Note 1306 — Chapter III
Reading edition
Ibid., fol. 21.—Vertot says, of a hundred and sixty pounds'weight. (Knights of Malta, vol. II. p. 202.) Yet even this was far surpassed by the mammoth cannon employed by Mahomet at the siege of Constantinople, in the preceding century, which, according to Gibbon, threw stone bullets of six hundred pounds.
Since the above lines were written, even this achievement has been distanced by British enterprise. The "Times" informs us of some "monster guns," intended to be used in the Baltic, the minimum weight of whose shot is to be three cwt., and the maximum ten.