id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
elements-8909	McGovern, Conor	Gunpowder Empire: The Mighty Ottoman Military Outpaced	2009	12	.pdf	application/pdf	6130	339	71	Sir Steven Runciman acknowledges that earlier artillery had been un- able to damage solid masonry; it was not unti l Sultan Mehmet's foundries and the Hungarian engineer Urban devised a mighty cannon that would blast the walls of Babylon itself Here is the siege of Constantinople, the boldest expression of the might of the Ottoman military and the first example of Rogers' artillery revolution of the fifteenth century, when advances i n artillery technology caused it to become devas- tatingly powerful, thereby rendering old-style masonry for- tifications obsolete/1 Though gunpowder artillery had been i n use by both Muslim and Christian forces i n Europe prior to the siege of Constantinople, there is no finer example of the power of gunpowder against old style fortifications.	cache/elements-8909.pdf	txt/elements-8909.txt