The Origin of Artillery

They could be quite effective, hurling heavy stone balls with great smashing power against, or from within, walls of wood or stone. In Europe, there was wide adoption of the trebuchet from 1200 in response to thickening of military architecture in towns and encastellation of the countryside. It was not until the 15th century that normal military usage modified the original term to ”artillery pieces,” which distinguished gunpowder cannon from nonchemical artillery.

Chemically powered or gunpowder artillery had appeared earlier than that, but it took centuries of slow development for cannon to be recognized as a special arm of war. The appearance on the late medieval battlefield of effective cannon hastened the end of individual combat in Europe and the chivalric values that supported it. (This pattern was repeated two centuries later when the samurai first faced gunpowder weapons in the hands of other samurai or peasants or wild ashigaru.) While this shift took centuries to complete, the pattern was everywhere the same: artillery in the hands of kings made possible centralized power, eroded established privileges of aristocracy, and made low-born master gunners a greatly valued military asset.

Why? Because artillery permitted literal bombardment of the old, fragmented feudal order into submission to the monarch. That partly reflected the great expense of artillery, which for the most part only kings (or emperors or shoguns or sultans) could sustain, and even they had difficulty. It also arose fromartillery’s raw destructive power: siege cannon, especially those firing cast iron cannonballs rather than cut stone (c.1380), enabled kings to batter in the castellan fortresses of rude or recalcitrant barons and reduce to rubble the walls of cities. Field armies had a new importance as the Middle Ages ended, for many reasons, including the rise of money economies and decline in respect for feudal institutions and social and religious mores.

An additional reason was that armies with the latest artillery could do what only the chevauche´e did before: cause so much destruction that the other side felt compelled to attack first, even though the advantage remained with the defense. Smaller nations such as the Flemings, Scots, and Swiss were able to use new infantry tactics and formations to fend off larger predatory neighbors, such as France, England, and Burgundy. Still, in the end it was only the wealthiest and most powerful monarchs who could afford enough of the best artillery and use it to smash internal enemies and overrun smaller neighbors. The new logic of expensive firepower thus advantaged the Great Powers over the small and middling, until independent cities, duchies, baronies, and petty kingdoms, with some exceptions in each case, fell to one greater sovereign or another.

This meant even further concentration of military and political power, and sharp differentiation among the survivor sovereigns of the European states system. However slowly, change wrought by artillery was inexorable and revolutionary, as gunpowder weapons excited the minds of warriors and improved in reliability and rate of fire. Records show Muslim armies in Spain using gunpowder cannon by 1342, and that three years later Edward III had 100 cannon stored in the Tower of London. Earlier or comparable dates exist concerning China. Similarly, rates of fire accelerated over time.

In the late 14th century a cannon might be fired just five times per day, with the largest capable of only a single firing. By the mid-15th century the trend was toward mid-sized siege guns that could fire several dozen times per day, which made them vastly more effective and shortened sieges. Casting and related gunpowder technology only slowly spread to regions or economies where both sides lacked the wealth to buy or make enough guns to make a difference on the field of battle, but where the technology did catch on it was embraced with rarified enthusiasm and its use in battle and sieges became universal and dramatic.