Tsar Cannon: a weapon masterpiece or a toy? Why did the king's cannon fire? When did the king's cannon fire?

At first the cannon was aimed at the walls, but then it was moved to Red Square to Lobnoye Mesto. And by decree of Peter I, the cannon went into the courtyard. Now the giant weapon is located on. Each movement required the strength of at least 200 horses, which were tied to special brackets on the sides of the gun.

The Tsar Cannon is called so not only because of its size - it also has a portrait of Tsar Fyodor, the son of Ivan IV, engraved on it. The lion on the carriage (a stand under the barrel for aiming at the target and accurate shooting) emphasizes the high status of the gun. The carriage itself was cast only in 1835 at the Berda factory in St. Petersburg.

Many people ask, did the Tsar Cannon fire? Scientists say that she did fire one test shot for sighting purposes.

Therefore, inside the barrel there is a mark of the creator: then the master’s personal stamp was placed only after testing the weapon in practice. Therefore, we can safely say that the Tsar Cannon fired.

But such massive guns were intended for targeted firing of heavy cannonballs at the walls of fortresses. But the four cores at the foot of the monument are decorative and hollow inside. Real cannonballs of this size would weigh at least a ton each and would require a special mechanism to load them. Therefore, small stone cannonballs were used to charge the Tsar Cannon. And the real name of the gun is “Russian Shotgun”, or mortar (in military terminology), that is, it should stand with the muzzle up.

There is also a version that the design of the Tsar Cannon is a bombard. Cannons include guns with a barrel length of 40 calibers and above, and the Tsar Cannon has a length of only 4 calibers, like a bombard. These battering guns were huge enough to destroy a fortress wall and did not have a carriage. The barrel was dug into the ground, and two more trenches were made nearby for the artillery crew, since the guns were often torn apart. The rate of fire of bombards was from 1 to 6 shots per day.

The Tsar Cannon monument has several copies.

The Kremlin: a mini-guide to the territory

In the spring of 2001, by order of the Moscow government, the Udmurt enterprise Izhstal manufactured a copy of the Tsar Cannon from cast iron. The remake weighs 42 tons (each wheel weighs 1.5 tons, trunk diameter is 89 cm). Moscow donated a copy to Donetsk, where it was installed in front of the city hall.

In 2007, in Yoshkar-Ola, on Obolensky-Nogotkov Square at the entrance to the National Art Gallery, a copy of the Tsar Cannon, cast at the Butyakovsky Shipyard, was installed.

And in Perm there is the world's largest 20-inch cast iron cannon. This is definitely a military weapon. It was manufactured in 1868 by order of the Maritime Ministry at the Motovilikha Iron Cannon Factory. During testing of the Perm Tsar Cannon, 314 shots were fired with cannonballs and bombs of different systems.

A life-size model of the Permian cannon was exhibited in front of the Russian pavilion at the World Exhibition in Vienna in 1873. She had to go to Kronstadt to protect St. Petersburg from the sea. A carriage had already been prepared there, but the giant returned to Perm. By that time, engineer-inventor Pavel Obukhov from Zlatoust had developed a technology for the production of high-strength cannon steel and opened a plant in St. Petersburg, where lighter guns were cast. So the Perm Tsar Cannon became technically obsolete and became a monument.

What do you know about the history of the Tsar Cannon of the Moscow Kremlin?

Every resident of Russia, during a tour of the Moscow Kremlin, certainly saw two unique historical artifacts - the Tsar Cannon and the Tsar Bell. At the same time, the guide probably claimed that the bell never rang and the cannon never fired. This is wrong. A shot was once fired from the Tsar Cannon, although from the point of view of military science it was never an artillery weapon.

Cannon for the Tsar

Despite the fact that today the Tsar Cannon is considered a fake, it was cast in 1586 on the personal order of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich for the defense of Moscow. The creator of the giant gun, or rather its barrel, was the cannon yard foundry worker Andrei Chokhov. Over the 18 years of his work as a gunsmith, this talented craftsman made many unique guns, among which the Tsar Cannon turned out to be the most grandiose. Its weight was 39,310 kilograms, with a barrel length of 5.4 meters and a caliber of 890 mm. Since the formidable weapon was intended to protect Moscow, from the moment of its creation until 1706, the Tsar Cannon carried out combat service at the fortifications of Kitai-Gorod. Subsequently, it was moved to the courtyard of the Arsenal, and then to Ivanovskaya Square of the Moscow Kremlin.

