If Bacon were in possession of such secrets, why, it may be asked, did
he not publish them openly? The reason was, as he explains repeatedly
and at length, that he firmly believed scientific knowledge to be
hurtful to the people. He protests in his works again and again against
the diffusion of scientific information. “The crowd,” he says, “is
unable to digest scientific facts, which it scorns and misuses to its
own detriment and that of the wise. Let not pearls, then, be thrown
to swine.”[336] Elsewhere he says: “The mob scoff at philosophers and
despise scientific truth. If by chance they lay hold upon some great
principle, they are sure to misinterpret and misapply it, so that what
would have been gain to every one causes loss to all.”[337] “It is
madness,” he goes on to say, “to commit a secret to writing, unless
it be so done as to be unintelligible to the ignorant, and only just
intelligible to the best educated”;[338] and so much in earnest was he
upon this point that he enumerates seven methods of baffling public
curiosity. A secret may be concealed by making use of:—
(1) Symbols and incantations (_characteres et carmina_);
(2) Enigmatic and figurative words;
(3) Consonants only, without vowels;
(4) Letters from different alphabets;
(5) Specially devised letters;
(6) Prearranged geometric figures;
(7) Shorthand (_ars notatoria_).
These are among the means of veiling secrets, he tells us, and “ill
will it betide him who reveals them.”[339]
Bacon was not singular in holding the doctrine of secrecy in matters
of science, nor was it peculiar to the age he lived in: it arose
ages before his birth, and was held for ages after his death. To
any objections that might have been raised against the doctrine,
philosophers would probably have replied with Subtle and Mammon:—
“... was not all the knowledge
Of the Egyptians writ in mystic symbols?
Speak not the Scriptures oft in parables?
Are not the choicest fables of the poets,
That were the fountains and first springs of wisdom,
Wrapp’d in perpetual allegories?
* * * * *
... Sisyphus was damned
To roll the ceaseless stone, only because
He would have made Ours common.”[340]
A man who boldly, even fiercely, avowed such opinions as Bacon’s, was
bound in consistency to employ some cryptic method in recording his
own secrets; and when we closely examine the course Bacon actually
followed, we find that his practice was rigidly in accordance with his
theory—in fact, too rigidly. Those steeped in the Cabbala of Alchemy
in his own age may have grasped his meaning, but to those who came
afterwards it was obscure, if not hidden. Even to the early copyists
of his MSS. it was unintelligible. In one of the MSS. consulted by
Professor Brewer, the scribe has written on the margin of Chap. IX. of
the _De Secretis_:—_Hæc sunt œnigmata_; “these things are enigmas,”
and enigmas they have remained for seven centuries.
The presence of two anagrams in Chap. XI. is sufficient of itself to
arouse a suspicion that some cryptic method (of a different kind) has
been employed in Chaps. IX. and X., and this suspicion is strengthened
by their whole manner and diction. Their style is involved, and their
meaning (as they stand) unintelligible. Bacon passes from one subject
to another in bewildering haste; from the unfinished description
of one process to instructions about a second, which he leaves half
told in order to plunge into a third. Among directions of _seemingly_
primitive simplicity he interpolates such phrases as “catch my meaning
if you can” (_intellige si potes_); “you will see whether I am
speaking riddles or the plain truth” (_videas utrum loquor œnigmata
aut secundum veritatem_); and he warns us that the purport of Chap.
IX. may wholly escape us, unless we distinguish the (real from the
apparent) meaning of his statements (_in hoc capitulo decipieris, nisi
dictionum significata, distinguas_). These special peculiarities of
Chaps. IX. and X. can be only explained by the use of some cryptic
method, to which Bacon points plainly in Chap. VIII. He there names two
cryptographers, Ethicus and Artephius, in connection with the seven
cryptic methods already given, and he broadly hints that he may make
use of some of these methods (_forsan, propter secretorum magnitudinem,
aliquibus his utar modis_). It is needless to pursue the matter
further: Chaps. IX. and X. are not, as they appear to be, nonsense, but
the cryptic exposition of some secret which Bacon believed to be of
great value.
Few of the difficulties we experience in investigating the meaning of
these three chapters were felt by the correspondent to whom the Friar
addressed them as letters. He and Bacon had long been in communication
with each other, and as both knew the substance which formed the _real_
subject of these letters, Bacon was at liberty to call it chalk
or cheese or what he willed. They appear to have had some system
of numerical signs, the meaning of which is lost to us. The tenth
chapter begins with a reference to a letter received by Bacon from
his correspondent in the year 602 A.H., and as the date is given in
words, not figures, it can hardly have been mistaken by the scribes.
Now the year 602 A.H. began on 18th Aug., 1205 A.D., nine years before
Bacon was born. The number 602, therefore, is either a blind, or a
conventional sign or key. The same may be said of the number 630 in the
first line of Chap. XI., and of the totally unnecessary 30 which occurs
just before the anagram in the same chapter—“(_sit_) pondus totum
30,” _i.e._ let the total weight be 30. No one can have ever wanted to
know the total weight of the mixture in question: every one wanted to
know the proportions of the ingredients. Our ignorance of these signs
creates difficulties for us which did not exist for the initiated in
Bacon’s time.
As will be shown hereafter, Bacon has occasionally availed himself
in Chaps. IX., X., and XI. of Nos. 2 and 4 of the cryptic methods he
has given us; but these methods apply only to words and phrases, and
the wily Franciscan did not think it necessary to allude to the more
general method by which he set forth so much of his statement as is
contained in Chaps. IX. and X. We cannot discuss cryptograms here:
suffice it to say that some of the early methods were too tedious and
some too complicated to be employed throughout the whole length of
Chaps. IX. and X. The method he appears to have adopted (as the result
will show) was that known long afterwards as the “Argyle cipher,” of
which the following letter from Thackeray’s “Esmond” is an example. The
real contents of this letter are the phrases within brackets:—
“[_The King will take_] medicine on Thursday. His Majesty is better
than he hath been of late, though incommoded by indigestion from
his too great appetite. Madame Maintenon continues well. They have
performed a play of Mons. Racine at St. Cyr.... [_The Viscount
Castlewood’s passports_] were refused to him, ’twas said; his lordship
being sued by a goldsmith for _Vaisselle plate_ and a pearl necklace
supplied to Mademoiselle Meruel of the French Comedy. ’Tis a pity
such news should get abroad [_and travel to England_] about our young
nobility here. Mademoiselle Meruel has been sent to Fort l’Evesque;
they say she ordered not only plate, but furniture, and a carriage and
horses [_under that lords name_], of which extravagance his unfortunate
Viscountess knows nothing.
“[_His Majesty will be_] eighty-two years of age on his next
birthday.... All here admired my Lord Viscount’s portrait, and said
it was a masterpiece of Rigaud. Have you seen it? It is [_at the Lady
Castlewood’s house in Kensington Square_]. I think no English painter
could produce such a piece.
“Our poor friend the Abbé hath been to the Conciergerie [_where his
friends may visit him_. _They are to ask for_] a remission of his
sentence soon.
“[_The Lord Castlewood_] has had the affair of the plate made up and
departs for England.
“Is not this a dull letter?...”—Bk. III. Chap. 8.
This letter shows very clearly that the Argyle steganogram is one
which it is almost impossible to solve without the key, unless the
matter to which it relates is known beforehand[341]—a difficulty to
which Bacon’s correspondent was not exposed, for he knew well what
the subject of Bacon’s communication would be. Here, then, we should
have found ourselves left in utter darkness were it not for a ray of
light afforded by Chap. XI. There we are told that _something_, in
connection with saltpetre and sulphur, produces an explosion,[342]
and we know that this _something_ is charcoal. Since Chap. XI. is
concerned with the composition and effects of this mixture, what more
probable than that Chaps. IX. and X. should deal with its ingredients
separately—or at least with saltpetre and charcoal, for sulphur was
so simple and common a drug that Bacon was not likely to dwell upon
it? Now, towards the end of Chap. X. Bacon speaks without disguise
of charcoal under the name of the wood from which it is made,[343]
and mentions the two trees, hazel and willow, which give the best. He
significantly adds that when charcoal is added to proper proportions
of certain other substances, something noteworthy happens (_si vero
partes virgulti coryli aut salicis multarum justâ rerum serie apte
ordinaveris, unionem naturalem servabunt: et hoc non tradas oblivioni,
quia valet ad multa_). Since, then, charcoal is one of the subjects of
these two chapters, it becomes all the more probable that saltpetre
forms another. Bacon was writing but a few years after its discovery,
and nothing could be more natural than that the great alchemist should
bestow his attention upon the preparation of the new salt. This
hypothesis explains simply and completely the most remarkable feature
of Chaps. IX. and X.—the series of common and well-known alchemical
terms and phrases, referring undoubtedly to the preparation of either
saltpetre or gold, which are scattered and hidden among incoherent
maunderings about chalk and cheese, philosophic eggs and Tagus sand,
Adam’s bones and aperient medicine. But how could the preparation of
gold lead up to the recipe for an explosive with which Chap. XI. ends?
There is no connection whatever between gold and gunpowder, while the
connection between saltpetre and gunpowder is of the closest possible
kind. Before giving a recipe for gunpowder it was absolutely necessary
for Bacon to describe the method of refining the lately discovered
saltpetre, without which his recipe would have been worthless; and
he took advantage of the close similarity between the alchemical
preparation of gold and the refining of saltpetre to conceal the real
import of his tract. By the title of the last three chapters—“On the
Method of Making the Philosopher’s Stone”—and by constantly harping
on gold, he endeavoured to distract and deceive his ordinary readers,
leading them to believe that he was writing about gold when he was
really treating on saltpetre.
The unnamed substance saltpetre, then, is the principal subject of
Chaps. IX. and X., and our course is clear. We must treat these
chapters as we should treat Col. Esmond’s letter were the brackets
omitted[344]-we must make shift to insert them. We must bracket
together the phrases and sentences relating to the real subject of
these chapters, the familiar alchemical expressions relating to
saltpetre. On doing so we shall find a connected and rational method of
refining the salt.
In the following reproduction of Chaps. IX. and X. I have used the
Esmond brackets, but I have not thought it necessary to reprint _all_
the padding which connects them. All omissions, however, are shown
by dots. No word of the bracketed phrases has been changed, altered,
added, or suppressed, nor has the order of the words been altered.
Nothing has been done but to indicate by brackets the misleading
interpolations.
CAP. IX.
_De modo faciendi ovum philosophorum._
Dico igitur tibi quod volo ordinari quæ superius narravi exponere, et
ideo volo ovum philosophorum et partes philosophici ovi investigare,
nam hoc est initium ad alia. [_Calcem[345] igitur diligenter_] aquis
alkali et aliis aquis acutis [_purifica_], et variis contritionibus
cum salibus confrica[346] et pluribus assationibus concrema, [_ut
fiat terra pura penitus liberata ab aliis elementis_[347]], quam tibi
pro meæ longitudinis statura dignam duco. Intellige si potes, quia
proculdubio erit compostum ex elementis, et ideo est pars lapidis
qui non est lapis,[348] et est in quolibet homine et in quolibet
loco hominis.... Deinde oleum ad modum crocei casei et viscosi
accipias,[349] primo ictu insecabile, cujus tota virtus ignea dividatur
et separetur per distillationem; [_dissolvatur[350] autem in aqua_]
acuta temporatæ acuitatis [_cum igne levi,[351] ut decoquatur quatenus
separetur pinguedo sua_[352]], sicut pinguedo in carnibus.... Melius
est tamen ut decoquatur in aquis temporatis in acuitate [_donec
purgatur et dealbetur_]. Aqua vero salutaris exaltatio fit ex igne
secco vel humido; et [_iteretur distillatio_] ut effectum bonitatis
recipiat sufficienter [_donec rectificetur: rectificationis novissima
signa sunt candor et crystallina serenitas_[353]]; et cum cætera[354]
nigrescunt ab igne hoc albescit, mundatur, serenitate nitescit et
splendore mirabili. [_Ex hac aqua_] et terra sua argentum vivum
generatur, quod est sicut argentum vivum in mineralibus, et quando
incandidit hoc modo [_materia congelatur. Lapis vero Aristotelis, qui
non est lapis, ponitur in pyramide in loco calido_[355]].
CAP. X.
_De eodem, sed alio modo._[356]
Transactis annis Arabum sexcentis et duobus, rogasti me de quibusdam
secretis. [_Accipe igitur lapidem[357] et calcina ipsum_] assatione
leni et contritione forti sive cum rebus acutis. [Sed _in fine parum
commisce de aqua dulci; et medicinam laxativam[358] compone de_]
septem rebus ... vel de quot vis; sed quiescit animus meus in [_duabus
rebus quarum proportio melior est in sesquialtera proportione_[359]]
vel circiter, sicut te potest docere experientia. [_Resolve_[360]]
tamen aurum[361] [_ad ignem et mollius calefac_]. Sed si mihi credas,
accipias unam rem, hoc est secretum secretorum, et naturæ potens
miraculum. [_Mixto[362] igitur ex_] duobus, aut ex pluribus, aut
[_Phœnice_[363]], quod est animal singulare, [_adjunge, et incorpora
per fortem motum; cui si liquor calidus adhibeatur,[364] habebis
propositum ultimum_[365]]. Sed postea cœlestis natura debilitatur si
aquam infundis ter vel quater. Divide igitur, debile a forti in vasis
diversis,[366] si mihi credas. [_Evacuato[367] igitur quod bonum est._]
Iterum adhibe pulverem, et aquam quæ remansit diligentur exprime, nam
pro certo partes pulveris deducet non incorporatas. Et ideo illam aquam
per se collige, quia pulvis exsiccatus ab ea habet incorporari medicinæ
laxitivæ.... [_Regyra cum pistillo,[368] et congrega materiam ut potes,
et aquam sepera paulatim_] et redibit at statum. Quam aquam exsiccabis,
nam continet pulverem[369] et aquam medicinæ, quæ sunt incorporanda
sicut pulvis principalis.
The phrases within brackets, which constitute the recipe, will be
found collected together and translated in their proper place in Chap.
II.
