The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2

Marco Polo (translated by Sir Henry Yule, revised by Henri Cordier) · c. 1298-1299 primary

passage 156 of 704 · BOOK SECOND—(*Continued*). > CHAPTER LXX. (8/8)

↪ you wandered here via “effects of exploding artillery shells” — the connecting lines are tinted below

in brief

The passage continues with calculations of counterpoise and range, mentions material logistics for large machines, and then compares mangonel performance to mortar fire, giving Froissart’s siege accounts and cases of precise targeting.

Marino Sanudo, about the same time, speaks of the range of these engines with a prophetic sense of the importance of artillery in war:—

“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 Passé 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 Cœur 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

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topics: battle and tactics · naval warfare and sea power · supply, logistics, and encampment

The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2 · Marco Polo (translated by Sir Henry Yule, revised by Henri Cordier) · 1298–1299