Tsar Mortar

What the guides are right about is that the cannonballs and carriage of the Tsar Cannon were actually manufactured much later and are fake. The fact is that the Tsar Cannon is actually a mortar, which was never mounted on a carriage when firing, but was dug into the ground, reinforced with logs. Most often, this type of weapon was used when storming fortresses or their defense. The carriage for the Tsar Cannon was made in 1835 according to a sketch by Alexander Bryullov, when it was decided to install the cannon on Ivanovo Square as a decoration. The cores were cast at the Bird plant in St. Petersburg. Each of them weighs about two tons. According to experts, if the Tsar Cannon is loaded with these metal cannonballs and fired, its barrel will burst and the carriage will fall apart. This is not surprising, since during the creation of this weapon it was assumed that stone cannonballs weighing approximately 800 kilograms would be fired from it, while the weapon itself would be strengthened in the ground so that the recoil from the shot would go into it. No more than six shots could be fired from such a weapon per day.

The weapons of the formidable king

The most interesting thing is that during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, who made many military campaigns, 11 similar guns were cast. They were used during the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan, as well as in military campaigns against Sweden, Poland and Lithuania. Among the predecessors of the Tsar Cannon, one can note the Kashpirov cannon, weighing 19.65 tons, and the Peacock, weighing 16.7 tons. These guns were actively used during the siege of Polotsk by the troops of Ivan the Terrible to destroy the walls of the city.

It should be noted that, according to legend, the Tsar Cannon was once fired... with the ashes of False Dmitry. By the way, the fact of a single shot from the Tsar Cannon was confirmed by experts who examined the barrel of the Tsar Cannon in Soviet times. But scientists were unable to say exactly when the shot was fired. In their opinion, this was much earlier than the Time of Troubles. Most likely, the shot was fired shortly after the gun was cast at the cannon yard, with the purpose of testing it before installation in Kitai-Gorod. Moreover, the fact that the cannon never took part in battles is explained solely by the lack of military operations near the city walls during the years of its combat duty, and not at all by its professional unsuitability, as is commonly believed today.

On January 7, 1598, the servant of God Fedor Ioanovich, Grand Duke of Moscow and Tsar of All Rus', died in the Moscow Kremlin. During the reign of the last of the direct Rurikovichs, quite a few significant events occurred. The cities were founded: Samara, Saratov, Tsaritsyn (Volgograd), Voronezh, Arkhangelsk, Tobolsk, Surgut - new frontiers of the actively growing Russian State were established.

The next Russian-Swedish war was completed and Russia, as a result of which, returned access to the Baltic Sea along the Koporye-Yam line... Quite a few worthy deeds are being achieved, but this is not what Tsar Fedor is remembered for... The main memory of him still stands on Ivanovo Square of the Moscow Kremlin, and his name to her - Tsar Cannon!

Story

Not much time has passed since the death of Ivan the Terrible, the dust raised by the hooves of the guardsmen’s horses has not yet settled, and in Moscow the largest artillery piece in the world was created, which remains so to this day. Maybe not in size, but definitely in terms of the caliber of the barrel.

In 1586, by order of the highest order, work began on the creation of a grandiose cannon. Historians are still struggling with the reason for such an unusual step, but most are inclined to believe that the weapon was created to produce an external effect on foreign ambassadors. Like, look what we are capable of. Let's eat so hard it won't seem enough!

More seriously, the cannon was intended to testify to the growth of the power of the Russian State, both industrial and military. And, of course, she exalted the ruling Sovereign! (and Fyodor Ioanovich, according to contemporaries, was very unprepossessing physically and had a meek disposition).

The production was led by foundry master Andrei Chokhov.

Andrei Chokhov (1545 - 1629) - famous Russian foundry worker, creator of a large number of cannons and church bells. One of the surviving examples of the uniqueness of creativity is Chokhov’s siege arquebuses. The students continued and developed the traditions of the master (in particular, Alexey Nikiforov).

The casting work was carried out at the Moscow Cannon Yard (now the Lubyanka Square area) for several months. The main material for production was bronze. In terms of production technology, the weapon fully complied with the standards accepted at that time. Only more...much more!

The finished super-weapon was dragged with the help of two hundred horses to the Kremlin’s Red Square for demonstration to the sovereign. The barrel of the cannon was skillfully decorated with the image of Fyodor Ioannovich wearing all the royal regalia and riding a horse. In addition, the patterns run along the entire circumference of the trunk in the form of a ligature. Whether the giant cannon fired during the demonstration - no evidence has survived, and, given the meek disposition of Tsar Fedor, most likely not.

On the trunk there is also a dedication to Tsarina Irina Fedorovna Godunova (the wife of Tsar Fedor) and a mention of the fact that the monster was made by the “litz Chokhov”.
According to one version, due to the presence of the image of the Tsar, the cannon was named “Tsar Cannon”.

According to the second version, the name is associated primarily with the size of the work of cannon makers and foundry workers of medieval Rus'.
Another name for the gun was “Shotgun”, since it was intended for firing small projectiles - “shot” (stone or metal uncalibrated buckshot).

Having admired it enough, the cannon was hoisted onto a wooden frame (carriage) and placed on combat duty near the walls of the Kremlin (opposite the modern GUM). There she stood for almost a century! Once they tried to use the gun against the attacking Tatars of Khan Kazy - Girey, but they did not dare to approach effective shooting distance and the shot was missed.

