Mishka Zubov
09-28-2007, 09:33 PM
Historya Artyleryi Polskiej - History of Polish Artillery
Konstanty Górski, Colonel of the Foot, ex Captain of the Quartermaster Services
Warsaw 1902
Selected fragments
This book is often cited on Internet, but it was only recently that I found it in one of the Polish online digital libraries. I must say that I am impressed. This is a very interesting narration to browse or to study in front of a fireplace, with a glass of brandy in hand.
It would be an immense task to translate all its 350 pages into English and I would not even dream of tackling it all. But I can translate some of its fragments for you to enjoy. I will start with some introduction and a table of contents to show in details what this book is all about.
Digital source
This publication is accessible in Polish from the Digital Library of Wielkopolska, http://www.wbc.poznan.pl/. The original owner is the Library of Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) at Kórnik near Poznań. Search for the keywords: Konstanty Górski.
You can also access this resource directly at: http://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/docmetadata?id=oai:www.wbc.poznan.pl:38020
Format: image/x.djvu.
Requires Djvu plug-in, downloadable in MS-Windows, Linux and Mac OS X versions from LizzardTech, http://www.lizardtech.com/download/. You can read the book online, or you can download the pages and then read it one-page-a-time using the same djvu plug-in.
From the editor's foreword
The book was printed posthumously, four years after the author died in 1898, by his friend and editor, Tadeusz Korzon. According to him, the book has been written in a rush, during the author's sickness, in one long spell - with the foreword added on his deathbed. The editor has introduced several formatting changes: he has broken the one long text into sections and paragraphs, added the table of contents, and inserted several illustrations indicated by the author.
In his foreword the publisher praises the author for his diligence in searching old archives, working from faded pages of original documents, extracting information from hard to understand middle-age Latin or German and laboriously copying by hand long expense accounts from the war expeditions, which are very helpful in understanding many details of military operations.
One can appreciate the author's hard work by considering that the entire book is 324 pages long, of which about last 100 pages are devoted to annotations - some of them being aforementioned expense reports.
Translation hurdles
The narrator's style is quite pleasant to work with. Although it is not written in the contemporary Polish the narration is still easily comprehensible and the different spelling rules from 100 years ago only add to the flavor of the story. However he often quotes passages containing words and phrases taken from Old Polish, Czech, Latin, German or Dutch and this is where a translation challenge begins.
Much as I would like to preserve a feel of the old Polish in translation into English my skills are just not good enough for such task; consequently the music of old language has been lost in translation. Some old words, especially those related to old military or old technology, still sound familiar to me and I hope that I understood their meaning, but translating them into modern English is still a challenge since my vocabulary is not rich enough and hunting such words in dictionaries is a time consuming task.
Many military related words are of foreign origin, but polonized somehow. These are the toughest to translate into modern English. For example, a 17th century word "cejgwart" is a polonized form of a German word "Zeugwart" - meaning a commander of gunners and an arsenal, whose rank corresponds to captain of artillery introduced later in 18th century. The arsenal itself is referred to as "cekauz" or "cekhauz", from the German "Zeughaus" - combination of "Zeug" (fabric, cloth, tool, equipment, weaponry) and "Haus" (house).
According to Górski, one of such commanders was Jan Behem, given a title "Magister expeditionis et omnium pixidariorum supremus magister", hired by Bonar [from a known family of Kraków burgesses - MZ] in 1522 for a period of 10 years, with a yearly salary of 200 Polish złoty and exemption from property taxes. It seems that good professionals were then held in high regard - considering the fact that King Zygmunt issued and order to build for him a separate apartment in the Kraków castle. When signing a contract Jan Behem expressed a wish to stay forever in Poland. But this was left for the King to decide. It is not known whether this in fact happened, because already in 1536 it was Georgius Algayer who became a "cejgwart" and a founder "Magister tormentorum".
Until late 17th century, when vernacular Polish finally took hold in written documents, Latin was in popular use in Poland, which undoubtedly helped with technology transfer from the West of Europe. German was also popular, since significant part of burgesses, especially in Kraków, were polonized Germans. Ancient artillerist were craftsmen in service of military, rather than soldiers, and this explains the German, Czech and Italian vocabulary in Polish military language.
Warning against impostors
Foreign influence has been undoubtedly significant in development of Polish artillery. But ancient times also had their measure of swindlers and impostors. One of them was Andrzej Della-Aqua, a Venetian, a self-taught pretender with no clue about geometry and mathematics, but yet an author of two books about artillery: "About the Assembly and School of Gunners of His Majesty the King Zigmunt III" (printed in 1623) and "Praxis ręczna działa" (A manual operation of a gun) [manuscript only, 1637].
