For the story of the manner in which its mystery was guarded at Constantinople, of its theft by the Infidel, and of the use he made of it against the Christian chivalry at the crusades, see Chapter LII of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
[47] Grose: Military Antiquities.
[48] Hayley’s MSS.: quoted by M. A. Lower.
[49] Oppenheim.
[50] Oppenheim.
[51] Corned powder was graded in France in the year 1540 into three sizes by means of sieves which varied with the types of guns for which they were intended (see Hime: Origin of Artillery). By the end of the century the manufacture had evidently improved in this country. “Some do make excellent good corn powder, so fine, that the corns thereof are like thime seed,” wrote Thos. Smith in his Art of Gunnery, A.D. 1600.
[52] Oppenheim.
[53] Bourne: The Art of Shooting in Great Ordnance, 1587.
[54] Sir J. K. Laughton: Armada Papers, N.R.S.
[55] Smith demolished, to his own satisfaction, a theory current that some molecular movement of the metal took place at the moment of gunfire. “I asked the opinion of a soldier, who for a trespass committed was enjoined to ride the canon, who confidently affirmed, he could perceive no quivering of the metal of the piece, but that the air which issued out of the mouth and touch-hole of the piece did somewhat astonish and shake him.”