Episode 5: Crecy to Constantinople ~ Part 3

Welcome to “Fire Mission Battery!” A podcast history of artillery.

I’m your host Jon Moore

A missed month, apologies, the virus finally caught with me a year and a day after my first jab.

I’m back on deck with a slightly diminished sense of taste and a slightly more fogged brain but that latter might have been happening anyway!

This episode we are exploring the areas outside the Anglo-Frankish conflict of the 100 Years War.

The first mention of artillery in a Russian context was during the siege of Moscow in 1382 by Tokhtamysh Khan who had united the Blue and White Hordes of the Golden Horde between 1380 and 1396. The Russians appear to have used a howitzer type known locally as a tyufyaks. Like much of the European world at this time the Russians continued to use trebuchets and catapults in unison with gunpowder weapons until the mid 15th century when the destructive power of the latter outstripped the former. It wasn’t until 1475 that Ivan III established a gun foundry in Moscow that local production began. We’ll return to Ivan after we covered the fall of Constantinople.

Speaking of which the Byzantines acquired some 250mm weapons of about a metre in length. The first reported use of artillery by the Eastern Romans was during the Siege of Constantinople of 1396 they made use of a few large bombards, manned by Geonese or “Franks” from the Galata region of the city. They were, apparently, extraordinarily loud and this was sufficient to drive off the Turks.

By 1442 the Ottomans returned the favour in yet another investment of the city using “Falconets” as their main armament. There’s an image over at the website for those who are interested. And you’ll see from the pic, the “Falconet” is pretty much the pattern for field/light guns for the next 400 odd years. The pic is from the 1500s but the design was set by the mid 1400s. The carriage holding the barrel with an ability to adjust for elevation, two large wooden spoked wheels with iron tyres and the shape was set. To be fair, it is difficult to think of a different setup that would work as well. Form following function, so to speak.

This siege, 1442, bothered western Christendom to such an extent the pope put out a call for artillery pieces to be donated to the Byzantines. All pieces that arrived after this date were donated and no new pieces were commissioned by the Eastern Romans.

Whilst the Byzantines were relying upon the kindness of strangers, the Ottomans were busy commissioning weaponry like it was the next new thing, which it was. At the 1453 siege of Constantinople they had in their artillery train 68 Hungarian made cannon. The largest was 8 metres in length and weighed over 18,000 kg. A true monster, it was dug into position, had a gun crew of 200 and fired a stone ball of 550 kg. That’s while in action. To move this beast required 70 oxen and allegedly 10,000 men. That last figure seems excessive but labour costs were considerably lower then, especially so for slaves so it could be legit.

Originally the Byzantines had been offered two of these by Orban an Hungarian master artillery founder. The cost though was beyond the Romans so the guns were hawked to the Ottomans.

The Turkish bombardement lasted 55 days. The Greek chronicler Kritovoulos describes it thus:

Quote

And the stone, borne with enormous force and velocity, hit the wall, which it immediately shook and knocked down and was itself broken into many fragments and scattered, hurling the pieces everywhere and killing those who happened to be nearby.

End Quote

This tells us the technology of trebuchets was being adapted to gunpowder artillery. Throw a stone in high arc with a trebuchet or blast it in low angle from a cannon. Either way the projectile is, well, projected.

According to Peifer, link in the show notes, artillery development had effects upon economies too. Adapting bronze bell casting to artillery increased demand fro tin across Europe. Similarly, once iron foundry skills were sufficient, iron ore became an economic advantage. Master gunners, smelters, gun casters, and even specialist gunners were hired across the continent to defend cities. Those with the guns were less likely to be subjugated than those without them. As was observed at Constantinople, traditional stone walls were not good defences against this new technology. Towers were not particularly well suited to gun emplacements even when they provided a height and hence range advantage over the attacking forces.

This led to what was known as “Italian Tracing”. Much lower walls and towers, built as circular structures with increasingly loping walls as time passed. These were then linked to other similar structures with the towers eventually forming arcs of interlocking fields of fire. The lower profile meant a smaller target and the sloping walls more useful for deflecting projectiles rather than absorbing the full brunt of the force directed at them.

You’ll recall from earlier episodes that Chinese fortress building was already along these lines with low wide walls filled with soil. These absorbed the impacts of incoming rounds much better than the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople.

Having reached this point in the story, the Fall of Constantinople and the end of the 100 Years War, next episode I’ll do a brief look back before defining the upcoming artillery types. There’s some overlap as each principality, county, duchy, kingdom and empire used their own naming practices but I’ll try to tease out themes based upon both form and function. So siege artillery could include bombards, mortars, the monsters of the Ottomans and all the way up to the railway guns used to shell Paris during WW1. Yet mortars are a whole class in their own right and part of a long discussion as to whether they are even artillery or some sort of glorified infantry weapon. I’m happy to receive opinions on both sides of that argument. There’s a large amount of material coming at the podcast but I think if we have the definitions in mind before we leap fully into the fully fledged gunpowder era, we will be doing so on firm ground.

There’s a transcript of this and every episode over at website: https://firemissionbattery.com/

Any errors, thoughts and suggestions are always welcome. One person cannot either know everything nor research it so help is always welcome.

This has been a shorter episode, thanks to that virus but I’m well and truly on the mend. Unfortunately, it is passing through work. We’re all vaccinated to the hilt as are our clients, a vulnerable group, and so people are getting crook but not bundying off. It has meant staff shortages and long hours. So rather than publish a less than acceptable episode, I delayed this one. This journey will not be a short one so I’m happy to skip a month for legitimate reasons.

Until next time, thanks for listening.