# CHAPTER 17 — How Much Value Should Armies in the Present Day Place on Artillery; and If the Generally Held Opinion About Artillery Is True

Besides the matters discussed above, having considered how many battles in the field (in our times called giornate * a French word, and fatti d’arme * by the Italians) were fought by the Romans at different times, I have decided to consider the common opinion of many who wish to argue that if artillery had existed in those days, the Romans would not have been able to seize provinces and make peoples their tributaries as easily as they did, nor would they have in any way achieved such great acquisitions. They also declare that with firearms men cannot demonstrate or make use of their exceptional ability as they were able to do in ancient times. They add a third point: it is now more difficult to engage in battle than it was then, and it is impossible to retain the battle formations of those times, with the result that, in time, war will be fought only with artillery. In the belief that it is not outside my topic to debate whether such opinions are true and how much artillery has increased or diminished the strength of armies, and whether artillery has eliminated or provided opportunities for good military leaders to act skilfully, I shall begin to discuss the first of these opinions: that the ancient Roman armies would not have made the acquisitions they made had artillery been in existence.

On this subject, in responding, I must say that one makes war either to defend oneself or to go on the attack; we must first, therefore, examine the question of which of these two aspects of war artillery benefits or harms the most. Although there are arguments on both sides of the issue, I nevertheless believe that without comparison, artillery causes more damage to the defence than to the offence. My reason for saying this is that anyone who is on the defence is either inside a city or in the field within a fortified camp. If he is inside a city, either this city is small, as the majority of fortresses are, or it is large: in the first case, anyone on the defence is completely lost, because the impetus of the artillery is such that there is no wall so thick that it will not collapse in a few days, and if the person inside does not possess good wide spaces to which he may retreat, furnished with trenches and fortifications, he is lost, nor can he resist the impetus of the enemy who will later try to enter through the breach in the wall, nor can the artillery that he possesses be of any use to him in this, because it is a maxim that wherever a large body of men can go with force, artillery cannot stop them. Thus, the fury of the Ultramontanes during the defence of cities is not withstood, but Italian assaults are withstood, because they are conducted not with a large body of men but in little groups during the battles, which the Italians call, quite appropriately, skirmishes. Soldiers who go forth with such poor organization and such a lack of ardour to attack the breach in a wall where they face artillery march to an obvious death, for against such men artillery is effective, but when a large number of soldiers is grouped together so tightly that one pushes the other forward, and they march toward a breach, if they are not held off by trenches or embankments they will enter at every point and artillery will not stop them; and if any of them die, the casualties will not be sufficiently high to prevent a victory. The truth of this can be seen in the many expeditions that the Ultramontanes have made into Italy and particularly the one against Brescia, for after that city had rebelled against the French and while its fortress still held out for the French king, the Venetians, in order to withstand the onslaught that might come against the city from the fortress, lined the entire street that descended from the fortress into the city with artillery and placed artillery in front and on the flanks and in every other suitable spot. Monsieur de Foix paid no attention whatsoever to this artillery; on the contrary, with his squadron dismounted, he passed through the middle of the artillery pieces and occupied the city, nor have we heard that he incurred any damage worthy of note. Thus, the defender of a small city, as we have said, who finds his walls levelled to the ground, lacks space with embankments and trenches to which he can retreat, and has no choice but to rely upon artillery, will quickly lose.

If you are defending a large city and you have the opportunity to retreat, artillery is, nevertheless, beyond any comparison more useful to those who are outside than to those who are inside. First of all, in order for artillery to harm those outside you must raise yourself above ground level, for if you are standing on a level plane, every small embankment or barrier the enemy creates makes him safe and you cannot harm him. Thus, since you must raise your artillery and put it upon the walkway atop the walls or in some manner or another raise yourself up from the ground, you expose yourself to two difficulties: the first is that you cannot bring up artillery that is of the size and power that can be used by those outside, since it is difficult to manage large objects in small spaces; the other difficulty is that when you actually can bring up the artillery, you cannot build effective and secure embankments to protect it in the same way as can those outside, since they are standing on solid ground and enjoy all the conveniences and the space they might wish: it is, as a result, impossible for anyone who is defending a city to keep his artillery in high places when those outside have many good and powerful artillery pieces, and if it must be positioned in low places it becomes largely useless, as was said. Thus, the defence of a city is reduced to defending it with hand-to-hand combat, as was done in ancient times, and with light artillery; even if some benefit may be derived from this light artillery, a disadvantage results that counterbalances the advantage of artillery, since on this account the walls of cities have been lowered and almost buried in the trenches, so that when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, either because the walls have been demolished or because the trenches are filled, whoever is inside has many more disadvantages than he might have had in ancient times. Hence, as was mentioned above, these weapons are of much more use to anyone besieging a city than to the besieged.

