If that’s the movie I think it is, the cannons kept exploding because the metal wasn’t tempered. They solved the problem by quenching the barrel with cold water right after casting it.
Not sure about the scientific validity of that, but that’s what they did. I think the setting was Constantinople, and the Byzantines were fighting off the Mohammedans, or whatever they called them.
I seem to remember Robert Taylor, or someone who looked very much like him, was commanding the Christians. I must have seen the movie around 1971, when I was 16. I was really into such historical fiction then.
At Constantinople, it was the attacking Turks (not the defenders) who were using giant cannons prone to exploding because the forging technology was fairly new in the 15th Century.
Right, but remember: This was Hollywood. The Turks would have been the bad guys. Also, the cannon in this movie was made by the defenders, not the attackers.
Maybe it was set elsewhere, but the part about quenching the barrel with water I definitely remember.
But would even Hollywood say the Byzantines won that battle? The failed seige of Vienna might be a better fit, but it was outside reinforcements that saved the day; not the defenders’s cannon.
I cannot remember many hollywood movies about byzantium and costantinople. Actually must be very small number comparing with movies with original roman empire or feudal west europe. More chances for the movie to be placed somewhere in spain (like el cid) i think.
Sounds like a depiction of the Fall of Constantinople. The cannon were probably made of cast iron or bronze. Possibly the exploding cannons were used to dramatize an incident of a large cannon that collapsed under it’s own recoil. Don’t think the quenching idea makes sense for bronze or cast iron cannon.
Isn’t that the battle where (supposedly) the Turks had the cannons and used so much ammunition that they ran out and had to start firing whatever was around, leading to them cut down palm trees, saw their trunks into short segments, and fire those?
In the film I’m thinking of, the defenders got the idea of quenching the barrel when one character bathed in cold water, thinking it would make him stronger or impervious to pain. Of course, Europeans back then seldom bathed at all, so everyone was surprised when he did.
True, but the question was about 1529, which wasn’t technically part of the Medieval era. Europe saw a sharp decrease in personal sanitation levels starting from the early 16th century, for some reason.
The water was far from clean, contributing to things like scrofula and other maladies. The surface of the water had to be scraped clean constantly to remove all the scuz that built up on it.