Subsequently, already under Pyotr Alekeseevich Romanov in 1706, having gathered their strength, the cannon was dragged into the courtyard of the Kremlin Arsenal. And for a long time, the whole country admired the skill of gunsmiths and was amazed at the size, and also demonstrated it to overseas guests.

In 1835, a new cast-iron carriage was cast for the cannon (designed by Academician A.P. Bryullov) and decorative cannonballs weighing approximately 2 tons each. They then rolled it to the Armory, where other samples of guns were put on display.

In the 60s of the 20th century, the Tsar Cannon was finally installed in the place where it still stands today, near the bell tower of Ivan the Great. Or not quite that, since already in the 70s the gun was sent for restoration to Serpukhov, where it was equipped with a new decorative carriage and returned to its place in 1980.

Features of the device and application

If we talk about the Tsar Cannon in the language of gunsmiths, then it is, first of all, a military weapon, such as a bombard, intended for firing along a flat or mounted trajectory. The charge was a small “shot” with a total weight of up to 800 kilograms. It does not have an ignition hole, although there is a platform for it. The shot could only be fired when the fuse was fired from the side of the barrel; for this, an ignition cord was inserted into the powder chamber from the side of the muzzle.

The total weight of the artillery dinosaur is about 39 tons 312 kg, the barrel length is 5 meters 34 centimeters, the barrel caliber is 890 millimeters.

There are several opinions as to whether the Tsar Cannon fired during its centuries-old history. When carrying out restoration work in Serpukhov, experts from the Artillery Academy named after F.E. Dzerzhinsky concluded that the cannon was fired at least once.

The historian L.N. Gumilev there is a mention that the ashes of False Dmitry I were scattered by a shot from a legendary gun.

However, there are supporters and versions that the cannon was never fired. Intact traces of casting inside the barrel are indicated as evidence.

About records

The Tsar Cannon occupies an honorable place among the world record holders in the Guinness Book as a weapon of the largest caliber (890mm).

The Tsar Cannon Family

In 2001, in the city of gunsmiths Izhevsk, by order of the Government of the Russian Federation, two copies of the symbol of artillery valor were made with almost exact compliance with the main parameters. One copy was solemnly presented to the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, where it was installed near the city hall building.

The second replica adorns the territory of the Izhstal OJSC plant in Izhevsk.

In Yoshkar-Ola, on Obolensky-Nogotkov Square, there is a relatively small copy (weight - 12 tons). Also, the design of the gun does not correspond to the original; a number of patterns on the barrel are missing, others have been changed, and the decorative cores are also significantly smaller than the original ones. The cannon was suitable for firing, so the barrel was caulked with a special cannonball.

But the most interesting “Tsar Cannon” is located in the open-air museum of the Motovilikha Plant in the city of Perm. A real combat ship mortar, created in 1868 for the defense of St. Petersburg from the forts of Kronstadt.

The weight of the gun with carriage is 144 (!) tons, caliber 508 mm.

Having successfully passed artillery tests, the gun never entered combat duty - during tests and demonstrations in 1873 in Vienna, it became technically obsolete after Krupp created a bolt for loading guns from the breech. By decree of Tsar Alexander II, the cannon was preserved as a museum exhibit.

Conclusion

Why exactly the Tsar Cannon was created is not particularly important in our time. The main thing is that it is an eloquent symbol of the centuries-old military and industrial power of Russia, a bronze embodiment of the fighting spirit of the Russian people!

Video

But is the “Tsar Cannon” a prop or a real artillery piece? Yes and no.

Here, as they say, “on the third day” I visited India () and, along with all sorts of beauties, I saw the largest cannon in Asia there.

While I was near this weapon, a thought was spinning in my head... but we have more, but it was interrupted by another - yes - that is, but there are just rumors that it (ours) is not real, but a fake, and since certainty it wasn’t, then some kind of ambiguity remained in my soul, and I don’t like this state...

Even then I decided that when I come home I’ll definitely find out!

Maybe everything would have been forgotten, but then my son and the whole class went on an excursion to Moscow and then, upon arrival, showed photos, including this one:

and all sorts of doubts came flooding back again, and since I’m still an artilleryman (oh, what kind of artilleryman are you, knowledgeable people will exclaim, you make an artilleryman like Savchenko is a pilot) I decided to finally figure out what’s what, especially since I’m going to take a ride here one of these days Moscow and walk around historical places there, climb skyscrapers, visit Poklonnaya Hill.

Well, it’s understandable to visit the Kremlin, but you won’t be able to pass by the “Tsar Cannons” there.

As you know, the Tsar Cannon is a medieval artillery piece and a monument to Russian artillery, cast in bronze in 1586 by Russian master Andrei Chokhov at the Cannon Yard.
The Tsar is a bronze cannon.

