Cannons and Artillery

podcast Transcript

Over the last several centuries, one of the weapons that has defined warfare has been artillery.

It was used in the conquest of Constantinople by ships on the high seas, reached its peak during the First World War, and is still in use today.

What has allowed this weapon to remain in use for so long is technological advancements, which have made artillery more accurate, powerful, and deadly.

Learn more about cannons and artillery and how they evolved and shaped warfare over the centuries on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

In a previous episode, I discussed the history of gunpowder.

Gunpowder was one of the four great inventions of ancient China, but the remarkable thing is that gunpowder existed for centuries before the development of firearms or artillery.

We have evidence of gunpowder existing in the second century, but it wasn’t until the 13th century that evidence of the first cannon appears.

It was the discovery that a confined charge of gunpowder could throw a projectile farther and harder than a siege engine, such as a trebuchet, that marked the real beginning of artillery.

These early Chinese cannons were akin to firearms and served as a precursor to what they would become.

In the same century that the first proto-cannons appeared in China, the secret of gunpowder escaped China, most likely by Muslim traders and the Mongols. Once it left China, it spread quickly.

The first cannons began to appear in Europe in the early 14th century, less than a hundred years after they first appeared in China.

These early weapons faced several challenges: how to contain the explosive force without the barrel bursting, how to load projectiles efficiently, and how to aim with any degree of accuracy.

Initially, they were more psychological weapons than practical military tools. These early pieces, often called “bombards,” were massive, unwieldy devices that required teams of specialists to operate.

The famous Mons Meg cannon, built around 1449 for King James II of Scotland, weighed over six tons and could fire stone balls weighing 330 pounds, but it required hours to load, aim, and fire just a single time.

The critical early advancement was learning to cast cannons from bronze and later iron.

Casting melts iron and pours it into a mold to solidify in shape, while forging heats iron short of melting and shapes it by hammering or pressing to create its structure.

This casting technique, perfected in the 15th century, enabled the creation of much stronger and more reliable barrels that could withstand greater internal pressures. The stronger barrels meant artillery crews could use larger powder charges, dramatically increasing range and impact.

During this period, artillery began to reshape military architecture. Traditional high stone walls, which had dominated medieval fortification for centuries, became vulnerable to sustained cannon bombardment.

The siege of Constantinople in 1453 demonstrated this dramatically when Ottoman cannons, including the massive “Basilica” cannon, breached walls that had stood for over a thousand years.

The Basilica was an immense bronze bombard built by the Hungarian engineer Orban for Mehmed II in 1453. It was cast at Edirne, Turkey, and hauled by teams of oxen and hundreds of laborers to the siege lines outside Constantinople, where it fired huge carved stone balls at short range to batter the massive Theodosian Walls.

Its sheer size demanded heavy wooden beds, custom earthworks, and cooling between shots, so the rate of fire was only a few rounds per day. The cannon needed constant repair and specialist crews to handle the charges and the projectiles.

Despite the fact that it wasn’t actually very practical, it became legendary for being the weapon to breach the walls that hadn’t been breached in a thousand years.

It should also be noted that at the time, the projectiles were mostly stone instead of iron cannonballs simply because they were easier to manufacture.

The 16th century marked a crucial transition from crude experimentation to the development of artillery science. Military engineers, such as Niccolò Tartaglia, began applying mathematical principles to ballistics, studying projectile trajectories and developing the first scientific approaches to gunnery.

This period saw the emergence of standardized calibers and the beginning of interchangeable ammunition.

One of the most significant innovations was the development of wheeled carriages that made cannons truly mobile. Earlier cannons had been essentially siege weapons, moved with enormous difficulty and used primarily against static targets.

Mobile artillery could accompany armies in the field, providing direct fire support and tactical flexibility previously impossible.

Cannons were also built with trunnions, which are simply pegs protruding off either side of the cannon so that the barrel could pivot on a carriage.

The technical challenge of creating reliable ignition systems also drove innovation during this era. Early cannons employed simple matchlock mechanisms, where a burning slow match was manually applied to a touch hole filled with fine priming powder.

This system was unreliable in wet weather and dangerous for gun crews. The development of more sophisticated firing mechanisms, including early flintlock systems adapted from small arms, improved both reliability and safety.

Naval artillery matured in the same era. Ships mounted broadside batteries of iron guns on wooden carriages, and naval architects redesigned hulls to support heavy ordnance on multiple decks.

Cast iron gun production in places like England’s Weald region made naval gunnery cheaper and more plentiful. Sea fights shifted from exclusively boarding actions to ranged gunnery duels, and coastal fortresses evolved into low earthen bastions that could survive cannon fire.

One thing most people don’t realize about cannon battles at sea is that they were notoriously inaccurate. While cannons could and did sink ships, more often than not, they simply disabled a ship by striking the mast. The reason ships had so many cannons was due to their limited accuracy.

The 17th century witnessed the transformation of artillery from a specialized craft to a professional military science. This change reflected both technological advances and new tactical thinking about how cannons should be integrated into military operations.

The Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus revolutionized field artillery by developing lightweight cannons that could keep pace with infantry and cavalry. His “leather guns,” cannons, which were copper tubes bound with leather and rope to reduce weight, represented early experiments in making artillery truly mobile.

The leather gun wasn’t successful, but they demonstrated the growing recognition that artillery needed to be flexible rather than just powerful.