Górski leaves no shade of the doubt that Della-Aqua, although apparent erudite, had only a superficial knowledge of the subject. His many illustrations and explanations in his manual seem to be a result of compilation of fragments taken out of context from some Venetian artillery books - combined with his own fuzzy and nonsensical explanations.
It is not known what kind of damages he had managed to inflict on development of Polish artillery. Hopefully - none, aside from his own material gains, if any. But it should be pointed out that Della-Aqua's name has recently surfaced in one of the Polish websites devoted to the glory of Polish ancient artillery - either due to naivete of its web-master or deliberate omission of critique easily found in the Górski's book. I must admit that I have been guilty of citing that website in one of my posts - and I took it as a bitter lesson how careful one must be when handling internet resources.
Table of Contents
From the editor - page 5
Foreword - page 9
Section 1 - Artillery in 14th and 15th centuries
1. The oldest news and documents. - page 13
2. Types of the oldest guns: taraśnica (Czech: tarasnica, German: Tarasbüchse, trestle-gun), half-taraśnica, hufnica (Czech: houfnica, proto howitzer), bombarda (bombarde), śrubnica (composite bolted gun), charczownica (?), koza (?). - page 16
3. Balls, powder and operation. - page 28
4. Hand guns: piszczel (Czech: pistala, pipe), hakownica (heavy handgun with a hook) - page 30
Section 2 - 16th century
5. Types of new guns. - page 33
6. Material for casting, price of guns and equipment - page 41
7. Gunners, craftsmen, wagoners - page 43
8. Commanders of artillery, commanders of arsenals, arsenals - page 45
9. Participation of artillery in the wars of Zygmunt I. Artillery tabor of Tarnowski in 1538. - page 48
10. Hand weapons: hakownica, rusznica (rifle), arquebus. State of artillery before the death of Zygmunt I - page 51
11. Artillery of Zygmunt August. Wilno and Tykocin with their workshops and supplies. Personnel. - page 54
12. Articles for gunners from 1567. Equipment of gunners and other services. Expeditions. Literature: the only work of Bielski. - page 63
13. Orders of Stefan Batory and his war expedition. Improvements. - page 70
Section 3 - 17th century
14. New names of guns during reign of Zygmunt III. Some survived exemplars. - page 79
15. Participation and composition of artillery during wars of 1588 with Maximillian, 1595 with Nalewajko, 1600 with Hospodar Michał, 1601-1632 with Swedes, 1609-1611 at Smoleńsk, 1617 at Moscow, 1621 with Turks. - page 82
16. Hand guns: muskets, half-muskets, [rusznice z krzesem i zamkami hubczastymi] - page 93
17. Professional writers:
1. Anonymous manuscript "A Book Useful for All Kind of Gunners"
2. Dell-Aqua "On Assembly and School of Gunners"
3. Dell-Aqua "Manual Praxis of Guns" - page 94
18. Improvements of Władysław IV in 1637, the office of The Elder of Cannon or Artillery General, the New Quart as a continuos fund for artillery - page 105
19. Architecture and contents of Warsaw's, Lwów's and other arsenals - page 109
20. Ironworks in Wąchock and Samsonów. Smelters: Caccio, Seravalle, "Dzianetty" and "Dziboni" (Polish spellings of Italian names) - page 112
21. The office and merit of Krzysztof Arciszewski. Inventory of Warsaw Arsenal in the end of 1649. - page 113
22. The personnel composition of all artillery service in 1647. - page 126
23. "Articles of the Most Famous Artillery" put together by Jan Platter and authorized by Władysław IV in 1634. - page 129
24. Participation of artillery during the wars of Władysław IV and Jan Kazimierz. Generals of Artillery: Przyjemski, Krzysztof Grodzicki, Fromhold Wolf von Ludinghansen. - page 140
25. Work of Kazimierz Siemionowicz: "Artis Magnae Artilleriae", pars I. - page 148
26. A view on a state of artillery during the reign of Jan III, under Marcin Kątski - 152
Section IV, 18th Century
27. Fall of artillery under the reign of the Sases. Generals of Artillery: Fleming, Jan St. Kątski, J.K.Branicki. - page 153
28. Raise (of artillery) by Henryk, but especially by Alojzy, Brühls. - page 158
29. Establishment in 1767
30. Articles for artillerists from 1767
31. Arsenals' supplies and war materiel before the First Partition
32. Establishment in 1776
33. School of artillery. Gunfounding. The work of Jakubowski: "Science of Artillery". - page 176
34. Hand guns. The progress before The Great Sejm. - page 187
35. Fortifying of artillery by The Great Sejm. - page 188
36. Deployment of artillery corps at permanent quarters and with regiments. - page 192
37. An arsenal inventory from 1791. Powder mill at Łośmianki. Gun foundry. The School under Schüller. - page 205
38. Notes and general conclusions. - page 213
Annotations - page 217
Konstanty Górski, Colonel of the Foot, ex Captain of the Quartermaster Services
Warsaw 1902
Selected fragments
This book is often cited on Internet, but it was only recently that I found it in one of the Polish online digital libraries. I must say that I am impressed. This is a very interesting narration to browse or to study in front of a fireplace, with a glass of brandy in hand.