It would be presumptuous to suggest that the foregoing solution of
Bacon’s Argyle steganogram is free from error; but I may express a hope
that the errors are few and inconsiderable—a hope founded upon the
completeness of the method disclosed. Whatever errors may be found,
there can at least be little doubt that the occult meaning of the two
chapters is the refining of saltpetre. One sentence, two sentences,
or even more, might be selected from the description of almost any
long chemical process which would apply with equal propriety to some
other process; but it is incredible that a long, varied, and connected
process, such as the refining of saltpetre, could be extracted by any
method from documents professedly devoted to the philosopher’s stone,
unless this process had been designedly inserted there, piecemeal or
whole, by the author himself. For the figurative interpretation given
of two or three words and phrases, we have Bacon’s own warrant. He
threatened to employ _verba œnigmatica_ and _verba figurativa_, and he
has been taken at his word; with the result that a rational chemical
process has been extracted from what was previously unintelligible.
Having said all he had to say about the ingredients, Bacon proceeds to
deal with their mixture in Chap. XI., in which he employs a cryptic
method without disguise:—
CAP. XI.
_De eodem, tamen alio modo._
Annis Arabum 630 transactis, petitioni tuæ respondeo in hunc modum....
Item pondus totum 30. Sed tamen salis petræ[370] LURU VOPO VIR CAN
UTRIET sulphuris; et sic facies tonitruum et coriscationem, si scias
artificium. Videas tamen utrum loquor œnigmatate aut secundum veritatem.
Omitting the anagram, the translation is:—“In this 630th year of the
Higira I comply with your request as follows.... Let the total weight
(of the ingredients) be 30. However, of saltpetre ... of sulphur; and
with such a mixture you will produce a bright flash and a thundering
noise, if you know ‘the trick.’ You may find (by actual experiment)
whether I am writing riddles to you or the plain truth.”
The mention of the flash and the noise indicates at once that we have
here to do with an explosive. But saltpetre and sulphur when mixed
together do not form an explosive. We may feel sure, therefore, that
the name of the one substance necessary to convert the incendiary
mixture of saltpetre and sulphur into an explosive, namely charcoal,
is included under some form in the anagram—either as _carbo_, or the
name of the wood from which it is made. The _et sic facies_ of the
second clause shows that there must necessarily be in the first clause,
and consequently in the anagram, some verb in the imperative mood,
such as _mix_ or _take_. We may expect a word for a weight (_libræ_,
_unciæ_, &c.), or the word _partes_. As regards the proportions, the
earliest we are acquainted with approximate more or less closely
to 2:1:1, Arderne’s recipe being merely a laboratory recipe. The
proportions of the ingredients, therefore, if included in the anagram,
will probably not differ much from 2:1:1.
Rearranging the letters of the anagram, we get—
RVIIPARTVNOUCORULVET,
or since U and V are interchangeable,
R. VII PART. V NOV. CORUL. V ET; _i.e._
r(ecipe) vii part(es), v nov(ellæ)[371] corul (i), v et.
The whole passage in the original therefore reads:—
“sed tamen salis petræ recipe vii partes, v novellæ
coruli, v et sulphuris,” &c.; that is—
“but take 7 parts of saltpetre, 5 of young hazel-wood,
and 5 of sulphur,” &c.;
_i.e._ 1-2/5 sp., 1 char. and 1 sulph.
_R._ was the common contraction for _recipe_, and may be seen in Marcus
Græcus’ first recipe (Berthelot’s text). _Nov._ _Corul._ could have
presented no difficulty to Bacon’s correspondent, seeing that in the
previous letter, Cap. X., Bacon had spoken of _virgulti coryli_. There
he writes _coryli_: in his _Opus Majus_ he wrote _coruli_ (ii. 219,
Bridges ed.).
The second anagram (in Greek, Roman, and Anglo-Saxon letters) seems to
be a note to the first and need not detain us, since we have already
got the names and proportions of the ingredients.
In deference to those readers who may reject the preceding attempts to
read Bacon’s riddles, we now proceed to show, on grounds independent
of the steganogram and anagram, that Bacon was in possession of an
explosive.
The igneous bodies of which Bacon speaks fall into two classes. The
first class are incendiaries. “Incendiaries,” he tells us, “may be
made from saltpetre, or petroleum, or maltha,[372] or naphtha, mixed
with other substances.... To these are allied Greek fire and many
other incendiaries[373].... (Burning) maltha, if thrown upon an armed
soldier, will cause his death.... It is difficult to extinguish, water
being useless for this purpose.”[374]
But side by side with these passages we find descriptions of igneous
compositions of a totally different kind. “There are other natural
wonders. We can produce in the air sounds loud as thunder and flashes
bright as lightning—nay, even surpassing the powers of nature. A small
quantity of (a certain) composition, no bigger than one’s thumb, will
give forth (on ignition) a deafening noise and a vivid flash.”[375] We
have, too, the passage, already quoted, in the eleventh chapter, where
he says that saltpetre and sulphur and _something else_ give forth (on
ignition) “a thundering noise and a vivid flash.”[376] Again: “Some
compositions (when ignited) make an unbearable noise.... No other sound
can be compared with it. Others produce flashes more fearful to behold
than real lightning.... We may exemplify these effects with a child’s
toy which contains within it a quantity of saltpetre (mixture) the size
of one’s thumb. In the bursting of this bauble, made only of parchment,
there are given forth a noise louder than the mutterings of thunder
and a flash brighter than the brightest lightning.”[377] It will be
evident on a moment’s consideration that the charge of this toy must
have been an explosive. Had it been an incendiary, the paper would
have taken fire long before the pressure of the gases generated by the
combustion had increased sufficiently to burst the case, and there
would have been no loud report.
The consequences of igniting these two classes of composition are
described so clearly as to preclude all possible misunderstanding:—the
incendiary _burns_ fiercely, while the other mixture gives forth
_a bright flash and a loud noise_. In the latter case, Bacon was
describing an explosion, and, as he has elsewhere spoken of saltpetre,
charcoal, and sulphur, the reasonable conclusion is that the explosive
was gunpowder.
It has been said that the first of the foregoing passages—“there are
other natural wonders,” &c.—describes a rocket. As everybody knows, a
rocket in its flight makes a whizzing noise and is followed by a trail
of heated gas and sparks. The whizzing noise can only be compared to
thunder by a total disregard of fact, for no sound resembles thunder
less. Does thunder whizz? The fiery trail can only be called a flash
by an equal disregard of fact: it gives a continuous light. But if
the rocket carries a bursting charge which explodes in mid-air, the
explosion may, with venial exaggeration, be said to produce a flash
like lightning and a noise like thunder. Bacon was alluding to a
bursting charge consisting of an explosive, and that explosive was
gunpowder.
Was Bacon aware of the projective force of gunpowder? There is nothing
in his works (so far as I am acquainted with them) which suggests that
he was. He knew that gunpowder exploded, and he believed that an army
might be either actually blown up by it, or put to flight by the terror
inspired by its explosion;[378] but he seems to have gone no further.
He experimented, probably, with very small quantities of it; and the
behaviour of gunpowder when fired in large quantities under pressure is
so unlike its behaviour when fired in small quantities in the open air,
that its projective force could neither have been predicted by abstract
reasoning nor realised by even his powerful imagination.
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.
Strictly speaking, the table ought to have included _all_ the
ammunition in use between the introduction of cannon and the
introduction of rifled arms in the middle of the last century; but
the principle has not been pushed to its limit, nor was it necessary
to do so in order to enable the reader to form a clear notion of the
broad divisions of ammunition. Machines lingered on for some time
after the invention of cannon: in fact they were used at the siege of
Constantinople in 1453. Their stone balls and pots of Greek fire are
not formally included, because what is said of stone shot for guns in
Chap. XIII. applies equally to stone balls for machines, and all that
it was considered necessary to say about Greek fire has been said in
Chap. III. Electric fuzes, and some few species of ammunition of little
interest or value, have been also omitted, because their inclusion
would have increased the size and complexity of the table without any
counterbalancing advantage.
Ammunition for rifled guns has not been included, because it is for the
most part an adaptation and development of smooth-bore ammunition.
TABLE IV
┌ Fire Arrows, &c.
┌ Hand ────────────────────────────────────│ Grenades, Incend. and
│ └ Explos.
│
│ Automatic ───────────────────────────────[ Rockets, War
│
│ ┌ Charge ───────────────────────[ Gunpowder
│ │
│ │ ┌ Darts, &tc.
│ │ │ ┌ Stone
│ │ │ Round │ Iron
│ Cannon ─ │ ┌ Shock ─│ Shot │ Bronze
│ │ │ │ └ Lead
│ │ │ │ Case
│ │ │ └ Sharapnel
│ │ │
│ └ Projectiles ─│ ┌ Hot Shot
AMMUNITION ─│ │ Incendiary ────│ Fireballs
│ │ │ Shell
│ │ └ Carcasses
│ │ ┌
│ └ Explosive ─────│ Fireballs
│ └ Shell
│
│ ┌ Hot Wires
│ │ Priming Powder
│ │ Matches, Slow and Quick
│ Igniters ────────────────────────│ Portfires
│ │ ┌ Tubes
│ │ Fuzes │ Time
│ │ │ Percussion
│ └ └ Concussion
│ ┌
└ Signals ─────────────────────────────────│ Rockets
└ Fixed Lights
CHAPTER X
HAND AMMUNITION
_Fire-Arrows and Fire-Pikes_
The system of attaching incendiaries to arrows, lances, &c., survived
the introduction of gunpowder and died a lingering death. In November
1588 the Government ordered the purchase of “20 Slurr Bows at 25s.
each, and 20 doz. of firework arrows for the said slurr bows at 5s.
the doz.”[380] From a list of naval stores for the year 1599, it would
appear that fire-arrows were discharged from long-bows as well as
slur-bows:—
“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]
(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]
Towards the close of the eighteenth century rockets were almost
forgotten in the one European city where they were most likely to have
been remembered—Constantinople. In 1783-84 Tipu Sultan sent a mission
to the Sultan of Turkey, and of the presents which they offered “none
were so much admired as the Rockets, of which there were none in that
country.”[401]
We find traces of the employment of rockets, both incendiary and
explosive, in India in this very year, when some “rocketeers ... threw
confusion and dispersion into the masses of the Mahrattas.”[402]
Nothing can be more probable: the army of the Mahrattas was an army
of cavalry, and horses are terrified by fire in any form. The Indian
rocket at this time had a tube of 8” length and 1.5” diameter,[403] and
it does not appear to have been a very effective missile. Speaking of
our loss during the attack on Seringapatam, 1792, Colonel Dirom says:
“(We had) a good many wounded, though in general but slightly, chiefly
by rockets.”[404] Within the next few years, however, rockets were
much improved, and an eye-witness speaks of the use of “rockets of an
uncommon weight” at the siege of Seringapatam, 1799.[405] These were
undoubtedly explosive rockets, for Col. Gerrard saw one of them kill
three and wound four of our men.[406]
Shortly after the taking of Seringapatam the Ordnance Office applied
to the Laboratory, Woolwich Arsenal, for the services of some one who
understood the manufacture of war rockets. The Laboratory referred
the Ordnance to the East India Company, who replied that they knew
of no one who possessed such knowledge.[407] This state of things
led Colonel Congreve to turn his attention to the subject. It is not
correct to say that he brought rockets from India,[408] for he never
was there. He knew of course—the whole world knew—that war rockets
were employed there: “I knew that rockets were used for military
purposes in India, but that their magnitude was inconsiderable and
their range not exceeding 1000 yards.”[409] His object was to make
large incendiary and explosive rockets with a range of 1000-3500 yards,
and he succeeded, perhaps, as well as the materials at his disposal
permitted. He never laid claim to the invention of war rockets: “What
I have done,” he says, “towards the perfection of this weapon is as
much my own as if the original invention of rockets in general were
mine.”[410]
Oberst-Lieutenant Jähns tells us that, from a certain point of
view, the Emperor Caligula’s rockets were on a level with those of
Congreve.[411] It may be doubted, however, whether Caligula’s rockets
would have produced the same effect as the Congreve rockets at
Copenhagen in 1807,[412] or at Walcheren in the same year, when the
French Commandant, General Monnet, protested against their use. They
did good service at the passage of the Adour in 1813, and at the battle
of Leipsig, where Captain Bogue, who commanded the Rocket Brigade,
was killed. A French infantry brigade in the village of Paunsdorf,
“unable to withstand the well-directed fire (of rockets), fell into
confusion, began to retreat,” and ultimately surrendered to the Rocket
Brigade.[413] Two years afterwards, at Waterloo, the rockets, under
Sergeant Daniel Dunnett, proved very effective.
Of late years rockets have fallen into disrepute everywhere, owing to
radical defects explained by Captain C. O. Browne, R.A.;[414] and their
use is unlikely to be revived until the chemists make some unforeseen
and astonishing discovery.
CHAPTER XII
GUNPOWDER
THE oldest recipe for gunpowder is Roger Bacon’s. If the solution
of his anagram which I have ventured to propose be accepted, the
proportions of the ingredients in 100 parts were:—
_Saltpetre._ _Charcoal._ _Sulphur._
41.2 29.4 29.4
The French recipe of 1338 being incomplete (Table VIII.), the next
complete recipe for gunpowder is that given in the MSS. of Dr.
John Arderne of Newark, who began to practise as a surgeon before
1350:[415]— “Pernez _j._ _li._ de souffre vif; de charbones de saulx
(i. weloghe) _ij._ _li._; de saltpetre _vj._ _li._ Si les fetez bien
et sotelment moudre sur un pierre de marbre, puis bultez le poudre
parmy vn sotille couer-chief; cest poudre vault à gettere pelottes de
fer, ou de plom, ou d’areyne,[416] one vn instrument qe l’em appelle
_gonne_.” This gives in 100 parts:-
_Saltpetre._ _Charcoal._ _Sulphur._
66.6´ 22.2´ 11.1´
The word _gonne_, in the sense of cannon, must have been commonly
known during the last quarter of the fourteenth century; for Chaucer
uses it with this meaning in the “Hous of Fame,” iii. 553, cir. 1380—
“As swift as pelet out of gonne,
Whan fyr is in the poudré ronne;”
and Langley uses it with the same meaning in the C text of his “Vision
of Piers Plowman,” xxi. 293, _cir._ 1393:—
“Set bows of brake and brasene gonnes,
And shoot out shot enough his sheltrums to blend.”
