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.
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