Bellifortis

'Strong in War', 'War Fortifications') is the first fully illustrated manual of military technology, written by Konrad Kyeser and dating from the start of the 15th century.

[4] The work, which was not printed until 1967, survived in a single original presentation manuscript on parchment at University of Göttingen,[5] bearing the date 1405, and in numerous copies, excerpts and amplifications, both of the text and of the illustrations, made in German lands.

It described weapons such as trebuchets, battering rams, movable portable bridges, cannons, rockets, chariots, ships, mills, scaling ladders, incendiary devices, crossbows, and instruments of torture.

[6] Kyeser’s viewpoint was that warfare in the broadest sense was most effective if looked at from all angles, which included astrology and sorcery.

[3] Konrad dedicated his finished treatise to the weak Ruprecht III in a bitter response to his exile.

The most famous are the Thott manuscript of Hans Talhoffer of the 15th century,[citation needed] but there are editions of Vegetius' De Re Militari from 1535 in Latin[7] and 1536 in French,[8] that contain pictures clearly copied from the Bellifortis (with more up-to-date clothing for the soldiers), to augment the original text-only treatise by Vegetius.