A bibliography of English military books up to 1642 and of ...

Tartaglia's fether, a letter-carrier of Brescia, of surname unknown, but
who, on account of his low stature and occupation, was commonly called
Little Michael the Courier, died when Nicholas was six years old, leaving
At the sack of Brescia in
his family no other heritage than a good name.
1512, Nicholas fell into the hands of some French soldiers, who wounded
him frightfully on the skull, frafturing his jaw. His mother, having no
money to buy ointments, cured him by washing the wounds continually with
water j in later years he was obliged to wear a beard to hide the monstrous
scars, and, being unable to speak plainly on account of the injury to his jaw,
he was nicknamed by his playmates " Tartaglia " (the Stammerer). He was
almost entirely self-taught. He relates how, when he was about fourteen
years old, he put himself to school. The agreement was that he should pay
one-third of the fee beforehand, one-third when he had learnt half the
alphabet, and the remainder when he had learnt it all. At the end of a fortnight
he had learnt the letters to K, and then, being unable to pay the last
instalment, he quitted the school, having first obtained, for self-instrudion,
From
copies of the complete alphabet, and some letters written by his master.
that day he had no other teacher than " a certain daughter of Poverty named
Industry." His attention -wzs not directed to military matters until 1531 ;
up to that time he took no delight in such things, nor ever thought to do so.
He had not even remarked the plan of the defences of the fortified towns in
which he had resided. A question asked him as to what elevation should be
given to Artillery in order to obtain the greatest range first induced him to
write on the science of gunnery ; but, becoming convinced that it was wrong
to study to improve an art intended for the destruftion of human beings, he
ceased his investigations, and burnt all his papers. However, in 1537, on
the rumour spreading that Soloman II. of Turkey was preparing for an
attack on Christendom, he hastily re-wrote and published them, some in
lectures and some through the press, the latter under the title of " Nuova
Scientia." This work aroused great interest. In estimating the value of
his writings so far as concerns gunnery, it must be borne in mind that
•^
Leonardo da Vinci's notes on that subjedl were in MS., and therefore unknown,
save perhaps to two or three persons. Tartaglia's researches were
thus, at that time, with reason termed a " new science," and questions concerning
them came to him from all sides. With the aid of the memoranda
he had made of these questions, and of his
answers to them, he wrote the
"Quesiti," which was published in 1546. This account is given by Tartaglia
himself in the 6th book of the " Quesiti," and in the Preface to
and to the "Nuova Scientia." He died in Venice in 1557, famous and
much esteemed.
Tartaglia was the first to inquire into the nature of the curve described by
projediles. His claim to the invention of the Quadrant is disputed by
Collado, who quotes a passage from Santbech's edition of Regiomontanus
(1561) in support of this view, wherein the elevation of a piece to an angle
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that