On the question of the date at which the discovery of gunpowder took place writers have held the most divergent views. The opinion of the majority has been that its properties were known in the remote ages of antiquity, and this opinion has been formed and confirmed by the accounts given of its origin by most of the medieval writers. The Chinese claim to have known it long before the Christian era. And from hints in classical literature, and on the broad ground of probability, it has been inferred by some authorities that the explosive properties of gunpowder were known to the ancients. The wonderful property of saltpetre, they argue, must certainly have been known to the wise men of old: its extraordinary combustive power when mixed with other substances. Melted alone over a hot fire saltpetre does not burn; but if a pinch of some other substance is added, a violent flame results. In many fortuitous circumstances, they say, saltpetre must have been found in contact with that other essential ingredient of gunpowder, charcoal. And such a circumstance has been pictured by one writer as occurring when camp fires, lit upon soil impregnated with nitre (like that in parts of India), were rekindled; the charred wood converted into charcoal forming with the nitre a slightly explosive mixture.
Other investigators maintain that gunpowder, which claims a spurious antiquity, is really an invention of the Middle Ages. Incendiary compositions—Greek fire, and other substances based on the properties of quicklime, naphtha, phosphorus, etc.—were undoubtedly known to the ancient world. But explosive compositions, based on saltpetre as the principal ingredient, were certainly not known in all their fearful power. The silence of history on the subject of the projection of missiles by explosive material, says a recent authority,[38] is eloquent; the absence of its terminology from such languages as Chinese and Arabic, conclusive.
Whichever of the two views may be correct it is certain that a knowledge of gunpowder was possessed by the great alchemist, Roger Bacon, who in A.D. 1249 committed to paper an account of its properties.[39] To Berthold the Black Friar is given the credit for its application to military ends; whom legend, in an impish mood, has hoisted with his own discovery.
In a learned work on the early days of artillery an English writer has described the difficulties encountered in tracing the first stages of the evolution of guns and gunpowder. Confusion was caused by the fact that, after gunpowder had been introduced, military engines were still known by the same generic names as those borne in pre-gunpowder days. No contemporary pictures of guns could be discovered. The loose statements of historians, the license of poets, and the anachronisms of the illuminators of the medieval MSS., all tended to lead the investigator astray and to make his task more difficult. The statements of the historians are indeed whole hemispheres and centuries apart; as for poets, our own Milton assigned the invention of artillery to the devil himself; and “from the illuminators we should gain such information as, that Gideon used field pieces on wheeled carriages with shafts, when he fought against the Midianites, as in a MS. in the British Museum.”[40]
Of all the clues which throw light on the origin of artillery the most important yet discovered lies in some MSS. belonging to the city of Ghent. After a list of municipal officers for the year 1313 occurs the entry: “Item, in this year the use of bussen was first discovered in Germany by a monk.” And there is evidence that in the following year “guns” were manufactured in Ghent and exported to England.[41] The same century was to witness a wonderful development of the new-found power.
It was but natural that the first application of gunpowder to warlike purposes should have been, not only to strike terror by violent explosion and thus obtain an important moral effect, but to project the missiles already in military use: arrows and ponderous stones. Two distinct types of artillery were thus foreshadowed. The first took the form of a dart-throwing pot or vase, a narrow-necked vessel from which, in imitation of the cross-bow, stout metal-winged arrows were fired; while, for projecting stones of great size and weight in imitation of the ancient siege-machines, large clumsy pieces made of several strips of iron fitted together lengthways and then hooped with iron rings were eventually developed.
In the first half of the fourteenth century the guns manufactured were of the former type. In The Origin of Artillery a reproduction is given of an illuminated MS. belonging to Christ Church, Oxford, dated 1326, showing an arrow-throwing vase: the earliest picture of a gun which is known. And, from a French document quoted by Brackenbury, it appears that in 1338 there was in the marine arsenal at Rouen an iron fire-arm—pot de fer—which was provided with bolts (“carreaux,” or quarrels) made of iron and feathered.
But the unsuitability of the arrow for use in conjunction with gunpowder as a propellant was, even at this date, realized. There was obvious difficulty in preventing the powder gases from escaping through the windage space between the arrow-shafts and the neck of the vase, even with the aid of leather collars. So the arrow almost immediately evolved into a stone or metal sphere; the narrow neck of the vase increased to the full diameter of the vessel. And as early as 1326, the date of the picture of the arrow-throwing vase, cannon of brass, with iron balls, were being made at Florence for the defence of the commune. The use of the new weapons quickly spread. By 1344 the cannon is mentioned by Petrach as “an infernal instrument of wood, which some think invented by Archimedes,” yet “only lately so rare as to be looked on as a great miracle; now, ... it has become as common as any other kind of weapon.” By 1412, according to unquestionable testimony supplied by public documents, cannon were employed in English ships: breech-loading guns with removable chambers.[42]
In 1346 Edward III fought Cressy. Whether or no cannon were used in this decisive battle has been a matter of considerable controversy. According to Villani, an old Florentine chronicler who gave an account of the campaign, they were; but no mention of them was made by Froissart, who wrote some years later. The silence of Froissart has been attributed, however, to a desire to avoid offending our court by implying that the victory was due to other than the prowess of the Prince of Wales; or tainting our success with any mention of “devilish machines which were universally regarded as destructive to valour and honour and the whole institution of chivalry.” Though English chronicles contain no mention of gunpowder till some years after Cressy, yet evidence exists that artillery—“gunnis cum sagittis et pellotis”—was extensively used in this campaign. “But the powder was of so feeble a nature and the cannon so small, that the effect of a few of them, fired only a few times, could not have been very noticeable compared with the flights of arrows.”[43]
Cannon in the first half of the fourteenth century were indeed feeble weapons compared with the huge mechanical engines of the period; yet their moral effect was very great and their physical effect by no means negligible. They were destructive of chivalry, in a quite literal sense. The value of cavalry as an arm was greatly reduced by their adoption in the field. They took from the horseman cased in complete armour all the advantage he possessed over other troops. Instead of forming the nucleus of the fighting strength of an army, the armour-clad nobles and their mounted retinues became somewhat of an encumbrance, and a change in the composition and strength of armies from this time ensued. Tournaments went out of fashion, chivalry declined.