licorne

plural licornes

1. historicalgovernmentA type of muzzle-loading gun-howitzer used by the Russian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries.

   But I think our new 24-pounder howitzer will be found superior to any of them, not even excepting the Russian Licorne.

   1824, “Answers of Sir A. D., K. C. B. of the Royal Artillery, to some questions from Lieutenant C. D. Bengal Artillery”, in The British Indian Military Repository, volume 3

   2 more examples

   The Russians have a howitzer denominated licorne, the bore of which is, in its whole extent, the truncated frustrum of a cone: the only field guns in the possession of the artillery at Corfu, in 1822, were Russian guns of this description.

   1837, T. F. Simmons, Ideas as to the Effect of Heavy Ordnance Directed Against and Applied by Ships of War, etc.

   Essentially a hybrid between a howitzer and a gun, thus a gun-howitzer, the licorne was capable of a flatter trajectory and a longer range than the conventional howitzer.

   2007, Jeff Kinard, “Eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century artillery”, in Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact