Bombard

Origins

Guns appeared in Europe in the early fourteenth century. A manuscript made for the English king Edward III in 1326 shows a small vase-shaped gun firing a large arrow, and for decades most guns stayed small, like the Hand Cannon. In the late fourteenth century gunmakers began to build much larger pieces to knock down walls, a job previously done by the Trebuchet and by mining. These great guns were called bombards, a name probably taken from the Latin word for a booming noise. They grew larger through the fifteenth century. The Pumhart von Steyr, made in Austria in the early 1400s, had a bore of about 80 centimeters. Mons Meg, forged at Mons in 1449 for the Duke of Burgundy and given to James II of Scotland in 1457, weighs about six tonnes.

Design & Construction

Bombards were made in two ways. Iron bombards were built like a barrel. Long wrought-iron bars were laid side by side around a core and hammer-welded together, and red-hot iron hoops were driven over them, shrinking tight as they cooled. Many had a separate powder chamber at the back that was screwed or wedged in place. Other bombards were cast in bronze in one or two pieces, as church bells were. Most fired balls carved from stone by masons, which were lighter than iron balls of the same size and so needed less powder. Mons Meg fired stones of about 150 kilograms (330 pounds). A bombard had no wheeled carriage. It was hauled to the siege on a wagon or sledge, laid on a timber bed or earth bank, and protected by wooden screens. Loading, aiming and cooling were slow, and the largest guns fired only a few shots a day.

Combat Use

Bombards changed siege warfare in the fifteenth century. In the last years of the Hundred Years War the French artillery train organized by the brothers Jean and Gaspard Bureau took English-held towns and castles in Normandy and Gascony in days or weeks rather than months. The best-known bombard was the great gun at the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Orban, a gun founder usually described as Hungarian, first offered his skills to the Byzantine emperor Constantine XI, who could not pay him. He then went to Sultan Mehmed II, who gave him everything he needed. At Edirne in early 1453 Orban cast a bronze gun that the Greek chroniclers say was about 8 meters (some 27 feet) long, firing stones that weighed several hundred kilograms; their figures vary. A test shot is said to have flown about a mile. Moving the gun roughly 140 miles to Constantinople reportedly took some sixty oxen and hundreds of men. Placed opposite the land walls, it could fire only a handful of times a day, perhaps seven. Some accounts say it cracked early in the siege. It was one of dozens of Ottoman guns, and together they battered the ancient walls for seven weeks.

Legacy

In 1464 the Ottoman founder Munir Ali cast the Dardanelles Gun, a bronze bombard of about 17 tonnes made in two pieces that screw together. In 1807 old guns of this kind in the forts of the Dardanelles fired huge stone shot at a British squadron under Admiral Sir John Duckworth, causing casualties. The Dardanelles Gun was given to Britain in the 1860s and is now at the Royal Armouries' Fort Nelson, while Mons Meg stands at Edinburgh Castle. By the 1490s lighter cast bronze guns on wheeled carriages, firing iron balls, were replacing the great bombards. They led to guns such as the Culverin, and to low, thick-walled bastion forts built to resist them.