Now the explanatory phrase, “qe l’em appelle gonne,” shows that
_gonne_ was but little known when the above recipe was written. We may
therefore date it at 1350.
It will be observed that down to the word _marbre_, the recipe is a
literal translation of a receipt for rocket composition given by Marcus
Græcus.[417] Yet the two powders, although made of _nominally_ the
same ingredients in the same proportions, did not produce the same
effects when fired; for gunpowder will not propel a rocket, and rocket
composition will not project a cannon-ball. The difference in their
effects was probably due to the researches of Roger Bacon, who had
discovered the importance of using pure saltpetre and of thoroughly
incorporating the ingredients. It is improbable that Arderne’s recipe
represents the powder used in the cannon of his time. Its proportions
are so entirely out of keeping with those of the French powder of 1338
(Table VIII.) and those of Whitehorne’s powder of 1560 (Table VII.),
that we may regard it as no more than a laboratory receipt.
It needed but little experience to show how far short of perfection
serpentine powder fell.
While the fouling of dry, well-incorporated powder is comparatively
trifling, a damp or slow-burning powder, such as serpentine, leaves a
much larger residue. The consequence was that, after a few rounds, it
was exceedingly difficult to reload small arms, a considerable part
of the loose, floury charge sticking to the fouling.[418] The remedy
for this evil was the use of cartridges. Whitehorne mentions “bagges
of linnen or paper” for the charges of cannon in 1560,[419] and in
1590 Sir John Smythe speaks not only of cartridges, but of composite
cartridges for small arms—“cartages with which (musketeers) charge
their peeces both with powder and ball at one time.”[420]
There are payments for talwood (faggots) “for drying powder” in the
English store accounts 1372-74,[421] and in 1459 the Scotch Government
were endeavouring to keep their powder dry by storing it in waxed
canvas bags.[422] An official recommends the English Privy Council in
1589 to sell certain “bad powder” at Dorchester, adding, “the longer
it is kept the worse yt wilbe.”[423] The Navy were of course, then and
always, the chief sufferers from damp powder. Serpentine powder, Sir
Henry Manwayring tells us in 1664, was never taken to sea (after big
guns had become strong enough to stand corned powder) “both because
it is of small force, and also for that it will, with the aire of the
sea, quickly drie and lose its force.”[424] But corned powder was
by no means proof against damp. In the action fought off Grenada in
July 1779, Bishop Watson says “the English shot would not reach” the
French. The powder, it was found, “had concreted into large lumps, in
the middle of which the saltpetre was visible to the naked eye.”[425]
Between the years 1790 and 1811, 189,000 whole barrels of powder,
“which had formed into lumps from the damp of H.M.’s ships of war,” and
had consequently been returned into store as useless, were rendered
serviceable in the Government powder factory.[426]
Being merely a loose mechanical mixture of three substances with
different specific gravities, serpentine powder had a tendency, when
shaken in transport, to resolve itself into three strata, the heaviest
substance (the sulphur) settling down to the bottom, and the lightest
(the charcoal) remaining at the top. This meant, practically, that on
coming into the enemy’s presence the ingredients had to be incorporated
afresh. To save trouble, and to avoid the danger of a second mixing, it
was for a long time customary to carry the ingredients separately,[427]
or, at least, to carry the charcoal apart from the saltpetre and
sulphur. There was another argument, however, in favour of this
course. While serpentine powder, however tightly secured, gave out
a large quantity of impalpable dust which might cause an explosion
at any moment, no explosion was possible so long as the ingredients
were kept asunder. But whatever was the reason for resorting to such
an expedient, it is evident that the remedy was nearly as bad as the
disease.
Serpentine powder had another drawback,—it required very careful
ramming home. “Thrust the pouder home fair and softly,” says
Whitehorne.[428] “The powder rammed in too hard and the wad also,” says
Bourne in 1587, “it will be long before the peece goeth off.... The
powder too loose ... will make the shotte to come short of the mark....
Put up the powder with the rammer head somewhat close, but beat it
not too hard.”[429] By beating it too hard the interstices between the
particles through which the flame permeated the charge were diminished
in size, and if beaten sufficiently hard the mixture tended to become
a solid which burned away without exploding. Finally, the combustion
of serpentine, at the best, was so slow that a large volume of its gas
escaped wastefully through the vent.
These evils were in some cases much lessened, and in others quite
got rid of by the gradual introduction of corned powder, which is
mentioned in 1429 in the Firebook of Conrad von Schongau,[430] and was
in use for hand-guns in England long before 1560. Corned powder (1)
deposited less fouling than serpentine; (2) it was less susceptible
to damp, especially after the introduction of glazing;[431] (3)
it did not resolve into strata in transport; (4) it gave out less
dust; (5) it was much less affected by hard ramming; (6) owing to
the larger interstices between the grains,[432] it burned so quickly
that there was little or no waste of gas through the vent, and it was
consequently so strong that 2 lbs. of corned did the same work as 3
lbs. of serpentine powder.[433] It was, in fact, too strong for cannon
for a long period: Chemistry had outrun Metallurgy. “If serpentine
pouder should be occupied (used) in handguns,” says Whitehorne, “it
would scant be able to drive their pellets[434] a quoit’s cast from
their mouths; and if handgunne (_i.e._ corned) pouder should be used
in pieces of ordnance, without great discretion, it would quickly
break or marre them.”[435] Here we have the cause which necessitated
the general retention of serpentine powder for cannon until the first
half (or middle) of the sixteenth century, after which it is heard of
no more except for secondary purposes, such as priming, &c. We must
not overlook the importance of Whitehorne’s remark. He was an educated
man of sound, practical sense, who had been a student of Gray’s Inn,
and whose experience was not confined to the English Artillery, for he
had seen service in the Low Countries. What he says is a sufficient
safeguard against inferring too much from Schongau’s mention of corned
powder in 1429. It came slowly into use for hand-grenades and small
arms in the fifteenth century; but no country then possessed cannon
strong enough to stand its explosion, and it did not come into general
use for another century.
In addition to its being at first too strong for big guns, corned
powder had the disadvantage of being dearer than serpentine. The latter
was sold in 1569 at £80 the last (2400 lbs.); the former in 1570 at
£90.[436] The following Table gives the price of English powder at
various times:—
TABLE V.
_Price of English Gunpowder per lb._
+----------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
| Nature. | 1347 | 1378 | 1462 | 1482 | 1569 | 1578 | 1588 | 1595 | 1695 | 1865 |
| | | |[437] |[438] |[439] |[440] |[441] |[442] |[443] |[444] |
+----------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
| | _d._ | _d._ | _d._ | _d._ | _d._ | _d._ | _d._ | _d._ | _d._ | _d._ |
|Serpentine|13-3/4|13-2/3| 12 | 10 | 8 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
|Corned | -- | -- | -- | -- | 9 | 10 | 12 | 13 |10-3/4| 7 |
|Fine | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 11 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
+----------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
The remarkable uniformity in the prices of English powder has been
noticed by Prof. Rogers in his “History of Agriculture and Prices,”
iv. 631. He thinks that “fine” powder meant priming powder, because
infantry soldiers were usually served out with 1 lb. “common” (corned)
powder and ¼-lb. “fine” powder. It doubtless did at one time; but the
term was applied to all small-arm powder eventually.[445]
The prices of the first two powders have necessarily been calculated.
The price of charcoal in 1347 was .013d. per lb.; in 1378 it was
.02d.[446] The prices of sulphur and saltpetre in 1347 were 8d.
and 18d. per lb. respectively;[447] in 1378 they were (for large
quantities) 4d. and 20d. respectively.[448] From an English MS., quoted
by the Emperor Napoleon III., it appears that the cost of manufacturing
powder at Southampton in 1474 was .864d. per lb.;[449] and, as it is
the only fact available, I have been obliged to assume that this was
the cost of making powder in 1347 and 1378. But it is probably not
far from the truth. The proportions taken for the 1347 powder are
Arderne’s, 6-2-1; those for 1378, 3-1-1. From these data we have:—
1347. 1378.
_d._ _d._
6 lbs. saltpetre 108. | 3 lbs. saltpetre 60.
2 “ charcoal .026 | 1 lb. charcoal .02
1 lb. sulphur 8. | 1 ” sulphur 4.
——————— | ———————
Price of 9 lbs. of materials 116.026 | Price of 5 lbs. of materials 64.02
======= | =======
” ” 1 lb. ” ” 12.892 | ” ” 1 lb. ” ” 12.80
Cost of making, per lb. .864 | Cost of making, per lb. .864
——————— | ——————
Price of 1 lb. 13.756 | Price of 1 lb. 13.664
The price of French powder in 1375 was 120d. per lb.;[450] but in order
to be able to compare it with the price of English powder in 1378,
we must know the ratio of French to English money at that period. The
French Troyes livre then contained 5760 gs.; the English Tower pound
5400 gs. Therefore—
1 livre (pure silver) = 16/15 pound (pure silver).
Under Philip of Valois (1328-50) the livre was debased to 1/12 its
original value,[451] and almost simultaneously the pound was debased
by Edward III. to 4/5 its primitive value.[452] Or 1 good livre was
worth 12 bad livres, and 1 good pound was worth 5/4 of a bad pound.
Therefore—
12 livres = 16/15 (5/4 pound) = 4/3 pound; or 9 livres = 1 pound.
Dividing the price of 1 lb. French powder, 1375, by the price of 1
lb. English powder, 1378, we get 120/13.664 = 8.7; so that the French
powder at this period was somewhat cheaper than the English. As the
purchasing power of fourteenth-century money was about ten times that
of ours, the French powder of 1375 cost about 11s., and the English
powder of 1378, 11s. 4½d. per lb.
The high price of early gunpowder resulted from high freights and (in
the case of saltpetre) the rapacity of Eastern merchants. We may form
some notion of the price they exacted for their saltpetre which cost
them little,[453] from the price they put upon their naphtha which cost
them next to nothing. “Another fountayne there is towarde the Oryent
whereof is made fyre grekysshe, with other myxtyons (mixtures) that is
put thereto; the which fyre when it is taken and lyght is so hote that
it can not be quenched with water, but with aysel (vinegar), urine or
sande only. The Sarasynes sell this water dere, and derer than they do
good wyne.”[454]
The manufacture of gunpowder soon became a trade. We find a powder-mill
in Ausburg in 1340, in Spandau in 1344, and in Liegnitz in 1348.[455]
There was a gunmaker in Stockholm in 1430, who was very probably a
powder-maker too;[456] and it is certain that there was a powder-maker
there in 1464—Mäster Berend.[457] Nor were Governments blind to the
importance and the profit of the trade. Beckmann states that the
Archbishop of Magdeburg in 1419 only permitted the collection of
saltpetre on payment of a license,[458] and Clarke informs us that the
Pope and the Archduke of Bavaria engaged themselves in powder-making
at an early date.[459] Louis XI. appointed commissioners in 1477 to
collect all the saltpetre they could find, with power to force an entry
wherever they suspected it was stored.[460]
During the Ancient Period, say 1250-1450, when serpentine was
exclusively used, one powder could only differ from another in
composition, that is, in the proportions of the ingredients used,
supposing them to be equally pure; during the Modern Period, say
1700-1886, the powders used (in each individual State) differed only,
as a general rule, in the size of the grain;[461] during the Transition
Period, 1450-1700, they generally differed both in composition and
grain.
The proportions of the ingredients were quite arbitrary during the
Ancient Period, and not only Governments, but private manufacturers,
had their special recipes. As late as 1628 Norton says there were
“infinite recipes for making of powder, but most states have enjoyned a
certain proportion.”[462]
The introduction of corning, far from curbing the lawlessness of the
Ancient Period, made confusion worse confounded. _Then_ there was
but one variable—the proportions of the ingredients; _now_ a second
independent variable was introduced—the size of the grain. But a
reaction was at hand, which set in first in France, where corned
powder had been adopted in 1525.[463] It appears to have been noticed
during the second half of the fifteenth century that large-grained
powder was the fittest for big guns, and this fact the French utilised
in 1540 by officially restricting the service powders to three, of
uniform composition but different-sized grains.[464]
The largest-grained powder was used for the largest guns, and the
composition was 80.7 salp., 11.5 char., and 7.8 sulph., which closely
corresponded to Whitehorne’s (corned) hand-gun powder—78.3 salp.,
13 char., and 8.7 sulph.[465] It may be questioned, however, whether
the French, official injunctions notwithstanding, confined themselves
very religiously to powders of uniform composition. Boillot, whose
work was published at Chaumont in 1598, says the grain for big guns
was as large as a pea, that for medium guns the size of hempseed, and
that for serpents, &c., still smaller. But from a remark he makes on
reaching the manufacture of powder—“vous viendrez à la composition (de
la pouldre), mais par poix et mesure, selon que vous voudrez faire les
pouldres”[466]—it is clear that powders for all purposes were not of
the same composition.
During the first half of the seventeenth century the French official
powder was weaker than the above—75.6 salp., 13.6 char., and 10.8
sulph.—and for big guns had grains as large as hazel-nuts.[467] At
Pont-à-Mousson, just across the German border, powders of different
compositions were in use in 1620;[468] and east of the Rhine powder
for different guns probably varied in grain, and certainly varied in
composition. “Of the various powders now made,” says Furtenbach in
1627, “the following are generally employed:[469]—
Saltpetre. Charcoal. Sulphur.
69.0 16.5 14.5 for big guns;
72.4 14.5 13.1 for small guns;
75.7 13.0 11.3 for small arms.”
The information given to us about granulation by the early English
gunners is neither clear nor full.
