“Slurbowe arrowes with firewoorkes, 184;
inde 19 without firewoorkes.
Longbowe arrowes with firewoorkes, 4 shef. 1 arr.”[381]
Hansard gives a plate of an English archer, 1250, with spicula ignita, or arrow tipped with wildfire.[382] Sir R. W. Payne-Gallwey gives a sketch of a slur-bow. It is a cross-bow, with a barrel and a single string which works in two slits cut in the sides of the barrel.[383]
Fire-lances were used, perhaps for the last time, at the first siege of Bristol, 1643. There, Prince Rupert tells us, “Captain Clerk, Ancient Hodgkinson, and some others running in upon (the Royalists) with fire-pikes, neither men nor horses were able to endure it. The fire-pikes did the feat.”[384]
Fire-arrows had a longer spell of existence, and were used by the Chinese against the French in 1860.[385]
Hand Grenades
Incendiary hand grenades are of great antiquity. We have seen that earthenware grenades were used at the siege of Salonika,[386] 904. Towards the end of the thirteenth century Hassan er-Rammah describes grenades made of bark, papyrus, or glass—materials well adapted to break up on impact and scatter about their burning contents.[387] They were used at the passage of the Lys in 1382:—“Adonc vinrent arbalêtriers et gens de pied avant; et si en y avait aucuns qui jetait de bombardes portatives et qui traioient grands quarriaulx empennés de fer,” &c.[388] By a common figure of speech Froissart calls the grenade a bombard, just as the author of the “Avowing of Arthur” calls a shot a gun:—
“... there came fliand a gunne
And lemet as the leuyn....”[389]