early cannon and castillon

Technical innovations:

POWDER MILL. Bt 1400 recipes of gunpowder close to ideal proportions of saltpetere (75%), sulphur (12%), and charcoal (13%) came into use, though by 1450 most powder makers preferred less efficient mixtures. The reason why was a new technique of powder making that made powder far more powerful. By 1400/1420 powder was beginning to be ‘engrained’ or ‘corned’: mixed together when wet and alowed to dry into kernels. New ‘corned powder-grains’ no longer disintegrated into components (sulphur, saltpetre and charcoal), so could be prepared in advance. (Before this powder had to be mixed on the field.) Corned powder was also more efficient, because the burning between powder grains permitted a more rapid transformation of the solid into gas. (R 271).

Advances in FOUNDING cannon (bronze, brass, sometimes iron). In 14th century cannons were made by beating together strips of forged iron. The result was that such cannons often exploded. By early 15th century cannons were made along the same lines as bells (and by bell-founders), by founding iron, pouring it in molten form into moulds and then boring with a steel tipped drill to insure regularity of the bore (C 143).

METALLURGICAL INNOVATION: new process of iron smelting made the production of iron less expensive (addition of limestone ‘to the flux during the ore refinement process increased temps necessary so that iron could only be smelted in blast forges, invented c.1340, but changed structure of slag from 2FeO.SiO2 to CaO.SiO2. This meant increased output as less atoms of iron were wasted from each molecule of slag. R 269-70)

LONGER BARRELS. Barrels were lengthened. 1400 ration of barrel length to diameter of ball was about 1.5:1. By 1430 it was 3:1. Result was to increase accuracy and velocity of shot (latter because it increased amount of time over which pressure of the exploding gunpowder accelerated shot. Kinetic energy is function of square of velocity, so major increase in effectiveness of guns.

RATE OF FIRE This also permitted more rapid firing. In early 15th cent loading a gun was elaborate process involving three chambers to allow the building up of pressure: needed to fill rear three fifths of chamber with powder. Next fifth left empty, and last fifth filled by wood plug fitted into barrel with soft wood wedges. This was covered with mud and straw and allowed to dry. The powder would then be ignited and pressure would build up until the plug popped out like a champagne cork. Rogers 268: ‘This elaborate procedure so slowed down the firing process that one master gunner, who achieved the remarkable feat of firing his bombard three times in a single day and hitting different targets each time, was forced to make a pilgrimage from Metz to Rome, because it was thought he ‘could only have been in league with the devil’. Maximum rate of fire: 6-8 shot from short barreled bombards.

By late 15th century switch to tight fitting caliber iron shot allowed movement away from separate chambers and plugs.

TRANSPORT: In mid 15th century guns with trunions were mounted on carriages with two wheeled axles. Larger pieces, as previously done, were transported by carts, but from 1470s on most artillery was drawn, which made them more easily transportable and deployable in batteries (C 144)

Development of a useable handgun (called culverins--matchlocks; by 1450 a matchlock was used). Arquebus ca 1530 weighed about 50 lbs. The shot was about 1.6 ounces and the charge was about 1.6 ounces. It had a range of 120 paces point blanc and could fire 300 rounds a day. Aiming was near to impossible because of smooth bore and windage. In 1790s Prussians found that one could not rely upon hitting 6 out of 10 men standing in a line beyond 75 yards.

Use of cannons in war in 14^th century:

1337 Civdale in Friuli siege

1346 Crecy battle BUT sources differ on whether guns were used. Best sources do

not mention cannons; Villani (d. 1348) who was not present at the battle writes that guns were

used against the Genoese crossbowmen to rout them. Even if used, use was mainly sychological.

1375 St-Saveur-le-Vicomte siege French took English fortification with 40 engines,

large and small. Inconclusive. English surrendered in return for money payment.

1382 Beverhoudsveld in Flanders battle. Rebellion of burghers of Ghent led by Philip van

Artevelde against men of Bruges supporting count of Flanders. Froissart says Ghent forces had

200 carts carrying artillery–and only 7 wagons with supplies. Ghent men assumed strong position

flanked by marshes, and when the Brugeois attacked, they were met with fire from 300 cannons.

Brugeoisie routed.

1382 Rosebeke battle. Philip van Artevelde loses to French (conventional force of 10,000

men) coming in relief of besieged city Oudenarde. Philip’s battle plan was to have a steady

advance of pikemen supported by artillery and crossbow fire. Failed when French enveloped

Ghentish forces. Problems of coordinating infantry advance with gunfire.

