Main rifle

Mons Meg : Main rifle (also giant gun), is in Edinburgh today

One of the two main rifles that were brought to the island of Mont-Saint-Michel by the English and that were left behind after they escaped in 1434.

Leg piece on stationary carriage

Heavy and medium stone rifles were grouped under the term main rifles . Main rifles were so-called leg pieces, i.e. That is, they were stretched in a frame so that they could shoot. Stone rifles were made as bar ring guns or in bronze or iron casting .

Emperor Maximilian I was the first to try to standardize the gun caliber; it failed because the stone boxes were all individual pieces that either needed too much powder for the standard iron ball, which the pipes could not cope with, or because the iron balls with the higher specific weight did not have the desired effect. In 1504 the last main rifle was in use during the siege of Kufstein . After that, almost all of them, as far as they were made of bronze, were melted down and replaced by sharp cutters . Today only a few pieces made of bronze are preserved. B. the "Kateri" located in the Paris Army Museum. Most of the time only the iron main rifles have survived, such as the " Lazy Maid of Dresden " on a block carriage or " Mons Meg " in Edinburgh , but not on the original carriage .

literature

Volker Schmidtchen : Bombards, fortifications, gunsmiths: From the first wall breakers of the late Middle Ages to the siege artillery of the Renaissance . Droste, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-7700-0471-X .
Bernhard Rathgen: The Gun in the Middle Ages , VDI-Verlag, Berlin, 1928. ( online at archive.org )

Individual evidence

↑ Volker Schmidtchen : giant guns of the 15th century. Technical top performances of their time. Part I. In: History of technology . tape 44 , no. 2 , 1977, ISSN 0040-117X , p. 153–173, here 157 .
↑ Wendelin Boeheim, The stuff books of Emperor Maximilian I. 1892, in the yearbook of the art historical collection 13 (pages 94 to 201)