TOPPE PECES.--To be used in the tops, _i.e._, the stands on the ship’s masts. NOTE.--The History of Artillery is mainly compiled from the following:--“Engines of War,” by Wilkinson; “Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe,” by John Hewitt; “Military Antiquities,” by F. Grose; “Critical Inquiry into Ancient Armour,” by Meyrick; “Elementary Lectures on Artillery,” by Major C. H. Owen and Capt. T. L. Dames, R.A.; and “Our Engines of War,” by Capt. Jarvis, M.P., Royal Artillery. HISTORY OF PORTABLE FIRE-ARMS. ~Form of early hand-guns.~ The earliest hand-guns differed in nothing but in size from the small cannon of the day: they consisted of a metal tube fixed in a straight stock of wood; the vent was at the top of the barrel; there was no lock of any kind. The barrels were short and made of iron or brass; they were occasionally furnished with moveable chambers. (Plate 19, fig. 1.) ~With trunnions.~ ~Breech-loader.~ A specimen of hand-cannon of the early part of the reign of Henry VI., is made of iron, and furnished with trunnions, which from this specimen, appear to have been appropriated to small fire-arms before they were adopted for artillery. The breech is made of a separate piece and screwed on to the tube, on the further end of which is a sight. It was placed on a stock or club, and fired by hand with a match. (Plate 19, fig. 2.) ~Invented 14th century.~ That hand-guns were invented, though but rarely appearing, in the fourteenth century, seems very probable from several cotemporary evidences. An inquisition taken in 1375, at Huntercombe, (a place belonging to the Abbey of Dorchester) and now preserved among the records at the Chapterhouse, Westminster, states that one Nicholas Huntercombe, with others, to the number of forty men, armed with “haubergeons, plates, bacenettes, cum aventayles, paletes, lanceis, scutis, arcubus, sagittis, balistis, _et gonnes_, venerunt ad Manerium de Huntercombe, and there made assault,” &c. It appears very improbable that a body of men making a sudden attack upon an abbey manor-house, would be armed with any kind of “gonnes” except hand-guns. ~Bohemia 1340.~ ~Lithuanians 1383.~ Mons. Mangeot states that “canons de fusil” were said to have been first invented in Bohemia, 1340, but that it is safer to fix the date at 1378, when mention is made of the “arquebuse à mèche” in Germany. In the year 1381, the inhabitants of Augsburg had thirty six arquebusiers, and in the following year they had portable fire-arms at the battle of Rosabecque. In 1383 the Lithuanians were acquainted with hand fire-arms, and used them at the siege of Froski. All these arms had straight stocks. In the excavations of the Castle of Tannenberg, dismantled in 1399, there was found a hand-gun of brass, with part of the wooden stock remaining, and the iron rammer belonging to it.