Under this appellation are understood portable or moveable mills,
which can be used, particularly in the time of war, when there are
neither wind- nor water-mills in the neighbourhood, and which on that
account formerly accompanied armies in the same manner as camp-ovens
and camp-forges. Some of these mills have stones for grinding the corn,
and others are constructed with a notched roller like those of our
coffee-mills. Some of them also are so contrived that the machinery is
put in motion by the revolution of the wheels of the carriage on which
they are placed; and others, and perhaps the greater part of those
used, are driven by horses or men, after the wheels of the carriage are
sunk in the ground, or fastened in some other manner.
To the latter kind belongs that mill of which Zonca[129] has given a
coarse engraving, but without any description. He says it was invented
by Pompeo Targone, engineer to the well-known marquis Ambrose Spinola;
and he seems to place the time of the invention about the end of the
sixteenth century. This mill is the same as that described by Beyer in
his Theatrum Machinarum Molarium, and represented in the twenty-seventh
plate of that work[130]. Beyer remarks that it was employed by Spinola.
The inventor, as his name shows, was an Italian, who made himself
known, in particular, at the celebrated siege of Rochelle, under Louis
XIII., at which he was chosen to assist, because in the year 1603, when
with Spinola, who was consulted respecting the operations at Rochelle,
he had helped by means of a mole to shut the harbour of Ostend during
the tedious siege of that place. He was likewise in the French service,
as _intendant des machines du roi_; but his numerous and expensive
undertakings did not succeed according to his expectations[131]. He
invented also a particular kind of gun-carriages, and a variety of
warlike machines[132].
Another old figure of such a mill was shown to me by Professor Meister,
in Recueil de Plusieurs Machines Militaires, printed in 1620. This
machine was driven by the wheels of the carriage; but whether it was
ever used the author does not inform us.
Lancellotti[133] ascribes this invention to the Germans, about the year
1633.
Carriages for transporting camp-forges and mill-machinery are mentioned
by Leonard Fronsperger[134], but he does not say whether complete mills
were affixed to them.