These Indian philosophers seem, from the writings of Ctesias and .liar, to have also possessed an unquenchable fire similar to that employed later by the Greeks. Pass ing from these very early times, in which there is reason to believe that some sort of great gun was employed, we come to the comparatively recent date, 1200 A.D., when their use is established beyond a doubt, for Chased, the Hindu bard, writes (in stanza 257) that the culivers and cannons made a loud report when they were fired off, and that the noise of the ball was heard at the distance of about ten toss, which is more than three quarters of a mile. In 1258, the vizir of the king of Delhi went forth to meet the ambassador of Hulaku, the grandson of Genghis Khan, with 3,000 carriages of fire-works (in the sense of weapons, probably a sort of rude muskets). In 1368, 300 gun-carriages were captured by Muhammed Shah Bahmiani. The use of cannon had so far advanced in India by 1482, that they were even used for naval purposes; shells having been employed two years earlier by the sovereign of Guzerat. In 1500, the Portuguese had matchlockmen to contend with, as well as heavy ordnance. Piga fetta, in 1511, found the town of Borneo defended by 62 pieces of cannon mounted on the walls. So much for the antiquity and apparently common use of fire-arms in China and India, at times long antecedent to any knowledge of them in Europe, and during the period at which they were scarcely developed in an effectual degree. Most of the pieces discovered in India, and supposed to be of early manufacture, are composed of parallel iron bars welded together, and very often they had a movable breech-piece.
The knowledge of gunpowder and fire-arms may be presumed to have extended in a westerly direction through the Arabs, whom we find using them possibly in 711 A.D., under the name of manjaniks. and certainly very early in the 14th century. The Byzan tine emperor, Leo, introduced "fire-tubes" between 890 and 911, for use in connection with Greek fire; and there can be little doubt that these were a species of cannon, prob ably of small bore. In Spain, both Moors and Christians used artillery as early as the 12th century.
Friar Bacon was conspicuous among his contemporaries for his general learning, and we have no evidence to show whether he discovered the ingredients of gunpowder inde pendently of foreign aid, or whether he derived the knowledge from some ancient MSS.; the latter, however, seems the more likely conclusion, as sir F. Palgrave brought to light in the Bodleian library a letter from a Spanish friar, brother Ferrarius, who was a contemporary of Bacon, in which the materials of Greek fire are detailed, differ ing only in proportions, and in these but slightly, from real gunpowder. That the lat ter was identified of old with Greek fire, is shown by the name " Crake," applied to the first cannon used. This word, which still survives in " cracker," is pointed out by sir F. Palgrave to be nothing more than a Norman corruption of " Grec." Bacon's announcement dates from 1216; but the 'powder of his time, as made in the west, was not readily explosive, since the materials were but roughly cleared of impurities, and then mixed together on a slab, and probably little use could be made of it as a propel lant until the process of granulating had been introduced by Bertholdus Schwartz in 1320. Immediately after this discovery, cannon of small size appeared in the armory of
almost every state, as if their use had been known previously, although no practical effect had been given to the knowledge, on account of the badness of the powder manu factured. These cannon generally consisted of a smaller barrel or chamber to receive the charge, which fitted into a larger one containing the projectile. It may be safely assumed that these weapons, if terrifying from their noise, were tolerably harmless— at least to the enemy—in their practice. In 1326, the Florentine republic ordered the making of iron shot and cannon for the defense of its villages. In 1327, Edward III. used ' crakeys of,vvar"against.the Scotch Lin 1339,,10 cannons were ,employed in the siege of Cambray. By 1346, various improvements had been made; and we find in the same year the consuls of Bruges witnessing experiments by one Peter, a tinman, who had constructed a cannon with a square bore, to throw a cubical shot of about 11 lbs.; his bolt passed both walls of the town, and unfortunately killed a man on the other side. We have the authority of Villani for believing that Edward III. had three can non at Crecy; but -the cannon then made were, from the little knowledge of casting, limited to about the size of modern duck-guns, and, as has been remarked, three very inferior muskets could have had but little to do with putting 50,000 men to flight.
Up to this time European ordnance had been kept back by the rarity and high prices of sulphur, saltpeter, and iron, the last having been so scarce in England, that it was thought necessary to forbid its exportation by a statute of 28 Edw. III. Still, crude as was their form, and small their number, fire-arms had established a firm footing in Christendom; their mission of civilization, and, paradoxical as it may appear, of humanity, had begun. With the first killing discharge, the doom of feudalism had gone forth. Plated armor no longer availed against the weapon of the peasant; and the mailed chivalry, the sinews of previous battles, who had trampled with their iron heels upon popular rights, no longer could carry all before them, but, like other soldiers, were now as loath to be slain by unseen foes as the veriest villein in the host. The people discovered their powers of contending with the noblesse;- by degrees, they rose for liberty, and suppressed the tyrannies of the petty lords who had long held them as mere bondsmen. In war, again, as artillery became more general, so the slaughter of battles diminished, for an army outmaneuvered was an army at the enemy's mercy, and therefore beaten; whereas, previously, in the hand-to-hand fights where victors and vanquished mixed pelll moll in single combat, a victory could only be really won when there were no foes left to slay. A battle as great as that at Crecy might now be gained with a loss to the vanquished of not more than 1000 men, instead of the 30,000 who are said to have fallen victims to the English sword or bow.