Of the Artillery:

Artillery, machines that hurl projectiles by explosive means, have been part of the armament of the British and European armies since the 14th Century. The early history of cannons and gunpowder is extremely vague but we do know that cannon were in existence by 1326 as they are mentioned in a Decree of the City of Florence for that year. Also a manuscript dated 1326 held in the British Museum entitled De Notabilitanibus Sapiens et Prudentia Regum written by Walter de Milimete, shows one of these early weapons (known as a vasi by the Italians and a pot-de-fer by the French) being fired by a soldier in a chain mail armour.

Until the 1500's artillery pieces were made up of the small cast bronze pot-de-fer set on wooden shafts or the larger siege guns made from iron bars and hoops hammered and welded together set on carriages of large tree trunks and elevated by placing blocks of wood beneath it. Artillery developed rapidly with the introduction of trunnions (small rounded pieces from each side enabling the gun to elevated, mounted and unmounted quickly) and carriages enabling the transportation of the pieces. The first cast iron guns made in England were cast by Ralphe Hogg at his foundry in Sussex in 1542. Henry VIII established the first permanent Train of Artillery in England and appointed a Master Gunner and 12 gunners stationed at the Tower of London. Light mobile artillery was used on the Continent many years before its introduction to England and it was the King of Prussia who first used artillery in mobile warfare. The British followed suit with battalion guns, a number of light guns that moved with the infantry. It is very difficult to ascertain much information about the performances of the guns as it was not until the middle of the 1600's that artillery became a science and books of an instructional nature were written and published. The Gunners Dialogue, by Robert Norton, published in 1643, described the type of pieces used in the artillery at the start of the Civil War:-

Besides those named above there was also recorded a Syren - 8100lbs, Sparrow - 4600lbs, Dragon -1400lbs and a Base at 450lbs.

Up until the 1640s the majority of the guns were owned privately and were hired with their mates by militants to fight alongside them. On the 15th February 1645 the New Model Army, under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax, came into being. The infantry and cavalry were completely reorganised but the artillery was left unchanged and not considered very important. However the Train still had to be formed in time of need around the nucleus of gunners and their mates who were stationed at the various coastal forts and towns of England. Drivers and horses were hired from civilians and the gunners still marched on foot to the place of battle. There had been various attempts to form a mobile artillery however, it wasn't until the early seventeenth-century that Gustav Adolphus, King of Sweden used horse drawn artillery with the use of limbers (a two wheeled axle or carriage to which a gun carriage was attached) and introduce them into England.

Gunpowder

It is generally thought that the Chinese were the first to discover gunpowder. Ufano Valensco, a Spanish author, wrote that powder and guns were found in China in the year 85 by King Vitey, however there is no other documented evidence to prove this or that it was known in any other country. The introduction of gunpowder into Europe was by a friar by the name of Roger Bacon (1214-1292), being the first known man to record the formula and properties of gunpowder but there is no evidence linking the discovery of gunpowder to Bacon himself. Fifty years later, around 1320, Bartold Schwartz from Mentz, a monk specialising in chemistry, also discovered the properties of gunpowder and was the first man known to apply its properties for military use.