ORDNANCE.
Tnis term is generally intended to designate all the larger species of warlike fire-arms, used both for land and sea service, and is thereby more comprehensive in its signification than the term artillery, which is applied only to the former.
There is some uncertainty as to the date when these machines were first introduced into the military sys tem of European powers, for the attack and defence of strong places, and in the field ; but, it is highly pro bable, that it was not long after the invention of gun powder. Father Daniel, in his life of Philip de Va lois, produces proofs limn the records of the chamber of accounts at Paris, that cannon %vele used in the year 1338, and Froissart and some other French historians state them to have been employed still earlier. In the lists of aid raised fur the redemption of king John of France, in 1368, mention is made of an officer in the French army, under the denomination of master of the king's cannon, and of his providing four large cannon for the gatrison of Harfleur. The English unques tionably employed these arms as early as 1346, at the celebrated battle of Cressy, and from the statement of the French historians, this appears to have been the first instance in which they were used in the field, and they are said to have contributed greatly to the success of that day. The English also made use of them the following year at the siege of Calais ; and in 1350, they are said to have been employed un ship-board, in the Baltic, an assertion, of the truth of which, how ever, we must be allowed to entertain some doubts. Some of the oldest cannon of known origin, preserved as curiosities in our arsenals, &c. seem not to bear an ear lier date than about the middle of the sixteenth cen tury ; but there are others, obviously of an anterior construction, of which it is impossible to trace the his :ory. At this early time, the forms and means of re moving, adjusting, &c. were so exceedingly rude and uncultivated, that the application of guns or instru ments of attack and defence must have been attended mith great labour and uncertainty. Although Ive have
some accounts of enormous cannon being bored as early as the year 1400, yet it seems unquestionable that some, after that date, Were formed of wrought iron bars, fitted together and hooped with rings. (See Plate CCCCX1.11I. Fig. 1 ) which is an exact representation of one of these guns, in the arsenal at Woolwich. In general, after the art of boring had been applied tu the purpose of form ing cannon, it seems to have been an object of emula tion amongst the different European powers, to produce the largest possible piect. s; for in that eat ly period of the artillery art, we find the guns large, and especially long, beyond all due proportion, and far beyond the necessity DI the case ; of mortats paitictilar, we find dimen sions stated which appear wholly incredible. Thus, Mahomet II. is said to have employed against thc wails of Constantinople, in 1453, a mortar capable of throw ing a ball, or at least of a calibre equal to a ball, of 1200 lbs. which would require the diatneter of the bore to be nearly 24 inches.
Whether this statement be correct or not, there is no doubt that the -first cannon and mortar were exceed ingly umlieldy and unmanageable, and that they could only be discharged three or four times in a day. Guic ciardin informs us, in the first book of his History, that so great a portion of time intervened between the dif ferent chargings and dischargings, that the besieged had sufficient time to repair, at their leisure, the breaches rnade in the walls by the enormous stones that were thrown upon them. Although the use of these extraor dinary pieces of ordnance was not of long duration, yet, even in the seventeenth century, the cannon were still much larger and longer than at present,and great pains were taken to ornament them, sometimes with a certain degree of elegance, but frequently with various unmean ing symbols, figures, and mottos; they had also certain names given to them, as we still give to our ships, as, the Thunderer, the Terrible, &c.