Medieval France
. Playing a major role in medieval warfare, artillery evolved parallel to the art of fortification. Although Roger Bacon introduced gunpowder to the West ca. 1260 and the English used cannon at Crécy in 1346, it took a further century of experimentation before cannon supplanted trébuchet (i.e., tension) artillery. Improvement of explo-sives, projectiles, and guns was impeded by the difficulties in obtaining adequate amounts of matériel and equipment. But by 1400 cannon had come into regular use, and the final campaigns of the Hundred Years’ War made their superiority unmistakable. Either protecting sappers or breaching walls themselves, they became an indispensable tool in sieges. In response, defense tactics and military architecture changed rapidly after 1450. Governments were compelled to modernize fortifications, and every town was driven to acquire artillery for its own defense.
Following French use of artillery at Formigny (1450) and Castillon (1453), where cannon were shown to be useful on the field as well as in siege warfare, the Valois monarchy led the way in the perfection of technology, in the development of an institutional infrastructure, and in the exploitation of the full potential of the new arms. Gaspard Bureau, maître de l’artillerie for Charles VII, formed a permanent force of cannoniers that grew steadily thereafter.
Limited range, inadequate rates of fire, and immobility limited reliance on artillery for the remainder of the 15th century, and cannon remained auxiliary to cavalry and infantry in the army of Louis XI. Only the triumphs of Charles VIII, who made dramatic use of artillery in Brittany and in the Italian campaign of 1494, removed all doubt that only armies with adequate artillery could hope to prevail in modern warfare.
Paul D.Solon
[See also: ARMOR AND WEAPONS; RECONQUEST OF FRANCE; WARFARE]
Contamine, Philippe. Guerre, état et société a la fin du moyen âge: études sur les armées des rois de France 1337–1494. Paris: Mouton, 1972, p. 757.
——. War in the Middle Ages, trans. Michael Jones. London: Blackwell, 1984.
De Lombars, Michel. Histoire de l’artillerie française. Paris: Charles-Lavanzelle, 1984.
Patrick, John Merton. Artillery and Warfare During the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. Logan: Utah State Univer-sity Press, 1961.
Vale, Malcolm G.A. War and Chivalry. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981.
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