(A gun came flying by and gleamed like lightning.)
The plate from the MS. of Kyeser’s Bellifortis, 1405, given by Herr von Romocki (i. 169), shows three projectiles which were unquestionably hand grenades. Figs. 25 and 30 are provided with spikes, like crow’s-feet.[390] Fig. 27 is a flask or bottle of the same family as Hassan’s grenades, and was probably made of earthenware. It was by an explosive earthenware grenade that Del Vasto was severely wounded in 1528, during the sea-fight between the French and Spaniards off Cape Campanella.[391] The Comte de Rendan was killed by a grenade of unknown construction at the siege of Rouen, 1562,[392] and grenades were freely used at the siege of Famagusta, 1572. Du Bellay tells us that grenades were made in large quantities at Arles in 1536.[393] As it is improbable that iron grenades could have been turned out in large quantities in the first half of the sixteenth century, we may conclude that they were either earthenware or some form of brittle brass. This is rendered probable by Whitehorne’s remarks on the subject. He says that “earthen bottles or pottes,” filled with incendiary or explosive matter, had been formerly used; but he recommends “hollow balles of metal, as bigge as smal boules and ¼ in. thick, cast in mouldes and made of 3 partes of brasse and 1 of tinne.” Their charge consisted of “3 partes serpentine, 3 partes fine corne pouder, and 1 part rosen.” A little fine corned powder was used as priming; and he directs the grenades to be “quickly thrown,” as they will almost immediately “breake and flye into a thousand pieces.” The want of a proper fuze rendered their use so dangerous that he advises trials to be made with them, “to see how long they will tarry before they breake.”[394]
Major Ralph Adye mentions that grenades were supposed to be capable of being thrown 13 fathoms, or 26 yards.[395]
Evelyn says in his “Diary” that on 29th June 1678, he saw at the Hounslow Camp certain soldiers “called granadiers, who were dexterous in flinging hand-granades.” In the Archæological Journal, xxiii., 22, will be found a plate “Blow your Match,” after a sketch by Lens, “limner to His Majesty” George II., which represents a grenadier of the 1st Regiment of the Guards in 1735, grenade in hand.
CHAPTER XI
WAR ROCKETS
Incendiary rockets were known in the East from an early time, and they are frequently mentioned at later periods; but we are told so little about the loss they inflicted upon an enemy that one is inclined to suspect their effect was confined to wounding a few men and frightening elephants and horses. They are said to have been used by the Chinese against the Tatars in 1232.[396] The Malzufat-i Timuri and the Zafarnama leave us in doubt whether Timur’s rockets were used or not at the great battle of Delhi, 1399.[397] The effect produced by a single rocket led to the fall of the strong fort of Bitar in 1657, but this result was purely accidental. The commander of the fort, foreseeing that an assault would be made upon one of the bastions which had been much damaged by artillery fire, ordered a hole to be dug in it and filled with gunpowder, grenades, &c., intending to blow up the besiegers when they entered. Just before the assault was made, one of the besiegers’ rockets fell by accident into this pit and fired its contents, creating thereby so much loss and confusion among the garrison that the place was carried after a short struggle by Aurangzeb’s troops.[398]
In the West, rockets were employed as early as 1380,[399] if not earlier; but they were never looked on with favour, and they appear to have been seldom, if ever, used between the earlier part of the fifteenth century and our bombardment of Boulogne with Congreve rockets in 1806. Dunois’ capture of Pont Audemer in 1449 was a consequence of a fire that broke out in the town; but the fire appears to have been caused by a hand-grenade or fire-arrow, not by a rocket. However, the exact meaning of the word fusus is so doubtful that the matter is not worth pursuing.[400]