After 1470 the art of casting greatly improved in Europe. Lighter
cannon began to replace the bombards. Throughout the 1500's
improvement was mainly toward lightening the enormous weights of guns
and projectiles, as well as finding better ways to move the artillery.
Thus, by 1556 Emperor Ferdinand was able to march against the Turks
with 57 heavy and 127 light pieces of ordnance.
At the beginning of the 1400's cast-iron balls had made an appearance.
The greater efficiency of the iron ball, together with an improvement
in gunpowder, further encouraged the building of smaller and stronger
guns. Before 1500 the siege gun had been the predominant piece. Now
forged-iron cannon for field, garrison, and naval service--and later,
cast-iron pieces--were steadily developed along with cast-bronze guns,
some of which were beautifully ornamented with Renaissance
workmanship. The casting of trunnions on the gun made elevation and
transportation easier, and the cumbrous beds of the early days gave
way to crude artillery carriages with trails and wheels. The French
invented the limber and about 1550 took a sizable forward step by
standardizing the calibers of their artillery.
Meanwhile, the first cannon had come to the New World with Columbus.
As the _Pinta's_ lookout sighted land on the early morn of October 12,
1492, the firing of a lombard carried the news over the moonlit waters
to the flagship _Santa María_. Within the next century, not only the
galleons, but numerous fortifications on the Spanish Main were armed
with guns, thundering at the freebooters who disputed Spain's
ownership of American treasure. Sometimes the adventurers seized
cannon as prizes, as did Drake in 1586 when he made off with 14 bronze
guns from St. Augustine's little wooden fort of San Juan de Pinos.
Drake's loot no doubt included the ordnance of a 1578 list, which
gives a fair idea of the armament for an important frontier
fortification: three reinforced cannon, three demiculverins, two
sakers (one broken), a demisaker and a falcon, all properly mounted on
elevated platforms in the fort to cover every approach. Most of them
were highly ornamented pieces founded between 1546 and 1555. The
reinforced cannon, for instance, which seem to have been cast from the
same mold, each bore the figure of a savage hefting a club in one hand
and grasping a coin in the other. On a demiculverin, a bronze mermaid
held a turtle, and the other guns were decorated with arms,
escutcheons, the founder's name, and so on.
In the English colonies during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, lighter pieces seem to have been the more prevalent; there
is no record of any "cannon." (In those days, "cannon" were a special
class.) Culverins are mentioned occasionally and demiculverins rather
frequently, but most common were the falconets, falcons, minions, and
sakers. At Fort Raleigh, Jamestown, Plymouth, and some other
settlements the breech-loading half-pounder perrier or "Patterero"
mounted on a swivel was also in use. (See frontispiece.)
It was during the sixteenth century that the science of ballistics had
its beginning. In 1537, Niccolo Tartaglia published the first
scientific treatise on gunnery. Principles of construction were tried
and sometimes abandoned, only to reappear for successful application
in later centuries. Breech-loading guns, for instance, had already
been invented. They were unsatisfactory because the breech could not
be sealed against escape of the powder gases, and the crude, chambered
breechblocks, jammed against the bore with a wedge, often cracked
under the shock of firing. Neither is spiral rifling new. It appeared
in a few guns during the 1500's.
Mobile artillery came on the field with the cart guns of John Zizka
during the Hussite Wars of Bohemia (1419-24). Using light guns, hauled
by the best of horses instead of the usual oxen, the French further
improved field artillery, and maneuverable French guns proved to be an
excellent means for breaking up heavy masses of pikemen in the Italian
campaigns of the early 1500's. The Germans under Maximilian I,
however, took the armament leadership away from the French with guns
that ranged 1,500 yards and with men who had earned the reputation of
being the best gunners in Europe.
Then about 1525 the famous Spanish Square of heavily armed pikemen and
musketeers began to dominate the battlefield. In the face of musketry,
field artillery declined. Although artillery had achieved some
mobility, carriages were still cumbrous. To move a heavy English
cannon, even over good ground, it took 23 horses; a culverin needed
nine beasts. Ammunition--mainly cast-iron round shot, the bomb (an
iron shell filled with gunpowder), canister (a can filled with small
projectiles), and grape shot (a cluster of iron balls)--was carried
the primitive way, in wheelbarrows and carts or on a man's back. The
gunner's pace was the measure of field artillery's speed: the gunner
_walked_ beside his gun! Furthermore, some of these experts were
getting along in years. During Elizabeth's reign several of the
gunners at the Tower of London were over 90 years old.
Lacking mobility, guns were captured and recaptured with every
changing sweep of the battle; so for the artillerist generally, this
was a difficult period. The actual commander of artillery was usually
a soldier; but transport and drivers were still hired, and the drivers
naturally had a layman's attitude toward battle. Even the gunners,
those civilian artists who owed no special duty to the prince, were
concerned mainly over the safety of their pieces--and their hides,
since artillerists who stuck with their guns were apt to be picked off
by an enemy musketeer. Fusilier companies were organized as artillery
guards, but their job was as much to keep the gun crew from running
away as to protect them from the enemy.
[Illustration: Figure 5--FIFTEENTH-CENTURY BREECHLOADER.]
So, during 400 years, cannon had changed from the little vases,
valuable chiefly for making noise, into the largest caliber weapons
ever built, and then from the bombards into smaller, more powerful
cannon. The gun of 1600 could throw a shot almost as far as the gun of
1850; not in fire power, but in mobility, organization, and tactics
was artillery undeveloped. Because artillery lacked these things, the
pike and musket were supreme on the battlefield.