The Spanish artillery officers had a good practical training, during the 18th century. They had to fight in many wars in Europe, Africa and America. However, they had a poor theoretical basis until the last quarter of the century. Academies opened for the king to educate officers did not work well for them. The most successful centres for military education, such as the Military Academy of Brussels, directed by Fernández de Medrano (1675-1705) or the Military Academy of Mathematics of Barcelona (1720-1803), were devoted to fortification. Mathematics was an important part of the curriculum, but they did not include differential and integral calculus, necessary to study Newtonian physics and its application to ballistics or other fields of the artillery.
When Carlos III became King of Spain (1759), he brought with him from Naples the count Gazzola, who had been the head of his artillery in Italy. Gazzola organized a “Gentlemen Cadet's Military College of the Royal Artillery of Segovia” (1764) and tried to improve the teaching of mathematics. He appointed as head of the professors of mathematics the Jesuit A. Eximeno. When the Jesuits were expelled from Spain, he looked for a competent mathematician and he finally appointed for the post P. Giannini a disciple of Vincenzo Riccati. Giannini wrote for the College of Artillery a Mathematical Course (1779-1803, 4 v.). In that treatise elementary geometry, trigonometry, conics, arithmetic, algebra, equations, curves defined by equations, and differential and integral calculus are explained. The fourth volume is about static, hydrostatics and mechanics. He printed also a practical book entitled Practices of Geometry and Trigonometry (Segovia, 1784) that was used for a long time in the Academy of Artillery. Even if this treatise is not so well known as the work of Proust for the Spanish artillery, the Course of Giannini deserves some consideration as the beginning of the teaching of Newtonian physics in the Spanish military education.