1385 Aljubarita battle. Portuguese [7000] and John of Gaunt’s forces [700]–about 3,000 men at arms--fighting for King Joao I vs Castilian [6,000 men at arms, 2,000 light-horsemen, 10,000 infantry bowmen and spearmen--invaders supporting claims of Juan I to throne of Portugal. Portuguese were brought to battle and assumed defensive position, enhancing natural terrain with trenches, brushwood pallisades, and anti-cavalry pits. Castillians realized dangers of a charge, so bombarded Port. with 16 cannons, but produced no results. Charge on foot failed; Castilians fled and lost 2500-7500 men.

1387 Castagnaro battle. Veronese had three carts, each with 144 guns mounted in three

banks, firing stones as larges as hen’s eggs (ribaudequins). Veronese commander Oderfelli

wanted to use his guns, but carts failed to arrive in time. Hawkwood led Paduan forces to victory.

Problem of transportation.

Assessment

14^th century guns had little impact on battle because slow rate of fire, inaccuracy, and problems of transport. Attempt to mount banks of guns on carts–ribaudequin–made portability problem even worse. BUT guns became important in sieges in late 14^th and early 15^th century because the price of making gunpowder dropped and it became feasible to make guns large enough to be effective against stone walls (e.g. bombards measuring 16 and half feet long with 25 inch caliber could throw a 750 pound shot)

GUNS AND WAR IN 15^TH CENTURY

FIFTEENTH-CENTURY: HUNDRED YEARS WAR.

The sudden appearance of Joan of Arc to relieve the English siege of Orleans in 1429 and her subsequent successes, in particular over Sir John Fastolf at Patay (north of Orleans) also in 1429, reinvigorated the French war effort. Joan's influence upon the morale of the French survived her capture in 1430 and her trial and execution in 1431. Her aggressive approach to war and willingness to engage the English in battle shattered the Agincourt-inspired myth of English invincibility. But Joan did not win the war for the French. The French reconquest of territory after Joan of Arc and coronation of Charles VII (1429) was due to a combination of factors: public opinion which accepted Charles as the legitimate king; demoralization of English due to being on defensive and political disarray/weakness at home (reign of Henry VI), which led to failure of resistance (most towns and castles in Normandy surrendered in 1449-50 without a shot having been fired); superior French military organization, not only in creation of standing armies (companies of ordinance, 1445-6) but especially with establishment of an artillery service. The French ability to build up a large and well regulated artillery train helped them turn the tide in the Hundred Years War in the 1440s. The key figures in this were Maitre Jean Bureau, whom King Charles VII made Treasurer of France in 1443, and his brother Gaspard Bureau, Charles VII’s ‘Master of the Artillery.’ The brothers were natives of Champagne who came from humble origins. Before entering the service of Charles VII in 1434 Jean had been a legal official for the English regent, Duke of Bedford, while Gaspard had served the English as a gunner. In 1437 Charles VII made Jean responsible for creating an effective royal artillery train.

The siege of Orleans was the last real offensive undertaken by the English. After 1429 the English were on the defensive. Their main military objective now was to hold on to the territories they had gained under King Henry V. The war took a decisive turn against the English in 1435. In that year, the French invaded western Normandy, taking the port cities of Harfleur (temporarily) and Dieppe (permanently), which was followed by a peasants revolt against the English in Normandy’s pay de Caux; the English military commander and regent in France, Henry V’s younger brother John, Duke of Bedford died; and the Duke of Burgundy switched sides, contracting the Treaty of Arras with King Charles VII. This last was arguably the decisive blow. Much of Henry V’s success had been due to the initial neutrality and then active support he had received from the powerful Duke of Burgundy. The defection of the Burgundians made the fall of Paris in 1436 all but inevitable.

The English, meanwhile, had few options. As long as the English were on the offensive and war was profitable, the king of England could depend on the support of his nobles in prosecuting the war. But when war became a costly endeavor to retain territory, the English nobility lost its enthusiasm for the war and became more reluctant both to participate in military expeditions and vote the king war taxes in Parliament. In 1435 the professional soldier Sir John Fastolf (whose name Shakespeare appropriated for the comic figure of Falstaff, a character who had very little in common with his historical model) advised King Henry VI that sieges had become too expensive and that what was called for was a chevauchée of two armies of 750 men each every June to November: ‘burning and destroying all the lands as they pass, both house, corn, vines, and all trees that bear fruit for man’s sustenance’ together with all livestock that could not be driven off. The object was to bring the enemy ‘thereby to extreme famine.’

