A material alteration soon took place in the nature and use of arms. The invention of cannon followed that of gunpowder, and then different modifications of them were devised in smaller weapons. Froissart, distinct and intelligent author, affirms, that cannon were first used by the French at the battle of Quesnoy ; and Villani says they were used by the English at the battle of Cressy ; but father Daniel, whose opinion we must always quote with much deference, inclines to refer them to an earlier period, and at least to the year 1338. He cites an entry from the accounts of the war treasu rer, in these words : a Henri Faunzechon poUr avoir ,1rW7 dres et autres choses neccssaircs aux canons qui etoient decant Puy-Guillaume, which was a fortress in Auvergne. In corroboration of Daniel's sentiments, it may be re marked, that an old Scottish author, speaking of the battle of Were Water, 1327, employs expressions which have generally been judged applicable to cannon. We do not implicitly acquiesce in this opinion, yet we shall here present the passage alluded to, ilisissimis verbis; and from the oldest manuscript known to be extant, be cause we believe it has never hitherto been correctly laid before the public : Neither is this the only passage relative to the early use. of cannon, if these are to be understood by crakys ; for • the same author, speaking of the siege of Berwick cas tle in 1319, enters into a minute account of .the opera tions both of the besiegers and besieged. He particu larly celebrates the skill of John Crab, a Fleming, then in the Scottish service, and details the engines which. his ingenuity employed : Meaning, that he had no engines to throw crakys ; for their use was not then known in Scotland. Therefore he explicitly specifies, that during the interval 1319— 1327, they were employed in war. We should rather incline to interpret the passage in question, as relative to some kind of shell or grenade. Cannon were anciently called bumbards. At first, they are supposed to have been formed of iron bars, welded or hooped together. Afterwards they were cast hollow, and lastly bored from. the solid. The trunnions and cascable seem of more recent date, for a cannon was probably in its origin no thing but a simple hollow cylinder. Some were of enormous dimensions. Mons Meg, for example, a fa mous cannon, which was brought from Dunottar castle to Edinburgh, and from thence carried to London, we found on measurement to be 20 inches in diameter in the mouth. Therefore, an iron ball to fit it, allowing for windage, would not weigh less than 1100 pounds. This gun consists of pieces fortified by iron hoops ; its antiquity is unknown. Louis XI. of France had a cannon carrying an iron ball of 500 pounds ; and other examples of the like existed elsewhere. Such unwieldy guns are supposed to have been employed in discharging stones only, and we are told that M. Foucault, an eminent Frenchman, in 1711, discovered a great store of stone bullets in his garden three feet below the surface. They were from ten to sixteen inches in diameter, the largest weighing 182 pounds, and the smallest 60. But without recurring to the practice of ancient times, we know that, during a late unsuccessful attempt at Constantinople, stones of enormous size were discharged against our vessels of war from immense cannon on shore. We may remark, in general, that the moderns are rather dis posed to diminish the calibre of their long guns. The length also, though extremely various, has undergone tonsiderable diminution. lgons Meg is between 13 and 14 feet long. A cannon 2; feet long was formerly in the castle of Lisbon, which, with a charge of 60 pounds of powder, carried a ball of 90 or an hundred pounds in weight. The Culverine of Nancy, kept at Dunkirk, was 22 feet long from the muzzle to the bottom of the tastable. It was cast in the year 1593, and seems to have carried aAmll of about 80 pounds. It has been observed, that it neither discharged the bullet farther than a gun of ordinary length, nor did it strike an ob ject with precision. Perhaps the former may be ex plained, by supposing that the elastic fluid, generated by the ignition of gunpowder, has time to escape by the touchhole during the long traverse of the ball. Various experiments have been tried in casting several cannon laterally attached together. A gun of this descrip tion, carrying a four pound ball, with two cylinders, was made in France, and called a twin cannon. In an engra ving of the battle of Pinkie, 1547, we have remarked two guns supported on one carriage. Triple cannon, invented by an Italian monk, were used in France and Flanders ; and there are instances of seven cylinders being attached together. Such pieces had only a single touch-hole, by which all could be discharged at once. On sudden emergencies cannon have been made of wood, which stood more than one discharge ; and they have also been formed of leather, sometimes secured with metal hoops. Shortening the cannon at length ended in
the carronade, (sometimes incorrectly called cannonade,) ,which was introduced into general use by a foundery in Scotland soon after the middle of last century : we doubt if it is a new invention, and, like some cannon of old, it has a chamber. But all the varieties in constructing this species of arms, will more properly be resumed under another head.
