Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 8).pdf/82

 was the discoverer, and what occasions gave birth to it.

I am far from controverting, continued my uncle Toby, what historians agree in, that in the year of our Lord 1380, under the reign of Wencelaus, son of Charles the fourth—a certain priest, whose name was Schwartz, shew'd the use of powder to the Venetians, in their wars against the Genoese; but 'tis certain he was not the first; because if we are to believe Don Pedro the bishop of Leon—How came priests and bishops, an' please your honour, to trouble their heads so much about gun-powder? God knows, said my uncle Toby—his providence brings good out of every thing—and he avers, in his chronicle of King Alphonsus, who reduced Toledo, That