But this is the barrel itself, everything else that is on display is, yes... - a prop, namely: cast iron cannonballs (they are hollow inside, by the way), which in the 19th century became the source of talk about the decorative purpose of the gun.

In the 16th century they used stone cores, and they were 2.5 times lighter than the cast iron ones. We can say with absolute certainty that the walls of the cannon would not have withstood the pressure of the powder gases when fired with such a cannonball. Of course, this was understood when they were cast at the Byrd plant.

The gun carriage, cast there, is also a fake. You can't shoot from it. When a standard 800-kilogram stone cannonball is fired from a 40-ton Tsar Cannon, even with a low initial speed of 100 meters per second, the following will happen: expanding powder gases, creating pressure, will seem to expand the space between the cannonball and the bottom of the cannon; the core will begin to move in one direction, and the cannon in the opposite direction, and the speed of their movement will be inversely proportional to the mass (the lighter the body, the faster it will fly).

The mass of the cannon is only 50 times the mass of the cannonball (in a Kalashnikov assault rifle, for example, this ratio is about 400), so when the cannonball flies forward at a speed of 100 meters per second, the cannon will roll back at a speed of about 2 meters per second. This colossus will not stop right away, after all, it’s 40 tons. The rollback energy will be approximately equal to a hard impact of the KAMAZ into an obstacle at a speed of 30 km/h. The Tsar Cannon will be torn off its carriage. Moreover, she simply lies on top of him like a log. All this can only be held by a special sliding carriage with hydraulic dampers (recoil dampers) and reliable mounting of the gun. It simply didn’t exist then. . Therefore, the artillery complex that they show us in the Kremlin called the Tsar Cannon is a giant prop.

But this is only part of the picture. There is another one.

What Andrei Chokhov cast in 1586, that is, the bronze barrel itself, could really fire. It would just look completely different from what many people think. The fact is that by its design the Tsar Cannon is not a cannon, but a classic bombard. A cannon is a weapon with a barrel length of 40 calibers and above. The Tsar Cannon has a barrel length of only 4 calibers. But for a bombard this is just normal. They were often of impressive size and were used for siege, like battering rams. To destroy a fortress wall, you need a very heavy shell. This is what giant calibers are for.

There was no talk of any gun carriage then. The trunk was simply buried in the ground. The flat end rested on deeply driven piles.

Nearby they dug shelters for the artillery crew, since such weapons could be torn apart. Charging sometimes took a day. Hence the rate of fire of such guns is from 1 to 6 shots per day. But all this was worth it, because it made it possible to crush impregnable walls, avoid months-long sieges and reduce combat losses during the assault.

Only this can be the meaning of casting a 40-ton barrel with a caliber of 900 mm. The Tsar Cannon is a bombard - a battering ram gun designed to besiege enemy fortresses.

Now about that - did she shoot?

In 1980, specialists from the Academy named after Dzerzhinsky concluded that the Tsar Cannon was fired at least once...

However, as they say now, not everything is so obvious - the report of these same specialists was not published for unknown reasons. And since the report is not shown to anyone, it cannot be considered evidence. The phrase “they shot at least once” was apparently dropped by one of them in a conversation or interview, otherwise we would not have known anything about it at all. If the gun had been used for its intended purpose, then inevitably there would have been not only particles of gunpowder in the barrel, which according to rumors were found, but also mechanical damage in the form of longitudinal scratches. In battle, the Tsar Cannon would fire not cotton wool, but stone cannonballs weighing approximately 800 kg.

There should also be some wear on the surface of the bore. It cannot be otherwise, because bronze is a fairly soft material. The expression “at least” just indicates that, apart from particles of gunpowder, nothing significant could be found there. If this is so, then the gun was not used for its intended purpose. And particles of gunpowder could remain from test shots. The point in this issue is put by the fact that the Tsar Cannon never left Moscow.

“After the Tsar Cannon was cast and finished at the Cannon Yard, it was dragged to the Spassky Bridge and laid on the ground next to the Peacock cannon. To move the gun, ropes were tied to eight brackets on its barrel; 200 horses were harnessed to these ropes at the same time, and they rolled the cannon, which lay on huge roller logs. Initially, the “Tsar” and “Peacock” guns lay on the ground near the bridge leading to the Spasskaya Tower, and the Kashpirov cannon lay near the Zemsky Prikaz, located where the Historical Museum is now. In 1626, they were lifted from the ground and installed on log buildings densely packed with earth. These platforms were called roskats..."

At home, using a battering gun for its intended purpose is somehow suicidal. Who were they going to shoot at with an 800-kilogram cannonball from the Kremlin walls? It is pointless to shoot at enemy manpower once a day. There were no tanks then.