When Whitehorne tells us that the method of corning “all sorts of
powder” was the same, namely, by means of a sieve and a few heavy metal
balls,[470] what meaning did he intend to convey by the phrase “all
sorts of powder”? There can be little doubt that he meant “powders
of whatever composition, and whatever the size of the grain to be
produced;” first, because it would be preposterous to assume that all
the sieves of his time had meshes of equal size; and secondly, because
there is abundant evidence to show that, long after Whitehorne’s time,
the powders for different guns in England (and elsewhere) varied both
in composition and grain. In 1620 Thybovril and Hanzelet tell us that
powder to be granulated is to be passed through a sieve with holes
“de la grosseur que vous desirez votre poudre”;[471] and eight years
afterwards Norton uses the very same ambiguous phrase, “a syve ... made
full of holes of the bignesse you desire your cornes.”[472] Did they
mean that the size of the grain in their time was purely arbitrary
and might be of any magnitude whatever? A passage in Boillot’s
(earlier) work explains their meaning much better than they have done
it themselves. He first tells us that the sieve is to have holes “de
telle grosseur que vous voudrez,” and he then goes on to explain the
proper size of grain for use in the different classes of ordnance,
as given here on a previous page. In a word, three or four kinds of
sieves (differing in the size of their meshes) were procurable—some
for graining powder for big guns, others for graining powder for medium
guns, &c. &c.—and having fixed upon the gun from which your powder
(when grained) was to be fired (and consequently upon the size of
the grain), you were to select those sieves which had meshes “of the
bignesse you desired your cornes.”
From the phrase used above by Norton, it is certain that several
powders, differing in grain, were in use when he wrote; from the
evidence of Norton,[473] Nye,[474] and others, it is equally certain
that several different receipts for making powder were in use during
their time. The conclusion is that during the first half of the
seventeenth century powders made in England for different guns varied
both in composition and size of grain.
The lawlessness in composition and grain during the greater part of the
Transition Period was the natural consequence of the absence of any
instrument to measure the comparative strength of different powders,
and enable gunners to establish some standard for the proportions of
the ingredients and the size of the grain.
The earliest instrument proposed for testing the strength of powder
was, I believe, Bourne’s “engine or little boxe,” which, he says, was
“very necessarie to be used.”[475] Whether he invented it himself or
not, it is impossible to say: he tells us, “some of (the inventions)
I have gathered by one meane and some by another, but the most part
of them hath been mine own.”[476] The engine was a wretched one. The
powder to be tested was ignited in a small metal cylinder with a heavy
lid (working on a hinge) which when raised could not shut of itself.
The angle through which the lid was raised by the explosion indicated
the strength of the powder.
A better instrument was that described by Furtenbach in 1627.[477]
It differed from Bourne’s “little boxe” in that the lid was only
laid upon the cylinder. When the powder exploded the lid was blown
upwards along two vertical wires which passed through it; but it could
not descend again of itself, being held in the place it reached by
iron teeth (like those which supported the lid of Bourne’s box). Nye
describes this instrument, and suggests that the comparative strength
of powders should be further tested by measuring the penetration of
pistol balls into clay, and the ranges of projectiles fired from a
small mortar.[478] This is, I believe, the first proposal of the
_mortar éprouvette_, 1647. The French certainly adopted them before
1686, often though it has been said that they then introduced them.
On the 18th September of this year Louis XIV. published an ordonnance
complaining of “the variety of eprouvettes” in use for testing powder,
and directing that for the future no powder should be accepted unless
3 oz. of it could throw a ball of 60 lbs. 50 toises (320 ft.) from the
Government pattern mortar.[479] In a previous ordonnance (April 16,
1686) the King had protested against the bad charcoal (_de méchante
qualité_) constantly employed; against impure saltpetre (_rempli de
graisse et de sel_), insisting upon the exclusive use of saltpetre “de
trois cuites”; and against insufficient incorporation (_dix ou douze
heures ... au lieu de ... vingt quatre heures_).[480] But he marred the
reforms he made by taking the unaccountable step of introducing one
powder, of the same composition and size of grain, for all arms.[481]
For this blunder the French afterwards paid in blood, especially during
the Peninsular war.[482]
About the beginning of the eighteenth century most countries had
reduced their powders to two or three, which were of the same
composition, and differed only in grain. In 1742 Benjamin Robins,
by his “New Principles of Gunnery,” placed gunnery upon a strictly
scientific basis, and by his epoch-making invention of the ballistic
pendulums[483] enabled gunners for the first time to measure the
muzzle-velocity of projectiles with considerable accuracy. It may have
been owing to the lessons taught by this instrument that, between
1742 and 1781, we changed the proportions of the ingredients of
our powder from 75—12½—12½ to 75—15—10. Profiting by the rapid
progress of electricity during the first half of the nineteenth
century, Sir Charles Wheatstone proposed in 1840 his electro-magnetic
chronoscope,[484] which registered to the 1/730 part of a second, to
replace Robins’ ponderous pendulum.
Wheatstone’s instrument was not adopted by our Government, but his
idea was followed up and improved upon by Captain Navez, of the
Belgian Artillery, who in 1847 brought forward his electro-ballistic
pendulum.[485] Only one instrument was now wanting to enable the
mechanical effect of the explosion to be directly and completely
observed—an instrument to measure the pressure upon the bore of the
gun; and this want was supplied in 1861 when Captain T. J. Rodman,
Ordnance Department, United States Army, produced his Indenting
Apparatus and his Internal Pressure Gauge.[486] The following Table
gives the results of some experiments with the new instruments:—
TABLE VI.
_Showing the connection between the Size of the Grain, Muzzle Velocity,
and Pressure on Bore._
+-------------+---------+-----------+-----------+------------------+
| Diameter of | Charge. | Weight of | Muzzle | Pressure on |
| Grains. | Lbs. | Shot. | Velocity. | Bottom of Bore. |
| Ins. | | Lbs. | F.s. | Tons per Sq. In. |
+-------------+---------+-----------+-----------+------------------+
| .1 | 8 | 43 | 1261 | 21.5 |
| .15 | ” | ” | 1235 | 21.0 |
| .2 | ” | ” | 1199 | 18.8 |
| .25 | ” | ” | 1151 | 17.1 |
| .3 | ” | ” | 1146 | 15.3 |
| .4 | ” | ” | 1187 | 14.2 |
+-------------+---------+-----------+-----------+------------------+
This Table shows that as the size of the grain slowly increases,
the muzzle velocity decreases very slowly, and the pressure on the
bore decreases very quickly. The consequence of this discovery was
the manufacture of various very large grained powders such as pebble
powder, &c., for heavy guns. But the thorough knowledge of the
mechanical effect of the explosion of gunpowder gained by the use of
the Navez and Rodman instruments, was of little avail to anybody, for
gunpowder had nearly run its course. Just twenty-five years after the
introduction of the pressure gauge M. Vieille put the French Government
in possession of a nitrocellulose explosive,[487] and gunpowder was
added to the list of things that were.
Throughout the whole gunpowder period enthusiasts seem never to have
been wanting who believed in the possibility of making smokeless
powder and noiseless powder. Castner’s powder, which contained only
3 per cent, sulphur, seems to have been the nearest approach to the
former, but no powder containing sulphur could be absolutely smokeless.
Whether early gunners suspected this or not I do not know; certain it
is, however, that sulphurless powder was under discussion centuries
ago. Rabelais (who may have heard soldiers talking about the matter)
alludes jokingly to “pouldre de canon curieusement composée, degressée
de son soulfre.”[488] In 1756 the French actually experimented with
sulphurless mixtures, one of which (80 per cent. sulph. and 20 per
cent. ch.) gave good results in range, with very little smoke. It
proved to be worthless for military purposes from the difficulty
of corning it, and from its crumbling to dust during ordinary
transport.[489] The belief in a noiseless powder was scoffed at by
Whitehorne: “There be many who bring up lies, saying that they can tell
how to make pouder that shooting in gunnes shall make no noise, the
which is impossible.” A century afterwards Sir Thomas Browne believed
means might be adopted, if not to stifle the sound altogether, at least
“to abate the vigour thereof, or silence its bombulation.”[490]
Tables VII. and VIII. give the composition of gunpowder at various
times.
TABLE VII.
_English Gunpowder._
+---------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+----------+----------+----------+
| | 1250[491]| 1482[492]| 1569[493]| 1578[494] | 1588[495]| 1595[496]| 1695[497]|
| | _cir._ | _cir._ | | | | | |
+---------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+----------+----------+----------+
|Saltpetre| 41.2 | 66.6´ | 50.0 | 66.6´ | 71.4 | 75.0 | 75 |
|Charcoal | 29.4 | 22.2´ | 33.3´ | 16.6´ | 14.3 | 12.5 | 15 |
|Sulphur | 29.4 | 11.1´ | 16.6´ | 16.6´ | 14.3 | 12.5 | 10 |
+---------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+----------+----------+----------+
_N.B._—All these writers give the proportions of gunpowder in their
own times.
TABLE VIII.
_Foreign Gunpowder._
+---------+-----------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------+-----------+------------+
| |France[498]|Sweden[499 |Germany[500]|Denmark[501]|France[502]|Sweden[503]|Germany[504]|
| | 1338 | 1560 | 1595 | 1608 | 1650 | 1697 | 1882 |
+---------+-----------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------+-----------+------------+
|Saltpetre| 50 | 66.6´ | 52.2 | 68.3 | 75.6 | 73 | 78 |
|Charcoal | ? | 16.6´ | 26.1 | 23.2 | 13.6 | 17 | 19 |
|Sulphur | 25 | 16.6´ | 21.7 | 8.5 | 10.8 | 10 | 3 |
+---------+-----------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------+-----------+------------+
CHAPTER XIII
SHOCK PROJECTILES
The nature of the first Artillery projectiles was determined by the
nature of the small-arm missiles in use when cannon were introduced by
the Germans. To use the bulky and ponderous projectiles of the machines
in these small and feeble pieces was out of the question; nothing
remained, therefore, but to adopt the darts, bolts, or quarrels which
produced such deadly effect when shot from cross-bows:—
"Of Arblasters grete plenté were,
Noon armure myght her stroke withstonde."[505]
_Darts._
The iron darts feathered with brass—"garros ferrés et empanés en
deux cassez"—which are mentioned in the earliest document relating
to Artillery that has been found in France,[506] dated 1338, belonged
unmistakably to the same family as those used for cross-bows. The
brazen feathers were nailed to the shaft, and the missile, which
weighed about 7 oz.,[507] was wrapped in a leather covering, so as to
fit the bore tightly. Experience quickly proved these darts to be quite
unsuited for firearms; yet they dragged on a lingering and precarious
existence for quite 250 years. In the anonymous _Livre de Canonnerie et
Artifice de feu_, Paris, 1561, the title of the seventy-fourth chapter
is: “Pour tirer lances ferrées d’une bombarde, canon ou autre baston
à feu de cannonerie.”[508] To a return of the powder on board his
squadron, dated March 30, 1588, addressed to Government, Sir Francis
Drake added a P.S.: “Forgett not the 500 musketts, and at least 1000
arrows”;[509] and on the 8th April following the Privy Council ordered
him to be supplied with “muskittes, 200; arrowes for the said muskittes
with tamkines for eche, 1000.”[510]
_Round Shot._
On the failure of the darts, informal trials were begun everywhere with
balls of stone, iron, bronze, and lead, to discover which material was
best suited for ordnance.
Stone shot, which had been used in machines for countless centuries,
were on trial for cannon in France in 1346;[511] and, unless a ballad
written about this time refers to machines and not to guns, we
employed them at the siege of Calais the same year:—
“Gonners to schew their art
Into the town in many a parte
Schot many a fulle great stone.
Thanked be God and Mary mild,
They hurt neyther man, woman, nor child;
To the houses, though, they did harm.”[512]
Stone shot were in use in Italy in 1364,[513] and in 1378 Richard
II. ordered 600 stones to be bought for the cannon in the castle of
Brest.[514] They were employed more or less in England and elsewhere
until the Great Rebellion, and possibly even later.
The earliest mention of iron shot, perhaps, is that in the Arderne
MSS., say 1350;[515] although we should not be justified in inferring
from it that they were then in actual use. There were 928 iron shot
in the arsenal of Bologna in 1381,[516] but iron seems to have
been sparingly employed until the time of Charles VIII. of France,
1483-98.[517] The only iron projectiles mentioned by (or, we may
infer, known to) the authors of the Berlin Firebook, 1400-50,[518] and
of the _Tractatus de Pugnaculis_ of the same period preserved in the
Hof-Bibliothek at Vienna,[519] are iron bullets for handguns. When
used against troops in wooden buildings, &c., they both recommend that
the balls should be heated red-hot Hot (cannon) balls were introduced
much later, in 1579, by Stephen Bathory, King of Poland.[520] It was
a simple matter to discharge hot projectiles from a machine, but a
delicate operation to load a gun with them without exploding the
charge. In fact, it was impracticable until the thick wet wad had been
devised.
It appears from Petrarch’s _De Remediis Utriusque Fortunæ_,[521] which
must have been written in or before 1344, that bronze shot—_glandes
æneas_—were then in use among the Italians; and Valturio mentions
bronze shells—_pilæ æneæ_—in his work, which, although not published
until 1472, was already written in 1463.[522]
A document, dated 29th April 1345, proves that the French were
employing lead shot at this time;[523] and the accounts of Robert de
Mildenhale, Keeper of Edward III.’s Wardrobe, show that we sent to
Calais on the 1st and 2nd September 1346, 73 large leaden shot, 31
small shot, and 6 pieces of lead.[524] Finally, the accounts of John
de Sleaford, Clerk of the King’s Privy Wardrobe, prove that in 1372-74
workmen were employed in the Tower in making leaden “pelottes” for
guns.[525]
In a battle at Taro, 1491, the Venetians are said to have fired upon
the French with shot of all three metals—iron, bronze, and lead.[526]
These trials naturally resulted in the general, but by no means
exclusive, adoption of stone as the best material for round shot;
because it was found that not only the use of metal balls was
considerably more costly than that of stone, but that the heavier
charges of powder necessitated by metal shot exerted a destructive
effect upon the feeble cannon.
The respective prices per lb. of iron,[527] gun-metal,[528] and
lead[529] in the second half of the fourteenth century were .856,
2.44, and .627 pennies, fourteenth century money. Multiplying by 10, to
get their approximate prices in our money, we obtain:—
TABLE IX.
