the art
of war. But the latter application of it was made by the Europeans
almost contemporaneously with their knowledge of its properties, and for
war it has been chiefly employed until the present time. The invention
of cannon preceded by a century that of small-arms, and it was by a
gradual reduction in the size of the former that the latter were
produced. Barbour, in his metrical Life of Robert Bruce, says, that
cannon were used by Edward III. in his first campaign against the Scots,
in 1327. He calls them "Crakys of war." They are also supposed to have
been employed by the French in the siege of Puy Guillaume, in 1338. But
the first use of them which rests on unimpeachable evidence, and which
seems to have been productive of much effect, was at the battle of
Cressy, in 1346. It is from this epoch that it is most usual to date the
employment of artillery. That day which witnessed the first efficient
use of a weapon destined to revolutionize the art of war, also witnessed
the most splendid achievements of the archers of England. The bowstrings
of the French had become useless by the dampness of the weather, while
those of the English, either on account of greater care or the different
material of which they were made, were uninjured. The cloth-yard arrows
of the English bowmen, directed with unerring skill, made terrible havoc
in the ranks of their enemies, while four pieces of artillery stationed
on a little hill contributed to their victory. The French troops had
none of them ever seen, and most of them never heard of such a weapon,
and the terror inspired by the noise and the smoke did more than the
balls to hasten their defeat.

The first cannons were rude in the extreme. They were made of bars of
iron hooped together like the staves of a barrel, and were larger at the
muzzle than at the breech. The size was very soon decreased, so that two
men could carry one, and fire it from a rest. The 400 cannon with which
Froissart said that the English besieged St. Malo, in 1378, were
probably of this kind. Nearly a century elapsed before small-arms were
invented. Sir S. Meyrick, to whom subsequent writers have been indebted
for most of their knowledge upon this subject, has given, upon the
authority of an eye-witness, the time and place of their invention. "It
was in 1430," says Bilius, "that they were contrived by the Lucquese,
when they were besieged by the Florentines." A French translation of
Quintus Curtius made by V