hat level of irearm technology did not occur in Europe until a century
or two later. Fundamental knowledge of gunpowder and its potential for
use in warfare passed slowly but steadily from China to Europe during
the 1100s and early 1200s. One pathway seems to have been verbal accounts
by merchants and other travelers who periodically made the long
trek over the handful of trade routes linking the two regions. Some evidence
also suggests that a few eastern Europeans witnessed the Mongols,
a tribal people who conquered China, using gunpowder weapons.
Hearing about these devices, European inventors became fascinated
and started to experiment. hey found that the main ingredients of gunpowder
could be combined in numerous proportions, and it took a while
to ind the most efective ones. he famous English scientist Roger Bacon
hit on a moderately useful formula in 1267. It mixed the components in
fractions of about 29 percent sulfur, 41 percent potassium nitrate, and
close to 30 percent charcoal. Bacon found that this combination generated
a lash of light and a loud bang, but its detonation produced almost
no damage.
Only after several more decades did European inventors begin to ind
a handful of gunpowder recipes that produced considerable destructive
force. Some came fairly close to the modern formula. Meanwhile, by
the early 1300s European military engineers had begun to experiment
with delivery systems for the gunpowder explosions—that is, the actual
irearms. he irst examples were not guns but rather grenade-like devices
similar to the Chinese thunderclap bombs, only more destructive.
Some of these weapons were relatively small and hand-held, which
allowed soldiers to throw or catapult them into enemy camps, castles, or
towns. Another version was the irst land mine, a big pot of gunpowder that
was inserted into a sap dug beneath a castle wall during a siege. Its explosion
directly under a wall could help bring that wall down. Conversely, defenders
could use the same device to destroy a sap before it reached a wall.
Still another early bomb was the petard (meaning “little fart” in
French). It was a large metal container of gunpowder that a soldier hung
on the front gate of a castle or fortiied town. After lighting the fuse, he
ran for cover, hoping the bomb would not ignite before it was supposed
to. If it did, and he suf ered injury or death, it was said that he was
“hoisted [lifted into the air] by his own petard.” h at phrase is still used
today to denote a person whose scheme somehow backi res.
World History