Of course, these huge battering guns were put on public display not for combat purposes, but as an element of the prestige of the power. And, of course, this was not their main purpose. Under Peter I, the Tsar Cannon was installed on the territory of the Kremlin itself. There she remains to this day. Why has it never been used in combat, although it is quite combat-ready as a battering weapon? Perhaps the reason for this is its excessive weight? Was it realistic to move such a weapon over long distances?

Modern historians extremely rarely ask themselves the question: “why?” And the question is extremely useful. So let's ask, why was it necessary to cast a siege weapon weighing 40 tons if it could not be delivered to the enemy city? To scare the ambassadors? Hardly. They could make a cheap mockup for this and show it from afar. Why spend so much work and bronze on bluffing? No, the Tsar Cannon was cast to be used practically. This means they could have moved it. How could they do this?

40 tons is very heavy. and the “Tsar Cannon” was dragged, not transported.

Look at the picture of a heavy weapon being loaded - a transport platform is visible in the background. It has a bow curved upward (protection from sticking into uneven surfaces). The platform was clearly used for sliding. That is, the load was dragged, not rolled. And it is right. It is also understandable that the curved bow is bound with metal, because the cargo is very heavy. The weight of most battering guns did not exceed 20 tons.

Let's assume that they covered the main part of the journey by water. Moving these bombards over short distances of several kilometers with the help of many horses is also a feasible task, although very difficult.

Is it possible to do the same with a 40 ton gun?

Let's say goodbye to the idea that our rulers were stupider than today's historians. It’s enough to blame everything on the inexperience of the craftsmen and the tyranny of the kings. The king, who managed to occupy this high post, ordered a 40-ton gun, paid for its production, was clearly no fool, and should have thought very carefully about his action. Such costly issues cannot be resolved at the end of the day. He understood exactly how he was going to deliver this “gift” to the walls of enemy cities.

The fact that the Tsar Cannon is not just a surge of enthusiasm among Moscow foundry workers is proven by the existence of an even more enormous weapon, Malik - er - Maidan.

It was cast at Ahman Dagar in India in 1548 and weighs as much as 57 tons.

This is a siege weapon with the same purpose as the Tsar Cannon, only 17 tons heavier.

And how many more such weapons need to be discovered in order to understand that at that time they were cast, delivered to besieged cities and practically used?

So a logical picture has lined up. In the 16th century, the Principality of Moscow waged numerous military operations both in the east (capture of Kazan), in the south (Astrakhan), and in the west (wars with Poland, Lithuania and Sweden). The cannon was cast in 1586.

Although Kazan had already been taken by this time, and the Western countries had established a shaky truce, however, more like a respite.

Could the Tsar Cannon be in demand under these conditions? Yes, definitely. The success of the military campaign depended on the presence of battering ram artillery. The fortified cities of our western neighbors had to be taken somehow.

The Tsar Cannon is real.

The surroundings around her are a sham.

The formed public opinion about her is false.

On the one hand, we have an example of a gigantic props of the 19th century, on the other, one of the largest working medieval guns, and it turns out that a real miracle is on display in the Kremlin (it’s not for nothing that the Tsar Cannon was included in the Guinness Book of Records), disguised as absurdity , but for some reason we don’t notice it.

Maybe because they are zombified by Russophobic propaganda, false hypotheses and the opinion of liberal “authorities” who claim that except for “slurping cabbage soup with bast shoes”, the Russians did not know how and do not know anything...

And now some interesting and educational facts and tales associated with this miracle gun.

• Gumilyov claims that she shot False Dmitry I, the only Pole who returned to Poland from Russia, however, in the form of a mixture of black powder and teeth.
• They also say that the second shot was fired in the 60s of the 20th century - the gun was taken to the firing range before being moved. The cannonball flew about 250 meters. The weight of the core is 40 pounds.
• The famous mathematician and troll Fomenko claims that the Tsar Cannon was cast under Nicholas II, and previously it did not exist at all.
• The Tsar Cannon was moved back and forth for a long time. First it was placed on Lobnoye Mesto, then it was moved inside the Kremlin to the Arsenal building. Then they pulled it out and placed it side by side on a decorative carriage and placed two stacks of kernels next to it. And only under Soviet rule in the 60s they brought it to Ivanovskaya Square, where it still stands today.
• In 2001, a duplicate was made by special order in Izhevsk and donated to Donetsk. The duplicate weighs 42 tons. Completely souvenir, cannot be used for its intended purpose.

• In 2007, a duplicate was also cast in Yoshkar-Ola, half the original size. They claim that this is a working model, so they put a core in the barrel and welded it there. Unlike the original, it is made entirely of steel (the original has a bronze barrel). Weight - 12 tons.

• Other weapons made by Chokhov have also survived.

Siege arquebus "Skoropea"

Siege arquebus "Lion"

The siege arquebus “Lion”, slightly redesigned, now looks like this.

All of them are located in St. Petersburg in the Artillery Museum on Kronverkskaya Embankment.