_Comparative Prices of Metals, 1375 and 1865._
+-----------+----------------+------------+----------+--------------+
| | Price per lb., | | Price | |
| | 1375, | | per lb., | |
| Metal. | multiplied | Ratio. | 1865. | |
| | by 10. | | _d._ | |
| | _d._ | | | |
+-----------+----------------+------------+----------+--------------+
| Iron | 8.56 | 8.5 to 5.7 | 1 to 1.5 | {Bar iron of |
| Gun-metal | 24.4 | 2.03 | 12 | { average |
| Lead | 6.27 | 3.13 | 2 | { quality |
+-----------+----------------+------------+----------+--------------+
It will be noticed that the price of bronze, which had been brought
to perfection by the ancients, and whose manufacture was independent
of modern appliances, only fell to half its old price in five
centuries; that the price of lead, which had some dependence on these
appliances, fell to a little over one-third; while the price of iron,
whose progress depended essentially upon the use of coal, scientific
furnaces, &c., fell to between one-fifth to one-ninth.
The weights of (wrought) iron,[530] bronze,[531] and lead balls of
4” diameter are respectively 9.3, 10.18, and 13.8 lbs., and Master
Gunner Nye informs us that the weight of a stone ball of this diameter
was 3.375 lbs.[532] Therefore the respective prices of the iron,
bronze, and lead balls were 7.96, 26.468, and 8.65 pence, exclusive
of the cost of manufacture; while the price of the material of the
stone ball was much less than a farthing.[533] Again, for powder at
13.664d. per lb.,[534] and charges one-ninth the weight of the shot,
the prices of the charges for the stone, iron, bronze, and lead balls
are respectively 5.12, 14.07, 15.44, and 20.496 pence. We can therefore
form an estimate of the relative cost of one round with balls of the
four materials.
TABLE X.
_Comparative Cost of One Round, 4.25″ gun; stone, iron, bronze, and
lead balls._
+--------------------+-----------+------------+----------+------------+
| | Stone. | Iron. | Bronze. | Lead. |
| | _d._ | _d._ | _d._ | _d._ |
+--------------------+-----------+------------+----------+------------+
| Price of 4” ball | 0.25 | 7.96 | 26.468 | 8.652 |
| Price of powder | 5.12 | 14.07 | 15.44 | 20.496 |
| Cost of one Round | 5.37 | 22.03 | 41.908 | 29.148 |
| or in our money |4s. 5-3/4d.|18s. 4-1/4d.| 34s. 11d.|24s. 3-1/2d.|
+--------------------+-----------+------------+----------+------------+
These figures do not profess to give the absolute price of one round,
but they represent pretty accurately the relative cost of a round with
the different projectiles.
The pressures per square inch exerted upon the bore of a gun are
directly proportional to the weight of the charges used, and these
charges were directly proportional to the weights of the projectiles
used. We have therefore the following comparative pressures:—
TABLE XI
_Numbers proportional to the pressures per square inch on the bore of a
4.25″ gun when fired with shot of different materials._
+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| Stone. | Iron. |Bronze. | Lead. |
| 3.6 | 10 | 10.9 | 14.5 |
+--------+--------+--------+--------+
Table X. shows that the cost per round with stone was much less than
with metal shot, while Table XI. shows how great was the disparity
between the pressures on the bore in the two cases, which, as the
calibre (and therefore the absolute pressure) increased, became a
serious matter. With the very small, early guns, the greater cost and
heavier strain may not have been sensibly felt. The extra cost in
their case was not very considerable, and the increased pressure may
not have been even suspected until guns began to burst.[535] But that
these disadvantages made themselves unmistakably felt when the guns
grew larger is proved beyond a doubt by the fact that “great stone shot
and great cannon were introduced together.”[536] Leaden bullets were
retained for hand-guns, because it was comparatively easy to strengthen
them, and the metal, although dearer per bullet than iron, was much
easier to manipulate. Iron shot were doubtless used as a general rule
for breaching purposes, for which stone shot were ill adapted, owing to
their lightness and liability to break up. We even hear from time to
time of the use of bronze and lead cannon balls.
_Case._
There were two ways, in early times, of firing a volley of small
shot at troops. The first consisted in mounting a number of small
bombards on one carriage and firing them all, or a certain number
of them, together. Gattaro speaks of 144 bombards mounted on the
same bed, and so arranged as to fire thirty-six at a time.[537] The
whole apparatus was called a _ribaudequin_, _barricade_, _orgue_,
_orgelgeschütz_, &c.; the two latter names being given to it because
it resembled “organ-pipes placed upon a broad carriage.”[538] By
the second method the bullets required for the volley were put for
convenience in a cartridge case or canister, and fired from a large
bombard. The bullets, according to General Köhler, were simply pebbles
of flint.[539] During the Indian Mutiny, I forget where, a volley of
“Pyramid” or “Pool” balls was fired by the mutineers from a clubhouse
upon our storming party with deadly effect.
Essenwein gives plates of an orgue, dated 1390-1400, and of a gun
firing case dated 1410.[540] Case was used at the siege of Belgrade,
1439,[541] and at the siege of Scutari, 1478.[542] Orgues were used as
late as the Great Rebellion. At the battle of Copredy Bridge, 1644,
the Cavaliers took “two baricadoes of wood, which were drawn upon
wheels, and in each seven small brass and leather cannon, charged with
case.”[543]
_Shrapnel._
Isolated attempts to fire shell from guns (as distinguished from
howitzers and mortars) had been made from time to time in the course
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but they proved, one and
all of them, abortive. The first methodical and successful shell-fire
from guns was carried on during the siege of Gibraltar, 1779-83, at the
suggestion of an English Infantry officer.
The distance from our nearest batteries to the Spanish lines when the
siege began was 1700 to 2000 yards,[544] and at this range our fire
was ineffective. Many of the mortar shell burst at the muzzle from
the heavy charges required for these long ranges, a gunner losing his
life on one occasion from this cause.[545] The shell that withstood
the shock flew wildly; the fuzes were “in general faulty”;[546] many
good shell were smothered in the sand of which the Spanish works were
constructed; those that burst produced but little effect;[547] and
round shot were of no avail against sandbanks twenty-two feet high.
As fire against the Spanish works was useless, it only remained to
direct it on the working parties. Against them our mortar fire was
as ineffective as against the works, and what was to be looked for
from guns provided only with round shot and case? Case would not
carry one-sixth of the range, and round shot against handfuls of men,
scattered here and there, were as worthless as shell. The difficulty
was still unsolved when Captain Mercier, 39th Regiment, suggested
firing the 5.5-inch shell of the royal mortars, with _short_ fuzes,
from the 24-pounder guns which had the same calibre as the mortars,
5.8-inch. A trial was made on the 25th September 1779 with (I believe)
the “Rock gun,” which was a 24-pounder; the “calculated fuzes,”[548]
it was found, “often burst (the shell) over the heads of the working
parties,”[549] and Merciers brilliant proposal was officially adopted.
When the siege was over, and men had time to think, it became clear
enough that excellent as was Captain Mercier’s plan as a makeshift
during the stress and strain of a siege, it had its weak points. The
strong charge necessary to burst the common shell tended to scatter the
fragments here and there in all directions, and the fragments were few
in number. Experiments were carried on in Prussia in 1761 to determine
the bursting charges which broke (mortar and howitzer) shell into
the greatest number of pieces. It was found that royal mortar shell
(_maximum_ bursting charge, 1 lb. 2 oz.) broke into eight pieces, with
a bursting charge of 1 lb., and into nineteen pieces with a bursting
charge of 14 oz., these figures being the means of six trials.[550]
In any case, the siege of Gibraltar proved beyond denial that we
possessed no recognised and effective projectile against troops in open
order beyond the range of case. To fill the void thus disclosed in our
ammunition, Lieutenant Henry Shrapnel, R.A., conceived the idea in
1784[551] of a gun-projectile, which he called “spherical case.” As he
was quartered in Newfoundland during the siege, it is improbable that
he was aware at this time of Capt. Mercier’s plan. At all events he did
not follow it, the principle of his invention being radically different
from that of common shell. The bursting charge of the latter was a
_maximum_, the bursting charge of the former was a _minimum_; the fuze
of the latter was bored long, the fuze of the former was bored short;
the fragments of common shell were projected by the bursting charge of
the shell, the fragments of the shrapnel by the charge of the gun from
which it was fired.
This absolutely new and original invention at first met the fate of
many other new inventions—it was long disregarded.[552] Not until
1803, when England was in grave danger, did the authorities bestir
themselves about it: a trial of Shrapnel’s shell was then ordered, and
the Ordnance Committee reported in their favour.[553] How great an
invention these shell were may be measured by their inextinguishable
vitality: they outlived official apathy; they overcame endless
objections; they survived countless modifications; they adapted
themselves to rifled guns; and at the present moment they are the best
projectiles available against troops in open order beyond the range of
case.
The originality of the Shrapnel shell did not, of course, remain
unchallenged. Certain officers in France, Germany, and Belgium
discovered that the invention was an old one, and that Master Gunner
Samuel Zimmermann had employed Shrapnel no later than 1573. His MS.,
it may be observed, had been removed from Heidelberg to Rome during
the Thirty Years’ War; was sent back to Heidelberg in 1816; and was
not discovered by Hauptmann Toll until 1852, just ten years after
Shrapnel’s death.[554]
Zimmermann’s projectile was not constructed on Shrapnel’s principles.
It consisted of a leaden cylinder, with a time fuze fixed in the end
placed next to the charge of the gun. The back half of the cylinder was
filled with strong (_röschem_) powder; the front half with bullets;
and the missile was intended to act a few hundred paces (_etlich
hundert schrytt_) beyond the ordinary range of case, say, at 500-600
yards. A very small bursting charge would have sufficed to burst open
a leaden case: why, then, did the Master Gunner use the _maximum_
charge which was possible without unduly diminishing the number of
bullets—a charge, too, of specially strong powder? Because he intended
the bursting charge not only to open the case, but to accelerate the
velocity of the bullets—he could have had no other conceivable reason.
Whatever may have been the merits of this missile, it was certainly
not a Shrapnel, as will be seen clearly by placing the details of
construction of the two projectiles side by side.
_Zimmermann’s Case_, 1573. | _Shrapnel’s Spherical Case_, 1805.
|
(_a_) A hollow leaden cylinder. |(_a’_) A hollow iron sphere.
(_b_) Thickness of cylinder unknown. |(_b’_) Thickness of sphere a minimum.[555]
(_c_) Contained a number of bullets.[556]|(_c’_) Contained a number of bullets.
(_d_) Bursting charge a _maximum_. |(_d’_) Bursting charge a _minimum_.
(_e_) Bullets accelerated by explosion |(_e’_) Bullets (as far as practicable)
of bursting charge. | unaffected by explosion of
| bursting charge.
(_f_) A very bad fuze. |(_f’_) A tolerably fair fuze.[557]
(_g_) Range up to 500-600 yds. |(_g’_) Range up to 3000 yds.
The annals of Artillery will be ransacked in vain for Shrapnel shell
before the nineteenth century, because the successful application of
Shrapnel’s principle was impossible until an extremely accurate time
fuze had been constructed, and no nation possessed a really good fuze
before that epoch[558]—nor in truth until long afterwards. The results
of the Shrapnel practice in 1819,[559] after Shrapnel and many others
had devoted their best energies to the improvement of time fuzes
for sixteen years, show how defective they still were. But although
the want of a sufficiently accurate fuze made the Shrapnel system a
practical impossibility before the nineteenth century, a man above his
fellows might have dreamt dreams of distant case fire ages before.
That Zimmermann was groping about blindly in search of the projectile
Shrapnel found in 1784, is proved beyond a doubt by the question
which the Feuerwerker puts to the Büchsenmeister: “Cannot a case shot
be made which will leave the bore whole and burst at a few hundred
paces’ distance?”[560] But Zimmermann failed in his search: what he
sought did not lie on the road that he took. Like Fronsperger,[561]
he placed his fuze next the charge, in consequence of which (as the
old man frankly confesses) most of his cylinders burst in the bore:
“Gemainlich im Stückh angegangen und zersprungen.” Boillot, a quarter
of a century later, had a better knowledge of gunnery: “adviserez que
le trou d’icelle (the fuze-hole) soit du costé de la bouche dudit
mortier.”[562] Zimmermann filled the front half of his cylinder with
bullets and the rear half with strong powder, obviously assuming
the stability of the missile in its flight. Now Prof. Greenhill has
given us a table showing the _minimum_ twist at the muzzle requisite
to give stability of rotation to elongated projectiles. If a common
shell’s length be 3 calibres, it requires a twist of 1 turn in 38.45
calibres; if its length be 4 calibres it requires a twist of 1 turn
in 27.6 calibres; and so on.[563] How far, then, would Zimmermann’s
ill-balanced, smooth-bore cylinder have travelled before it toppled
over, with the certain result that, when it did, the large bursting
charge would blow the bullets any way but the right way?
Zimmermann’s projectile failed, and his sole merit consists in vaguely
foreshadowing the Shrapnel, just as Roger Bacon dimly foresaw balloons
and ships driven by machinery—“Marine engines can be constructed and
worked by one man which will propel the largest vessels quicker than a
ship’s crew of oarsmen.... Flying machines can also be made.”[564] His
cylinder no more establishes Zimmermann’s claim to be the inventor, or
even the suggester, of Shrapnel shell, than Bourne’s method of shooting
“three times in a peece at one lading of her”[565] entitles him to be
regarded as the inventor of quick-firing guns.
We should have been spared much unprofitable controversy had foreign
critics thought fit to make themselves acquainted with the nature
and properties of Shrapnel’s Spherical Case before discussing its
history. Its history is simple. It was made in England, the invention
of an English Artillery officer who owed nothing to earlier gunners in
Germany or anywhere else.
CHAPTER XIV
IGNEOUS PROJECTILES
_Hot Shot._
The Britons set fire to the Roman Camp during Cæsar’s second invasion,
54 B.C., by discharging hot balls of clay among the tents.[566] At the
attack on Placentia, A.D. 69, igneous missiles were employed (_glandes
et missilem ignem_), and probably destroyed the amphitheatre.[567] As
before mentioned, hot shot (for cannon) were invented by the Polish
king, Stephen Bathory, in 1579.[568] Their greatest triumph was the
destruction of d’Arçon’s floating batteries and a great part of the
Spanish fleet at Gibraltar, 13th September 1782.
