Falconet

The falconet is a light cannon developed in Europe during the sixteenth century, smaller and considerably more mobile than the heavy siege guns of the period, named as part of a family of artillery pieces that European gunfounders classified using bird names such as the falcon and the saker according to size. Its light weight let it be mounted aboard smaller warships that could not carry heavy siege ordnance, carried on simple field carriages for maneuver alongside marching armies, or mounted on fortress walls where a smaller, quicker-firing gun was more useful than a single large piece, giving commanders flexible direct-fire support against personnel and light targets rather than the wall-breaching role of heavier siege cannon. Falconets remained common shipboard and field armament through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries before larger standardized naval gun classes and dedicated field artillery calibers gradually replaced the older bird-named gun classification system.