Such being the case, it is not a little remarkable that the discovery of gunpowder should be veiled in uncertainty, although this very obscurity seems proof of its great antiquity. It is, however, certain that it was not invented, as has been often stated, by the German monk Bertholdus Schwartz, about 1320, although Wilkinson, in his Engines of JΓar, considers Schwartz may have suggested the use of a mortar, since the form as also the name of this piece of ordnance may well have been due to some accident in the laboratory. Roger Bacon, who was born in 1214, refers, circa 1267, to an explosive mixture of the nature of gunpowder as known before his time, as being employed for purposes of diversion, and as producing a noise like thunder, and flashes like lightning; he even suggests its application to military purposes, and indulges in the supposition that some such composition might have been employed by Gideon to destroy the Midianites (Judges vii.). He elsewhere writes —“Ex hoc ludicro puerili quod fit in multis mundi partibus, scilicet,ut instrumento facto ad quantitatem pollicis humani, ex hoc violentia salis, qui salpetrae vocatur, tam horribilis sonus nascitur in ruptura tam modicae pergamenae, quod fortis tonitru rugitum et coruscationem maximam sui luminis jubar excedit” (see preface to Jebb’s edition of Bacon’s Opus Magus'). In the above passage saltpetre is alone referred to as the violently explosive substance, but Bacon was well aware of the fact that saltpetre of itself will not explode, for in his previously written treatise, De Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae et de Nullitate Magioe, he says “that from saltpetre and other ingredients we are able to make a fire that shall burn at any distance we please.” In chap. xi. of the same work these other ingredients are veiled in the disguise of an anagram: “Sed tamen salis petrae lura nope cum ubre et sulphuris, et sic facies tonitrum et coruscationem, si scias artificium;” the unmeaning words in italics have been translated as carbonum pulvere. Robins, in his work on gunnery (1742), and Dutens (Enquiry into the Origin of Discoveries attributed to the Moderns) suggest that Bacon may have derived his knowledge from the MS. of Marcus Graecus, preserved in the National Library in Paris, entitled “Incipit Liber Ignium a Marco Graeco prescriptus, cujus virtus et efficacia est ad comburendum hostes, tam in mari quam in terra.” Marcus Graecus, who lived about the end of the 8th century, was therefore not ignorant of the military uses to which the composition might be put; among other modes of launching fire upon an enemy he gives one to the following effect :— one pound of live sulphur, two of charcoal of willow, and six of saltpetre, reduced to a fine powder in a marble mortar and mixed together; a certain quantity is to be put into a long, narrow, and well compacted cover, and then discharged into the air. This is evidently the description of a rocket. It has also been suggested that Bacon may have learnt the secret in Spain, in which country he is known to have travelled, and whose Moorish masters were then far in advance of the rest of Europe in science and literature. Albertus Magnus, in his treatise De Mirabilibus Mundi, repeats almost word for word several receipts in the work of Marcus Graecus; also, an epistle by Ferrarius, a Spanish monk, and a contemporary of Bacon, which is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, gives receipts for Greek fire, rockets, and “thunder.” There is a treatise on gunpowder in the library of the Escorial, written about 1250, which appears to describe both rockets and shells; the Arabians are, from this and other authorities, supposed to have enclosed combustible or explosive compositions in hollow globes of iron, which were discharged upon the foe either by hand, like the modern grenade, or from the warlike machines then in use; it has also been stated that towards the close of the 13th century they projected small balls from tubes carried in the hand, or attached to the end of a lance, and only used at close quarters, being in fact hand-guns. Rockets were employed during the reign of the Greek emperor Leo, about 880, and indeed seem to have been known in India from time immemorial, some of them having been made of great size.

The gloom of the dark ages precludes further attempt to trace back the history of gunpowder with any certainty, but Mr Dutens, in the work before quoted, adduces many passages from classical authors in support of his view that a composition of the nature of gunpowder was not unknown to the ancients, as, for example, the story of Salmoneus, king of Elis, who, according to Virgil (Aeneid, vi. 585), for his audacity in attempting to imitate thunder and lightning, was slain by Jupiter; Mr Dutens considers he may have fallen a victim to his own experiments. Eustathius, a commentator on Homer, speaks of him as being so skilled in mechanics that he constructed machines to imitate thunder (Eustathius ad Odyss., λ 234, p. 1682, 1. 1; see also Hyginus, Fαbul., 61, 650; Valerius Flaccus, lib. i. 662). It is also narrated of Caligula by Di·on Cassius (Hist. Eοm., “Caligula,” p. 662) that he had machines which imitated thunder and lightning, and emitted stones. See also Johannes Antiochinus, Chronica apud Peiresciaηa Valesii, Paris, 1604, p. 804.

