Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/619

Rh i .rmour, are too numerous to be specified in a sliort notice. For these and other details the works of Grose, Meyrick, Skelton, Stothard. and Hewitt may be consulted by those who wish to study them fully, while the copiously-illus trated works of Demuiin and Lacoinbe, recently trans lated by Mr Black of tha South Kensington Museum and Charles Boutell, are excellent popular manuals of the general subject.

Artillery.—The adoption of gunpowder as an agent in warfare gradually revolutionised the whole system of military tactics, and was not only the ultimate cause of the total disuse of defensive armour, but rendered obsolete the whole of the projectile machines and weapons of the Middle Ages. Bows and shields were the first to give way before it, as they were the oldest forms of weapons of offence and defence. Shields are not represented on English effigies after the last quarter of the 14th century, though the round Highland target survived with the broad sword till 1745. The long-bow, which became such an important weapon in the 13th and 14th centuries, was usually of yew, about five feet in length, and a practised archer would send an arrow of a yard long through his mark at a distance of 240 yards. The cross-bow, which is first mentioned by the Princess Anna Comnena, appears in an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the llth century. Its use against Christians was prohibited by the Lateran Council in 1139, although it was allowed against the infidels. The long-bow continued in use in England till the end of Queen Elizabeth s reign, and the cross-bow was only disused in the French, army in the 17th century, so slow was the process of transition from one system to another, even after the superiority of gunpowder had been long well known. Gunpowder had been in use for cen turies, however, before it was applied to projectiles. The Chinese used it in their fireworks at a very early date, and it is believed to have been introduced into Europe by the intercourse of the Arabs with the natives of the far East. The earliest receipt for its composition with which we are acquainted occurs in the Liber Ignium ad com- burendos hostes of Marcus Grsecus (846 A.D.), where it is described as including six parts of saltpetre, two of sulphur, and two of charcoal. A similar receipt occurs in the De Mirdbilibus Mundi of Albert us Magnus, bishop of Ratis- bon, 1280 A.D. Until about the beginning of the 14th century, however, it had not been applied in warfare to the purpose of throwing projectiles, and was probably regarded merely as an explosive mixture, like the &quot;Greek fire &quot; and similar preparations, employed to spread terror and conflagration. Large cannon were used on the Con tinent in siege operations, however, as early as the beginning of the 14th century. Cannon are first mentioned in Eng land in 1338; Froissart alludes to them in 1340, and it is certain that they were used by the English at the siege of Cambray in 1339. At the same time experiments were being made at Tournay with long, pointed projectiles, and the duke of Brunswick had substituted leaden bullets fur those of stone which were then in common use in his artillery. Carronades were used on board the French ships at the battle of Rhodes in 1372, and bronze cannon were cast at Augsburg in 1378. Towards the end of the 14th century there were bombardes in existence, capable of throwing balls of stone of 200 Ibs. in weight. All early cannon were breech-loaders, and at first they were built of bars of wrought-iron hooped together. The well-known Scottish bombarde, Mons Meg, which was used at the sieges of Dumbarton and Norham in 1489 and 1497 is made in this way. So early as the beginning of the 15th century the prototypes of the modern mitrailleuse were invented. In Germany they were subsequently styled &quot;death-organs,&quot; and Weigel mentions one which had as many as thirty- three pipes. In the 15th century cannon of a lighter kind than those used in siege operations began to be employed in the field, carriages with trails were introduced, trunnions were added to the guns, and iron balls became common. With the improvement in the manufacture of the gun powder it was found that the increased velocity of the pro jectile made up for the diminution of its weight; and throughout the IGth century, the course of improvement was chiefly directed to the lightening of the enormous weights of the guns and projectiles, so as to secure facility of transport. So much progress had been made in this direction by the middle of the century, that, in 1556, the Emperor Ferdinand was able to march against the Turks with 54 heavy and 127 light pieces of artillery. At this period the French artillery were restricted by Henry II. to the following sizes: Cannon throwing a projectile of about 34 fib ; culverins of three sizes, throwing projectiles of 15 Ib, 7 ft), and 2 K) respectively ; and the falcon and the falconet, the former of which threw a projectile of about 1 fi&amp;gt;, and the latter of less than half a pound. In the second half of the 16th century mortars began to be used in Germany, and howitzers, or pieces for discharging hollow projectiles in a horizontal direction, came into use in England about the same period. At first the mortars were discharged by double firing, the artilleryman lighting the fuse of the shell with one hand and the priming of the mortar with the other. It was not until 1634 that the mortar was introduced into the French army ; and towards the close of the 17th century the method of igniting the fuse of the shell by the discharge of the piece itself became general, and greatly simplified the use of the arm. Though Benjamin Robins (who died in 1742) is sometimes spoken of as the inventor of the greatest improvement of modern times, the application of the system of rifling to artillery, he was merely the first who treated the subject scientifically. There are rifled cannon of the 16th century in the museum of the Hague. One in the arsenal at Ber lin, dated 1661, is rifled with 16 grooves, and one at Nuremberg, of 1694, has 8 grooves. But it was not till after the time of Benjamin Robins that, by the application of an armature of softer metal to the iron projectiles of the rifled guns, the difficulty was surmounted of enabling them at the moment of explosion to fit themselves tightly into the grooves of the rifling. The improvements of Paixhans in 1822, and of Armstrong in England and Krupp in Prussia, have brought the manufacture of these monster pieces of ordnance to the highest pitch of perfection. Krupp s cannon are made of cast-steel, and one of these, a breech-loader, exhibited in 1867, weighed close on fifty tons, and its shot, also of cast-steel, were somewhat over half a ton in weight. The most recent, and perhaps the most important improvement in the working of heavy ordnance is that of Captain Moncreiff, by which the recoil of the gun itself is utilised, so as to withdraw it under the parapet, and by means of a counterpoise to elevate it again, after it has been reloaded and laid by means of a reflecting sight. These operations are thus conducted without exposing a man, and the gun itself is only exposed at the moment of delivering its fire.

Hand Fire-arms.—Hand-cannons appear almost simultaneously with the larger bombardes. They were made by the Flemings in the early part of the 14th century, and before the end of the century considerable bodies of troops were in existence armed with portable culverins. At the battle of Morat (1476) the Swiss army is said to have been provided with 6000 of these hand fire-arms. In England the yeomen of the guard were armed with them in 1485. At first these portable fire-arms were served by two men, but a smaller kind termed petroneh were used by the cavalry. The long-barrelled harquebus, the prototype of the 