Excavated Bomb Suggests Early Start for Artillery

[tluassa]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...769016,00.html

photos included in the link.

very interesting ...

By dint of hard work and strict devotion to God, Christoph Bernhard von Galen (1606-1678) managed to attain the rank of prince-bishop. The man also liked to rub shoulders with generals and was fond of using gunpowder to lend authority to Jesus' words. His contemporaries nicknamed him "Bombing Bernd."

[tercio67]

Yes, us Dutch are intimately aware of those. He brought 200 guns and laid siege to Groningen in 1672. Not all projectiles exploded and were described in great detail, including their obnoxious smell. There's a few in museums over here too. The siege failed btw.

[nemowork]

Hardly surprising, theres a reason cannons are named after the churches cannons.

And thats not including the thing about how the protein rich diet of bishops made their urine ripe targets for the powder makers dark arts in finding night soil.
I mean, my local bishops rode down William Wallace at Falkirk and fought at Crecy (with cannons) and Agincourt, a little dabbling in the pyromancers arts 300 years later wouldnt have shocked them in the slightest.

[Cadarso]

The bishop don Jerónimo, worthy cleric,
when he has had enough of fighting with both his hands,
he has lost count of all the Moors he has killed,
what fell to him was tremendous.
My Cid don Rodrigo, he who in a fortunate hour was born,
from his entire fifth the tithe he has granted him.

Cantar del Mío Cid. 12th century.

[JCR]

Interestingly, according to german wiki, his parents were protestant, his father held lands and titles in Courland.
His father killed a catholic man during a Landtag session in 1607 and was punished by 12 years of imprisonment.
Worse for him, his son was taken away by Jesuits and raised as a catholic clergyman and became "Bomben-Bernd"
These are ancestors (not directly of course) of Clemens Graf Galen, the prince bishop of Münster during the third Reich, one of the few really heroic figures the catholic church had during the nazi era.
He was bishop (no longer prince-bishop though) of Münster as well, so the Galens can rightfully say they are bishops in the third generation

[SineJustitia]

Hardly surprising, theres a reason cannons are named after the churches cannons.

Meh. Them protestant rebel scum from The Netherlands, in Groningen where Bernd layed his longest siege, retaliated by naming their favorite gun "Grote Griet", roughly translated as "Big Girl". According to local lore, the gun was so accurate that they used it to target Bernd himself. Okay, they didn't succeed in killing him, but they did, at one time, shoot his plate of sauerkraut just as he was about to eat it

And to this day, one of the biggest bars in Groningen is called Grote Griet.

Anyway, interesting article; @tluasse: thanks for posting.