If a surmise be permissible, Bacon did not invent, he discovered gunpowder. Experimenting with some incendiary composition, prepared with pure instead of impure saltpetre, the mixture exploded unexpectedly and shattered all the chemical apparatus near it, thereby laying the foundation of the mediæval legend about the destruction of the Brazen Head. This suggestion, if correct, only adds one more item to the long list of accidental discoveries. The laws of the structure of crystals were discovered by Haüy’s accidentally letting fall a piece of calc-spar, which broke into fragments. Malus, chancing to look through a double refracting prism at the light of the setting sun, reflected from the windows of the Luxembourg Palace, discovered the polarisation of light. Galvani discovered galvanism by mere accident. The decomposition of water by voltaic electricity was accidentally discovered by Nicholson in 1801.
However, whether as discoverer or inventor, Roger Bacon made and fired the first gunpowder. It fell to the lot of a persecuted English monk to fulfil the prophecy of Prometheus, that in the latter day there should appear “a wondrous being, who should call forth flashes brighter than lightning and sounds louder than thunder.”[379]
PART II
THE PROGRESS OF AMMUNITION
CHAPTER IX
ANALYTICAL TABLE OF AMMUNITION
To those who are not professional gunners, Artillery ammunition may seem at the first glance to be a hopeless and chaotic jumble of endless stores. This is no doubt partly owing to the necessary multiplicity of the stores, but far more to the absence (in most books and lists) of any synoptic digest, or plan, showing at one view the classification of the whole and the pedigree of each article. To remedy this want the following table has been drawn out, showing the stems to which belong the various kinds of ammunition we are concerned with here. Many trees of a somewhat similar nature might of course be constructed, fuller and more scientific than Table IV.; but it has the advantage of being very simple and sufficiently comprehensive for the present purpose.