Round shot

The cast iron cannonball was introduced by French artillery engineers after 1450; it had the capacity to reduce traditional English castle wall fortifications to rubble.

[1] French armories would cast a tubular cannon body in a single piece, and cannonballs took the shape of a sphere initially made from stone material.

It was used as the most accurate projectile that could be fired by a smoothbore cannon, used to batter the wooden hulls of opposing ships, fortifications, or fixed emplacements, and as a long-range anti-personnel weapon.

The casualties from round shot were extremely gory; when fired directly into an advancing column, a cannonball was capable of passing straight through up to forty men[citation needed].

Because such instances often did not leave visible marks, this initially gave rise to the theory that even in the case of a near-miss, the so-called "wind of a ball" could cause internal injury or concussion, often with fatal results.