(^88) Chapter Three
the same damage as bombards of three times the size if the gun tubes
were made strong enough to fire denser iron cannonballs instead of
stones. Iron cannonballs were also cheaper to make and could often be
reused, whereas giant stone projectiles shattered on impact and were
difficult and expensive to shape by hand and transport to the scene
of action.
A second technical improvement came in at the same time: the
practice of forming gunpowder into small grains or “corns.” This
allowed a more rapid ignition, since the exposed surfaces of the sepa
rate corns could all burn at once. The explosion became corre
spondingly more powerful, for rapidly generated gases had less time
to leak out around the cannonball while it accelerated along the bar
rel.^20 This put additional strain on the gunmetal of course, but the
bronze founders of the Low Countries discovered how to thicken the
critical area around the chamber, where the explosion occurred, and
tapered the thickness of the barrel towards the cannon mouth in pro
portion to the drop-off of pressure behind the projectile.
With suitable mounting and strong enough horses, powerful siege
guns of about eight feet in length, designed to fire an iron ball of
between twenty-five and fifty pounds, could travel cross-country with
relative ease. This required specially designed gun carriages, with
stout axles and wheels and long “trails” extending behind the gun. By
mounting the gun on trunnions near its center of gravity, it became
possible to elevate the tube to any desired angle without dismounting
it from the carriage on which it traveled. Recoil could be absorbed by
allowing the gun and its carriage to jerk backwards a few feet. To fire
again, it might be necessary to wheel the carriage forward to the initial
firing position, but this could be done by using simple levers and
without hitching the horses. When it was time to move on, a few
minutes sufficed to lift the trails from the ground, put a limber under
neath, and set off. Rapid transition from traveling position to firing
position and vice versa was matched by the fact that these guns could
go wherever a heavy wagon and team could pass. In essence, the siege
gun design developed in France and Burgundy between 1465 and
1477 lasted until the 1840s, with only marginal improvement.^21
their domains, which, however, extended irregularly southward to the Swiss border. For
half a century before the death of Charles the Bold in 1477 the dukes of Burgundy
seemed about to reconstitute the kingdom of Lotharingia which had been interposed
between France and Germany by the division of the Carolingian empire in 843.
- Daumas, Histoire générale des techniques, 2:487.
- Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns, Sails and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early
Phases of European Expansion, 1400–1700 (New York, 1965), pp. 1–73, is by far the