Command-initiated IED described in 1650

I’m steadily working through a book that was published in Latin in 1650, “The Great Art of Artillery” by Kazimierz Siemienowicz.  The book was translated into French, then from there into English in 1729 and of course that’s the version I’m studying. The breadth of subjects covered is remarkable, including physics, chemistry, mathematics, explosive processing, explosive storage and other related things.  There’s a lot about artillery and some interesting rocket technology related to my earlier post about the English rocket experimenter Robert Anderson who was making his rockets in 1696. I have an interesting blog post “cooking” on the technical similarities of rocket design from these two engineers, working in different countries 46 years apart. And readers of this blog will recall that the revolutionaries in Dublin in 1803 used Anderson’s rocket manufacturing instructions and it is very possible that one of the revolutionary Irishmen went to Woolwich in subequent years to assist Congreve in the manufacture of his rockets. Give me a few weeks to bottom out that detail and assess the apparent links, but this 1650 document is pretty remarkable in its technical detail, with multi-stage rockets being explicitly manufactured.

As well as covering artillery and rocketry, amongst the book are also numerous references to improvised explosive devices. For example there’s reference to a large barrel or cylinder shaped IED used in the Seige of St Andrews in 1546 that killed 321 and injured hundreds of beseigers. Ths large barrel containing “powder, stones and Iron bolts” was rolled down amongst the enemy.  I’m trying to find a cross or supporting reference for that, as that’s pretty early in my historical time line of IEDs. Siemienowiz quotes his reference to the St Andrews device as being written by an Italian in a book called “Precepts in the Modern Art of War” that must have been published prior to 1650. Unfortunately the name of the Italian author is not clear and varies between translations and I have yet to unearth it.

Here’s another example from Siemienowicz referring to command initiated improvised devices using the flintlock mechanism I have described in some recent posts – remember this was written in about 1650.  This text below is from a 1729 translation:

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