Mons Meg

Mons Meg is a fifteenth-century bombard, a large medieval siege cannon, held in the Royal Armouries collection and displayed at Edinburgh Castle in Scotland. Built in June 1449, likely by the gunsmith Jehan Cambier, on the order of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in Mons in what is now Belgium, it was presented to James II of Scotland in 1454 and used in sieges into the mid-sixteenth century before becoming a largely ceremonial piece. With a bore of about 20 inches, or 510mm, and a mass of some 6.6 metric tons, it fired stone shot weighing around 175 kilograms; its barrel burst during a firing in 1680, and after decades in the Tower of London it was returned to Edinburgh Castle in 1829 following a campaign led by Sir Walter Scott.