Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 November 1875 — Venetian Artillery. [ARTICLE]

Venetian Artillery.

_ Early guns were of very rude construction. The successive improvements, so far as they can be traced, originated in the north of Italy, and Venice certainly had a large share in bringing them into the practice of war. The brothers Alberghetti, celebrated at first as artists in metal, to whose skill we owe those beautiful fountains in the court of the Ducal Palace which still delight the eye of the traveler, were induced to turn their attention to the easting of guns, and the introduction of boring-machines is attributed to them. Leonardo da Vinci also, whose fame as an engineer is less than as a painter only in so far as his works were of a less popular nature, devised several improvements in the manufacture and management of artillery, which were easily reduced to practice by the Venetian workmen; and although he himself does not seem to have been in the immediate service of the Venetian Government, still, as his plans became known, and liis treatise on gunnerj'—probably the first scientific work on the subject—was published, he was really and effectively in the service 5 of every government whose officers had the brains to understand his teachings, or whose workmen had the hands to execute them; in which category the Venetians were pre-eminently included. Toward the end of the sixteenth cen-» tury they introduced what must be considered as a primitive form of howitzer, for tiring grape. It is described by Graziam as a sort of cask of very thick wood, barely a cubit in length and about the same bore as a mortar. It must thus have been inside about the size of a nine-gallon beer-barrel. This was loaded with leaden balls and stones as large as an egg, and is said to have done good service in the battle of Lepanto; “on board those ships on which this horrible hail fell it made terrible havoc. ’ '—Frazer's Magazine.