PRACTICAL MANUAL

OF ARTILLERY,

BY THE MAGNIFICENT SIGNOR LUIGI COLLADO

SPANIARD, FROM BAETICA, FROM NEBRIJA.

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OF THE GOOD QUALITIES THAT MUST CONCUR IN THE person of the General of Artillery, and of the importance of his office, and the correct administration of it. Chap. 1.

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It would be an impertinent thing to wish for anyone to qualify and ennoble the office of the General of Artillery with words, even if they were full of weight and great efficacy, for it is of such quality and importance that, without any doubt, it must be preferred over all other exercises that are employed both in land factions and in sea battles, regarding the military discipline of our times. Since, wherever Artillery intervenes, all other orders cease, machines are useless, and all other instructions of the old and ancient militia are without any effect. Nor can it be denied that those honorable successes of war consist entirely in the variety of prosperous or adverse cases and the varying outcomes of unstable fortune. Therefore, the very important actions of Artillery depend solely on the knowledge and experience of a practical and prudent General of it, who delights in perfectly understanding the stupendous effects and incredible power of that horrible instrument he handles, and knows how to prevail with it in such a manner that, while offending the enemy without being offended himself, the Prince under whose protection he serves may, through it, bring back honor and achieve the desired end of the enterprise. One reads in ancient histories, and even in modern ones, of many valiant Captains who, notwithstanding that they gave their enterprises high and sublime beginnings, lost them through the intervention of various means and sinister outcomes, and met an unfortunate end. And of many others who, judging themselves (by human judgment) to have already lost the day, unexpectedly and in an instant achieved high and glorious victories. This is all to the contrary in the exercise of Artillery and the enterprises concerning it. For it will be of little effect and utility to any enterprise if one has erred in the principle of the Artillery action, or the means to which that tremendous and infernal machine is applied. And that this is the truth, experience (the universal teacher of all arts) teaches us of how little fruit it would be if a General of Artillery were to go to war with the utmost diligence, with sumptuous apparatus of munitions and a large number of pieces, and many elected Gunners to operate them, artificial fires, and other innumerable instruments and inventions, and yet, having arrived with so much expense to his King or Prince at the point of performing an Artillery action, he did not know how to make use of the art, nor how to make the convenient