ARTILLERY. ARTILLERY. Fr. artillerie. Of doubtful twisted ropes inclined to recoil. Besides stones, Shakspeare, Id. I'll to the tower with all the haste I can, As when two black clouds Milton's Paradise Lost, b. ii. Upon one wing the artillery was drawn, being sixteen pieces; every piece having pioneers, to plain the ways. Hayward. He that views a fort to take it, Plants his artillery against the weakest place. ARTILLERY, in its general sense, denotes, 1. The offensive apparatus of war, particularly of the missile kind. Among the French the term was anciently appropriated to archery. In its modern signification it denotes certain firearms mounted on carriages and ready for action, with their balls, bombs, grenades, rockets, &c. 2. In a more extensive meaning, it includes the means which facilitate their motion and transport, the vehicles over which they traverse rivers, every thing, in short, necessary to them, or that belongs to a train of artillery. 3. In a sense still more extensive, the word comprehends the men and officers destined for the service of the artillery. 4. By the term artillery is nikewise understood the science which the officers of artillery ought to possess. SECT. I. OF ANCIENT MISSILES AND MILI- The missiles of the ancients were of three kinds, viz. on the principle of the cross-bow, the sling, and the recoil of twisted ropes. The first sent forward darts and sometimes combustible arrows; the second was the balista kind, hereafter described; the third acted like the boy's bone bow, which by means of a wooden lever and a twisted string ejects a plum-stone. Dr. Meyrick has had the good fortune to meet in an ancient manuscript with actual delineations of the leading kinds of these engines used in the middle ages. The balista seems only to have been a large beam, rather crooked, resting at about twothirds of its length on a forked support; if of three legs, then called trepied. Plate, ANCIENT ARTILLERY, fig. 1. At the long end was a great pear-shaped bag, tied to the beam by a stout rope. At the short end was a large box full of stones. The long end being suddenly released, slung upon the enemy the contents of the bag, through being jerked up by the great weight of the stone box. The onager, fig. 2, threw a like bag of stones, but there was no stone-box, the Deam being impelled by its position between were also used balls of earth, probably baked pelotes, corrupted into pellets and bullets. It will be sufficient therefore to enumerate shortly the machines, though it is to be recollected, that ancient authors are perpetually confounding the appellations. The arbalist is described in 1342 as a large cross-bow, furnished with a hundred gogions, or balls, and grapple to draw it up. The balista is said to be a Phoenician invention for throwing huge stones, confounded sometimes with the catapult, which threw darts, a Syrian contrivance, conveyed to the Syracusans, whence it was brought into Greece by Philip of Macedon. Accounts of the construction vary, but the crossbow principle of action seems the most probable. The scorpio was a smaller kind of catapult. In the middle ages, besides the balista, catapult, onager, and scorpion, Grose mentions the mangona, and its diminutive mangonel, similar to the balista. The trebuchet or trip getis, for throwing stones, which seems to have been the same as the trepied, before mentioned, though Dr. Meyrick says the term trebuchet, appears to imply a military engine, which ejected its ammunition from a trap-door, trebocchetto. The petiary, matafunda, bugles or bibles, couillart, and war-wolf (in one sense) also machines for ejecting stones. The bricolle, carreaux or quarrels, and the espringal, calculated for throwing large darts, called muchetta; and sometimes viretons, i. e. arrows with the feathers put diagonally so as to occasion them to turn in the air, but it was not limited to darts; for according to Dr. Meyrick, v. ii. p. 53, in 1342 the gates and towers of Norwich were furnished with thirty espringolds for casting great stones, and to every espringold a hundred gogions or balls fastened up in a box, with ropes and other accoutrements belonging to them; which illustrates the construction before given. The robinet and mate-griffon (i. e. destroyer of the Greeks) threw both darts and stones. The manu-balista, or cross bow, supposed to be of Sicilian and Cretan origin, was perhaps the most important machine of this kind, and introduced into Europe by the Crusades. It was known in England, at least for use in the chase, as early as the time of the Conquest. Its application to warlike uses (not its introduction) by Richard I. is well supported; it was used in Italy in 1139. A legionary soldier appears on an ancient seal endeavouring to bend the arcubalist with his foot. Five years earlier, mention is made of turni balisterii, or the arbaleste-a-tour, that drawn up by a turn; and in 1320, of the balista grossa de molinellis, or one wound by a moulinet or windlass, see fig. 6, and the balista grossa de arganellis, i. e. one furnished with tubes for ejecting the Greek fire. The crossbows used in the reign of Henry VII. were of two kinds; the latch, with its wide and thick bender, for quarrels, and the prodd for bullets. The stock of the former was short and straight, 16 ARTILLERY. not much exceeding two feet, and the bow was bent by the windlass or moulinet. Of the important battering ram Pliny and others have made Epeus the inventor, during the siege of Troy; but as it