According to Themistius (0rat., xxvii. p. 337) the Brahmins had similar machines. Philostratus, in his life of Apollonius Tyanaeus (lib. ii. cap. 14), written about 200 A.D., relates of a people of India, dwelling between the Hyphasis and the Ganges, whose country Alexander never entered: “Their cities he could never have taken, though he had led a thousand as brave as Achilles, or three thousand such as Ajax, to the assault; for they come not out to the field to fight those who attack them, but these holy men, beloved by the gods, overthrow their enemies with tempests and thunderbolts shot from their walls.”

From the mention by Vitruvius, and in Plutarch’s life of Marcellus, that one of his machines threw large stones with great noise, it has been thought that Archimedes used some explosive composition in the defence of Syracuse.

The most ancient reference of all is in the Gcntoo code of laws (Halhed’s translation), supposed by some authorities to be coeval with Moses. It runs thus: “The magistrate shall not make war with any deceitful machine, or with poisoned weapons, or with cannon and guns, or any kind of firearms.” The translator remarks that this passage may “serve to renew the suspicion, long since deemed absurd, that Alexander the Great did absolutely meet with some weapons of that kind in India, as a passage from Quintus Curtius seems to ascertain.” The word translated firearms is literally a weapon of fire, and one species of it has been described as a dart or arrow tipped with fire and discharged from a bamboo, so that the reference may not be to any propelling agent, but merely to some combustible or incendiary composition, of the nature of the so-called Greek fire.

It is almost certain that those authors who assert that the Arabians used gunpowder at the siege of Mecca, 690 a.t>,, having derived their knowledge of it from India or China, confound gunpowder with this Greek fire, which seems to have been the generic name given to several different combustible mixtures, although Arabian writers speak of them as Chinese fires. Greek fire was introduced into Constantinople from the East about the year 673; it was discharged upon the enemy by means of various engines of war, or in smaller quantities attached to arrows or darts. The Saracens used it against the Crusaders. Maimbourg, in his History of the Crusades, describes its effects; and Joinville, who was an eye-witness, says “it was thrown from a petrary, and came forward as large as a barrel of verjuice, with a tail of fire as big as a great sword, making a noise like thunder, and seeming like a dragon flying in the air; the light it gave out from the great quantity of fire rendered the camp as bright as day, and such was the terror it occasioned among the commanders in the army of St Louis that Gautier de Cariel, an experienced and valiant knight, advised that, as often as it was thrown, they should prostrate themselves upon their elbows and knees, and beseech the Lord to deliver them from that danger against which he alone could protect them.” However, its actual destructive effect seems to have been very inadequate to the terror it occasioned. From the account of Geoffrey de Vinesauf, sand and earth, but especially vinegar, appear to have been considered the best extinguishers; water would not put it out. One description of this wildfire was composed of resin, sulphur, naphtha, and probably saltpetre. Bacon states that religious scruples hindered European nations from adopting Greek fire; but if so, they seem to have been gradually overcome, for its use is mentioned by various writers, Anna Comnena, Père Daniel, and Froissart among them. Similar scruples no doubt considerably retarded the introduction of gunpowder; and the fear that its adoption would prove fatal to all knightly gallantry also caused it to be regarded with aversion. Firdousi, the famous Persian poet, describes in his writings what were doubtless the effects of rockets and wildfire discharged upon the enemy, but he ascribes the whole to magic.

The researches of all authorities seem to point to the Far East as the birthplace of an explosive mixture of the nature of gunpowder; it was used there from time immemorial, although doubtless its application as a propelling agent is of far later date. In all probability, the germ of the science of explosives lay in the accidental discovery of the peculiar properties of the nitre so plentifully found mixed with the soil upon the vast plains of India and China. By means of the charred embers of wood-fires, used for cooking, the two most active ingredients of gunpowder might easily be brought into contact, and, under the action of heat, more or less deflagration would ensue; in fact, the accidental dropping of some of the crude saltpetre into the coals would show its remarkable power of supporting and accelerating combustion. The combination of saltpetre and charcoal in a more or less powerful mixture can therefore be easily conceived, the sulphur being an after addition, and not necessary to cause explosion. Our present gunpowder is only the improvement and perfection of such a mixture. Saltpetre was early known as “Chinese snow,” and some have supposed the use of gunpowder in cannon to have been known in China very soon after, if not before, the Christian era. But this seems to be an error, for Colonel Anderson, C.B., in his book on gunpowder (London, 1862), quotes a conversation held by John Bell of Antermony, who visited Peking in 1721, with the emperor’s general of artillery, to the effect that from their records it had been used in fireworks, die., for about 2000 years, but that its application to the propulsion of shot was a late introduction. Some of their compositions had such names as “devouring fire,” “earth thunder,” Ac. The Institutes of Timur, written about the middle of the 14 th century, contain no mention of cannon or gunpowder, although full particulars are given of the equipment of his troops; it is, however, related that when Timur engaged the army of Mahmud under the walls of Delhi, men scattered wildfire and flung rockets in every direction. In this connexion it may be noted that, while the use of rockets was of very old date in India, the names given to pieces of artillery under the rule of Baber and the Mogul conquerors of Hindustan almost invariably point to a European, or at least to a Turkish origin. It is also well authenticated that Akbar and Aurungzebe had Englishmen and other Europeans in their service to teach the art of gunnery. The analysis of the gunpowder made by the Chinese in the present day shows a composition almost identical with that employed in Europe, which has only been arrived at after centuries of experience, so that, in all probability, they have corrected their earlier formula from Western sources.

