bombarda

Medieval Latin bombus derived from Greek bombos, the buzzing of bees or the deep resonant sound of a hollow vessel. The bombarda described the cannon's characteristic deep, resonating boom. The largest bombards — Mons Meg at Edinburgh Castle (cast 1449), the Dardanelles Gun at Istanbul (cast 1464), Pumhart von Steyr in Austria (cast ~1400) — were enormous weapons that fired stone balls weighing up to 400 kg.

The bombard arrived in Europe via Arab intermediaries who had learned gunpowder technology from China. The first documented European cannon appears in the Florentine records of 1326. By the time of the Hundred Years' War, English and French forces were using artillery in battle; Edward III had bombards at the siege of Calais in 1346. The weapons were slow, inaccurate, and difficult to move, but their psychological effect was immense.

The fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453 demonstrated the bombard's revolutionary capability. Mehmed II had twelve large bombards cast — including the Dardanelles Gun — under the direction of Urban, a Hungarian master cannon-founder whom the Byzantine Emperor had refused to hire. The walls of Constantinople, which had held for a thousand years, fell to gunpowder in fifty-three days.

Today 'bombard' means to attack with bombs or artillery, and metaphorically to overwhelm with information or stimuli. We bombard people with questions, emails, and advertisements. The resonant boom of the medieval cannon has become the sensation of being overwhelmed.