Today's rocket projectiles are not exactly new inventions. About the
time of artillery's beginning, the military fireworker came into the
business of providing pyrotechnic engines of war; later, his job
included the spectacular fireworks that were set off in celebration of
victory or peace.
Artillery manuals of very early date include chapters on the
manufacture and use of fireworks. But in making war rockets there was
no marked progress until the late eighteenth century. About 1780, the
British Army in India watched the Orientals use them; and within the
next quarter century William Congreve, who set about the task of
producing a rocket that would carry an incendiary or explosive charge
as far as 2 miles, had achieved such promising results that English
boats fired rocket salvos against Boulogne in 1806, The British Field
Rocket Brigade used rockets effectively at Leipsic in 1812--the first
time they appeared in European land warfare. They were used again 2
years later at Waterloo. The warheads of such rockets were cast iron,
filled with black powder and fitted with percussion fuzes. They were
fired from trough-like launching stands, which were adjustable for
elevation.
Rockets seem to have had a demoralizing effect upon untrained troops,
and perhaps their use by the English against raw American levies at
Bladenburg, in 1814, contributed to the rout of the United States
forces and the capture of Washington. They also helped to inspire
Francis Scott Key. Whether or not he understands the technical
characteristics of the rocket, every schoolboy remembers the "rocket's
red glare" of the National Anthem, wherein Key recorded his eyewitness
account of the bombardment of Fort McHenry. The U. S. Army in Mexico
(1847) included a rocket battery, and, indeed, war rockets were an
important part of artillery resources until the rapid progress of
gunnery in the latter 1800's made them obsolescent.