Walter de Milemete

Earliest picture of a European cannon, De nobilitatibus sapientii et prudentiis regum, Walter de Milemete, 1326

Walter de Milemete was an English scholar^[1] who wrote a treatise on Kingship for the young prince Edward, later king Edward III of England called De nobilitatibus, sapientiis, et prudentiis regum in 1326.^[2] The Treatise includes images of siege weapons and what is probably the first^[3] illustration of a firearm: a pot-de-fer.^[4] One of the marginal border illustrations in the Milemete Treatise shows a soldier firing a large vase-shaped cannon, the arrow-shaped projectile is seen projecting from the cannon which is pointed at a fortification.^[5] In the 1331 siege of Cividale, German knights used guns which were probably very similar to Milemete weapons.^[6]

References

1. M.A. Michael. 'The iconography of kingship in the Walter of Milemete treatise'. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 57 (1994), 35-47.
2. C.J. Nederman, Political thought in early fourteenth-century England : treatises by Walter of Milemete, William of Pagula, and William of Ockham, Turnhout, 2002.
3. Anne Curry, in The Hundred Years' War, 1337-1453 ISBN 1-84176-269-5 includes a drawing from a book of instruction for Edward III of England which "may predate slightly [Milimete's illustration]"
4. Walter de Milemet from Science and Its Times (2006)
5. Montague Rhodes James, ed., The Treatise of Walter de Milemete, 1913, p. 140, cited in Robert Douglas Smith, The Artillery of the Dukes of Burgundy, 1363-1477, p. 10 ISBN 978-1-84383-162-4
6. Rogers, Clifford J., Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years' War, in The Military Revolution Debate, p. 65. ISBN 0-8133-2054-2