Re: Grapeshot

[John Richards]

As a small aside, years ago when the cannon was new, we loaded it with  
a handful of gravel from a path (powder bag, then handful of gravel  
and grass wad) and fired it at a certain wall. At a range of approx 30  
metres it made a circle of marks about a metre in diameter and very  
effectively demolished a rose bush (many of the stalks were cut  
straight through). Although a purely empirical test (no measurements  
were taken), it opened our eyes to the awesome effectiveness of our  
gun as an anti-personnel weapon (the little stones would quite  
certainly have caused some nasty wounds), using nothing more than some  
black powder and materials that were immediately to hand. At  
Schwarzsee, where we were able to fire the gun for the  
"Offiziersschule", we sent several large pebbles over the lake (>200  
metres) and a concrete ball well over 300metres.

It would appear that there are plenty of references to "hailshot" in  
contemporary sources, but even if sources were difficult to come by,  
it seems logical that if munition (properly stored, transported and  
subject to an inventory, and therefore recorded) was scarce, the  
gunners would just scrabble around their firing position and load  
anything "nasty" that came to hand. Much was also made up on site (and  
therefore again not recorded in an inventory). We know for example  
that Basel employed 2 stonemasons for the gun sent to Hericourt, who  
presumably did nothing else during the siege but sit in a quarry and  
produce stone shot. The ready availability of pebbles, quickly  
selected for suitability and put into a sack for easy handling, would  
not necessarily be recorded, but would certainly have been everyday  
"gunner's fare"

John



On Nov 17, 2009, at 13:12, Peter Keel wrote:

> Many thanks.
>
> I remember seeing those bags in Patrices pictures, but of course I
> couldn't remember the name of the original artist, and didn't know
> the name of the codex. It does not seem to be available
> in digital form anywhere, tough.
>
> The "Hailleshot", by the way, is described in the "Feuerwerkbuch von  
> 1420"
> (available in various codices, cpg 122 or cpg 502 for instance, which
> are available in digital form, and transcribed on http://www.feuerwerkbuch.de/)
> as "Hagel", meaning  in that case stones the size of eggs packed in a
> contraption of mostly clay. Also described is the "Ygel" (Hedgehog),
> which consists of a metal sheet in front of a wooden block, and up to
> 400 pieces of metal loaded in front of that.
>
> Cheers
> Seegras
> -- 
> "Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve
> neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
> "It's also true that those who would give up privacy for security are
> likely to end up with neither." -- Bruce Schneier
>