H. W. L. Hime

“ But whatever the moral effect of these trumpery scarecrows—if ever actually used—it is certain that archers with longbows could not have shot fire-arrows through them with any success; and the meaning of Emperor and Princess remains hidden until we interpret “flexible instrument” as the leathern hose of a pump or water-engine, than which nothing can be more flexible. ”

“ THE CHINESE China, like India, affords an example of “arrested civilisation:” the Chinese intellect and language became petrified while still in a primitive stage of development. But, unlike the Hindus, the Chinese betook themselves at an early period to historical pursuits. ”

“ One of their historians of the fifteenth century, when speculating on the subject in his narrative for the year 1389, says the Germans were commonly believed to have been the inventors.121 Could the Greeks, then, have been in possession of saltpetre-mixtures many centuries before? Is it credible that people with intellect as keen as the Greeks employed an explosive for long ages without hitting upon the idea of metal guns? Yet judging from the manner in which Chalcocondyles speaks of cannon in his narrative for 1446, they were even then but little known to the Greeks. ”

“ But although the want of a sufficiently accurate fuze made the Shrapnel system a practical impossibility before the nineteenth century, a man above his fellows might have dreamt dreams of distant case fire ages before. ”

“ But the mere fact that the shell was made of bronze is a sufficient proof that it was an incendiary missile. Even had the charge been explosive, a bronze envelope would have been only ripped open by it, not broken into many pieces as iron would have been; a fact which Valturio must have known. Finally, the gunners of the fifteenth century were not in possession of a fuze that would have enabled them to carry on fire with explosive shell. ”

“ It is infinitely more probable that the passages in the two poems which mention gunpowder and cannon were interpolated by the scribes of after-ages than that the Hindus wantonly broke the first and strongest law of human nature, the law of self-defence. There can be no reasonable doubt that the recipe for gunpowder in the Sukraniti is an interpolation. The proportions are given in the first place as 5:1:1, and then it is added, “if the powder is to be used for a gun,” let them be 4:1:1, or 6:1:1.238 And why not 5:1:1 also? ”

“ A clue to the composition of the Kallinikos mixture may perhaps be found in its Greek name, “sea-fire” or “wet-fire.” One substance had long been known with whose combustion water was closely connected—quicklime, and with its properties Kallinikos, as an architect, must have been perfectly familiar. Its temperature rises—to 150° C. (302° F.) if the quantity be large—when sprinkled with water, and it can consequently be employed to ignite substances with low points of ignition. ”

“ The fiery trail can only be called a flash by an equal disregard of fact: it gives a continuous light. But if the rocket carries a bursting charge which explodes in mid-air,161 the explosion may, with venial exaggeration, be said to produce a flash like lightning and a noise like thunder. Bacon was alluding to a bursting charge consisting of an explosive, and that explosive was gunpowder. ”

“ The fact that the first recorded use of fire-arrows on Greek soil was made by Persian archers,123 lends some probability to the view that Greek fire was originally borrowed from the East; but the Greeks assuredly invented the sea-fire which was the palladium of the Empire for several centuries. To the discovery of saltpetre they have no legitimate claim. The claim put forward in their name is based partly on a metaphor,124 partly on the assumption that the effects of sea-fire could have been only produced by a mixture containing saltpetre; and it cannot be sustained. ”

“ We may rest assured, then, that the words Ferishta wrote in his account of the battle near Peshawur, 1008, were naphtha and arrow, not musket and cannon.
Far from possessing muskets in the ninth century, there is no evidence to show that the Arabs had firearms, that is, arms charged with an explosive, during the whole of the Crusade period, 1097-1291. So strange and deadly an agent of destruction as gunpowder could not possibly have been employed in the field without the full knowledge of both parties ”

“ Again, as the projectile was simply a lump of oleaginous matter, it would have been blown by an explosive cartridge into thousands of fragments, each of them so small as to be worthless for incendiary purposes; for the efficacy of an incendiary depends to a great extent on its containing a large quantity of matter. ”

“ The Greeks founded alchemy in remote times; their methods were transmitted through the Syrians and Egyptian Greeks to the Moslems; and a large number of their recipes had become common property long before the Liber Ignium was written. But Greek science did not spread equally in all directions, at least to any appreciable extent. It spread to the south and east only, and the west owed its knowledge of alchemy to the Arabs who invaded Spain in 710 A.D. This fact may throw some light upon the Arabic words and allusions to be found in the tract. ”

“ Progressive Combustion.—Combustion which takes place in a time appreciable by the unaided senses, such as that of rocket composition or a bit of paper.
Gunpowder.—A mixture of saltpetre, charcoal, and sulphur, which explodes. The signs of its explosion are a bright flash, a loud noise, and a large volume of smoke.
Incendiary (for “incendiary composition”) .—A substance or mixture which burns progressively, although fiercely, and is hard to put out.
Machine always means an apparatus of the ballista type. ”

“ SALTPETRE The attention of the ancients was naturally attracted by the efflorescences which form on certain stones, on walls, and in caves and cellars; and the Hindus and nomad Arabs must have noticed the deflagration of at least one of them when a fire was lit on it. These efflorescences consist of various salts,—sulphate and carbonate of soda, chloride of sodium, saltpetre, &c.—but they are so similar in appearance and taste, the only two criteria known in primitive times,19 that early observers succeeded in discriminating only one of them, common salt, from the rest. ”

