1 - Six cannonballs for a culverin, iron slag, Herzog Julius Hütte Langelsheim, circa 1575

Six cannonballs for a culverin, iron slag, Herzog Julius Hütte Langelsheim, circa 1575 Iron slag, six balls for a culverin, Herzog Julius Hütte, Langelsheim, Braunschweig / Wolfenbüttel, circa 1575. Lot of six historical cannonballs with grey-brown, rough and porous surface, all with a circumferential casting seam. The balls come from a filled-in ditch in Wolfenbüttel which was repaired in the 1960s. Preservation commensurate with age. D. 4 to 5 cm, weight 183 to 241 g per ball. Duke Julius of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1528-1589) reigned from 1568, promoted mining and smelting in the Harz and made the Oker navigable between Wolfenbüttel and the Harz. In 1569 he introduced a new artillery ammunition, balls cast from the slag of the Harz metal smelters. They were produced until 1585 in the Frau-Sophienhütte and in the Herzog-Juliushütte near Astfeld, founded in 1575, today part of Langelsheim, where ores from the Rammelsberg near Goslar were smelted. In 1572 alone, 54,000 of these projectiles reached Wolfenbüttel, with a further 73,000 held in store. The slag balls saved iron but often broke on firing or shortly after leaving the gun barrel.