is not mentioned by Homer, nor any Greek writer, Vitruvius and Tertullian more probably assign the invention to Pephasmenon, a Tyrian, in the army of Carthage, during the siege of Cadiz. There were three kinds of fams; one suspended, fig. 5; the second running upon rollers, fig. 3; the third carried by the men who worked it, fig. 5. At Haguenau, and Morviedro, the ancient Saguntum, are the remains of two: one is topped with a strong head of iron, square and of one piece; the other consists of three pieces, has a ram's head, and is similar to one on the arch of Severus. The ram was used in the middle ages; and Sir Christopher Wren, in throwing down old walls, found no machine equal to it, particularly in disjointing the stones. The momentum of one, twenty-eight inches diameter, 180 feet long, with a head of a ton and a half weighed 41,112 lbs. and worked by a thousand men, was about equal to a point-blank shot from a thirtysix pounder. Hardly, perhaps, to be called artillery, but materially assisting their operations were the ancient musculus or testudo a covered machine, probably the subsequent sow, a very low shed, long and very sharp roofed; used to advance to the wall, and overturn it by sap. The pluteus, a machine covered with ozier work and hides, running upon three wheels, one in the middle, and two at the extremities. The cat, also a covered shed, occasionally fixed on wheels, and used for protecting soldiers employed in filling up the ditch, preparing the way for the movable tower, mining the wall,&c. Some of these cats had crenelles and chinks, from whence the These archers could discharge their arrows. were called castellated cats; and sometimes under cover of this machine, the beseigers worked a small kind of ram; fig. 4. Dr. Meyrick, from an ancient illumination, has engraved one of these, called the chaschateil or cat castle. It resembles in form a modern four-post bedstead upon wheels. A miner is working under it with a pick-axe. And to the same purpose the vinea, another shed, was applied. The belfragium or belfroi, was a tower with stories, moved up to the walls. A cat, made of osier twigs and leather, and covered with planks, was used to protect those who filled up the ditches preparatory to wheeling upon them the belfries; from this use of the cat, was derived the French word eschaufaux, an elevated floor, and subsequently the English word scaffold. Elsewhere Dr. Meyrick says, the catti versatiles, were chats faulx furnished with drawbridges. The chief belfries were called brestachiæ or brestaches. William de Breton says, he caused to be made double orestaches in seven different places. These were wooden castles, very highly fortified, surrounded with double quadrangular fosses, at a proportionate distance from each other, with drawbridges thrown across them, and he had not only these filled with armed men, but the interior surface of each foss, and thus he surrounded the besieged by his works' The prickly cat, or felis echinata, was a beam, Missive wheels were formed of mill-stones SECT. II.-OF MODERN ARTILLERY. According to Du Cange the word artillery (ars telaria, meaning bows, arrows, and all implements of war,) first occurs in Rymer. Grose is confirmed by Dr. Meyrick in assigning the introduction of it to the fourteenth century. Cannon called dolia ignivoma, or fire-flashing vessels, in Spain, were known in Italy as early as the year 1351, and were used by our Edward III. They were termed by the French, gunnæ, and appear at first to have been of two kindsa large one for discharging stones, called a bombard, and a smaller sort for discharging darts or quarrels. In 1377, 1 Richard II. Thomas Norbury was directed to provide from Thomas Restwold of London, two great and two less engines, called cannons, 600 stone shot for the same, and salt-petre, charcoal, and other ammunition, for stores, to be sent to the castle of Bristol. At the first invention of cannon, darts and bolts were shot from them; but, before these, stones were used instead, for, in 1388, a stone bullet, which weighed 195 lbs., was discharged from a bombard called the trevisan. The bombard was so called from the Greek Boußoc, which expressed the noise it made in the firing. It was a Greek invention, and there is some reason to conceive that gunpowder owed its origin to the same people. At first used only in fire-works amusively, its discovery is involved in obscurity. From a tract on Pyrotechny by Marcus Græcus, Friar Bacon, in 1270, learned that its composition was two pounds of charcoal, one of sulphur, and six of salt-petre, well pulverised and mixed. It was first made in England in the time of Elizabeth. At first it was not corned, but remained in its mealed state. It was then called serpentine powder, Meyrick, v. iii. p. 71. The first bombards were made of bars of iron, strengthened with welded hoops of the same metal. They were short with large bores, and were made with chambers, in imitation of the tubes which ejected the Greek fire. These chambers consisted of the lower half of the cylinder, the upper being open for the admission of the can, or canister, which held the charge, from whence probably arose the term cannon. One of these may be seen in the tower of London, and there is another at Rhodes of the sixteenth century, on its original carriage, and a stone ball to fire from it. It is nineteen feet in length, two feet eight inches in diameter, its calibre two feet, and its thickness four inches. About half the length