[J. Lee]

One recent topic that came up into my mind was whether wheeled carriage was essential for employing artillery on field. The topic drew my attention after watching debate, during which one student of military history claimed that employing guns at field warfare(fifteenth to seventeenth century) was absolutely impossible without field carriages.

Of course, unlike sixteenth century, fifteenth century showed huge variety of gun carriages including wheeled ones or just those with trestles or even simple plank or carriages even unto second half of the century.

Alas, I can only recall that I saw such variety of carriages at medieval manuscripts(many of them from the famous froissart's chronicles in biblotheque natoinale), but not the exact source or websites containing the illuminations.
I wonder if I can hope for some enlightenment regarding where(be it website, books, or thesis) to find out fifteenth medieval manuscripts depicting either artillery or other gunpowder weaponry.

[David Hohl]

Well, I started on Wikipedia, and it looks like it answers your question, though one can debate its accuracy; I didn't find primary material aside from a pair of images. They have two reproduced images from manuscripts which clearly show the carriage; the first is simply a trestle, but the second appears to show cannon on wheels in the siege of Orleans, 1429. The date mentioned in the text for wheeled carriage is the 1380s.

[Timo Nieminen]

[Doug Lester]

I would agree that in Europe the carrage made the use of cannons possible. Just don't assume that that means a cannon mounted on a wheeled carriage. The early cannons were often, if not usually, transported on wagons with their supplies and then set up on a stationary bed to be used.

[David Hohl]

As a side note, heavy loads were commonly carried on sleds up through the 18th century and beyond. On soft or uneven ground a sled can be considerably better than wheeled conveyance, and some of the beams which some early artillery were strapped to could have been dragged quite well. Just a possible interpretation.

[Sean Poynter]

I reckon wheeled carriages were pretty essential to the transportation and placement of artillery. Here are a couple examples of them in use:

Ribaudequins were placed on and operated from two wheeled "carts" as early as 1339 with the largest one being made in Verona in 1387 (Konstantin Nossov, Ancient and Medieval Siege Weapons/C.W.C Oman, Art of War in the middle Ages A. D. 378-1515).

Regarding bombards, Nossov mentions "These enormous bombards were only used at sieges, and, of course, never from wheeled carriages. They were driven into the ground or mounted on timbered platforms assembled on the spot." I interpret this to mean bombards were carried on wheeled carriages to their destination and then either the wheels from the carriage were removed and the carriage secured to the ground or the cannon was removed from the carriage and placed on a platform.

[William P]

when i get a chance in the next week or so, ill get my hands on the book 'wars in the renaissance' which has roughly 6-8 chapters, one is dedicated entirely to gunpowder, and subsequent development of fortress defences
http://unsymbolization.blogspot.com/2009/11/r...t-war.html

[Len Parker]

Here's a thread with some cannons http://www.tforum.info/forum/index.php?showtopic=29221 and a few paintings.