With cannons, siege warfare and castle design had to change. Stonethrowing
machines were still very effective, but the prestige attached to
cannons because of their novelty and their enormous expense made them
the ultimate royal armament. These early cannons could be fired only
ten or twenty times an hour and had to be cleaned after every shot and
regularly cooled. They were effective only at about fifty yards. Cannons
required massive earthworks to absorb the shock of firing.
Mons Meg, the six-ton cannon still to be seen in Edinburgh castle,
was cast in 1449 in Flanders for the duke of Burgundy, who presented it
to the Scottish king in 1457. Mons Meg could fire gunstones that
weighed 330 pounds nearly two miles, but the cannon was so heavy it
took 100 men to move it and then they could move it only at a speed of
three miles a day. The Scottish kings used Mons Meg as a siege weapon
for the next hundred years, as much for the impressive explosion it produced
as for its actual usefulness. After about 1540 the cannon was only
used to fire ceremonial salutes from Edinburgh castle walls. In 1681 the
barrel burst and could not be repaired.
To counter the new offensive weapons, architects created a new system
of defense in depth by using low, broad ramparts that were wide
enough to endure firing from the enemy and at the same time support
their own cannons and teams of gunners. Extremely thick masonry walls
were expensive and slow to build, so wide and low earthen ramparts faced
with stone became common. Since guns shoot horizontally, the land
around the castle walls was cleared to form a space called the glacis. As
we have seen at the castle of Angers, existing towers were cut down to
the same height as the walls and turned into firing platforms (see Figure
17). This redesign of the towers did not “slight” the castle, but rather
made it more effective in the new age of artillery warfare.
World History
