By the start of the WARS OF
THE ROSES in the late
1450s, artillery had been in use in northern Europe for over a
century, and most civil war armies included at least a small
artillery force.
The pace of advancement in European gun
technology had quickened in the 1370s, when the small, inaccurate,
and unreliable artillery used early in the HUNDRED YEARS WAR gave way to larger, more powerful
weapons able to breach the high stone walls of towns and castles.
Although the new artillery could still be
unpredictable-JAMES II of
SCOTLAND was killed in 1460
when one of his siege cannons exploded-the English began using such
guns with great effect in WALES and on the Scottish border in the
early fifteenth century. The new guns came in many types and sizes,
ranging from massive bombards, which could batter down walls with
huge balls of stone or iron, through a variety of
intermediate-sized serpentines, orgues, and ribaudequins, to the
smaller culverins, which could be fired from tripods or used as
handguns. Fifteenth-century cannon were made of iron or bronze,
although cast bronze weapons were most common because techniques
for casting iron did not reach a similar level of expertise until
the late sixteenth century. Because weapons were nonstandard and
each large gun fired projectiles made especially for it, the gun
makers usually also served as gunners.
This uniqueness in
projectile size caused individual large guns to be given their own
names, such as Mons Meg, now in Edinburgh Castle, a 14,000-pound
cannon with a caliber of twenty inches.
Firing a fifteenth-century artillery piece
was a slow and difficult process. The larger siege guns threw stone
and iron projectiles that could weigh hundreds of pounds. To fire
the weapon, the gunner used a firing iron-an iron bar heated in a
pan of charcoal that was kept hot and near at hand. Because one
pound of powder was required to throw nine pounds of shot, and
because the barrel had to be washed with a mixture of water and
vinegar after every firing, ten shots per hour was considered a
good rate of fire. During the Wars of the Roses, this slow rate
meant that cannon were used mainly on the eve or at the start of a
battle, firing one volley at the enemy before the hand-to-hand
combat commenced. During the night before the Battle of
BARNET, Richard NEVILLE, earl of Warwick, fired his cannon
continuously, hoping to create fear and disorder in the Yorkist
ranks; however, Warwick was unaware of how close the enemy was and
his guns overshot. To keep Warwick from learning his error,
EDWARD IV ordered his own guns
to refrain from revealing their position by returning fire. A few
weeks later at the Battle of TEWKESBURY, Edward drew the Lancastrians
out of an excellent defensive position with an opening artillery
salvo.
Nonetheless, artillery pieces were much less
of a factor in the Wars of the Roses than they were in contemporary
campaigns on the continent. Able to fire a ball about 2,000 to
2,500 paces, cannon could be used with devastating effect against
massed immobile troop concentrations, such as at river crossings,
or against town or castle walls during a siege, situations where
the slow rate of fire did not matter. But the art of fortification
was less advanced in England than elsewhere, and the English civil
wars were therefore characterized by pitched battles, not by
sieges; during the Wars of the Roses, the enemy's towns or castles
usually surrendered soon after the enemy's field armies had been
defeated.
Still, both sides recognized the growing
importance of artillery and took measures to ensure a good supply
of guns. Since about 1415, the English Crown had appointed a master
of ordnance to supervise the king's artillery. In 1456, John Judde,
a LONDON merchant, won
appointment to the post by offering to supply
HENRY VI with guns and powder at his own
expense. Judde's ambitious program of collecting and manufacturing
guns for the Lancastrians so alarmed the Yorkists that they
ambushed and killed him in June 1460 as he was supervising delivery
of a new shipment of weapons. Edward IV also appreciated the
importance of artillery, and his Masters of Ordnance (like John
Wode, who held office from 1463 to 1477) were trusted members of
the royal household. Edward was said to frequently inspect his
ordnance, and his campaigns usually included a sizable artillery
train. Thus, by HENRY VII's
reign, the English Crown housed a large and growing collection of
ordnance in the TOWER
OF LONDON.
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