There is in the Escurial Collection a treatise on Gunpowder, written in 1249.
Roger Bacon on powder, A. D. 1267.
Our countryman, Roger Bacon, who was born 1214, and published works at Oxford 1267, expressly mentions the ingredients of Gunpowder, not as any new discovery, but as a well known composition, used for recreation. He describes it as producing a noise like thunder, and flashes like lightning, but more terrible than those produced by nature; and adds that it might be applied to the destruction of an army or a city. Bacon, in his treatise “De Secretis Operibus,” says that from saltpetre, sulphur, and wood coals, we are able to make a fire that shall burn at any distance we please.
Tradition of Schwartz, A. D. 1320.
The common tradition of Bartholdus Schwartz having invented Gunpowder and Artillery, about 1320, is without the slightest foundation, but he might possibly have suggested the simplest application of it to warlike purposes, in consequence of some accidental explosion while mixing the ingredients in a Mortar. mortar. Indeed, the name, as well as the form of the old species of artillery, which was employed to throw large bullets at an elevation, strongly corroborate this conjecture; but Schwartz cannot lay any claim to originality of invention.
Powder made in the reign of Richard II. 1378.
Gunpowder was made in England in the fourteenth century, as Richard II. commissioned Sir Thomas Norwich to buy, in London, or in any other place, certain quantities of “sulphur, saltpetre, and charcoal,” for making Gunpowder.
Tartaglia on Powder, A. D. 1500.
Tartaglia, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, sets down twenty-three different compositions, made use of at different times, the first of which, being the most ancient, consists of equal parts of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal.
Ancient gunpowder weak.