[SECTION I.]
Of Gunpowder.
Before we enter into the practical part of Pyrotechny, we deem it consistent with the nature of our Work to give an ample description of the materials made use of; for we do not take it for granted that all our readers are chemists, or that they are sufficiently versed in that science to render such description unnecessary. But before the principles of the art can be well understood, or successfully applied, it is proper that the artist should possess a portion of chemical and mechanical knowledge; the first will teach him to select his materials with judgment, to free them from impurities, and combine them in the proportions most suitable for each particular purpose; and the latter will assist him in constructing his different pieces so as to produce the desired effect with the least loss of time and force. The mechanical apparatus we shall defer describing till they come immediately under hand, and such protraction we think will be conducive to a better understanding of their utility: and, in some other Section, we shall teach him to calculate the direction which the flying fire-works (from their principles of construction) are to move, and the velocity with which they are to proceed.
Gunpowder is the principal ingredient made use of in Pyrotechny; and, being of itself a compound, we shall make it the first object of description, and endeavour to point out the cause of every property it possesses.
The invention of it is ascribed, by Polydore Virgil, to a chemist, who accidentally put some of the composition, viz. nitre, sulphur, and charcoal into a mortar, and covered it with a stone, when it happened to take fire, and, what was a natural (though unexpected) consequence of such combination, it shattered the stone to pieces.
Thevet says, the person here spoken of was a monk of Fribourg, named Constantine Anelzen; but Belleforet, and other authors, with more probability, suppose him to be Bartholdus Schwartz, or the Black, who discovered it, as some say, about the year 1320; and the first use of it is ascribed to the Venetians in the year 1380, during the war with the Genoese; and it is said to have first been employed in a place anciently called Fossa Clodia, now Chioggia, against Lawrence de Medicis; and that all Italy made complaints against it, as a manifest contravention of fair warfare.
But this account is contradicted, and Gunpowder shewn to be of an earlier era, for the Moors, when they were besieged in 1343 by Alphonsus XI. King of Castile, are said to have discharged a sort of iron mortars upon them, which made a noise like thunder; and this assertion is seconded by what Don Pedro, bishop of Leon, relates of King Alphonsus, who reduced Toledo, viz. “that in a sea-combat between the King of Tunis, and the Moorish King of Seville, about four hundred and fifty years ago, those of Tunis had certain iron tubes or barrels, wherewith they threw thunder-bolts of fire.”
Farther, it appears that our Roger Bacon knew of Gunpowder near a hundred years before Schwartz was born. That excellent friar tells us, in his treatise, “De Secretis Operibus Artis & Naturæ, & de Nullitate Magiæ,” that from salt-petre, and other ingredients, we are able to make a fire that shall burn at what distance we please; and the writer of the life of Friar Bacon says, that Bacon himself has divulged the secret of this composition in a cypher, by transposing the letters of the two words in chap. xi. of the above-cited treatise, where it is thus expressed; “sed tamen salis petræ lura mope can ubre, (i. e. carbonum pulvere) et sulphuris; et sic facies tonitrum & corruscationem, si scias artificium:” and from hence Bacon’s biographer apprehends the words carbonum pulvere were transferred to the sixth chapter of Dr. Longbain’s MS. In this same chapter Bacon expressly says, that sounds like thunder, and coruscations, may be formed in the air, much more horrible than those that happen naturally. He adds, that there are many ways of doing this, by which a city or an army might be destroyed; and he supposes that, by an artifice of this kind, Gideon defeated the Midianites with only three hundred men, (Judges, chap. 7th.) There is only another passage to the same purpose, in his treatise “De Scientia Experimentalia:” see Dr. Jebb’s edition of the Opus Magus, p. 474. Mr. Robins apprehends (see the preface to his Tracts,) that Bacon describes Gunpowder, not as a new composition first proposed by himself, but as the application of an old one to military purposes, and that it was known long before this time.
Dr. Jebb, in his preface to the above-cited work, describes two kinds of fire-works; one for flying, inclosed in a case or cartouche, made long and slender, and filled with the composition closely rammed, like our modern rocket, and the other thick and short, strongly tied at both ends, and half filled, resembling our cracker; and the composition which he prescribes for both, is two pounds of charcoal, one pound of sulphur, and six pounds of salt-petre, well powdered and mixed together in a stone mortar.