_Incendiary Fireballs._
The gunners of old encountered great difficulties in their endeavours
to introduce igneous projectiles. Their use in the early guns was not
absolutely impossible, but it would have been fruitless; for to prove
effective an igneous projectile, whether incendiary or explosive,
must contain a considerable mass of combustible matter, and this
condition could not be fulfilled with guns of very small calibre.
When the calibre had greatly increased, during the last quarter of the
fourteenth century, any attempt to employ such igneous projectiles as
were in use with the machines must have ended in failure. The action
of the machines was similar to that of a sling, and the shells (or
envelopes) of their incendiary missiles were made just strong enough
to resist the pressure to which they were subjected on discharge,
although not strong enough to bear the shock of impact with the object
they struck. This broke them up and scattered their blazing contents
about. Such projectiles were evidently unfit for use in cannon;
for the explosion of the charge would inevitably break them up in
the bore, and their viscous contents would travel but a very short
way. Owing to these difficulties the machines held their ground to
the middle of the fifteenth century, if not longer, and the igneous
projectiles ultimately constructed for cannon were developments of the
hand-grenade.
In Fig. 31 of the plate from the MS. of Kyeser’s “Bellifortis,” 1405,
given by Herr von Romocki (i. 169), we are shown a projectile which
unquestionably belongs to the same family as the _tonneau_ which
terrified Joinville and his companions;[569] but this barrel could have
only been discharged from a machine. Whether Figs. 26 and 28 of the
same plate were thrown by hand or machine depended on their size, which
we do not know. From their construction, with a mere covering of cloth
or cordage, we may safely conclude that they were not gun-projectiles.
We are given a detailed account of fireballs in the German Firebook,
1400-50, belonging to the Royal Library, Berlin, MS. Germ. qu. 1018.
Missiles are there described which consisted of an interior ball
of gunpowder kneaded with spirits of wine, smeared over with thick
incendiary matter, rolled tightly in a cover of cotton steeped in the
same mixture, and secured by two metal bands at right angles to each
other. They could be either thrown by hand or fired from a bombard.
In the latter case a hole was bored through the ball and the plug
which was used in bombards to close the end of the powder-chamber next
the projectile, in order to admit the flame into the interior of the
ball. The success of the missile, it was thought, depended on the hole
through the ball being exactly opposite the hole through the plug, a
condition which could be only fulfilled in a breechloading bombard. The
inventor believed that the ball would explode, for he warns the gunner
to throw it before the flame reaches the composition, lest it “blow
his head off.”[570] It is obvious, however, that the gunner’s head
was quite safe, although he might burn his fingers, when using these
incendiary toys which are unknown to military history. The incendiary
projectiles actually used in the fifteenth century were comparatively
simple and of a different nature. Take, for instance, the incendiary
cannon-projectile used at the siege of Weissenburg in 1469, just six
years after Valturio had presented his book to the Sultan Mahomed
II.[571] It consisted of a stone ball, considerably smaller than the
bore of the gun, which was smeared over with thick incendiary matter
and wrapped in a cloth soaked in the same mixture. This process was
continued until the ball was the proper size for the bore.[572] Other
incendiary missiles were tried,[573] but none of them, so far as I am
aware, had anything in common with the unpractical projectile proposed
in the Berlin Firebook.
_Incendiary Shell._
A further step is taken in a later edition of the Firebook just quoted,
but of the same period,[574] 1400-50. A quill full of incendiary
matter is directed to be inserted in the hole through the ball above
described, and the whole was enclosed in an envelope or shell of
earthenware or iron. An earthenware ball could of course only be thrown
by hand: an iron ball would be fired in general from a bombard. The
metal shell was formed of two hemispheres of iron fastened together by
bands, with a small hole to admit the flame to the quill. A similar
envelope, of bronze, is suggested by
Valturio in his _De Re Militari_, 1463, p. 267;[575] but in this case
the shell is filled with powder, which in all probability was driven
in and compressed as tightly as possible with a mallet and drift.[576]
The German writer undoubtedly believed that his shell would burst,
for he uses such phrases as “chugel dye da springt” and “zerspringt
und zerslecht alls umb.” Neither his shell or Valturio’s would have
exploded except under the most exceptional circumstances.
The weakness of the shell leads Herr von Romocki to suppose that
Valturio’s plate is wrong or grievously exaggerated. I see no grounds
for this suspicion: the shell was purposely made weak, so that it
might break into two pieces on impact and leave the incendiary charge
free to do its work. The missile belonged to the same family as the
incendiary projectiles thrown into Roveredo by the Swiss in 1487.[577]
There the shell was filled with pitch and rosin: Valturio’s shell was
charged with powder, but it was probably compressed tightly into the
interior of the shell, and powder, especially serpentine powder,
will not explode under such circumstances. When experimenting with
gunpowder at New York, Doremus and Budd subjected good modern powder to
such hydraulic pressure as to compress it into a solid block without
interstices, and on ignition the mass burned quietly away.[578]
Valturio’s charge was probably reduced to a state approximating more or
less closely to that of the New York powder, and it would have exploded
but rarely and occasionally. But the mere fact that the shell was made
of bronze is a sufficient proof that it was an incendiary missile.
Even had the charge been explosive, a bronze envelope would have been
only ripped open by it, not broken into many pieces as iron would have
been; a fact which Valturio must have known. Finally, the gunners of
the fifteenth century were not in possession of a fuze that would have
enabled them to carry on fire with explosive shell. The construction of
such a fuze (as will be seen in the section on “Time Fuzes”) was the
work of the following century.
The Berlin Firebook does not profess to give us an account of
ammunition actually used in the field; it merely describes certain
ammunition proposed for use by a fireworker, or inventor, and it
adds his honest convictions of the way in which it would act if
manufactured. The excerpts given by Herr von Romocki from the Firebook,
in so far as they concern the projectile in question, are simply the
specification and opinions of an inventor, and there are no grounds
for supposing that his missile was ever made or ever tried. If these
projectiles had been used with effect in the field, their inventor
would surely have been the first to tell us of their success. There
is nothing remarkable in the above conclusion: the inventor followed
the custom of his age. The value of experiment generally, the absolute
necessity for experiment in gunnery, was unknown or altogether
underrated in the Middle Ages, and those fireworkers who may have
suspected its importance had neither the money nor the opportunity
to put their theory into practice. Would Sextus Julius Africanus and
Marcus Græcus have bequeathed to us certain preposterous recipes, had
they been at the pains and expense of making them and trying them?
It was Roger Bacon who wrote: “Experimental science ignores abstract
arguments; because, strong though they may be, their conclusions
are not perfectly certain until verified by experiment.... In these
studies experiment alone, not abstract reasoning, leads to certain
conclusions.”[579] Yet even he, with his “everlasting lamps,” has
not quite escaped the infection of the prevailing fashion: he never
tried these lamps. Bourne has left us a whole book of “Inventions
and Devices,” and at least one half of Boillot’s book is occupied by
similar inventions; but neither of them makes the slightest suggestion
that any one of his contrivances was ever made or ever tried. We may,
then, discard the wholly unpractical proposal of the Berlin Firebook,
and accept Valturio’s as the earliest incendiary cannon-shell of which
we have any detailed account.
_Carcasses._
Carcasses were invented in 1672 by a gunner in the service of
Christopher van Galen, the fighting Prince Bishop of Munster.[580]
They are mentioned in the _London Gazette_, 1980/1, 1684. They were
originally oblong, in order to contain a large quantity of incendiary
matter; but their flight was so erratic that it became necessary to
make them spherical. Their thickness was at the same time so much
reduced, in order to increase their internal capacity, that a large
proportion broke up in the bore. To remedy this defect during the siege
of Quebec, 1759, “the interval between the powder and the carcass
was filled with turf,” an arrangement which “produced every desired
effect.”[581]
_Explosive Fireballs._
Explosive fireballs were simply hand-grenades, which, according to the
classification of ammunition adopted here, have been already noticed,
p. 169.
_Explosive Shell._
The step from Valturio’s shell to common shell may seem to us now to
have been a short and an easy one, yet it took nearly a century to make
it; the obstacle that barred the way being neither the envelope nor the
bursting charge, but the fuze.
It is impossible to say exactly when, where, or by whom explosive shell
were first employed. The want of them had been long felt everywhere,
and numberless attempts to manufacture them were made. They may,
therefore, have come into being independently in several countries
about the same period; a supposition which receives considerable
support from the conflicting claims which have been set up, quite
honestly no doubt, to their first employment.
We have sound evidence of the manufacture of large mortars and shell
in England as early as 1543. In this year Bawd and Collet constructed
mortars of 11″ to 19″ in calibre, with cast-iron shell “to be
stuffed with fireworks or wildfire,” and a match (_i.e._ fuze) “that
the firework might be set on fire for to breake in smal pieces,
whereof the smallest piece hitting any man would kill or spoile
him.”[582] Stow, to whom we owe these facts, began life as a tailor,
and was not familiar with the intricacies of Artillery _matériel_;
but it is sufficiently clear that he speaks here of two kinds of
projectiles—incendiary shell filled with wildfire, and explosive shell
filled with firework. Whether these shell were ever used and, if so,
whether their action was successful, there is no evidence to show; but
in 1588 took place the sieges of Bergen-op-Zoom and Wachtendonck at
which explosive shell were used with much effect, for the first time
according to the evidence we at present possess. Reyd, whose _Belgarum
aliarumque Gentium Annales_ was published in 1600, tells us (lib.
viii., p. 182) that during the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom “an Italian
deserter to the Dutch devoted himself to the art, hitherto unknown, of
making hollow balls of iron or stone, which, when filled with a certain
composition and ignited, burst into innumerable fragments like grape
stones.”[583] Father Strada, S.J., in his _Hist. de la_ _Guerre des
Pays Bas, Brussels_, 1739, speaks as follows (iv. 415):—
[Sidenote: On bat la Ville avec une nouvelle espèce de balles qu’on
nomme Bombes.]
“Il n’y avoit rien qui épouvantait davantage les assiégés (in
Wachtendonck) que de certaines grosses boules de fonte creuses, et
remplies de poudre et d’autres matiéres inextinguibles, qui étant
poussées en l’air avec de gros mortiers, accabloient par leur pésanteur
tous les lieux sur qui ils tombaient, et en même tems, comme le feu
s’y prenoit par des buses qui y étoient attachées, ils rompoient en se
crévant et embrasoient tout ce qui étoit à l’entour, sans que l’eau le
put éteindre.
[Sidenote: L’inventeur de ces sortes de boulets.]
“Cette sorte de boulet, que nous avons vû ajoûter aux grenades, aux
pots à feu, &c. ... fut, dit on, inventée un peu devant le siége de
Wachtendonck par un artisan de Venloo.... Je sais que quelqu’un (_i.e._
Reyd) a ecrit qu’une pareille expérience avait été faite a Berg-op-Zoom
... avec un pareil succès par un Italien deserteur des troupes
d’Espagne. Au reste, le Comte Mansfeld se servit de cette machine qui
fut inventée à Venloo et faisoit dans Wachtendonck une déstruction des
maisons et des hommes aussi inévitable qu’elle étoit inopinée.”
These passages possess at least one quality of good evidence—they
differ about details and agree on the main points; and it is difficult
to see how they can be gainsaid or overlooked. We may take it, then,
until further evidence (which may possibly exist) is produced, that
explosive shell were first used in large numbers and with good effect
in 1588.
CHAPTER XV
IGNITERS
Charges of incendiaries and explosives confined in guns, shells, mines,
&c., are not fired directly: for convenience and safety they are
ignited by means of some intermediate agent, or agents, such as priming
powder, fuzes, &c., which are themselves in turn ignited by some other
agents. These collective agents are here called Igniters.
_Hot Wires, Priming Powder, Matches, and Portfires._
The small early guns, whose recoil was insignificant, seem to have
been fired directly by thrusting a hot wire into the powder through
the vent.[584] When guns grew bigger, this method had to be abandoned
and priming powder came into use.[585] For centuries priming powder
consisted of serpentine, or some slow-burning mixture, which was at
first laid in a train from some convenient spot to the vent, and was
afterwards simply poured on the vent. The advantage of the former
proceeding, in securing the safety of the gunners, is pointed out in a
very old French book:—“vous pourrez retirer affin que vostre baston
(_gun_) ne vous face dommage.”[586] In the latter case, the priming
was ignited in various ways:—by a hot wire; by a match fixed in a
lint-stock, which was “a staffe of a yard or two yards long;”[587] and
later by a portfire attached to a portfire-stick.[588]
The objection to priming powder was its liability to be wetted by rain,
or blown away by wind.[589]
TABLE XII.
_Matches._
+------------------+----------------+----------------+------------------+
| Chinese. | Arab. | English. | English. |
| 13th Century. | 13th Century. | 17th Century. | 20th Century. |
+------------------+----------------+----------------+------------------+
| Cord soaked | Cord of cotton | “Cottonweeke | “Cottonwick |
| in a mixture | and palm | dipped | boiled in |
| of sulphur and | leaves soaked | in gunpowder | a solution of |
| water (and well | in naphtha and | wet with water”| mealed powder |
| dried).[590] | dried.[591] | and dried.[592]| and gum, and |
| | | | afterwards |
| | | | dusted over |
| | | | with mealed |
| | | | powder before |
| | | | it is dry.[593] |
+------------------+----------------+----------------+------------------+
_Tubes._
Priming powder was ultimately replaced by small tubes, full of
combustible matter, which fitted into the vents of guns. Of the
multitude of these tubes only a few can be mentioned here. Tubes
filled with quickmatch, and primed with mealed powder and spirits of
wine, are said to have been in use in the first half of the eighteenth
century.[594] In 1778 Captain Sir Charles Douglas, R.N., invented the
gun-flint-lock. It was simply a flint-and-steel apparatus, fastened
to the ventplate of the gun and worked by a lanyard, which ignited a
tube placed in the vent. Captain Douglas introduced this lock into
his ship, the _Duke_, at his own expense, and it worked so well that
it was officially adopted for the Navy in 1790.[595] It was owing,
apparently, to the personal intervention of General Sir Alexander
Dickson that this lock was at length adopted for the Artillery in
1820.[596] In a letter to Sir Howard Douglas (son of Sir Charles),
18th April 1818, Sir Alexander gives his reasons for advocating the
change:—“By the employment of slow match only, the fire is frequently
retarded, and nothing can be more dangerous than lighted portfires in
a battery ... I have ever prevented, as much as in my power, the use of
portfires.”[597]
A percussion tube, invented by Mr. Marsh, of the Royal Arsenal Surgery,
was approved for the Navy in 1831: the Artillery was not supplied with
a similar tube until 1846.
