Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/337

Rh GUNPOWDE K 317 According to Themistius (Orat., xxvii. p. 337) the Brahmins had similar machines. Philostratus, in his life of Apollonius Tyanseus (lib. ii. cap. 14), written about 200 A.D., relates of a people of India, dwelling between the Hyphasis and the Ganges, whose country Alexander never entered : &quot; Their cities he could never have taken, though he had led a thousand as brave as Achilles, or three thousand such as Ajax, to the assault ; for they come not out to the field to fight those who attack them, but these holy men, beloved by the gods, overthrow their enemies with tempests and thunderbolts shot from their walls.&quot; From the mention by Vitruvius, and in Plutarch s life of Marcellus, that one of his machines threw large stones with great noise, it has been thought that Archimedes used some explosive composition in the defence of Syracuse. The most ancient reference of all is in the Gcntoo code of laws (Halhed s translation), supposed by some authori ties to be coeval with Moses. It runs thus : &quot; The magis trate shall not make war with any deceitful machine, or with poisoned weapons, or with cannon and guns, or any kind of firearms.&quot; The translator remarks that this pass age may &quot;serve to renew the suspicion, long since deemed absurd, that Alexander the Great did absolutely meet with some weapons of that kind in India, as a passage from Q jiintus Curtius seems to ascertain.&quot; The word translated firearms is literally a weapon of fire, and one species of it has been described as a dart or arrow tipped with fire and discharged from a bamboo, so that the reference may not be to any propelling agent, but merely to some combustible or incendiary composition, of the nature of the so-called Greek fire. Greek It is almost certain that those authors who assert that fire - the Arabians used gunpowder at the siege of Mecca, 690 A.D., having derived their knowledge of it from India or China, confound gunpowder with this Greek fire, which seems to have been the generic name given to several different combustible mixtures, although Arabian writers speak of them as Chinese fires. Greek fire was intro duced into Constantinople from the East about the year 673 ; it was discharged upon the enemy by means of various engines of war, or in smaller quantities attached to arrows or darts. The Saracens used it against the Crusaders. Maimbourg, in his History of the Crusades, describes its effects ; and Joinville, who was an eye-witness, says &quot; it was thrown from a petrary, and came forward as large as a barrel of verjuice, with a tail of fire as big as a great sword, making a noise like thunder, and seeming like a dragon flying in the air; the light it gave out from the great quantity of fire rendered the camp as bright as day, and such was the terror it occasioned among the commanders in the army of St Louis that Gautier de Cariel, an experienced and valiant knight, advised that, as often as it was thrown, they should prostrate themselves upon their elbows and knees, and beseech the Lord to deliver them from that danger against which he alone could protect them.&quot; However, its actual destructive effect seems to have been very inadequate to the terror it occasioned. From the account of Geoffrey de Vinesauf, sand and earth, but especially vinegar, appear to have been considered the best extinguishers; water would not put it out. One description of this wildfire was composed of resin, sulphur, naphtha, and probably saltpetre. Bacon states that religious scruples hindered European nations from adopting Greek fire ; but if^so, they seem to have been gradually overcome, for its use is mentioned by various writers, Anna Comnena, Pere Daniel, and Froissart among them. Similar scruples no doubt considerably retarded the introduction of gun powder; and the fear that its adoption would prove fatal to all knightly gallantry also caused it to be regarded with aversion. Firdousi, the famous Persian poet, describes in his writings what were doubtless the effects of rockets and wildfire discharged upon the enemy, but he ascribes the whole to magic. The researches of all authorities seem to point to the Easter Far East as the birthplace of an explosive mixture of ori g in the nature of gunpowder; it was used there from time gun &quot;, immemorial, although doubtless its application as a propel ling agent is of far later date. In all probability, the germ of the science of explosives lay in the accidental discovery of the peculiar properties of the nitre so plentifully found mixed with the soil upon the vast plains of India and China. By means of the charred embers of wood-fires, used for cooking, the two most active ingredients of gunpowder might easily be brought into contact, and, under the action of heat, more or less deflagration would ensue ; in fact, the accidental dropping of some of the crude saltpetre into the coals would show its remarkable power of supporting and accelerating combustion. The combination of saltpetre and charcoal in a more or less powerful mixture can therefore be easily conceived, the sulphur being an after addition, and not necessary to cause explosion. Our present gun powder is only the improvement and perfection of such a mixture. Saltpetre was early known as &quot; Chinese snow,&quot; and some have supposed the use of gunpowder in cannon to have been known in China very soon after, if not before, the Christian era. But this seems to be an error, for Colonel Anderson, C.B., in his book on gunpowder (London, 1862), quotes a conversation held by John Bell of Antermouy, who visited Peking in 1721, with the emperor s general of artillery, to the effect that from their records it had been used in fireworks, tic., for about 2000 years, but that its application to the propulsion of shot was a late introduction. Some of their compositions had such names as &quot;devouring fire,&quot; &quot;earth thunder,&quot; ic. The Institutes of Timur, written about the middle of the 14th century, contain no mention of cannon or gunpowder, although full particulars are given of the equipment of his troops ; it is, however, related that when Timur engaged the army of Mahmud under the walls of Delhi, men scattered wildfire and flung rockets in every direction. In this connexion it may be noted that, while the use of rockets was of very old date in India, the names given to pieces of artillery under the rule of Baber and the Mogul conquerors of Hindustan almost invariably point to a European, or at least to a Turkish origin. It is also well authenticated that Akbar and Aurungzebe had Englishmen and other Europeans in their service to teach the art of gun nery. The analysis of the gunpowder made by the Chinese in the present day shows a composition almost identical with that employed in Europe, which has only been arrived at after centuries of experience, so that, in aU probability, they have corrected their earlier formula from Western sources. Whatever obscurity may hang over the early history of Its hit gunpowder, it seems most probable that its employment ductic as a propelling agent originated among the Moors or &quot; lto Saracens, whose civilization for several centuries con trasted forcibly with the intellectual darkness of Christen dom, and from them spread eastward, as well as north ward into Europe. Conde&quot; (Hist. Dom. Arabs in Spain} states that Ismail Ben Feraz, king of Grenada, who in 1325 besieged Baza, had among his machines &quot;some that cast globes of fire with resounding thunders and lightnings resembling those of the resistless tempest ; all these missiles caused fearful injuries to the walls and towers of the city.&quot; The first reliable contemporary document relative to the use of gunpowder in Europe, a document still in existence, bears date llth February 1326; it gives authority to the priors, the gonfalonier, and council of twelve of Florence to appoint persons to superintend the manufacture of cannons