There was a gun foundry in France in 1346, Germany in 1378, in Switzerland in 1371. The first mention of any guns cast in England was, we believe, in 1521, when, according to Stone, brass cannon were first “cast” there; the founder’s name was Hugget, of Uckfield, in Sussex, and there are some specimens of about this date at Woolwich. Early cannon were fired by a live coal; later, by a slow match. There is nothing to indicate the date of the wooden cannon strengthened with iron coils, brought from Cochin China, and now in the Musée des Invalides at Paris. There is a mortar in the arsenal at Vienna, made in several layers of coiled hempen rope, with an outside covering of leather, which is said to have been captured from the Turks. There are also mortars made of paper, covered with leather, in the arsenal at Malta, but without any reliable record concerning their origin--doubtless they also came from the East. In Johnes’s version of _Froissart_, vol. ii., p. 252, is an account of a sea-fight between the English and Spanish fleets off Calais, King Edward commanding in person. It is there stated that the Spanish ships were amply provided with artillery, and a later passage specially mentions “cannon,”--this was probably the year after the battle of Creçy;[50] but in 1340 these weapons are referred to in connection with the naval battle of Sluys. In 1372 some of the French ships undoubtedly carried ordnance at the battle of Rhodes; and the Venetians used bombards a few years later at the battle before Chioggia, when some of the guns burst on the first discharge; one of these weapons, which is made of leather, is still preserved at the Vienna arsenal. Leathern cannon were also used at the siege of Hohensalzburg in 1525, and by Gustavus Adolphus in 1631. We may take it that some time before this both artillery and hand-guns were regularly used in battle, but side by side with catapultæ and other engines of war, thus clearly showing that they were at this time largely experimental. They were still but sparingly found at sea in the middle of the fifteenth century, when an English war vessel sometimes carried only one gun, and the largest ships never more than eight; and each piece of ordnance was then only provided with thirty rounds of ammunition for a month’s cruise. After this time, however, the progress was rapid, and some of the Mediterranean galleys of late in the sixteenth century were armed with as many as two hundred guns. In 1377, Thomas Norbury was directed by King Richard II. to provide “two great and two less engines called cannon,” to be sent to the castle of Bristol. The first reliable mention of field guns is on the occasion of a battle between the forces of Bruges and Ghent in 1382. The first piece of ordnance was probably a mortar, the earliest form of which was a hollow tube, like an inverted cone, the butt-end being blocked with wood--they were short pieces of large bore.