The Tsar Cannon and the Tsar Bell located nearby are surprising in size, but were never used for their intended purpose.
Some consider them the creations of a national genius, others the personification of bragging, window dressing and impracticality, recalling the famous lines: “Russia cannot be understood with the mind.”

The caliber of the Tsar Cannon is 890 mm, the barrel length is 5.345 m, the weight is 39.312 tons (2400 pounds), the weight of the stone core is 819 kg (50 pounds). A cast iron cannonball of the same size would weigh 120 pounds. To push it out would require a powder charge, which the barrel would not withstand.

The giant gun was moved from place to place by 200 horses on wooden rollers, so it was practically non-transportable.

The main characteristic of an artillery gun is the caliber of the barrel. According to this indicator, the Tsar Cannon is in fourth place in the world. The first three are shared by two Mallett mortars and a Little David mortar, manufactured in Britain and the USA in 1857 and 1945, respectively. All had a caliber of 914 mm (36 in), like the Tsar Cannon, they were never used in combat and are museum pieces.

But is it? We will find out the expert's opinion at the end of the post.

The largest artillery piece used in practice (during the siege of Sevastopol in 1942) was the German Dora cannon with a caliber of 800 mm. She also holds the records for barrel length (32 m) and projectile weight (7.088 tons).

The Tsar Cannon was cast in the third year of the reign of Ivan the Terrible's son Fyodor, known for his meek disposition, extreme piety and lack of interest in state affairs. The actual initiator of the creation of the “superweapon” was his brother-in-law and actual regent Boris Godunov.

It was intended to protect against the Crimean Tatars, who burned Moscow in 1571 and threatened to repeat the raid. In 1591, Khan Kazy-Girey again approached Moscow and withdrew without attempting an assault. Whether the presence of the Tsar Cannon among the Russians played any role in this is unknown. There was no further military need to use it.

Artillery Academy experts who examined the gun in 1980 determined that it had been fired at least once, probably for testing.

Structurally, the Tsar Cannon was a classic bombard - a medieval weapon with a thick short barrel, widespread in Europe, Ottoman Turkey and Mughal India. The bombard was dug into the ground with its breech, loaded from the muzzle and fired up to six shots a day, mainly with the aim of destroying enemy fortifications. A trench was set up nearby for the crew, because the bombards were often blown apart.

In Turkey, ancient bombards stood on the forts protecting the Dardanelles until 1868. The last case of their successful use dates back to 1807. A 244-kilogram stone core fell into the powder magazine of the British battleship Windsor Castle, which sank as a result of the explosion.

Since the Tsar Cannon had to fire not at the walls, but at the infantry and cavalry approaching the Kremlin, it could shoot both stone cannonballs and cast iron shrapnel or small stones (“shotgun”), and therefore is called in many sources the “Russian Shotgun” .

Its creator, Andrei Chokhov, was honored to place his name on the trunk next to the name of the monarch. He entered the Moscow Cannon Yard on Neglinka in 1568 as a 23-year-old youth, quickly advanced and over 40 years of work cast more than twenty large guns. The master successfully survived the terror of Ivan the Terrible and the Time of Troubles and died at 84, having witnessed six reigns.

The Tsar Cannon was located at Lobnoye Mesto and covered the Kremlin’s Spassky Gate. At first it lay on the ground, in 1626 it was erected on a log frame filled with soil ("roll"), 10 years later a stone rack was built, inside which there was a wine shop.

In 1701, the Tsar Cannon miraculously survived. After the loss of most of the artillery near Narva, Peter I ordered the old Kremlin cannons to be converted into modern ones. Only at the last moment did he spare the Tsar Cannon for its uniqueness.

At the beginning of the 18th century, it was moved to the Kremlin to the gates of the Arsenal (demolished due to the construction of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses), and in 1960 to its current location on Ivanovskaya Square.

The artistic casting decorating the Tsar Cannon is a work of art

The cast-iron carriage on which the Tsar Cannon now stands, and the four hollow cast-iron cannonballs cast in 1835 at the St. Petersburg plant of Charles Byrd, are decorative. Placing the cannon on the carriage was a technically complex operation, for which the winning contractor, Mikhail Vasiliev, received a huge sum of 1,400 rubles at that time.

At the time of its creation, the Tsar Cannon was, to use a now favorite expression in Russia, “a weapon that has no analogues in the world.” At the same time, for the same money it was possible to cast 20 guns of a smaller caliber, which would have brought much more benefit. The main goal of the government was, in modern terms, PR.

When the ponderous monument to Alexander III by Paolo Trubetskoy was erected in St. Petersburg in 1909, the poet Alexander Roslavlev responded with an epigram: “The third wild toy for the Russian serf: there was the Tsar-bell, the Tsar-cannon, and now the Tsar-f...a.”

