, and even then, because of the opposition of the vested interests, it was long before it displaced the use of timber. In the Tudor times the iron and brass foundries were nearly all in the wooded south of England. The rivers of Sussex and Kent had for centuries been dammed to form hammer-ponds, and the sound of the tilt-hammers was heard throughout these counties. To such an extent were the forests depleted of wood to form fuel for the Wealden foundries, that serious inroads were made on the available supplies of shipbuilding timber; legislation was required in Elizabeth’s reign to prevent the charcoal-burner from robbing the shipwright of his raw material.

Gun-founding, even in bronze, was still a somewhat primitive art. But, once taught, the English founders soon excelled their teachers; and Norton’s eulogy, and the records of foreign efforts to obtain possession of English pieces, bear witness to the superiority of our workmen. The products of the most famous founders of that time in Europe were very imperfect. “Some of their pieces (and not a few) are bored awry, their soul not lying in the midst of the body of metal; some are crooked in their chase, others of unequal bores, some too light towards the breech turn their mouths downwards in their discharge, and so endanger their own vawmures and defences; others are too heavy also in their breach, by placing the trunnions too much afterwards, that coynes can hardly be drawn.... Some are come forth of the furnace spongey, or full of honeycombs and flaws, by reason that the metal runneth not fine, or that the moulds are not thoroughly dryed, or well nealed.... Yet thus much I dare say to the due commendations of our English gunfounders, that the ordnance which they of late years have cast, as well for neatness, as also for reasonable bestowing and disposing of the metal, they have far excelled all the former and foreign aforementioned founders.” Norton, a land gunner, was here referring to brass ordnance, alone used on shore.

Perhaps the most interesting witness to the success of the English gunfounders is Sir Walter Raleigh, who in his Discourses rebuked the detestable covetousness of those licensed to sell ordnance abroad. So great was the number of pieces exported, that all other nations were equipped with good English artillery for ships and forts and coast defence. “Without which,” he remarks, “the Spanish King durst not have dismounted so many pieces of brass in Naples and elsewhere, therewith to arm his great fleet in ’88. But it was directly proved in the lower house of parliament of Queen Elizabeth, that there were landed in Naples above 140 culverins English.... It is lamentable that so many have been transported into Spain.”

In 1589 Lord Buckhurst wrote to the justices of Lewes Rape, complaining of their neglect in permitting the surreptitious export of ordnance. “Their lordships do see the little regard the owners of furnaces and the makers of these pieces have of their bonds, and how it importeth the state that the enemy of her Majesty should not be furnished out of the land with ordnance to annoy us.”

It is not improbable, in short, that some of the Armada’s cannon had been moulded and poured on English soil.

The imperfection of the sixteenth-century foundry products may be gauged from Bourne’s evidence that the use of cartridges was inconvenient because, on account of honeycombs and flaws, “you shall scant get the cartridge home unto the bottom of the piece.” On the other hand loading by ladle was still considered dangerous. In his Art of Gunnery, of 1627, Thos. Smith, soldier, of Berwick-on-Tweed, warns the gunner always to stand to one side of the mouth of the piece when thrusting home the ladle; otherwise, the charge being ignited by smouldering dÉbris in the cavities of the metal, it takes fire and kills the loader—“as happened in Anno 1573 at the siege of Edinborough Castle, to two experienced gunners.”55 At about the same date as Smith’s book was written, Sir H. Manwayring, in The Sea-Man’s Dictionary, described the “arming” of cross-bar shot: i.e. the binding them with oakum, yarn, or cloth, to prevent their ends from catching hold in any flaws during their passage through the gun, which might break it.

§

Under the Stuart kings a continuous development of ship armament took place.

This development was not always in the right direction. The Commission of Reform of the year 1618 recorded, as we have already seen, the importance of artillery in naval warfare, but owing to the absence of all system it was long before the principle found effective application. Owing to divided authority, or to a lack of unity in the conception of the fighting ship, a tendency to excess in the number and weight of guns continued to be noticeable, an excess which was to react unfavourably on the performances of our ships both in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Progress was made in the classification of pieces and in the reduction of the number of different types carried; a change was also made in the forms of the guns, in order to enhance the fighting value of the gun armament in certain circumstances. The great guns were made still shorter than before; the quicker-burning powders now in use allowed this to be done. By which expedient the ratio between gun-weight and weight-of-metal-thrown was reduced; more guns could be carried for a given weight of metal; they could be more easily manipulated; and if they were of small ranging power they yet possessed a power of penetration sufficient for close-quarter fighting. Moreover, the reduction in length enabled an increase in calibre to be made; and this was one of the factors which led to the reintroduction of larger types than had formerly been considered suitable: the cannon-serpentine, the cannon, and even the cannon-royal, with its sixty-six pound shot and its eight thousand pounds of metal.56 In the Dutch Wars the preponderance in the size and weight of the unit shot lay with the English ships, and was in itself undoubtedly a great advantage in their favour; though complaints were made of the great weight and clumsiness of the pieces, “which caused much of the straining and rolling at sea.” Writing of naval ordnance in the year 1690, Sir Cloudesley Shovell recorded that, “our lower-deck guns are too big and the tackles ill fitted with blocks, which makes them work heavy; the Dutch who have light guns have lignum vitÆ sheaves. The Dutch guns are seldom larger than twenty-four pounders.” By this time, it will be noted, the more scientific nomenclature had come into vogue; the cannon-petro was now known as the 24-pounder, and the heavy lower-deck guns referred to were the old bastard-cannons, known since the reorganization of the Commonwealth navy as 42-pounders.