In 1841 Lieutenant Siemens, of the Hanoverian Army, laid a friction
tube before the officials of Woolwich Arsenal, which was tried and,
owing to whatever defects, was rejected. Just ten years later Mr.
Tozer, of the Royal Laboratory, made the copper friction tube now in
use. It was officially adopted in 1853.[598]
In 1860 there were no less than six tubes in the service:—(1) the
Common Quill Tube; (2) the Dutch Paper Tube; (3) the Common Metal Tube;
(4) the Percussion Tube; (5) the Friction Tube; and (6) the Galvanic
Tube.[599]
_Time Fuzes._
Nothing can be less satisfactory than Hassan er-Rammah’s allusions to
igniters, of which he possessed two—the _rose_ and the _ikreekh_ (اكريج).
The latter word strictly means a duct, channel, or tube; but just as
we frequently use _fuze_ for _fuze composition_, so the Arabs often
use _ikreekh_ for the composition it contained. Hassan, for instance,
speaks of “the sulphur with which one makes ikreekhs.”[600] It is
quite clear, however, from Reinaud and Favé’s Plate II., fig. 24, that
the ikreekh was of the nature of a fuze-case. Whether the composition
given here in column 1 of Table XIII. was used in the ikreekh or the
rose, I do not know. In fact our knowledge of these two igniters may
be summed up in the statement that they were used together in the same
(incendiary) shell, and that it was the rose which was lighted.[601]
The ikreekh possibly contained the fuze composition proper, and the
rose corresponded to our priming matter.
Judging from the plates of Kyeser’s _Bellifortis_ reproduced by Herr
von Romocki (i. 169), the igneous projectiles of 1405 were ignited by
some slow-burning composition, which was put on the top of the charge,
and filled up the loading hole flush with the exterior of the missile.
The breech-loading quill fuze of the second Berlin Firebook, mentioned
in the section on “Explosive Shell,” seems to have been only the
abortive proposal of an inventor.
The foregoing Arab and German igniters were for use in machine and hand
projectiles, and we now reach cannon fuzes.
The first igneous gun-missiles were incendiary, at once hand-grenades
and cannon-balls, and were ignited by means of some slow-burning
mixture, without a case, which was put into the shell on the top of its
charge. When the missile is “neere full (of good come pouder),” says
Bourne, “take some receite of soft fire worke that will not burne too
hastily and fill up the rest of the ball.”[602] That the fuze-hole was
originally placed next the cartridge is shown by Boillot’s repeated
directions to turn it towards the muzzle[603]—directions which would
have been superfluous had it not been previously customary to place
it next the cartridge; and by many other indications. By this mode of
loading the ignition of the fuze composition was ensured before the
projectile left the piece. There was perhaps no absolute necessity for
the use of this soft, slow-burning mixture, with incendiary shell so
placed; but it was probably found very useful in confining the charge
within the missile during flight.
The need of an explosive projectile to blow up earthworks, &c., was
more and more felt as time rolled on, and the use of such missiles
was clearly impossible with such igniters so placed. But the best way
of mending matters was by no means so clear. If an explosive shell
was placed in the bore with an igniter of soft, caseless composition
next the cartridge, there was in the great majority of rounds a burst
in the bore. If the shell was reversed, with the igniter towards the
face of the piece, either the composition did not ignite and the
shell was blind, or the soft composition set back into the shell from
the shock of the explosion[604] and again there was a burst in the
bore. Furthermore, in firing against works it was before all things
necessary that the shell should enter the revetment, &c., before it
exploded, and it was extremely difficult in practice to put into the
shell the exact amount of composition that would burn just longer
than the time of flight. To prevent the gases of the explosion from
forcing their way into the interior of the shell, it was necessary
to have the fuze-hole towards the muzzle when the shell was home. To
prevent the soft composition from setting back, and to ensure that it
was sufficient in quantity to burn longer than the time of flight, a
fuze-case was necessary. To ensure the ignition of the fuze (in its new
position) it was necessary to light it from the muzzle just before the
piece was fired, and this condition restricted the use of explosive
shell for centuries to mortars and (afterwards) howitzers. No one would
have dared to thrust a lit match down the bore of a gun which had been
loaded with loose powder by means of a ladle, and cartridges were not
in general use when the question of explosive shell arose. Bourne
says in 1587: “It is a great deal better for to charge a peace in time
of service with a cartredge than with a ladell,”[605] and he presently
proceeds to give his reasons for thinking so at great length.[606] In
the beginning of the following century, Diego Ufano only allows the use
of cartridges when a ladle is not at hand.
Such were the steps of the evolution of the fuze, as partially
explained by Hanzelet and Thybovrel in their _Receuil de plusieurs
Machines Militaires_, published in 1620: “Le souspirail de l’amorce
(the funnel of the priming = the fuze-case) est long ... et creux....
Ainsi ce canal éstant emply de composition lente, il ne permet que le
feu se prenne qu’il nait (n’ait) lentement consumé la matière mise
audit canal, et par ce moyen le feu ne peut toucher la poudre grainée
(the bursting charge) qu’il ne soit arrivé jusques au fond de la ditte
grenade. Cela sert pour avoir loisir de la jetter à la main, ou de
l’allumer et la mettre dans le mortier ou canon” (l. iv. c. 6).
One of the first indications of a fuze with a case is afforded by
a passage in Stow’s “Annals” for the year 1543, where he speaks of
“hollow shot of cast-yron, to be stuffed with fireworks or wild fire;
whereof the bigger sort had screwes of yron to receive a match”
(p. 584). Stow was evidently describing something which he did not
understand, but his meaning is made clear by Boillot. The fuze-case
was a hollow, cylindrical male screw which fitted a female screw in the
fuze-hole, and when fixed extended across the cavity of the shell: “En
laquelle (the shell) laisserez un trou ... auquelle ferés faire une
viz pour le bien boucher, laquelle sera de la longeur de la grenade”
(p. 163). Further on he speaks of the case as “un tuyau de fer blanc
ou cuivre ... bien adjousté au dit trou,” and directs it to be filled
“bien massif de pouldre sans graine.” It was lighted from the muzzle
of the mortar by a quick-match or hand-fuze,[607] as Nye directs half
a century afterwards—light the fuze first, “and then with great speed
give fire to the touch-hole” (chap. v.).
Diego Ufano describes experiments carried on during the latter years
of the sixteenth, or the early years of the seventeenth century, with
cased fuzes of a new patterns[608] proposed by the (then) Governor of
Genappe. The fuze, which was filled with moist powder or one of several
mixtures given by Ufano, was placed next the cartridge.[609] The first
shell fired burst at the muzzle, the second burst short. Two rounds
were then fired from an English 60-pr. (_carthaunen_), both of which
burst in the air and damaged houses and walls in their neighbourhood.
A third shell lodged in the ground at a distance of 250 yards,[610]
and on bursting sent its fragments back towards the gun, damaging a
guard-room[611] which stood 150 yards in rear of it. The experiments
then ceased, on the urgent representations of an Artillery officer
about the risk they were all running. The earlier fuzes implicitly
referred to by Ufano were doubtless the “buses” which, Father Strada
tells us, were employed at Wachtendonck in 1588. Their name, buses =
tubes or pipes, is sufficient proof that they were fuzes with cases. In
his “Gunner,” 1628, p. 156, Norton speaks of a “pype primed with slow
receipt” for exploding shell. We find the very same word applied to
fuzes in Danish official documents in 1644: “piber til Granater,” pipes
for shell.[612] Writing three years afterwards, Nye, Master-Gunner of
Worcester, speaks familiarly of _fuzes_ which were conical in shape,
for he compares them to “faucets for a spigot.”[613] He says: “The
match doth ofttimes fail, but fuzes are very certain to give fire.”
There were no means of regulating the time of burning of these pipes,
which were generally metallic. The composition had a constant (and
unalterable) length, corresponding roughly to that required for the
_maximum_ range at which shell could be fired. Whatever the range,
the oblong bombs were fired with a fuze that burned some fourteen
seconds, answering to about 1000 yards range; the spherical grenados
with a fuze that burned some twenty seconds, answering to about 2100
yards range.[614] In firing against works, &c., it was essential that
mortar shell—and until the siege of Gibraltar, 1779, all shell were
mortar or howitzer shell[615]—should not burst before impact. A shell
which burst in flight was a shell wasted, but it mattered little
whether it burst on impact or a few seconds afterwards.[616] But it was
occasionally necessary to use shell against troops, and it was then
that the radical defect of the tube became fully manifest. In this case
it was desirable that the fuze should fire the bursting charge the
instant the shell touched the ground,[617] and this was impracticable
with the primitive pipe. While the long fuze was burning down to
its end, the explosion might be prevented, or its effects might be
neutralised in many ways. The shell might be thrown bodily into a pond
or the sea;[618] the fuze might be extracted;[619] or it might be
extinguished with water.[620] But in the vast majority of cases the
explosion of the shell was neutralised in a much homelier and less
heroic way; those near whom it fell waited for no command to quit its
neighbourhood in all haste.
It was long before any real progress was made in the adjustment of
fuzes to burn a certain time, chiefly because the early gunners had no
timekeeper. A striking illustration of this fact is found in the _Artis
Magnæ Artilleriæ_, &c., of Siemienowicz, published in 1650. Wishing
to give his readers an idea of the action of a certain fireball, he
explains that it burned in the time one takes to recite deliberately
the Apostles’ Creed.[621]
The first, so far as is known, who urged the adjustment of fuzes was
Sebastian Hälle,[622] in 1596, and he fared as fare most of those who
see further than their fellows. The many failed to see the object
which he saw clearly; therefore (they said) the object did not exist,
and he was a dreamer. A century after his death, however, gunners
began to discover that his dreams were substantial enough; and in 1682
Zeug-Lieut. Buchner dilates upon the advantages of a fuze that will
burn _ein gewiss Tempo_[623]—a certain time. The mere fact that there
were at least three different kinds of fuze in use towards the close of
the seventeenth century—paper, wood, and iron[624]—proves that the
search for a serviceable fuze was going actively forward. The excellent
plates given by Buchner and Mieth show clearly that their fuzes were
bored. In both cases the rate of burning was tested with difficulty,
owing to the want of a practical timekeeper. Buchner recommends the use
of a pendulum, or very careful beating time (or counting);[625] Mieth
alludes to the pendulum, but evidently put little trust in it, for he
adds, “The correct time can be only found by trial shell.”[626]
By the middle of the eighteenth century we had beechwood fuzes, which
were cut. The rate of burning was determined “by burning two or three,
and making use of a watch or string by way of pendulum.”[627] It was
observed about this period that when fuzes were cut very short, either
the flame failed to reach the bursting charge and the shell went blind,
or the thin disc of fuze composition set back into the shell from the
shock of the discharge and the shell burst in the bore. To obviate
this Muller proposed to provide special fuzes, with a quicker-burning
composition than usual, for use at short ranges.[628] This plan was
temporarily adopted, for we find that there were three different
fuzes in our service in 1779, one that burned an inch in 5 seconds, a
second that burned an inch in 4.5 seconds, and a third that burned an
inch in 4 seconds. It is evident, however, from a remark made by the
Inspector of the Royal Military Academy, Captain George Smith, R.A.,
in his “Universal Military Dictionary” (from which these details have
been taken) that the standard of shell fire in the year 1779 was a
low one. “When the distance of the battery from the object is known,
the time of the shell’s flight may be computed to a second or two.”
Extreme regularity of burning, then, was not expected: an error of “a
second or two” in the time of flight was of trivial importance. But an
event happened in Gibraltar in this very year which suddenly raised
the standard to a height that no one could have foreseen—the adoption
of Captain Mercier’s method of shell-fire from guns, with short fuzes.
This system ended with the siege; it was never resorted to, probably,
outside the gates of Gibraltar; and, more probably still, when the
siege was over things fell gradually back into the unruffled quiet of
routine. But the calm was only momentary, for in 1803 appeared Shrapnel
shell, and with them reappeared Captain Mercier’s forgotten system of
“calculated fuzes.”
From the first moment it was beyond all doubt that the ultimate success
of Shrapnel could be only assured by the use of what no Artillery then
possessed—a thoroughly good time-fuze. Writing to Major (afterwards
General Sir Thomas) Downman, R.A., on the 29th Feb. 1804, Shrapnel
remarks that in firing at short ranges the fuze composition “gives
way into the shell once in ten times,”[629] thus producing a burst
in the bore; and as a remedy he suggests cutting all fuzes 1¼″
long and then sawing a cut through the bottom of the fuze, in a plane
passing through its longer axis, _up_ to the desired length. However,
notwithstanding all precautions, of the 1090 shell fired during the
Woolwich experiments with Shrapnel in 1819, 74 burst in the bore, 71
burst in the butt, and 111 were blind, _i.e._ 23.4 per cent. were
failures.[630] No efforts were spared to improve these fuzes or replace
them by better ones, and a large number were proposed, or constructed,
during the second quarter of the last century. In 1850 there were no
less than nineteen time-fuzes in our service: three of metal and
sixteen of wood. Of the latter, ten were Shrapnel fuzes, viz. an 8″, a
5½″ and a 1″ fuze, which were uncut; and seven fuzes which were cut
ready for use, and lettered A for .1″, B for .2″,—G for .7″.[631]
This medley of fuzes was gradually superseded by a wooden time-fuze
proposed in 1849 by an officer who had a genius for ammunition, Captain
(afterwards General) E. M. Boxer, R.A., and adopted in 1850. In the
final pattern of this fuze, adopted early in 1854, England possessed
probably the best fuze in Europe.
TABLE XIII.