As for the third issue, that of encamping inside a stockade in order not to give battle unless it is to your benefit or advantage, I must say that in this case you ordinarily have no greater means to avoid fighting than the ancients had, and sometimes, on account of your artillery, you have a greater disadvantage. Accordingly, if the enemy comes upon you and has a slight advantage in his position, as can easily happen, when he is on higher ground than you are, or if at the time of his arrival you have not yet built your embankments or shielded yourself well with them, he will dislodge you immediately and you will have no remedy whatsoever and be forced to leave your fortresses and enter into battle. This happened to the Spanish at the battle of Ravenna; they were dug in between the Ronco river and an embankment, and because they did not make it as high as was necessary, while the French had a slight advantage in their position, they were forced by the artillery to leave their fortresses and to enter the fray. But given that, as is usually the case, you have chosen a place for your camp that is higher than the others opposed to it and that its embankments are good and secure, the enemy would not dare to attack you, considering the site and your other preparations; in this case the same methods will be used that were employed in ancient times when an army was in a position that could not be attacked; the enemy’s methods are to overrun the countryside, plunder or seize cities friendly to you, and prevent you from receiving provisions. They will do this until you are forced by some necessity to leave your camp and to come into combat, in which case the artillery, as will be said below, accomplishes very little. Considering, therefore, the kinds of wars the Romans fought, and seeing that they fought almost all their wars to attack others rather than to defend themselves, it will be clear, if the things said above are true, that they would have had a greater advantage and would have made their gains more rapidly if artillery had existed in those times.

As for the second issue, that because of artillery men cannot demonstrate their exceptional ability as they were able to do in ancient times, I must say that it is true that where men have to appear in scattered groups, they run more risks than in ancient times when they had to scale a city wall or engage in similar assaults, in which men were not gathered close together but had to appear by themselves one after another. It is also true that commanders and leaders of armies are more exposed to the peril of death than before, since they can be reached by artillery in any spot, nor does it avail them to be in the rear squadrons surrounded by extremely powerful men.

It is clear, nevertheless, that both of these two dangers rarely do serious damage, because well-fortified city walls cannot be scaled, nor does one proceed to attack them with feeble assaults, but if they are to be taken it comes down to a siege, as it did in ancient times. Even in those cities taken by assault, the dangers are not much greater than in ancient times, because even in those days the defenders of cities did not lack for weapons to hurl, and even if they were not as violent, in so far as killing men is concerned, they produced the same effect. As for the deaths of commanders and condottieri, there are fewer examples of this during the last twenty-four years of warfare in recent times in Italy than in ten year’s time among the ancients, since after Count Ludovico della Mirandola, who died at Ferrara when the Venetians attacked that state a few years ago, and after the duke of Nemours, who died outside of Cirignola, no such leader has been killed by artillery, because Monsieur de Foix died at Ravenna from sword wounds and not from cannon shot. * Hence, if men as individuals do not demonstrate their exceptional skill, this arises not from the presence of artillery but from inferior institutions and the weakness of their armies which, lacking this exceptional skill as a whole, are unable to show it in any way.

As for the third of their declarations, that it is not possible to fight hand to hand and that war will be conducted entirely with artillery, I can say that this idea is completely false, and it will always be held false by those who wish to make use of their armies according to the standard of ancient excellence, because anyone who wishes to create a good army must, with feigned or genuine battles, accustom his soldiers to approach the enemy, to engage in a sword fight, and to seize him by the throat, and he must rely primarily upon infantry rather than upon cavalry for reasons that will be explained below. When we rely upon infantry and upon the methods previously discussed, artillery becomes completely useless, because infantry, in approaching the enemy, can with more facility avoid cannon shots than soldiers in ancient times could avoid the onslaught of elephants, chariots armed with scythes, and other unexpected opposition that the Roman infantry encountered and against which they always found a remedy. They would have found one more easily against artillery, since the time during which artillery can do you harm is far shorter than the one during which elephants and chariots can hurt you. Thus, the latter throw you into disarray in the midst of a battle, whereas artillery impedes you only before the battle is joined, and such an obstacle is easily avoided by the infantry, either by marching under the natural cover of the terrain or by lying on the ground when these weapons are fired. Experience shows that even this is not necessary, especially to defend oneself from heavy artillery pieces which cannot be balanced in any way, so that if their aim is high they do not hit you, or if their aim is low they do not reach you. After armies have engaged in hand-to-hand combat, it is clearer than the light of the sun that neither heavy nor light artillery can hurt you, because if the artillerymen are in front of you, they become your prisoners; if they are behind you, they damage their friends more than you; if the guns are on your flanks, they cannot hurt you in such a way that you cannot proceed to attack them, and the result will be the effect that we have discussed. This cannot be disputed, because we have seen the example of the Swiss, who at Novara in 1513 without artillery and without cavalry went to meet the French army equipped with artillery inside their fortified positions, and they defeated this army without any hindrance whatsoever from the artillery. The reason for this, besides those mentioned above, is that artillery needs to be protected if it is to work properly, either by a wall or by trenches or by embankments, and if one of these protections is missing, it is captured or becomes useless, in the same way as when it has to be protected by men, which occurs in battles and other actions in the field. On the flank, artillery cannot be used except in the way that the ancients employed the weapons they hurled, which they placed outside their squadrons, so that they could fight outside the lines of battle, and every time that they were charged by cavalry or were pushed back by other kinds of troops, the artillerymen found refuge behind the ranks of the legions. Anyone who relies upon artillery in any other way does not understand the matter very well and relies upon something that can easily deceive him, and if the Turk has won victories with artillery against Sophy and the Sultan, * this has arisen not from some special excellence in artillery itself, but from the terror that its unusual noise spread through their cavalry.

I conclude, therefore, coming to the end of this discourse, that artillery is useful in an army where ancient excellence has been firmly implanted, but without it, artillery is quite useless against an excellent army.