A kartouwe (plural: kartouwen) is a siege gun used in European warfare during the 16th and 17th centuries.^[1] The name kartouwe is of Dutch origin,^[2] a corruption of Latin quartana^[3] (quarter cannon).^[2] In the Holy Roman Empire the gun was called Kartaune in German or cartouwe in contemporary Latin usage,^[4] in the Swedish Empire Kartow,^[4] spelling variants include kartouw, kartouve,^[5] cartow,^[2] cartaun,^[2] courtaun,^[2] and others.

Kartouwen were developed from bombards.^[1] A kartouwe has a caliber of 8 inches (200 mm), weighs about 8,000 pounds (3,600 kg), and is designed to fire cannonballs weighing up to 52 pounds (24 kg).^[6] As a minimum, twenty horses or oxen were needed to move a kartouwe.^[6]

In addition to "whole" ("hele") kartouwen, there were also double,^[7] half ("halve")^[8] and quarter kartouwen.^[4] The barrel of a whole kartouwe has a length of 18 to 19 times the caliber, weighs 300 kilograms (660 lb) to 350 kilograms (770 lb) and was transported on a special wagon by 20 to 24 horses, another four to eight horses were needed to transport the mount (lafette).^[9] The barrel length of a half-kartouwe is 32 to 34 times the caliber, which ranges between 105 millimetres (4.1 in) and 115 millimetres (4.5 in).^[9] Its barrel weighs 110 kilograms (240 lb) to 150 kilograms (330 lb), the whole gun 170 kilograms (370 lb) to 240 kilograms (530 lb).^[9] Half-kartouwen fired cannonballs weighing between 8 pounds (3.6 kg) and 10 pounds (4.5 kg), and for the transport of its barrel, 10 to 16 horses were needed.^[9]

The huge size of the cannon and the weight of its 48-pound projectiles (standard value, though real projectiles could vary from 30 to 60 pounds) made it onerous to maneuver and reload. William P. Guthrie estimates that a single kartouwe averaged only 8 to 10 shots under sustained combat conditions, half to a third as much as the more common 3 to 6 pounder field guns, though in all cases "well-drilled troops could shave these times."^[10]

Kartouwen were used for example in the Livonian War by the Russian^[5] and Swedish forces.^[7] During the Battle of Narva (1581), the besieging Swedish forces destroyed the walls of Narva, 5.5 metres (18 ft) strong, within two days using twenty-four double and half-kartouwen.^[7]

Kartouwen were also the characteristic of the Thirty Years' War.^[11] As such, they were featured in contemporary poems,^[11] e.g. in Am liebsten bey der Liebsten by Sibylla Schwarz ("grausame Kartaune", "gruesome kartouwe") and Tränen des Vaterlandes, anno 1636 by Andreas Gryphius ("donnernde Karthaun'", "thundering kartouwe").^[12][13] In his 1844 poem Die Tendenz, Heinrich Heine used kartouwen to symbolize loudness.^[14]