When Were Guns Invented?

Mongols had cannons by the late 1280s. First major use of cannon in war may have been the Turkish bombardment of Constantinople in the 1450s or thereabouts, first effective military use of personal firearms was probably in a conflict between France and Spain around 1500.

This guy is a spam bot, and, as usual, Gunga Dim doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. There is a treatise on gunpowder in Arabic which was written in the 11th century. Another such treatise in Arabic from the 13th century gives more than two dozen recipes for gun powder, and the specific use of each one. In the late 13th century, English observers of a battle in Spain saw cannon in use, and reported back to King Edward. As he had come to the throne in 1272, cannon were, obviously, in use in the 13th century. Edward's grandson, Edward III, had cannon at the siege of Caen in July, 1346. The part of the city across the river to the south was taken by a coup de main assault by English archers and Welsh lancers, who attacked despite Edward's explicit orders to fall back. Edward subsequently attempted to take the citadel using cannon, but they used stone canon balls which were completely ineffective against the stone walls, so Edward gave it up and marched away.

At the battle of Crécy on August 26th of that same year, small, light cannon which fired large iron, arrow-like bolts protected the right flank of the right hand "battle" (we would say division), commanded by Edward Woodstock (the Prince of Wales, also known as the Black Prince). Although they didn't do much damage beyond killing some horses, the French mounted knights and men at arms veered away from the flank to strike the center of Woodstock's battle, and to go down to disaster, first from the English archers, and then from the English knights and men at arms, fighting on foot.

Throughout the rest of the Hundred Years War until the early 15th century, cannon were little used, because the nickel hadn't dropped yet for the English, and they were still using stone cannon balls. At the siege of Soissons in 1414, the French used artillery along with their mangonels and trebuchets to make the breach in the city walls. The Burgundians in the city had a very expensive cannon with equally expensive Dutch gunners, all of which went to hell the first time they fired it, because it exploded. Throughout the late 14th and early 15th century, very expensive but also very competent Dutch and Italian gunners were employed at great cost to break down the walls of towns and small cities, or to slight castles. The Dutch and the Italians had figured out the part about the iron cannon balls.

The year after Soissons, in 1415, Henry V landed in Normandy and laid siege to the city of Harfleur. He used several cannon, some of them quite large. The siege didn't go well, but the cannon did what was expect of them. The English had finally discovered iron cannon balls. At the subsequent battle of Azincourt (for some unknown reason, the English, in their typical manner, call it Agincourt), the French had Beauvais archers who used the war bow just as the English did, although not nearly as many; they also had French and Genoese crowbowmen. They didn't use them, though. They had some small cannon, but only one was fired, and only once, although it did decapitate an English archer.

At the battle of Castillon in 1453, John Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury, rashly attacked a French camp protected by field fortifications, with Beauvais archers, crossbowmen, more than one hundred cannon lined up wheel-hub to wheel-hub, and small arms as well. It was a complete disaster, with the English losing nearly half their army, and the French about 100 men. The French were commanded by Jean Bureau, the "father" of French artillery. At that battle, Talbot lost the Hundred Years War, and his life, when his horse was killed under him by a cannon ball, and a French archer rushed up and hacked him to death with an ax.

Why do you always pretend to know things that you don't in fact know, Gunga?

I said the first MAJOR use... You might try looking up the word "major" in a dictionary, and ask your mommy what a dictionary is if you don't know...

So you don't consider more than one hundred cannon lined up hub to hub a major battery? You don't consider the bombardment of a besieged city over a period of weeks a major use?

I'd say you're the one who needs to get his mommy to find him a dictionary and explain the word "major" to him.