The touch and the tornado; all our guns give tongue together,
St Barbara for the gunnery and God defend the right,
They are stopped and gapped and battered as we blast away the weather,
Building window upon window to our lady of the light.For the light is come on Liberty, her foes are falling, falling,
They are reeling, they are running, as the shameful years have run,
She is risen for all the humble, she has heard the conquered calling,
St Barbara of the Gunners, with her hand upon the gun.They are burst asunder in the midst that eat of their own flatteries,
Whose lip is curled to order as its barbered hair is curled…
Blast of the beauty of sudden death, St Barbara of the batteries!
That blow the new white window in the wall of all the world.(from) The Ballad of St. Barbara G.K. Chesterton
Basic Information
Artillery is a general term for ordnance class weapons and, by extension, the military units that use them. They may be direct or indirect firing and use a variety of different kinds of ammunition. They are almost exclusively crew served by definition and usually fairly immobile - the smallest of them can be moved with some difficulty whilst the largest generally require some form of dissassembly before they can be moved … or even traversed in some cases.
Artillery more or less begins with ballistae and catapults and progresses through various species of cannons and rockets to the modern guided missile. In recent years (briefly in 1917-18 and then more generally since the late 1930s) artillery has been increasingly self-propelled (that is, mounted on a vehicle rather than towed behind something) - although the Romans introduced the vehicle mounted carroballista in the 2nd-3rd Century AD.
An indicative list of types of artillery would include: