High angle trajectory mortars held a great advantage over standard field guns in the rough terrain of the West Highlands of Scotland. An early use of these more mobile mortars as field artillery (rather than siege artillery) was by British forces in the suppression of the Jacobite rising of 1719 at the Battle of Glen Shiel. Mortars played a significant role in the Venetian conquest of Morea, and in the course of this campaign an ammunition depot in the Parthenon was blown up. The Coehorn mortar gained quick popularity, necessitating a new form of naval ship, the bomb vessel. This mortar fired an exploding shell, which had a fuse that was lit by the hot gases when fired. An early transportable mortar was invented by Baron Menno van Coehoorn in 1701. Simply made, these weapons were no more than iron bowls reminiscent of the kitchen and apothecary mortars whence they drew their name. The trajectory of the shell that hit the Parthenon, causing its explosion, is marked.Įarly mortars, such as the Pumhart von Steyr, were large and heavy and could not be easily transported. Įngraving depicting the Venetian siege of the Acropolis of Athens, September 1687. The time of flight of these was apparently long enough that casualties could be avoided by posting observers to give warning of their trajectories. An Italian account of the 1456 siege of Belgrade by Giovanni da Tagliacozzo states that the Ottoman Turks used seven mortars that fired "stone shots one Italian mile high". The first use in siege warfare was at the 1453 siege of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror. The earliest version of the wan'gu dates back to 1407. The earliest mortars were used in Korea in a 1413 naval battle when Korean gunsmiths developed the wan'gu (gourd-shaped mortar) (완구, 碗口). Mortars have been used for hundreds of years.
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