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Old 17th January 2014, 06:03 PM   #7
fernando
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Default The Aljubarrota barrels

Hi again Michl,
I can see that you made your home work in what concerns the Aljubarrota battle .
If memory doens't fail, i guess i (we) have already been through this subject.
I was aware that there are hand cannons from such period being connotated with this battle.
So:
I once paged a little book called Prestige de l'armurerie portugaise. La part de Liege and, there it was, in page 42, a hand cannon quoted as having been found on the Aljubarrota battle field.
After reading this, i reached contact with Lt. Colonel of Artillery Nuno Rubim, a person recognized for his expertize in this field by his pairs, who had written an article called (from the portuguese): About the technical possibility of the use of artillery in the battle of Aljubarrota ... ofwhich i will here attach the link for a humble translation ... appologizing for the possible repetition .
The following was his answer to my question:
In the various survey campaigns in the Aljubarrota field never any trace of light fire weapons was found. And there were several (surveys), the last one carried out under the auspices of Professor Gouveia Monteiro, from the University ogf Coimbra whom, about them wrote a work.
In fact neither was referenced any (heavy) artillery fire mouth, which raises lots of doubts about the fact that there may have ever appeared any example there. But i totally believe on what Fernão Lopes (*) wrote... as i let it clear in my article.
On the other hand i only have documental references about the use of light firearms in Portugal by the middle XV century.
(*) Fernão Lopes (1380/90-1460) was the chronicler who mentioned the presence of 16 trons (onomotopaic name for bombards) brought by the Spaniards and even used in the famous battle.
After facing this apparently solid information, i enquired the author of Prestige de lármurerie (Rainer Daehnhardt), asking him how certain he was of any evidence of the use of hand cannons in Aljubarrota. He answered by saying that the evidence was the logic that, portable artillery out to have appeared practically at same time as heavy one, so surely it was present in that battle.
Having said all the above, it is up to us to choose the side to which pend in this story.
Note, Michl:
I am not at all pretending to question this specific topic in the contents of your study : i have once made this little research concerning only the provenance of my own cannons .

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