The Great Art of Artillery, Part One

TO THE READER

...those exercises in which those who give themselves to this work are accustomed to be steeped. We have also observed that in the military state, this art alone possesses such power and is held in such high esteem among all people that it very often leads its practitioners to the highest ranks of honor. We have sometimes been permitted to see that not only those who understood it perfectly, but also those who had deluded the common people with a false opinion of their own skill—so that because they had learned to speak, everything they said was believed—attained the most important military positions and offices. Therefore, from a tender age, having put aside all other exercises concerning political life (in which the wishes of our elders and the state of our condition wished us to dwell), we first initiated ourselves into the sacred rites of the military. Then, subsequently, we devoted all our strength to mastering this art. We were held by such a desire for it that we spared no expense—however much it was done at the greatest cost to our personal resources—if anything of that kind offered itself which either escaped our knowledge or which we had not yet put into practice.

But when we had learned, both from the advice of friends and from our own experience, how short our equipment was, and that we could never reach the intended goal at which we were aiming if we learned this art in the common way, we realized that many other things were required to acquire a knowledge of this art that is perfect and absolute in every detail. For this reason, we learned many arts, both liberal and mechanical, which assist or adorn the Ars Magna Great Art. Among the liberal arts, we count Arithmetic, Geometry with its branches, Mechanics or Statics, Hydraulics, Pneumatics, Civil Architecture, and Military Architecture or Fortification, Drawing, Optics, and Tactics. We also acquired some knowledge of natural and chemical philosophy. To these, we added the more noble crafts, such as Modeling, Sculpture, Metal-engraving, and the art of Casting.

Therefore, equipped and armed with such things—if not in their entirety (for that is not possible for human genius, since a single science or craft requires a whole person, and a man’s life barely suffices to learn one thing properly: what then must be said of many?), at least in the greater part and as our art requires—we made a profession of it. Through many most famous Belgian sieges, by exercising military practice and performing the duties and offices of Artillery pertaining to it, we noted many things; some we discovered ourselves, others we learned from others. We have decided to make all these things known to you, studious and candid reader, in this little work.

Now, there were many and very valid reasons by which we were greatly moved to bring these things to light. Among these, not least of all, must be placed this: that among all the authors we have read (as many as have come into our hands), both ancient and recent, who have written something on Pyrotechnia the art of fire-making/artillery, we have observed no certain or just method, nor any arrangement and description sufficient and suitable to the dignity of so great an art. Instead, for the most part, it has been the custom for everyone to write down certain observations without any rules taken from mathematical truths or natural philosophy, and without being proven by practice—and done so incorrectly and confusedly, or at least simply and according to the grasp of the unlearned commoners. Hence, this noble science has even fallen into a certain low esteem among some; for you may now find that our pyrotechnicians (if it is fair to call them by this name) are, for the most part, unlearned in all the liberal arts. Content with what they know how to do with their hands, they neither want nor are able to scrutinize higher and more recondite matters, and they plainly relegate this art to the ranks of sordid crafts.

Therefore, in order to defend this art—which is easily the leader of all other liberal arts—from this supreme injury, and to show its excellence and dignity to the whole world, and also so that it might become known to those who agree with the opinion that this art consists solely of manual practice and cannot be comprehended by the rules that any discipline claims for itself, how great a difference there is between an ignorant and a learned pyrotechnician, it seemed to us good to write this work of our Artillery for public utility. There is another thing, also, that impelled and moved me to perform the same task: namely, to please my country and my countrymen, who always desire knowledge of this art with such longing, and honor it above all other military matters. Yet they are most destitute of books from which they could learn it, and if they have any translated into the native idiom (for we hardly have one or two Latin ones that are common to us and other nations), they are very maimed and do not treat the science as a whole. Finally, a third cause, and one not of small moment, gave us the handle both to write these things and to bring them into the public light...