However, let me remind you of this opinion of artillery specialist A. Shirokorad

He claims that venerable historians and dissident joke-tellers are wrong all around. Firstly, the Tsar Cannon fired, and secondly, this weapon is not a cannon at all.
Currently, the Tsar Cannon is on a decorative cast-iron carriage, and next to it lie decorative cast-iron cannonballs, which were cast in 1834 in St. Petersburg at the Berda iron foundry. It is clear that it is physically impossible to either shoot from this cast-iron carriage or use cast-iron cannonballs - the Tsar Cannon will be smashed to smithereens! Documents about the testing of the Tsar Cannon or its use in combat conditions have not been preserved, which gave rise to lengthy disputes about its purpose. Most historians and military men in the 19th and early 20th centuries believed that the Tsar Cannon was a shotgun, that is, a weapon designed to fire shot, which in the 16th-17th centuries consisted of small stones. A minority of experts generally exclude the possibility of combat use of the gun, believing that it was made specifically to frighten foreigners, especially the ambassadors of the Crimean Tatars. Let us remember that in 1571 Khan Devlet Giray burned Moscow.

In the 18th - early 20th centuries, the Tsar Cannon was called a shotgun in all official documents. And only the Bolsheviks in the 1930s decided to increase its rank for propaganda purposes and began to call it a cannon.

The secret of the Tsar Cannon was revealed only in 1980, when a large truck crane removed it from its carriage and placed it on a huge trailer. Then the powerful KrAZ transported the Tsar Cannon to Serpukhov, where the cannon was repaired at the military unit No. 42708 plant. At the same time, a number of specialists from the Artillery Academy named after. Dzerzhinsky examined and measured it. For some reason the report was not published, but from the surviving draft materials it becomes clear that the Tsar Cannon... was not a cannon!

The highlight of the gun is its channel. At a distance of 3190 mm, it has the shape of a cone, the initial diameter of which is 900 mm and the final diameter is 825 mm. Then comes the charging chamber with a reverse taper - with an initial diameter of 447 mm and a final diameter (at the breech) of 467 mm. The length of the chamber is 1730 mm, and the bottom is flat.

So this is a classic bombard!

Bombards first appeared at the end of the 14th century. The name "bombarda" comes from the Latin words bombus (thunderous sound) and arder (to burn). The first bombards were made of iron and had screw-mounted chambers. For example, in 1382, in the city of Ghent (Belgium), the “Mad Margaret” bombard was made, named in memory of the Countess of Flanders Margaret the Cruel. The caliber of the bombard is 559 mm, the barrel length is 7.75 calibers (klb), and the bore length is 5 klb. The weight of the gun is 11 tons. “Mad Margarita” fired stone cannonballs weighing 320 kg. The bombarda consists of two layers: the inner one, consisting of longitudinal strips welded together, and the outer one, made of 41 iron hoops welded together and with the inner layer. A separate screw chamber consists of one layer of disks welded together and is equipped with sockets into which a lever was inserted when screwing it in and out.

Loading and aiming large bombards took about a day. Therefore, during the siege of the city of Pisa in 1370, every time the besiegers prepared to fire a shot, the besieged went to the opposite end of the city. The besiegers, taking advantage of this, rushed to attack.

The bombard's charge was no more than 10% of the core's weight. There were no trunnions or carriages. The guns were laid on wooden blocks and frames, and piles were driven in behind or brick walls were erected for support. Initially, the elevation angle did not change. In the 15th century, primitive lifting mechanisms began to be used and bombards were cast from copper.

Please note that the Tsar Cannon does not have trunnions, with the help of which the gun is given an elevation angle. In addition, it has an absolutely smooth rear section of the breech, with which it, like other bombards, rested against a stone wall or frame.

Defender of the Dardanelles

By the middle of the 15th century, the most powerful siege artillery was... the Turkish Sultan. Thus, during the siege of Constantinople in 1453, the Hungarian foundry maker Urban cast the Turks a copper bombard with a caliber of 24 inches (610 mm), which fired stone cannonballs weighing about 20 pounds (328 kg). It took 60 bulls and 100 people to transport it to the position. To eliminate the rollback, the Turks built a stone wall behind the gun. The rate of fire of this bombard was 4 shots per day. By the way, the rate of fire of large-caliber Western European bombards was approximately the same. Just before the capture of Constantinople, a 24-inch bombard exploded. At the same time, its designer Urban himself died. The Turks appreciated large-caliber bombards. Already in 1480, during the battles on the island of Rhodes, they used 24-35-inch caliber bombards (610-890 mm). The casting of such giant bombards required, as indicated in ancient documents, 18 days.

It is curious that bombards of the 15th-16th centuries in Turkey were in service until the middle of the 19th century. Thus, on March 1, 1807, during the crossing of the Dardanelles by the English squadron of Admiral Duckworth, a marble core of 25 inches (635 mm) caliber weighing 800 pounds (244 kg) hit the lower deck of the ship Windsor Castle and ignited several caps with gunpowder, as a result there was a terrible explosion. 46 people were killed and wounded. In addition, many sailors jumped overboard in fright and drowned. The Aktiv ship was hit by the same cannonball and punched a huge hole in the side above the waterline. Several people could stick their heads through this hole.