More successful were the French innovations under Louis XIV and his artillery commander, Jean-Baptiste de Gribeauval. The Gribeauval system, introduced in the 1760s, standardized French artillery around a few specific calibers, created interchangeable parts, and developed systematic training programs for artillery officers.

This standardization enabled the manufacture of ammunition, spare parts, and replacement equipment in advance, allowing for their distribution where needed and dramatically improving logistical efficiency.

The technical improvements during this period were substantial. Cannons became more precisely manufactured, with improved boring techniques that created smoother and more consistent barrel interiors.

This improved accuracy and allowed for tighter-fitting projectiles that captured more of the explosive force. The development of more effective gunpowder compositions, with better ratios of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur, increased the power available from each charge.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s famous declaration that “God fights on the side with the best artillery” reflected the profound impact of cannons on warfare by the early 19th century. Napoleon, himself trained as an artillery officer, understood better than most commanders how to concentrate firepower for maximum tactical effect.

The technical advances of this period focused on improving the rate of fire, accuracy, and battlefield mobility. French artillery could now fire approximately two rounds per minute, a significant improvement over earlier systems.

The development of explosive shells represented another major advancement. While solid shot remained the primary anti-personnel and anti-fortification ammunition, hollow projectiles filled with gunpowder and equipped with timed fuses could explode above or among enemy formations. These shells were particularly effective against cavalry and infantry in the open, extending artillery’s lethal reach beyond direct impact.

By the 19th century, although advances had been made in the use of artillery and the manufacture of cannons, the basic design hadn’t changed significantly.

Almost all cannons were smooth-bored and muzzle-loaded.

This all changed with the Industrial Revolution.

The introduction of rifling, spiral grooves cut into the cannon’s bore, dramatically improved accuracy by spinning projectiles in flight. Rifled cannons could hit targets at ranges where smoothbore artillery could barely be aimed effectively. However, rifling also required more precise manufacturing and created new challenges in loading, since projectiles had to engage with the rifling grooves.

Equally revolutionary was the development of breech-loading mechanisms that allowed cannons to be loaded from the rear rather than the muzzle. This change might seem simple, but it required solving complex engineering problems related to creating gas-tight seals that could withstand explosive pressures while still opening and closing reliably.

Breach-loading dramatically increased the rate of fire and allowed gun crews to work in more protected positions.

The other major advancement was the replacement of bronze and iron with steel. Steel cannons could withstand much higher pressures, allowing for more powerful charges and longer ranges.

Steel was also more precisely manufactured than earlier materials, allowing for tighter tolerances and improved performance. The Krupp steel cannons developed in Germany became legendary for their range and accuracy.

These technical advances were demonstrated devastatingly during the American Civil War, where rifled artillery could engage targets at ranges exceeding two miles. The war showed both the potential and the destructive consequences of industrialized artillery production, as both sides manufactured cannons and ammunition on previously unimaginable scales.

In the 1880s, another major change in artillery technology was the development of smokeless powder, based on nitrocellulose compounds rather than the traditional saltpeter mixture, which increased the energy available from propellant charges by approximately three times. This meant artillery could achieve much higher velocities and longer ranges without increasing the size of powder charges.

Smokeless powder also eliminated the massive clouds of white smoke that had previously revealed artillery positions immediately after firing. This “smokeless” characteristic dramatically improved artillery survivability, since gun crews were no longer automatically exposed to counter-battery fire after each shot.

The First World War represented the culmination of artillery as an industrial weapon system. The war began with artillery tactics and technology little changed from the 19th century, but by 1918, artillery had evolved into a sophisticated, scientifically managed killing system.

The technical advances during this period focused on solving the problems of trench warfare. Traditional direct-fire artillery, where gunners could see their targets, became impossible in the face of machine guns and entrenched positions. Artillery had to learn to fire indirectly, using mathematical calculations and forward observers to engage targets that were miles away.

Estimates vary, but historians generally put the total artillery expenditure in the First World War at around a billion rounds. To provide a sense of the scale of the use of artillery, the number of shells fired during the war exceeded the cumulative artillery expenditure of all prior wars in human history by at least an order of magnitude, and probably several.

World War II marked a decline in the importance of artillery. Armies weren’t static like they were in the First World War. They were highly mobile, which made it difficult for artillery to target, as well as for artillery guns to be moved and deployed.

Radar technology, originally developed for air defense, found artillery applications in counter-battery work and target acquisition. Radar could detect incoming enemy shells and calculate back to determine the firing positions of enemy artillery, enabling rapid and accurate counter-battery fire.

After the war, the development of atomic weapons created an entirely new category of artillery applications. The American M65 “Atomic Annie” cannon, tested in 1953, could fire nuclear shells with yields equivalent to thousands of tons of conventional explosives, although of course they were never used in combat.

Precision-guided munitions have transformed artillery effectiveness. GPS-guided shells can now strike targets within meters of their intended impact points, even at maximum range.

Some believe that we have now reached the end of the line for artillery. Precision-guided munitions are accurate, but they are incredibly expensive. A single shell can cost between $15,000 to $68,000, which is less than the cost of a lethal drone, which can easily take out a mobile artillery platform.

Whatever the future holds, I’m sure there will be some place for cannons and artillery, but if trends continue, they might be less important in future wars than they have been since the development of cannons over 600 years ago.