_Time-Fuze Composition._
+---------+----------+------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+------------+-------------+
| |Arab.[632]|German.[633]|English.[634]|Swedish.[635]|English.[636]|German.[637]|English.[638]|
| | Late | Late | Early | Late | Middle | Early | 20th | |
| | 13th | 16th | 17th | 17th | 18th | 19th | Century. |
| | Century. | Century. | Century. | Century. | Century. | Century. | |
+---------+----------+------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+------------+-------------+
|Saltpetre| 71.43 | 52.1 | 69.8 | 69.85 | 75.0 | 72.1 | 76.4 |
|Charcoal | 21.43 | 25.6 | 12.7 | .5 | 6.25 | 10.7 | 14.1 |
|Sulphur | 7.14 | 22.3 | 17.5 | 21.65 | 18.75 | 17.2 | 9.5 |
+---------+----------+------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+------------+-------------+
_Percussion and Concussion Fuzes._
The earliest proposal for igniting the bursting charges of shell by
percussion appears to have been made in 1596 by Sebastian Hälle.[639]
A similar proposal was made in 1610 by Graf Johann von Nassau in a MS.
now in possession of the Royal Library, Berlin (MS. Germ. fol. 4),
where two hand-grenades are described which explode on being let fall
on the ground. The second differs from the first in having a safety
apparatus to prevent premature explosions, but both are based on the
same principle as Hälle’s: flints and steel so arranged as to strike
together on impact with the ground.[640] In 1650 Siemienowicz gives
a description (with plates) of similar grenades, without a safety
arrangement,[641] which Mieth regarded as “curiosities” specially
adapted to hurry those who meddled with them into the next world.[642]
Yet Buchner mentions them in 1682,[643] and Anderson in 1691,[644]
without any (expressed) misgivings of their danger. We may rest assured
that these man-traps were never used on actual service.
The use of percussion powder to ignite the bursting charges of shells
was first definitely proposed, I believe, by Johann Jürgenson von
Trachenfels in 1655;[645] just seven years after Glauber had drawn
attention to such mixtures in his _Philosophischen Öfen_.[646]
Trachenfels’ proposals were never put into practice, and no attempt was
made to apply percussion powders to military purposes for more than a
century. Fulminating silver, discovered by Berthollet towards the close
of the eighteenth century, could not be utilised owing to the violence
of its detonation. After Howard’s discovery of fulminating mercury in
1800, a number of percussion mixtures were made; but seven years passed
before Rev. Alexander Forsyth proposed to use them for the priming
of firearms,[647] and eleven years more elapsed before it occurred
to Colonel Peter Hawker to enclose percussion priming in a copper
cap.[648] The percussion musket did not make its appearance until 1842.
The first English concussion fuze[649] was invented by Quartermaster
Freeburn, R.A., in 1846; the first percussion fuze by Commander
Moorsom, R.N., in 1850.
CHAPTER XVI
SIGNALS
The following tables tell their own tale:—
TABLE XIV.
_Signal Rockets._
+--------------+-------------+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------+
| |Chinese.[650]|Greek.[651]|Arab.[652]|English.[653]|English.[654]|
| | 13th | 13th | 13th | 17th | 20th |
| | Century. | Century. | Century. | Century. | Century. |
+--------------+-------------+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------+
| Saltpetre | 61.0 | 69.2 | 69.5 | 60.0 | 61.6 |
| Charcoal | 18.3 | 23 | 15.7 | 25.5’ | 23 |
| Sulphur | 18.3 | 7.8 | 14.8 | 14.4’ | 15.4 |
| Mi-to-sing? | 2.4 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
+--------------+-------------+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------+
TABLE XV.
_Fixed Lights._
+--------------+----------------+------------------------+
| | Arab.[655] | English.[656] |
| | “Light of the | “Light, Illuminating |
| | Moon,” | Wrecks, Mark IV.,” |
| | 13th Century. | 20th Century. |
+--------------+----------------+------------------------+
| Saltpetre | 71.4 | 72 |
| Charcoal | 15.2 | 21 |
| Orpiment | 13.4 | 6.7 |
+--------------+----------------+------------------------+
TABLE XVI
_Fireworks._
+--------------------+----------------+--------------+
| | Arab.[657] | English.[658]|
| |Golden Garlands,|Tourbillions, |
| | 13th Century. |20th Century. |
+--------------------+----------------+--------------+
| Saltpetre | 62.5 | 58 |
| Charcoal | 25 | 12 |
| Sulphur | 6.25 | 13 |
| Steel filings | 3.125 | 4.8 |
| Cast iron borings | -- | 12.2 |
| Bronze filings | 3.125 | -- |
+--------------------+----------------+--------------+
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Escorial MS., No. 1249, given in Casiri’s _Bibliotheca
Arabico-Hispana Escur._, ii. 7.
[2] _Hist. du Roy Saint Loys_, Paris, 1668, p. 39. He calls the
projectile “ung tonneau,” which it probably was. See the section on
“Incendiary Fireballs.”
[3] Estimated for gunpowder at 3373° C.
[4]
“... to be the mark Of smoky muskets.”
—_All’s Well that Ends Well_, iii. 2.
[5] Chaucer’s “Legend of Good Women,” 637. Professor Skeat points out
that the word “gonne” applies to the projectile in this line.
[6] Only the whirring of the shot.
[7] Only the faint light of the time fuze.
[8] Sacy’s _Chrestomathie Arabe_, Paris, 1827, iii. 68.
[9] Cod. MS. phil. 63, in the library of the University of Göttingen,
quoted by Romocki, i. 134.
[10] Froissart’s original account of the battle of Cressy in the Amiens
MS. will be found in Kervyn de Lettenhove’s ed. of the “Chronicles,”
Brussels, 1870, and in the Appendix to Polain’s ed. of the _Vrayes
Chroniques de Messire Jehan le Bel_, Brussels, 1863. See also “Cannon
at Cressy,” by the present writer, in _Proc. R. A. Inst._, vol. xxvi.
[11] “Toxophilus,” p. 67.
[12] “Sometimes we put a new signification to an old word, as when we
call a Piece a Gun. The word Gun was in use in England for an Engine
to cast a thing from a Man, long before there was any Gunpowder found
out.”—“Table Talk,” p. 107.
[13] “Language and the Study of Language,” 1867, p. 126.
[14] _Cordite_, for instance, is frequently miscalled “smokeless
_powder_.”
[15] As _Artillery_ for ages represented both _bows_ and _cannon_.
[16]
“Si forte necesse est
Indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum,
Fingere cinctutis non exaudita Cethegis
Continget, dabiturque licentia sumpta pudenter.”—A. P. 48.
[17] _e.g._, whether Artillery means bows and arrows or cannon in 1
Sam. xx. 40; but this is an exceedingly simple case.
[18] Except one disputed Sanskrit text which will be found in Rāy’s
“Hindu Chemistry,” pp. 97-8.
[19] “Les terres d’où l’on tire le kien, ou la couperose de Chine,
fermentent comme celles du salpêtre; on y est souvent trompé, ce
n’est qu’au goût qu’on peut distinguer les unes des autres.”—Père
Incarville, a Chinese missionary, in Reinaud and Favé, p. 251.
[20] Supposed to be of Greek origin.
[21] _Journal Asiatique_, Oct. 1849, p. 283.
[22] Reinaud and Favé, p. 142. On the next page, 143, _sarcosti_ is
spelled (by the same writer) _salcosti_.
[23] “Tunc aquam illam (salt water) coque in vase vitreo.”—Albert
Groot in Zetzner’s _Theatrum Chemicum_, 1613, ii. 433.
[24] The Greeks had a corresponding distinction between natural and
artificial salt. Herodotus calls the salt crystallised by the sun at
the mouth of the Borysthenes ἅλες αὐτόματοι, automatic, or spontaneous
salt, as distinguished from ἅλς ὀρυκτός, dug-out, or rock salt; iv. 53
and 185.
[25] Berthelot, iii. 153.
[26] Ib., i. 239. The forgeries in question may have been the work of
several writers, but this does not affect the date given above.
[27] The Arabic works of the real Jabir are given by Berthelot in iii.
126 _ff._; the Latin works of the false Jabir (or Geber) in i. 336 _ff._
[28] Ib., i. 199, recipe 60.
[29] Ib., i. 308.
[30] Owing to the great number of Arabic words borrowed by the Persians
it is extremely difficult to judge from a translation whether a lost
original was Arabic or Persian, the more so as the Arabs borrowed
largely from the Persian. Far more honour for scientific work has been
paid to the Arabs, far less to the Persians, Syrians, and Hindus, than
was their proper due. Renan says that Al-Kindi was the only Moslem
philosopher of pure Arab blood.—_Discours et Conférences_, p. 391.
[31] Udoy Chand Dutt, “Materia Medica of the Hindus,” pp. 89-90. I
presume that _sora_ (being of foreign origin) was a corruption of the
Persian شوره (_shora_) = saltpetre.
[32] “Hindu Chemistry,” by Praphulla Chandra Rāy, Professor of
Chemistry, Presidency College, Calcutta, 1902, pp. 99-100.
[33] Yavakshara was apparently the “barley” used in a saltpetre mixture
of the Arabic treatise (in Syriac characters) given by Berthelot, ii.
198.
[34] Romocki, i. 51.
[35] هو زهر حجر اسيوس ... هو ثلج الصين عند القدماء من اطباء مصر
ويعرفونه عامة المغرب والطباوها بالبارود Reinaud and Favé, p. 14. The
phrase, “flower of the stone of Assos,” was a thousand years old when
Abd Allah used it, for we find it in Lucian’s _Tragodopodagra_ (ἄνθος
Ἀσίου λίθου, l. 162), a work written A.D. 180-200. But, like so many
other words, it completely changed its meaning in the lapse of years.
Abd Allah used it to designate saltpetre: Pliny the elder (“Nat.
Hist.,” xxxvi. 17) tells us it had the property of utterly consuming
dead bodies, except the teeth, in forty days—a property saltpetre does
not possess.
[36] _Majus Opus_, London, 1733, p. 474.
[37] See chapter iv.
[38] This process was carried out in the East, or wherever the natural
saltpetre was collected; not at Waltham Abbey. The facts are taken from
the “Handbook of the Manufacture of Gunpowder,” by Capt. F. M. Smith,
R.A., London, 1871.
[39] F´, &c., means a repetition of F, &c.
[40] See chapter iv., recipe 14.
[41] Taken from Reinaud and Favé, p. 237.
[42] _i.e._ the lapis assius = saltpetre.
[43] The way in which this process has been obtained will be explained
in chapter viii. The phrases within brackets there are simply written
consecutively here, word for word, except a few conjunctions rendered
unnecessary by the punctuation.
[44] Thucydides, vii. 43.
[45] Diodorus Siculus, xx. 88.
[46] Vergil, _Æn._, ix. 705; Lucan, _Phars._, vi. 199.
[47] Tacitus, _Hist._, iv. 23.
[48] _De Re Militari_, chap. viii. See Table II.
[49] xxiii. 4.
[50] Thucydides, ii. 77.
“E lor porge di zolfo e di bitumi Due palle, e’n cavo rame ascosi lumi.”
—TASSO, _Ger. Lib._, xii. 42.
[51] Ib., iv. 100.
[52] Ib., vii. 53.
[53] In _Bibliotheca Script. Græc. et Rom. Teubneriana_. Leipsig, 1874.
Chap. xxxv. p. 79. See Table II.
[54] _Poliorketikon_, xxxv. 79.
[55] _De Re Militari_, iv. 8.
[56] Recipe 26 (see Chap. iv.).
[57] “Bellifortis,” in Romocki, i. 154.
[58] Whitehorne, Chap. xxix. fol. 40.
[59] Official “Treatise on Ammunition.”
[60] _i.e._ Pine-wood charcoal.
[61] A gum.
[62] Salt recovered from salt-water by natural or artificial heat.
[63] Cream of tartar = bitartrate of potash.
[64] Kallinikos was probably a Syrian-Greek; Hertzberg, _Gesch. der
Byzantiner_, &c., p. 58.
[65] Τότε Καλλίνικος ἀρχιτέκτων ἀπὸ Ἡλιουπόλεως Συρίας, προσφυγὼν τοῖς
Ῥωμαίοις, πῦρ θαλάσσιον κατασκευάσας, τὰ τῶν Ἀράβων σκάφη ἐνέπρησεν
καὶ σύμψυχα κατέκαυσεν. Καὶ οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι μετὰ νίκης ὑπέστρεψαν καὶ τὸ
θαλάσσιον πῦρ εὗρον. _Corp. Script. Hist. Byzant._, ed. Niebuhr:
“Theophanes,” A.M. 6165, A.C. 665; i. 542.
[66] Ἰστέον ὅτι ἐπὶ Κωνσταντίνου Πωγωνάτου ... Καλλίνικός τις ἀπὸ
Ἡλιουπόλεως, Ῥωμαίοις προσφυγὼν, τὸ διὰ τῶν σιφώνων ἐκφερόμενον πῦρ
ὑγρὸν κατεσκεύασε, δι’ οὗ καὶ τὸν τῶν Σαρακηνῶν στόλον ἐν Κυζίκῳ
Ῥωμαῖοι καταφλέξαντες τὴν νίκην ἤραντο.
[67] K. K. Müller, in his _Eine griechische Schrift über Seekrieg_,
1882, p. 44, pertinently remarks that Jähns, who accepts this early
date, can give no example of the use of sea-fire before the seventh
century.
[68] “Traitors are often to be suspected even about your person”
(ὑποπτεύονταί τινες προδόται καὶ παρά σοι πολλάκις ὄντες). Leo’s
“Tactics,” xxi. 35.
[69] _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 15th Aug. 1891, p. 805.
[70] Μετὰ βροντῆς καὶ καπνοῦ “Tactics,” xix. 51.
[71] By Friar Bacon. See Chapter viii.
[72]
“... nec fulmine tanti Dissultant crepitus ...”—_Æn._, xii. 922.
[73] Siphons, of whatever kind, were known before sea-fire. On hearing
of the Moslem preparations to attack him in 671, Constantine Pogonatus
ordered the siphon-bearing warships (δρόμωνας σιφωνοφόρους) to be put
in commission.—Theophanes’ “Chronography,” i. 542.
[74] “Alexander,” _c._ 35; tr. by Stewart and Long.
[75] “Natural History,” xxxvi. 53.