Mortars and howitzers are in truth nothing but short cannon, with the trunnions differently disposed, and car rying a different kind of ball. They are of considerable antiquity, probably not above a century later than can non ; for every engine discharging a hollow ball, by means of gunpowder, which explodes from combus tibles within, must be included under mortars. We apprehend that they, as well as cannon, were formerly called bunzbards. They have been made so as to dis charge a number of grenades along with the principal 'shell ; these were contained in cylinders surrounding the great calibre. An immense mortar. was cut in the rock at Gibraltar in 1771, three feet in diameter, and the cavity equal to fourteen cubic feet. It was loaded with 1470 stones, the smallest weighing a pound, and some a pound and a quarter, and then discharged with out suffering injury. A bomb is a hollow ball of iron filled with combustibles, which explode it into frag ments : previous to being discharged, a fuze is adapted in such a manner in the shell as to produce explosion in its flight. This observation is necessary to explain a very recent invention of Colonel Shrapnel's, where the shell is filled with musket balls, and the fuze so regu lated as to produce the explosion in face of a body of troops : a kind of warfare which has been attended with uncommon success. The petard is an engine of the mor tar species, employed to burst open gates by applying its mouth to them.
Under this general account of arms, we need not say any thing of the different kinds of shot and shells dis charged from cannon and mortars, except that at vari ous times there have been used, besides others, stone, iron, leaden balls, and stones coated with lead ; star, chain, and double-headed shot ; grape and canister shot. Darts were anciently discharged from cannon, and they have very lately been applied to throwing iron rockets, with large hollow heads, full of combustibles. The rocket being heavy and sharp pointed, sticks where it falls, and a litre being adapted as in a bomb shell, it ex plodes and excites a dreadful conflagration. Timis in vention bears no imperfect resemblance to the ancient fire arrows.
Not long subsequent to the invention of cannon the use of muskets was discovered ; they were originally called hand-guns, also calivers, hackbuts, harquebusses, matchlocks, and lastly firclocks. They are said to have been introduced into England by a corps of Flemings in 1471. The barrels were so large and clumsy, that a soldier was unable to present his piece unless when sup ported by a rest, at least during sonic centuries, if not always, from the date of the invention. The musket was a considerable time in use before a stock was adapt ed to the barrel, and it was until no distant period dis charged by means of a match. Military men of modern times will bd surprised to learn, that in the days of James I. there were probably more manoeuvres in pre paring the match, than are now in the whole manual ex ercise. Matchlocks were common in the middle of the 17th century, perhaps later ; and we believe, that if not used at present by some of the eastern nations, they have very recently been abandoned. Nevertheless, flint locks appear to have been known in the 16th century, though their effect was produced by a different appara tus from what is now employed. The weight, calibre, and length of the musket, has undergone continual al terations; formerly there seems to have been a great disregard of uniformity among those used by troops in action. A piece called the carabine rayee was known in France about 100 years ago. The calibre, instead of being cylindrical, was angular. Hence has originated the modern rifle gun, if the carabine rayee was not ex actly the same. The rifle barrel has six or eight angles within ; but these, instead of procceging in a straight line from the breech to the muzzlc,"Torm one revolu tion of a screw. The ball is forced down with an iron rammer, and in its traverse, when discharged, it is supposed to acquire a rotatory motion, which directs it straight through the air. We have heard of surprising feats perfOrmed by rifle guns, and it is certain that great precision can be attained in using them. During the American war, we know that it was a point of dis cipline among the rebels to select the British officers with their rifles, that the destruction of them might throw the men into confusion. The utility of this description of arms has more recently occasioned the enrolment of whole corps in different modern armies to use them.