The final phase of the Hundred Years War (1431-1453) saw the English conducting chevauchées while the French pursued a strategy that focused on the systematic capture and reduction of the strongholds upon which English control over French territory depended. This strategy required a loyal, professionalized army and a large and a large siege train. The Bureau brothers were responsible for the latter. Jean Bureau organized and administered a system of personnel, arsenals, and magazines all geared toward providing the French Crown with “a large, reliable supply of siege guns and supporting firearms wherever and whenever the king might demand them" (Hall, Weapons and Warfare, p. 115). As Royal Treasurer and de facto chief artillery engineer, Jean was responsible for supervising the acquisition of cannons, the massive amounts of gunpowder required by those cannons, carts, horses, and other logistical support needed to move and maintain the artillery train. Gaspard, meanwhile, served as his brother Jean's technical expert. Together the Bureau brothers devised an approach to siege warfare that emphasized the digging of trenches and construction of massive earthwork ramparts and bulwarks to protect the cannons as they were brought into effective range of a castle's or city's walls.

The French reconquest of Normandy in 1449-1450 provides a dramatic example of the effectiveness of the new French military system. Four French armies operated in tandem to reduce Normandy into submission. In the space of 1 year and four days, the armies of Charles VII conducted 60 successful sieges. The French spent six months in 1346 besieging the town of Aiguillon, and King Henry V of England besieged Rouen for almost the same length of time (31 July 1418-19 Jan 1419). Although Rouen's walls were battered by shot, the city finally surrendered to Henry because of starvation rather than because of cannons. In contrast, it took only three days of bombardment in 1449 to persuade the inhabitants of Rouen to rise up against the English garrison. The Archbishop immediately began negotiations to surrender the city, and Charles VII entered in triumph on 10 November, only two weeks after the siege had begun. Even more dramatically, in 1451 the city of Bourg surrendered to the French after six days, the time it took to emplace the French cannons. The city's garrison surrendered before a shot was fired. Before 1420 lack of supplies was the critical factor in the surrender of town/castle. After 1420 guns became decisive, rendering the defenses useless.

Gunpowder also began to become effective in battle. In1450, the Duke of Suffolk, facing the loss of Normandy and the coastal ports upon which English hopes in France rested, attempted a counter attack in Brittany. The English army under the command of Sir Thomas Kyriel engaged the French at Formigny on 15 April 1450. The English deployed as they had at Agincourt, dug trenches and hammered in stakes to protect their archers and awaited the French advance. But the French did not charge. Rather, they bombarded the English flanks with coulverins, provoking the desperate English to charge the French artillery. The English, in fact, managed to capture the artillery, but as they attempted to drag it back to their lines, they were attacked by the French cavalry, which overran them. The result was 3,000 English troops either dead or captured.

Guns played an even more decisive role in the final battle of the Hundred Years War: Castillon

The Battle of Castillon, July 17, 1453 (for a fuller account with pictures, see the battle description at the Xenophon group website (maps taken from that site) http://xenophongroup.com/montjoie/castilon.htm)

17 Oct. 1452: Talbot's relief force lands in Guyenne. In 1451 the French conquered Gascony and took Bordeaux. French rule however, meant the merchants of Bordeaux were cut off from their economic lifeblood, trade with England. As a consequence, the leading citizens of Bordeaux sent an embassy to King Henry VI requesting that he send an army to liberate them. King Henry VI responded by sending a relief army of about 3,000 men under the aged English captain John Talbot, 1^st earl of Shrewsbury (c.1388-1453), the most celebrated English commander of the last phase of the Hundred Years War. He landed in the Medoc (Gascony) on 17 October. The Bordelais rose against the French and opened the gates of Bordeaux to Talbot (21 Oct). All of western Guyenne went over to Talbot, who received 3,000 more men under the command of his son, Lord de Lisle, before the end of winter.

Spring 1453: Charles VII sent three armies into Guyenne, from the north-east, the east, and south-east, all aimed at Bordeaux. Talbot decided to take them in detail. In July he went in relief of the townsmen of Castillon near Libourne (30 miles up river from Bordeaux), who were under siege.