The founding of guns continued to be, throughout the seventeenth century, an affair of private enterprise. Proof was carried out under the supervision of the Board of Ordnance.

In 1619 a decree was issued that gun-founding was to be confined to Kent and Sussex, that guns were to be landed at or shipped from the Tower Wharf only, and that East Smithfield was to be the one market-place for their sale or purchase. Guns could be proved only in Ratcliff fields, and all pieces were to have on them at least two letters of the founder’s name, with the year and the weight of the gun. Exportation was illegal; nevertheless the illicit traffic went on just as in Elizabeth’s time. The royal forts themselves were turned into marts for these and other unlawful transactions, and Upnor Castle is described as having been “a staple of stolen goods, a den of thieves, a vent for the transport of ordnance.”57

In later years proof took place at other government grounds, all within the London area. In Moorfields, according to Stowe, was the Artillery Yard, “whereunto the gunners of the Tower do weekly repair; and there, levelling certain brass pieces of great artillery against a butt of earth made for that purpose, they discharge them for their exercise.”58 Spitalfields also had its artillery butts. “Where Liverpool-street Station now stands the Tower gunners of Elizabeth’s day had their yard, and there discharged great pieces of artillery for exercise, while throughout the seventeenth century guns were both cast and tested in the vicinity, as Gun-street, Fort-street, and Artillery Lane hard by serve to remind us. Finsbury Field, levelled for an archery ground in 1498, passed from the London archers to the London gunners, and, as the Honourable Artillery Company’s Ground, survives to carry on the long traditions of the spot.”59

Under the Commonwealth progress was made in the quality of gunpowder, and improved methods were introduced of testing it for strength and uniformity. This advance had its effect on the guns. Failures were frequent, and, in spite of improved founding, pieces had to be made heavier than before; cast iron in particular was found unequal to withstanding the stresses caused by the improved powders, and this metal came into such disfavour that a whole century elapsed before it was again accepted as suitable by both naval and military artillerists. Founding in bronze had undergone improvement. Malthus, an Englishman who had risen in the French service to be Director of their Artillery,60 mentions in his Pratique de la Guerre, as evidence of this improvement, the fact that in breaking up old pieces lumps of free tin and copper were frequently discovered, whereas in the case of new guns the metal was invariably found well-mixed.

Somewhere between the years 1665 and 1680—presumably later than 1667—the proof of ordnance was transferred from Moorfields to the naval depÔt at Woolwich, and the nerves of the metropolis were no longer shaken by the roar of pieces loaded with powder charges equal, for proof, to one-and-a-half times the weight of the shots themselves. A proof-master and “his Majesty’s founder of brass and iron ordnance” were instituted to supervise and advise the various contractors. The State did not at first take over the work of casting its own guns. But in 1716 an event occurred which brought about the formation of the Royal Gun Factory, and the manufacture of both land and sea ordnance by the state. A disastrous accident occurred in the City of London. It happened that, after the peace of Utrecht in 1713, the guns captured by Marlborough from the French had been exhibited outside the Moorfields foundry. Three years later they were still there, and, the national ordnance being much depleted by the late wars, it was resolved to recast these pieces and so utilise their metal. On the appointed date a large concourse of the public attended to witness the operation. Late at night the metal was poured. A big explosion ensued, owing to the use of damp moulds, and a number of people were killed and injured.

To avoid a recurrence of such an accident it was decided that the government should possess a brass foundry of their own. The services of an able foreigner, Andrew Schalk of Douai, were sought, and the Royal Foundry at Woolwich was established with Schalk as master founder. The change was a complete success, and Schalk held the position for the next sixty years. Some of his guns, cast in the year 1742, were raised from the “Royal George” in 1840.61

By the middle of the eighteenth century the processes of gunnery had been placed for the first time on a scientific foundation; by whom, and in what manner, we shall describe in a later chapter.

The design of guns had by this time become subject to more scientific consideration than had hitherto been bestowed, and their manufacture had been improved by the Swiss invention of the boring machine, which enabled them to be cast solid instead of being cast hollow on a core. Iron guns came more and more into favour as the century progressed, especially for naval use. The cost of iron was only one-eighth that of brass. The art of casting iron in homogeneous masses had by this time made progress, and though hitherto it had been the custom to make iron ordnance of great thickness and weight, repeated trial proved that they could be made lighter, if required, without undue loss of strength, and that in action they outlasted brass ordnance, which cracked, bent at the muzzle, and wore out at the vent. A well-made iron gun was almost indestructible. At the siege of Belleisle, in the Seven Years’ War, the brass guns soon wore out, and had to be replaced by iron ship guns; and it was long, indeed, before a suitable brass was discovered, which would withstand the repeated fire of large charges without losing its tin-element and degenerating into a spongy and craterous material. Muller, in his Treatise of Artillery, of 1768, described how he had seen cast iron at the Carron works so tough that “it would flatten and tear like brass”; and advocated iron guns of a new and light construction to replace Schalk’s brass guns forming the armament of the Royal George, and give a saving in weight of over a hundred and sixty tons.

FRENCH TWENTY-FOUR-POUNDER WITH SPHERICAL CHAMBER

From St. Remy’s MÉmoires