Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 09.djvu/428

* GUNPOWDER PLOT. 378 GUNS. his friend would be of itself a sufficient reason for writing it; but it is not altogether improbable that Treshani wished to expose the plot, and at the same time allow his fellow-conspirators an opportunity to escape. That they might have escaped but for the unreasonable hopes of Cates- by is all but certain. On the evening of the fourth the Lord Chamberlain and Lord ilonteagle vis- ited Parliament House, and entering the cellar in a casual way, told Guy Fawkes, whom they found there, and who passed as Percy's servant, that his master had laid in plenty of fuel. In spite of this direct warning Fawkes clung to his post, though escape was still possible; and on the morning of the fifth, a little after midnight, he was arrested as he came from the cellar dressed for traveling. On his person the magistrate found slow matches, and in the cellar a lantern burning, and a hogshead and thirty-si.x barrels of gunpowder. E.xamincd under torture, Fawkes confessed his own guilt, and after long obstinacy revealed the names of his associates. Nearly all the others were killed on bein'g taken, or died with him on the scaflfold. Tresham, who at first went about openly, was finally arrested, and died of sickness in the Tower. Fawkes was a man of some ex- cellent qualities: his aim was unselfish, but his zeal was wliolly misdirected. So far from reme- dying the oppression of the Koman Catholics, he greatly increased their miseries. The memorj' of this mad plot, invested with much fiction and intentionally enveloped in mystery for State and religious purposes, was long perpetuated by an annua! festival on November 5th, in which it was customary to burn Fawkes in effigy. BiBLiOGR.'iPiiT. The Gunpoiixler Treason, u-ith a Discourse of Ihe Manner of Its Discovery and a Perfect Relaiirm of the Proceedings Afjainst Those Horrid Conspirators (London. 1679: re- printed, with additions from the official report) ; Arraifinment and Exception of the Late Traitors, etc. (London, 1872; reprinted from ed. of 1606) ; Archtroloffia. xii.. 202: Howell. State Trials (London,' 1809-26) : Winwood, Mctiiorials of Af- fairs of Hlaie in the Reiffn of Queen EUzaheth and Kinri James I. (London. 1725) : Gardiner, What the Ouiipoiiyler Plot Was (London, 1897) : J. Gerard, What Was the Gunpowder Plot? (Lon- don. 1897) ; J. S. J. Gerard (contemporary). The Condition of the Catholics Under James I., edited by Morris (London, 1871); Gerard (of Stony- hurst), The Gunpowder Plot and the Ounpoicder Plotters, reply to Gardiner (London, 1897). See Fawkes, Guy. GUNS, guns. Hunp. KOSZEG, k&'seg. A free royal town in the County of Eisenburg, Hungary, situated 11 miles by rail northwest of Steina- nnanger (Map: Hungary, E 3). It has a castle of the princes of Eszterhazy. a fine modern church, and two convents. Its educational institutions comprise a g^-7unasiiim and a military school. Giins obtained municipal rights in 1328. and be- came a free royal town in 1648. It is noted for its gallant resistance to the attacks of the Turks under Solvman II. in 15.32. Population, in 1890. 725.3: in 1900. 7930. GUNS, Nav.l. Neither gunpowder nor guns were invented in the modern sense of the word. They were developments that, in their earlier forms, were scarcely distinguishable from previous types. Greek fire (q.v.) and other ancient in- cendiary compositions contained all of the es- sential ingredients of ginipowder, and it was discharged through tubes, the prototypes of guns, placed in the bows of galleys. The force with which the llame and gas issued from the tubes may have led to placing darts or hard substances in the tubes so that they might be thrown out as projectiles. The earliest guns of which we have knowledge were certainly very crude affairs, and their immediate predecessors were probably cruder still, so that the importance of the im- pending change was not realized. If we regard the incendiary tubes as the prototypes of the gim, the latter seems to have been first developed in naval warfare. The earliest record of the use of guns on ship- board is derived from an old Japanese painting of the repulse of the ilongol fleet off the shores of Japan in a.d. 1281, the fleet being shown wreathed in smoke from its guns. Kublai Khan, the Mongol-Chinese Emperor, certainly had an ordnance department at this time, and it is not unlikely that he mounted some guns on the vessels of his fleet. The first recorded use of guns on European ships is in the thirteenth cen- tury. In 1350 the Moors of Spain are said to have us^d cannon in a sea fight with the iloors of Tunis, and in 1837 the French and English fleets fought at sea with guns. Up to this time the pieces were fired over the rail of the sliip, but early in the fourteenth century gim-ports were invented — a suggestion of Descharges, a ship- builder of Brest — and the number of pieces car- ried rapidly increased, so that toward the end of the century the Queen of Louis XII. made a present to the French people of the Cordclirre, a ship carrying 00 guns; and the English im- mediately built a very similar ves.sel, the Regent, to oppose her. The guns carried on these ships were mostly breech-loaders, and we are struck by the fact" that they still retained a removable chamber for the powder, similar to the charging piece of the incendiary tubes used in the old gal- leys. The inefficient closing of the breech made the guns very ineffective, and breech-loading was very generally abandoned in the early part of the seventeenth century. The metal of the earlier gmis was wrought iron or brass, hut after the general introduction of muzzle-loaders it was either cast iron or cast brass. Some of the early gims were rifled : at the Woolwich Arsenal there is a barrel dated 1547 which is rifled with sis grooves, of a twist of one turn in 26 inches. By the year 1600 rifled small arms firing spherical lead bullets were common, but the disuse of heavy breech-loading guns prevented the development of rifled artillery. Guns of very large size were made in the fifteenth century, those used by Mohammed II. in the siege of Con- stantinople in 1453 having a calibre of about 25 inches, and firing a stone ball of over fiOO pounds weight (see Artillery) : and still larger ones with a calibre of 30 inches, and firing stone balls of 1100 pounds weight, are yet to be seen in some of the old batteries on the Dardanelles. Iron shot began to be used about the middle of the fifteenth century, though stone shot were not whollv given up for many decades after this. By the end of the sixteenth century the batteries of ships had become formidable. The Spanish .'Armada of 1588 was composed of 130 ships car- rving 3165 gims. most of which were 4, 6. and 10 pounders, but the two largest ships, the San