“ It is incredible that pyrotechnists who seldom omit to call attention to the effects of their incendiaries,180 should have failed to make some allusion to explosives if they possessed them. Their silence was not owing to fear of the Church, for the decree of the Second Council of the Lateran was directed against the very mixtures which form the staple of the Liber Ignium, incendiaries.181 The 12th and 13th recipes contain the ingredients of the future gunpowder; they form the last link in the long chain of evolution which connects the incendiaries of primitive times with gunpowder ”

“ The success of the missile, it was thought, depended on the hole through the ball being exactly opposite the hole through the plug, a condition which could be only fulfilled in a breechloading bombard. The inventor believed that the ball would explode, for he warns the gunner to throw it before the flame reaches the composition, lest it “blow his head off.”570 It is obvious, however, that the gunner’s head was quite safe, although he might burn his fingers, when using these incendiary toys which are unknown to military history. ”

“ A hypothesis must cover all the facts of a case, and some facts in the present case are inexplicable on the theory of a Greek original.
The Greeks had three words for the asphalt family, pissa, asphaltos, and naphtha; and the translator had at least three Latin words (which he has actually used) wherewith to translate them, pix (or picula) , asphaltum, and petroleum. How, then, came he to use the barbarism, alkitran Græcum, in recipe 1? The original of this phrase came from no Greek source. ”

“ THE ARABS Although the Arabs had had relations with the Greeks, Romans, and Persians for centuries, and were acquainted with the details of the siege of Jerusalem, 70 A.D., the earliest allusion to their use of machines is the tradition that Jodhaimah, King of Heerah, constructed manjánik in the third century A.D.182 The scarcity of timber in Arabia may partially explain the lateness of their introduction, and the position of Heerah, in the north-east province of Arabian Irak, raises a suspicion that the Arabs learned the use of machines from the Persians, who got them from the Greeks. ”

“ We can produce in the air sounds loud as thunder 159and flashes bright as lightning—nay, even surpassing the powers of nature. A small quantity of (a certain) composition, no bigger than one’s thumb, will give forth (on ignition) a deafening noise and a vivid flash.”375 We have, too, the passage, already quoted, in the eleventh chapter, where he says that saltpetre and sulphur and something else give forth (on ignition) “a thundering noise and a vivid flash.”376 Again: “Some compositions (when ignited) make an unbearable noise.... No other sound can be compared with it. ”

“ By this mode of loading the ignition of the fuze composition was ensured before the projectile left the piece. There was perhaps no absolute necessity for the use of this soft, slow-burning mixture, with incendiary shell so placed; but it was probably found very useful in confining the charge within the missile during flight.
The need of an explosive projectile to blow up earthworks, &c., was more and more felt as time rolled on, and the use of such missiles was clearly impossible with such igniters so placed. But the best way of mending matters was by no means so clear. ”

“ As he was quartered in Newfoundland during the siege, it is improbable that he was aware at this time of Capt. Mercier’s plan. At all events he did not follow it, the principle of his invention being radically different from that of common shell. The bursting charge of the latter was a maximum, the bursting charge of the former was a minimum; the fuze of the latter was bored long, the fuze of the former was bored short; the fragments of common shell were projected by the bursting charge of the shell, the fragments of the shrapnel by the charge of the gun from which it was fired. ”

“ But on turning to Nos. 32 and 33, we find recipes as precise and formal as those of Hassan er-Rammah, who wrote in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. The description of the rocket and its composition (13) is as definite and intelligible as many a recipe of the seventeenth century: recipes 8 and 17, with their allusions to Hermes, the mythical Alexander the Great, Aristotle the wizard and Ptolemy the magician, belong to a far earlier period. ”

“ We find traces of the employment of rockets, both incendiary and explosive, in India in this very year, when some “rocketeers ... threw confusion and dispersion into the masses of the Mahrattas.”402 Nothing can be more probable: the army of the Mahrattas was an army of cavalry, and horses are terrified by fire in any form. The Indian rocket at this time had a tube of 8” length and 1.5” diameter,403 and it does not appear to have been a very effective missile. ”

“ The Arabic word barúd originally meant hail, was afterwards applied to saltpetre, and finally came to signify gunpowder. Our own word powder, which at first meant a fine, floury dust (pulvis) , is often used in the present day to designate the stringy nitrocelluloid, cordite—smokeless powder. The Chinese word yo means gunpowder now, although its first meaning was a drug or plant. For centuries gunpowder was called kraut in Germany, and to this day it is called kruid in Holland. The Danish krud has not long become obsolete. ”

“ But saltpetre and sulphur when mixed together do not form an explosive. We may feel sure, therefore, that the name of the one substance necessary to convert the incendiary mixture of saltpetre and sulphur into an explosive, namely charcoal, is included under some form in the anagram—either as carbo, or the 157name of the wood from which it is made. The et sic facies of the second clause shows that there must necessarily be in the first clause, and consequently in the anagram, some verb in the imperative mood, such as mix or take. We may expect a word for a weight (libræ, unciæ, &c.) ”

“ There is nothing in the military history of China in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to lead us to suppose that the Chinese possessed an explosive during that period. In 1255 Prince Hulágu had 1000 Chinese arbalisters in his pay to work his incendiaries,297 and it may be presumed that he would have learnt the secret of gunpowder from them if they had known it ”