is of a less diameter, and in this, as in a chamber, was placed the powder, while the ball was in the larger part. The carriage was made of timber, placed lengthways, and cramped together. These bombards were the only kind of cannon employed in the fourteenth century, and were of the howitzer kind, in use before mortars. After this invention of bombs, that of carcases of different kinds soon followed. The former, according to Strada, took place in 1588. Grenades are said to have been first used in 1594 in which year the howitzer was invented by the Germans. The bomb being intended to beat down buildings in its fall, or to break and destroy every thing around it, by the pieces of broken iron scattered in all directions by its explosions, the end proposed by the carcase and grenade was to burn the town by means of fire-balls. The petard for forcing gates was invented in France, a short time before the year 1579, and soon after introduced into England. The term bombard generally designates battering guns and mortars; but the word is also applied to lighter cannon. Accordingly Dr. Meyrick calls a cannon engraved by Strutt, a bombard on a carriage, light in proportion to the bulk of the piece. Its trail consists of a prolongation of the cascabale, which rests on the ground, a block of wood serving as a quoin for the purpose of depression. Admitting that cannon were not used in the field till the fifteenth century, this gun, for it is very small, is the kind to which Froissart alludes, when he mentions two hundred carts loaded with cannon and artillery; cannonades with bars of iron and quarrels headed with brass, and cannon mounted on walls and battlements. The balls were of stone adapted to the calibre. In 1434 it is said that the English had many kinds of projectiles, 'cannons, culverines, and other vuglaires,' more properly vulgaires, the ordinary kind. The scorpion was another sort. In an illuminated copy of the Roman de la Rose, done at the commencement of the reign of Edward IV. 1461, is the delineation of an iron cannon. The piece is placed in a kind of trough, or bed of wood, which is continued to the earth, not unlike a modern horse-artillery trail. Grose very properly says, that most of the earliest cannons were mere cylinders, fixed on sledges and being often composed of iron bars, iron plates rolled, or even jacked leather hooped, could be fired, because they were loaded by chambers fixed in at the breech. At this time they were generally purchased from abroad; and though Henry VII. and VIII. had Flemish gunners to teach the art, yet they did not VOL. III. understand it upon mathematical principles; and in the sixteenth century the ordnance rarely made more than one discharge, the cavalry being able to charge them before they could load again. Aliens were employed in 1543 in casting great brass ordnance, though one John Owen was said to have so done in 1521. In 1626, 2 Charles I. one Arnold Rotespen had a patent for making guns in a manner before unknown in this kingdom. Culverines were an early denomination of a species of large cannon; and when the distinction between battering-pieces (all above twelve pounders) and field-pieces commenced, according to Dr. Meyrick, temp. Henry VIII. the appellations were numerous. These names were derived from the tubes which had been used to eject the Greek fire, being fashioned so as to represent the mouths of monsters. The basilisk, the largest, shot stones of 200 pounds weight. It was so denominated from a basilisk sculptured upon it. The shot in this reign consisted of iron, lead, and stone balls; and ladles and sponges were used. Different proportions were given by various nations to pieces of the same denomination; but the following table of Ordnance in the reign of Elizabeth, applies in the main to the times immediately preceding : The change introduced in the military art by the modern artillery, Dr. Smith observes, has enhanced greatly both the expense of exercising and disciplining any particular number of soldiers in time of peace, and that of employing them in time of war. Both their arms and ammunition are become more expensive. A musket is a more expensive machine than a javelin or a bow and arrows; a cannon or a mortar than a balista or a catapulta. The powder which is spent in a modern review, is lost irrecoverably, and occasions a very considerable expense. The javelins and arrows which were thrown or shot in an ancient one, could easily be picked up again, and were besides of very little value. The can C on and the mortar are not only much dearer, but much heavier machines than the balista or catapulta, and require a greater expense not only to prepare them for the field but to carry them to it. As the superiority of the modern artillery too over that of the ancients is very great, it has become much more difficult, and consequently much more expensive, to fortify a town so as to resist, even for few weeks, the attack of that superior artillery. In modern war, the great expense of fire-arms gives an evident advantage to the nation which can best afford that expense; and consequently to an opulent and civilised, over a poor and barbarous nation. In ancient times, the opulent and civilised found it difficult to defend themselves against the poor and barbarous nations. In modern times, the poor and barbarous find it difficult to defend themselves against the opulent and civilised. The invention of fire-arms, therefore, an invention, which at first sight appears