19th Century "Trattato di fortificazione e d'artiglieria" (Military Architecture and Artillery treatise)

Another military art jewel, a 19th century rare manuscript about fortifications, bastions and citadels architecture with a treatise about artillery and ballistics, all in one. Written in Italian with elegant calligraphy, has around 30 detailed full page illustrations and starts with an introduction of geometrics (basics rules to erect pentagons, hexagons, heptagons, etc that are used later to design fortifications, most of them by the sea or close to rivers). This manuscript has extraordinary similarities to the other military architecture treatise I posted last October (by Spanish Captain Cristobal de Rojas), named Theory and Practice of Fortifications.

Unfortunately, don’t have author’s name. I’ll update this post if my investigation goes further. I recommend a complete an amazing web page about classical military architecture (forts, arms & armour…): http://www.militaryarchitecture.com/ 

Bombs and Explosives handbook

I found this handbook of bombs and explosives -17th Century- in the Bavarian State Library during my travels through open virtual libraries around the world. But my investigation about author (Hans G Schirvatt?) concluded with a poor-to-nothing result. The only reference I could find is that all weapons shown in this handbook were used during 17th century first quarter European wars, and were contemporaneous to Flandes war –also known as eighty years war or Netherlands independence war from Spain-.

Was during this war when the use of bombs with temporizers reached an incredible level of perfection, because some episodes –especially for city sieges like Breda- were based on “underground techniques”: an special task force of military engineers dig tunnels to approach enemy troops, put the bombs and grenades with combustion or mechanical based temporizers and escape using the same tunnel, with time enough –sometimes not- to avoid explosion. An authentic massive destruction weapon manual in 17th Century.

Some episodes of the eighty years war here.