Liège was cut off from the outside world; when the great black weapons reached the outskirts within range of the forts, only the local inhabitants saw the advent of the monsters that to one observer looked like “overfed slugs.” Their squat barrels, doubled by the recoil cylinders that grew on their backs like tumors, pointed cavernous mouths upward at the sky.
—Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August, (Random House), 225
She is, of course, talking about howitzers, essentially about pipes, although black pipes (do English cannon wear white hats?). I’ll be alert for the appearance of similar characterizations of French or English weapons while aware there likely will be none.
