By the middle 1400's the little popguns that tossed one-or two-pound
pellets had grown into enormous bombards. Dulle Griete, the giant
bombard of Ghent, had a 25-inch caliber and fired a 700-pound granite
ball. It was built in 1382. Edinburgh Castle's famous Mons Meg threw a
19-1/2-inch iron ball some 1,400 yards (a mile is 1,760 yards), or a
stone ball twice that far.
The Scottish kings used Meg between 1455 and 1513 to reduce the
castles of rebellious nobles. A baron's castle was easily knocked to
pieces by the prince who owned, or could borrow, a few pieces of heavy
ordnance. The towering walls of the old-time strongholds slowly gave
way to the earthwork-protected Renaissance fortification, which is
typified in the United States by Castillo de San Marcos, in Castillo
de San Marcos National Monument, St. Augustine, Fla.
Some of the most formidable bombards were those of the Turks, who used
exceptionally large cast-bronze guns at the siege of Constantinople in
1453. One of these monsters weighed 19 tons and hurled a 600-pound
stone seven times a day. It took some 60 oxen and 200 men to move this
piece, and the difficulty of transporting such heavy ordnance greatly
reduced its usefulness. The largest caliber gun on record is the Great
Mortar of Moscow. Built about 1525, it had a bore of 36 inches, was 18
feet long, and fired a stone projectile weighing a ton. But by this
time the big guns were obsolete, although some of the old Turkish
ordnance survived the centuries to defend Constantinople against a
British squadron in 1807. In that defense a great stone cut the
mainmast of the British flagship, and another crushed through the
English ranks to kill or wound 60 men.
[Illustration: Figure 4--EARLY SMALL BOMBARD (1330). It was made of
wrought-iron bars, bound with hoops.]
The ponderosity of the large bombards held them to level land, where
they were laid on rugged mounts of the heaviest wood, anchored by
stakes driven into the ground. A gunner would try to put his bombard
100 yards from the wall he wanted to batter down. One would surmise
that the gunner, being so close to a castle wall manned by expert
Genoese cross-bowmen, was in a precarious position. He was; but
earthworks or a massive wooden shield arranged like a seesaw over his
gun gave him fair protection. Lowering the front end of the shield
made a barricade behind which he could charge his muzzle loader (see
fig. 49).
In those days, and for many decades thereafter, neither gun crews nor
transport were permanent. They had to be hired as they were needed.
Master gunners were usually civilian "artists," not professional
soldiers, and many of them had cannon built for rental to customers.
Artillerists obtained the right to captured metals such as tools and
town bells, and this loot would be cast into guns or ransomed for
cash. The making of guns and gunpowder, the loading of bombs, and
even the serving of cannon were jealously guarded trade secrets.
Gunnery was a closed corporation, and the gunner himself a guildsman.
The public looked upon him as something of a sorcerer in league with
the devil, and a captured artilleryman was apt to be tortured and
mutilated. At one time the Pope saw fit to excommunicate all gunners.
Also since these specialists kept to themselves and did not drink or
plunder, their behavior was ample proof to the good soldier of the old
days that artillerists were hardly human.