to be so pernicious, is certainly favorable, both to the permanency and to the extension of civilisation. And, on the whole, the invention of gun-powder and modern artillery may be said to have saved the effusion of human blood. Equestrian engagements (the principles on which cavalry act being nearly the same in every age,) are still similar in circumstances to those which appear so extraordinary in the battles of antiquity. The present artillery of Great Britain is admitted to be the most perfect force of that description in Europe. It was until recently divided into the artillery of the park, the horse artillery, and the battalion guns, viz. all the light pieces of ordnance attached to regiments of the line. This latter description, however, has been discontinued of late, and brigades of foot and horse now comprehend the whole of our regular artillery. A brigade of foot artillery has either five medium 12-pounders and a heavy 53-inch howitzer; five 9-pounders and ditto; five long 6-pounders and ditto; five light 6-pounders and a light 54inch howitzer; or six 3-pounders when acting in a mountainous district. In the late war the 9-pounders were more generally used, as best opposed to the 8-pounders of the French army. The guns and howitzers are accompanied by anmunition cars, upon a new principle. To every brigade is a forge cart, a camp equipage waggon, and sparegun carriage, with spare wheels, and tools for a wheeler, collar-maker, and carriage-smith. The proportioning of field and battering ordnance, for foreign service, is a business of great importance, from the knowledge which is requisite to fix upon all the numerous articies to accompany the service, and the method to be pursued in equalising, arranging, and disposing of the guns, ammunition, and stores. No certain criterion can ever be established as to the proportion of artillery to be sent upon any expedition, as it must depend entirely upon the nature of the service; and great changes are generally made to suit the ideas of the officer who is to command the army, and also those of the officer of artillery, who may be selected to accompany it. But two brigades of field artillery to a division of an army consisting of 6000 men, may be considered a good proportion, independent of the reserve park. A troop of British horse artillery has generally five 6-pounders and one light 54-inch howitzer. The French have generally 8-pounders and a 6-inch howitzer. Each troop consisting of one captain, one second captain, three subalterns, two staff serjeants, twelve non-commissioned officers, seventy-five gunners, forty-six drivers, six artificers, and one trumpeter, with eighty-six draught horses, and fifty-six riding horses, and six pieces of ordnance, with carriages for the conveyance of ammunition, camp equipage, and stores. Horse artillery was brought into the service of this country by the duke of Richmond in the year 1792. There is a colonel-commandant, two colonels en second, four lieutenantcolonels, and one major, attached to it. The movements of horse artillery are made with great celerity, and it has been found, that they are perfectly adapted to act with cavalry in the field, in their most rapid movements, and are cons:dered as forming an essential addition to the artillery service. The royal artillery drivers are a corps first formed about twelve years ago, by the duke of Richmond. Previous to the corps being established, the horses and drivers were provided by contract; but, as no reliance could be placed on the service of either men or horses so procured, it was found absolutely necessary to abolish so unmilitary and destructive a plan; and to employ able men well trained to the service. The artillery horses are now kept in the highest condition, the drivers being thoroughly drilled to the manœuvres of artillery, and capable of securing, by rapid movements, advantageous positions in the field. This change arises from the high state of excellence in which the brigades are equipped, and from the artillery men being, in particular cases, mounted upon the cars attending the brigades. A park of artillery is a sort of movable supernumerary detachment, containing not only light guns, to replace such as may be lost or taken, but 12-pounders, or 18-pounders, with 8 inch howitzers, for the purpose of defending important positions, entrenched posts, &c. breaking down bridges, and conducting sieges. Attached to it also are the reserve officers and men of this service. In expedition service, where disembarkations of artillery take place, the depot of reserve carriages, ammunition and stores, is usually formed near to the spot where the articles are landed from the ships, and a communication is kept up between the advanced park and the depot, from whence the articles are forwarded as demanded for the immediate exigencies of the park. See CANNON AND FORTIFICATION. Regiments of artillery are always encamped, half on the right and half on the left of the park The company of bombardiers (when they are formed into companies, which is the case in almost every nation except England) always takes the right of the whole, and the lieutenant colonel's company the left; next to the bombardiers, the colonels, the majors, &c. so that the two youngest are next but one to the centre or park; the two companies next to the park are the miners on the right, and the artificers on the lest. In the rear of, and thirty-six feet from, the park, are encamped the civil list, all in one line. |