The French forces, about 8,000-9,000 troops, were under the overall command of Jean de Blois, comte de Perigord. The artillery, however, was commanded Jean Bureau, who had build at fortified artillery park just outside of the range of Castillon’s own guns. His batteries were entrenched closer to the town and connected with the parks by communication trenches (routine precaution against sorties by townsmen). The park, built by 700 workmen, consisted of a half mile lone wavy, 200 yards wide line of trenches with a wall of earth behind it strengthened by tree-trunks. The Bureau brothers knew the local terrain from the French conquest of the area in 1451, and the irregular line of ditch and earthwork they ordered built followed a dry ancient river bed leading off a dry tributary of the Dordogne river. The irregular shape of the gun park, like the shape of the future trace Italienne fortification, was designed to permit the guns to enfilade an attacker (as intended by Bureau). Bureau had mounted on the walls about 300 small cannons.

16 July: Talbot and his army rode 20 miles from Bordeaux. He had left Bordeaux with about 10,000 men, but had arrived at Libourne with only 500 men-at-arms and 800 mounted archers. The foot soldiers had fallen behind. Talbot at daybreak (17 July) ambushed a French detachment in a nearby priory. Though Talbot decided to wait for reinforcements, he received a report that the French were moving out. What the townspeople had actually seen was dust kicked up by horses of camp followers who had been sent away. Talbot assumed that the entire French army was in retreat, decided to seize the opportunity and ordered an attack. Crossing the Lidoire brook, Talbot ordered his banner unfurled and charged, with his men shouting his battle cry, ‘Talbot, St George. They dismounted (except for Talbot) and charged right into enfilading artillery fire. For an hour Talbot assaulted the park, as his forces gradually swelled to about 4000 as his foot soldiers arrived piecemeal. Despite the raking gun fire, the Anglo-Gascon army had managed to fight its way across the ditch and to the top of the rampart when a force of 1,000 Bretons suddenly appeared on the English right, attacking them from the south across the Lidoire. The English broke. Talbot was hit by fire while attempting to rally the troops. He was killed as he lay wounded by an archer with an ax.

On 19 October 1453 Bordeaux surrendered after a blockade and siege. The Hundred Years War had come to an end.

FIFTEENTH-CENTURY: SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE, 1453. 1453 was also the year that the greatest fortified city in Christendom, Constantinople, fell to the Turks. Gunpowder played a critical role in this event. Sultan Mahomet II (1451-1481) employed German and Hungarian cannon founders to assault Constantinople with artillery. The Turks set up fourteen batteries, each with several great bombards and 56 small cannons. There were two great guns (50,000 pounds), each of which required 70 oxen and 100 men to move from Adrianople to the Bosporous. It took two hours to load and could only be fired a few times a day. They fired stone balls 3 ft in diameter weighing 800 lbs. The siege began early in April and lasted 7 weeks (28 May) before Constantinople’s walls were breached and the city taken by storm.

STRATEGIC CONSEQUENCES OF CANNONS IN THE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY. Cannons both royalized and proletarianized warfare. It also made battles militarily reasonable. As long as the military landscape of medieval Europe was dominated by great castles and walled cities, victory in battle did not necessarily mean the acquisition of territory. For the latter, sieges were necessary. Hence, the dominant offensive strategy from the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries involved ravaging the enemy’s countryside in preparation for systematically besieging the enemy’s strongpoints. The invading force needed to be sufficient to threaten battle, but would not seek battle unless the commander believed that conditions favored him. The defensive counter was to garrison and supply the strongpoints, create a shadow army to prevent the invader’s forces from fanning out in search of supplies, and wait until the invader’s provisions were exhausted. As with the invader, the defender avoided battle unless the odds were greatly waited in his favor. But with the creation of effective siege artillery all this changed. Since one could now take towns by quick sieges, it was no longer a sufficient strategy to hole up behind town and castle walls and outwait the enemy. To defeat the invader, a defender now had to risk battle. BUT the improvement in artillery was met by end of 15th and early 16th century with an improvement in defenses: the Trace Italienne or bastion fortification, which was built with earth and brick walls designed to absorb rather than shatter under the impact of cannon balls, and which had integrated gun platforms to counter siege artillery. This meant a return in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to campaigns of maneuver and sieges involving thousands of men, great financial expense, and long investments of time.