In 1868, over 20 huge bombards still stood on the forts defending the Dardanelles. There is information that during the Dardanelles operation of 1915, the English battleship Agamemnon was hit by a 400-kilogram stone core. Of course, it was unable to penetrate the armor and only amused the team.

Let's compare the Turkish 25-inch (630 mm) copper bombard, cast in 1464, which is currently kept in the museum in Woolwich (London), with our Tsar Cannon. The weight of the Turkish bombard is 19 tons, and the total length is 5232 mm. The outer diameter of the barrel is 894 mm. The length of the cylindrical part of the channel is 2819 mm. Chamber length - 2006 mm. The bottom of the chamber is rounded. The bombard fired stone cannonballs weighing 309 kg, the gunpowder charge weighed 22 kg.

Bombarda once defended the Dardanelles. As you can see, in appearance and in the structure of the channel it is very similar to the Tsar Cannon. The main and fundamental difference is that the Turkish bombard has a screw-in breech. Apparently, the Tsar Cannon was made based on the model of such bombards.

Tsar Shotgun

So, the Tsar Cannon is a bombard designed to fire stone cannonballs. The weight of the stone core of the Tsar Cannon was about 50 pounds (819 kg), and a cast iron core of this caliber weighs 120 pounds (1.97 tons). As a shotgun, the Tsar Cannon was extremely ineffective. At the cost of the cost, instead, it was possible to produce 20 small shotguns, which would take much less time to load - not a day, but only 1-2 minutes. I note that in the official inventory “At the Moscow Arsenal of Artillery” # for 1730 there were 40 copper and 15 cast iron shotguns. Let's pay attention to their calibers: 1500 pounds - 1 (this is the Tsar Cannon), and then follow the calibers: 25 pounds - 2, 22 pounds - 1, 21 pounds - 3, etc. The largest number of shotguns, 11, are in the 2-pound gauge.

And yet she shot

Who and why wrote the Tsar Cannon into shotguns? The fact is that in Russia, all the old guns located in the fortresses, with the exception of mortars, over time were automatically transferred to shotguns, that is, in the event of a siege of the fortress, they had to shoot shot (stone), and later - cast iron grapeshot at the infantry marching for the assault. It was inappropriate to use old guns to fire cannonballs or bombs: what if the barrel would blow apart, and the new guns had much better ballistic data. So the Tsar Cannon was recorded as a shotgun; at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, the military forgot about the procedures in smooth-bore fortress artillery, and civilian historians did not know at all and, based on the name “shotgun,” decided that the Tsar Cannon was to be used exclusively as an anti-assault weapon guns for firing stone shot.

The dispute over whether the Tsar Cannon fired was settled in 1980 by experts from the Academy. Dzerzhinsky. They examined the bore of the gun and, based on a number of signs, including the presence of particles of burnt gunpowder, concluded that the Tsar Cannon had been fired at least once. After the Tsar Cannon was cast and finished at the Cannon Yard, it was dragged to the Spassky Bridge and laid on the ground next to the Peacock cannon.# To move the cannon, ropes were tied to eight brackets on its barrel, and 200 were harnessed to these ropes at the same time horses, and they rolled the cannon lying on huge logs - rollers.

Initially, the “Tsar” and “Peacock” guns lay on the ground near the bridge leading to the Spasskaya Tower, and the Kashpirov cannon lay near the Zemsky Prikaz, located where the Historical Museum is now located. In 1626, they were lifted from the ground and installed on log frames tightly packed with earth. These platforms were called roskats. One of them, with the Tsar Cannon and the Peacock, was placed at the Execution Ground, the other, with the Kashpirova cannon, at the Nikolsky Gate. In 1636, the wooden rolls were replaced with stone ones, inside which warehouses and shops selling wine were built.

After the “Narva embarrassment,” when the tsar’s army lost all siege and regimental artillery, Peter I ordered new cannons to be urgently cast. The king decided to obtain the copper necessary for this by melting down bells and ancient cannons. According to the “nominal decree”, it was “ordered to pour the Peacock cannon into cannon and mortar casting, which is on the roskat in China near the Execution Ground; the Kashpirov cannon, which is near the new Money Dvor, where the Zemsky order was located; the Echidna cannon, near the village of Voskresensky; the Krechet cannon with a ten-pound cannonball; "Nightingale" cannon with a 6-pound cannonball, which is in China on the square."

Peter, due to his lack of education, did not spare the most ancient Moscow casting tools and made an exception only for the largest tools. Among them, naturally, was the Tsar Cannon, as well as two mortars cast by Andrei Chokhov, which are currently in the Artillery Museum in St. Petersburg.