It would be an immense task to translate all its 350 pages into English and I would not even dream of tackling it all. But I can translate some of its fragments for you to enjoy. I will start with some introduction and a table of contents to show in details what this book is all about.
Digital source
This publication is accessible in Polish from the Digital Library of Wielkopolska, http://www.wbc.poznan.pl/. The original owner is the Library of Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) at Kórnik near Poznań. Search for the keywords: Konstanty Górski.
You can also access this resource directly at: http://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/docmetadata?id=oai:www.wbc.poznan.pl:38020
Format: image/x.djvu.
Requires Djvu plug-in, downloadable in MS-Windows, Linux and Mac OS X versions from LizzardTech, http://www.lizardtech.com/download/. You can read the book online, or you can download the pages and then read it one-page-a-time using the same djvu plug-in.
From the editor's foreword
The book was printed posthumously, four years after the author died in 1898, by his friend and editor, Tadeusz Korzon. According to him, the book has been written in a rush, during the author's sickness, in one long spell - with the foreword added on his deathbed. The editor has introduced several formatting changes: he has broken the one long text into sections and paragraphs, added the table of contents, and inserted several illustrations indicated by the author.
In his foreword the publisher praises the author for his diligence in searching old archives, working from faded pages of original documents, extracting information from hard to understand middle-age Latin or German and laboriously copying by hand long expense accounts from the war expeditions, which are very helpful in understanding many details of military operations.
One can appreciate the author's hard work by considering that the entire book is 324 pages long, of which about last 100 pages are devoted to annotations - some of them being aforementioned expense reports.
Translation hurdles
The narrator's style is quite pleasant to work with. Although it is not written in the contemporary Polish the narration is still easily comprehensible and the different spelling rules from 100 years ago only add to the flavor of the story. However he often quotes passages containing words and phrases taken from Old Polish, Czech, Latin, German or Dutch and this is where a translation challenge begins.
Much as I would like to preserve a feel of the old Polish in translation into English my skills are just not good enough for such task; consequently the music of old language has been lost in translation. Some old words, especially those related to old military or old technology, still sound familiar to me and I hope that I understood their meaning, but translating them into modern English is still a challenge since my vocabulary is not rich enough and hunting such words in dictionaries is a time consuming task.
Many military related words are of foreign origin, but polonized somehow. These are the toughest to translate into modern English. For example, a 17th century word "cejgwart" is a polonized form of a German word "Zeugwart" - meaning a commander of gunners and an arsenal, whose rank corresponds to captain of artillery introduced later in 18th century. The arsenal itself is referred to as "cekauz" or "cekhauz", from the German "Zeughaus" - combination of "Zeug" (fabric, cloth, tool, equipment, weaponry) and "Haus" (house).
According to Górski, one of such commanders was Jan Behem, given a title "Magister expeditionis et omnium pixidariorum supremus magister", hired by Bonar [from a known family of Kraków burgesses - MZ] in 1522 for a period of 10 years, with a yearly salary of 200 Polish złoty and exemption from property taxes. It seems that good professionals were then held in high regard - considering the fact that King Zygmunt issued and order to build for him a separate apartment in the Kraków castle. When signing a contract Jan Behem expressed a wish to stay forever in Poland. But this was left for the King to decide. It is not known whether this in fact happened, because already in 1536 it was Georgius Algayer who became a "cejgwart" and a founder "Magister tormentorum".
Until late 17th century, when vernacular Polish finally took hold in written documents, Latin was in popular use in Poland, which undoubtedly helped with technology transfer from the West of Europe. German was also popular, since significant part of burgesses, especially in Kraków, were polonized Germans. Ancient artillerist were craftsmen in service of military, rather than soldiers, and this explains the German, Czech and Italian vocabulary in Polish military language.
Warning against impostors
Foreign influence has been undoubtedly significant in development of Polish artillery. But ancient times also had their measure of swindlers and impostors. One of them was Andrzej Della-Aqua, a Venetian, a self-taught pretender with no clue about geometry and mathematics, but yet an author of two books about artillery: "About the Assembly and School of Gunners of His Majesty the King Zigmunt III" (printed in 1623) and "Praxis ręczna działa" (A manual operation of a gun) [manuscript only, 1637].
