"On this subject (length of range) the engineers and experts of the army
should employ their very sharpest wits. For if the shot of one army,
whether engine-stones or pointed projectiles, have a longer range than the
shot of the enemy, rest assured that the side whose artillery hath the
longest range will have a vast advantage in action. Plainly, if the
Christian shot can take effect on the Pagan forces, whilst the Pagan shot
cannot reach the Christian forces, it may be safely asserted that the
Christians will continually gain ground from the enemy, or, in other
words, they will win the battle."
The importance of these machines in war, and the efforts made to render
them more effective, went on augmenting till the introduction of the still
more "villanous saltpetre," even then, however, coming to no sudden halt.
Several of the instances that we have cited of machines of extraordinary
power belong to a time when the use of cannon had made some progress. The
old engines were employed by Timur; in the wars of the Hussites as late as
1422; and, as we have seen, up to the middle of that century by Mahomed
II. They are also distinctly represented on the towers of Aden, in the
contemporary print of the escalade in 1514, reproduced in this volume.
(Bk. III. ch. xxxvi.)
(Etudes sur le Passe et l'Avenir de l'Artillerie, par L. N. Bonaparte,
etc., tom. II.; Marinus Sanutius, Bk. II. Pt. 4, ch. xxi. and xxii.;
Kington's Fred. II., II. 488; Froissart, I. 69, 81, 182; Elliot,
III. 41, etc.; Hewitt's Ancient Armour, I. 350; Pertz, Scriptores,
XVIII. 420, 751; Q. R. 135-7; Weber, III. 103; Hammer, Ilch. II.
95.)
NOTE 4. - Very like this is what the Romance of Coeur de Lion tells of the
effects of Sir Fulke Doyley's mangonels on the Saracens of Ebedy: -
"Sir Fouke brought good engynes
Swylke knew but fewe Sarazynes -
* * *
"A prys tour stood ovyr the Gate;
He bent his engynes and threw thereate
A great stone that harde droff,
That the Tour al to roff
* * *
"And slough the folk that therinne stood;
The other fledde and wer nygh wood,
And sayde it was the devylys dent," etc.
- Weber, II. 172.
NOTE 5. - This chapter is one of the most perplexing in the whole book,
owing to the chronological difficulties involved.
SAIANFU is SIANG-YANG FU, which stands on the south bank of the River Han,
and with the sister city of Fan-ch'eng, on the opposite bank, commands the
junction of two important approaches to the southern provinces, viz. that
from Shen-si down the Han, and that from Shan-si and Peking down the
Pe-ho. Fan-ch'eng seems now to be the more important place of the two.
The name given to the city by Polo is precisely that which Siang-yang
bears in Rashiduddin, and there is no room for doubt as to its identity.
