Note 510 — THE TRAVELS OF BERTRANDON DE LA BROCQUIÈRE. (continued 2)

It was then the fashion to make pieces of artillery of an enormous size. Mohammed II., at the siege of Constantinople, employed cannon cast on the spot that threw, as they say, balls of two hundredweight. Monstrelet speaks of a gun that Louis XI. had cast at Tours, and carried afterwards to Paris, that flung balls of five hundred pounds. In 1717, prince Eugene, after his victory over the Turks, found in Belgrade a cannon twenty-five feet long, that shot balls of one hundred and ten pounds, whose charge was fifty-two pounds of powder. It was also then customary to make the balls of marble or stone, worked to fit the mouths of different cannons. [510]