Górski leaves no shade of the doubt that Della-Aqua, although apparent erudite, had only a superficial knowledge of the subject. His many illustrations and explanations in his manual seem to be a result of compilation of fragments taken out of context from some Venetian artillery books - combined with his own fuzzy and nonsensical explanations.
It is not known what kind of damages he had managed to inflict on development of Polish artillery. Hopefully - none, aside from his own material gains, if any. But it should be pointed out that Della-Aqua's name has recently surfaced in one of the Polish websites devoted to the glory of Polish ancient artillery - either due to naivete of its web-master or deliberate omission of critique easily found in the Górski's book. I must admit that I have been guilty of citing that website in one of my posts - and I took it as a bitter lesson how careful one must be when handling internet resources.
Table of Contents
From the editor - page 5
Foreword - page 9
Section 1 - Artillery in 14th and 15th centuries
1. The oldest news and documents. - page 13
2. Types of the oldest guns: taraśnica (Czech: tarasnica, German: Tarasbüchse, trestle-gun), half-taraśnica, hufnica (Czech: houfnica, proto howitzer), bombarda (bombarde), śrubnica (composite bolted gun), charczownica (?), koza (?). - page 16
3. Balls, powder and operation. - page 28
4. Hand guns: piszczel (Czech: pistala, pipe), hakownica (heavy handgun with a hook) - page 30
Section 2 - 16th century
5. Types of new guns. - page 33
6. Material for casting, price of guns and equipment - page 41
7. Gunners, craftsmen, wagoners - page 43
8. Commanders of artillery, commanders of arsenals, arsenals - page 45
9. Participation of artillery in the wars of Zygmunt I. Artillery tabor of Tarnowski in 1538. - page 48
10. Hand weapons: hakownica, rusznica (rifle), arquebus. State of artillery before the death of Zygmunt I - page 51
11. Artillery of Zygmunt August. Wilno and Tykocin with their workshops and supplies. Personnel. - page 54
12. Articles for gunners from 1567. Equipment of gunners and other services. Expeditions. Literature: the only work of Bielski. - page 63
13. Orders of Stefan Batory and his war expedition. Improvements. - page 70
Section 3 - 17th century
14. New names of guns during reign of Zygmunt III. Some survived exemplars. - page 79
15. Participation and composition of artillery during wars of 1588 with Maximillian, 1595 with Nalewajko, 1600 with Hospodar Michał, 1601-1632 with Swedes, 1609-1611 at Smoleńsk, 1617 at Moscow, 1621 with Turks. - page 82
16. Hand guns: muskets, half-muskets, [rusznice z krzesem i zamkami hubczastymi] - page 93
17. Professional writers:
1. Anonymous manuscript "A Book Useful for All Kind of Gunners"
2. Dell-Aqua "On Assembly and School of Gunners"
3. Dell-Aqua "Manual Praxis of Guns" - page 94
18. Improvements of Władysław IV in 1637, the office of The Elder of Cannon or Artillery General, the New Quart as a continuos fund for artillery - page 105
19. Architecture and contents of Warsaw's, Lwów's and other arsenals - page 109
20. Ironworks in Wąchock and Samsonów. Smelters: Caccio, Seravalle, "Dzianetty" and "Dziboni" (Polish spellings of Italian names) - page 112
21. The office and merit of Krzysztof Arciszewski. Inventory of Warsaw Arsenal in the end of 1649. - page 113
22. The personnel composition of all artillery service in 1647. - page 126
23. "Articles of the Most Famous Artillery" put together by Jan Platter and authorized by Władysław IV in 1634. - page 129
24. Participation of artillery during the wars of Władysław IV and Jan Kazimierz. Generals of Artillery: Przyjemski, Krzysztof Grodzicki, Fromhold Wolf von Ludinghansen. - page 140
25. Work of Kazimierz Siemionowicz: "Artis Magnae Artilleriae", pars I. - page 148
26. A view on a state of artillery during the reign of Jan III, under Marcin Kątski - 152
Section IV, 18th Century
27. Fall of artillery under the reign of the Sases. Generals of Artillery: Fleming, Jan St. Kątski, J.K.Branicki. - page 153
28. Raise (of artillery) by Henryk, but especially by Alojzy, Brühls. - page 158
29. Establishment in 1767
30. Articles for artillerists from 1767
31. Arsenals' supplies and war materiel before the First Partition
32. Establishment in 1776
33. School of artillery. Gunfounding. The work of Jakubowski: "Science of Artillery". - page 176
34. Hand guns. The progress before The Great Sejm. - page 187
35. Fortifying of artillery by The Great Sejm. - page 188
36. Deployment of artillery corps at permanent quarters and with regiments. - page 192
37. An arsenal inventory from 1791. Powder mill at Łośmianki. Gun foundry. The School under Schüller. - page 205
38. Notes and general conclusions. - page 213
Annotations - page 217