Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/533

MILITARY POLICY OF THE SOVEREIGNS. 387 served, corresponded with the rudeness of its manu- chapter facture. It is noticed as a remarkable circumstance ., by the chronicler, that two batteries, at the siege of Albahar, discharged one hundred and forty balls in the course of a day. '^ Besides this more usual kind of ammunition, the Spaniards threw from their engines large globular masses, composed of certain inflammable ingredients mixed with gun- powder, " which, scattering long trains of light," says an eyewitness, " in their passage through the air, filled the beholders with dismay, and, descend- ing on the roofs of the edifices, frequently occa- sioned extensive conflagration. ^^ The transportation of their bulky engines was Roajsior ■^ _ ^ _ -^ " _ the artillery not the least of the difficulties which the Spaniards had to encounter in this war. The Moorish for tresses were frequently intrenched in the depths of some mountain labyrinth, whose rugged passes were scarcely accessible to cavalry. An immense body of pioneers, therefore, was constantly em- ployed in constructing roads for the artillery across IG Mem. de la Acad, de Hist., 17 Jj. Marineo, Cosas Memora- tom. vi. Ilust. 6. bles, fol. 174. — Pulgar, Reyes We get a more precise notion of Catolicos, cap. 44. the awkwardness with which the Some writers, as the Abbe Mi- artillery was served in the infancy gnot, (Histoire des Rois Catholi- of the science, from a fact recorded ques Ferdinand et Isabelle, (Paris, in the Chronicle of John II., that, 1766,) torn. i. p. 273.) have re- at the siege of Setenil, in 1407, five ferred the invention of bombs to lombards were able to discharge the siege of Ronda. I find no only forty shot in the course of a authority for this. Pulgar's words day. We have witnessed an in-: are, " They made many iron balls, vention, in our time, that of our large and small, some of which ingenious countryman, Jacob Per- they cast in a mould, having re- kins, by which a gun, with the duced the iron to a state of fusion, aid of that miracle-worker, steam, so that it would run like any other is enabled to throw a thousand metal." bullets in a single mmute.