Whatever obscurity may hang over the early history of gunpowder, it seems most probable that its employment as a propelling agent originated among the Moors or Saracens,—whose civilization for several centuries contrasted forcibly with the intellectual darkness of Christendom,—and from them spread eastward, as well as northward into Europe. Condé (Hist. Dom. Arabs in Spain') states that Ismail Ben Feraz, king of Grenada, who in 1325 besieged Baza, had among his machines “some that cast globes of fire with resounding thunders and lightnings resembling those of the resistless tempest; all these missiles caused fearful injuries to the walls and towers of the city.” The first reliable contemporary document relative to the use of gunpowder in Europe, a document still in existence, bears date 11th February 1326; it gives authority to the priors, the gonfalonier, and council of twelve of Florence to appoint persons to superintend the manufacture of cannons of brass, and iron balls, for the defence of the commune, camps, and territory of the republic.

If the testimony of John Barbour, archdeacon of Aberdeen, who wrote in 1375, is to be believed, cannon, which he calls “crakys of war,” were employed during the invasion of Scotland by Edward III. in 1327; but they are not mentioned in the accounts of the expenses of this war preserved in the record office. An indenture, first published by Sir N. H. Nicolas in his Hist. Royal Navy (London, 1847), and since by Lieut.-Colonel H. Brackenbury (Proceedings R. A. Destitution, 1865), stated to be of 12 Edward III., 1338, contains several references to small cannon as among the stores of the tower, aud also mentions “un petit barrell de gonpouder le quart’plein.” If authentic, this is certainly the first distinct mention of gunpowder in Great Britain we now possess, but doubts have since been thrown upon the date of this MS. It, however, seems certain, from a contemporary document in the National Library in Paris, that, in this same year 1338, there existed in the marine arsenal at Rouen, an iron weapon, called “pot de fer,” for propelling bolts, together with some saltpetre and sulphur to make powder for the same; at this period the ingredients were usually kept separate, and mixed when required. From the year 1345, 19 Edward III., we have, preserved in the Record Office, reliable accounts of the purchase of ingredients needed for the fabrication of gunpowder, and of the shipping of cannon for France. In 1346 Edward III. ordered all the saltpetre and sulphur that could be found to be bought up for him, but the quantities obtained were very small. Whether it be true or not that cannon were used by the English at Crécy in that year belongs rather to the question of the employment of artillery in the field; it has been maintained that such was the case by Napoleon III. (Études sur le passé et l ’ avenir de l' Artillerie). It may be noted that Petrarch, about the year 1344, in his dialogues De remediis utriιιsque fortunae, speaks of “brazen globes cast forth by the force of flame with a horrible sound of thunder” as having become as common as any other kind of weapon.

In the year 1377, being the first of Richard II., Thomas Norbury was ordered to buy, amongst other munitions, sulphur, saltpetre, and charcoal to be sent to the castle of Brest. In 1414 Henry V. ordered that no gunpowder should be taken out of the kingdom without special licence; in the same year this monarch also ordered twenty pipes of powder made of willow charcoal, and various other articles for the use of the guns.

It was not, however, until the reign of Elizabeth that the manufacture of gunpowder can be said to have been established in England. The greater portion required had been previously imported from abroad, and the trade had been an open one; but the threatening attitude of Spain compelled the Government to provide more efficient means of defence, and patents were issued by the crown for the manufacture of gunpowder, constituting it a monopoly. Early in this reign also, saltpetre began to be artificially produced in England, but the quantity so obtained formed a very small proportion of the supply needed, the remainder being brought from various parts of the Continent, and from Barbary. Again, in 1623, nominally in order to prevent the sale of weak or defective powder, a proclamation was issued by James I., prohibiting its manufacture, as well as that of saltpetre, except under the king’s commission, and directing that all gunpowder should be proved and marked by the sworn proof-master. A little later, in 1626, the East India Company had commenced the importation of saltpetre, and had also erected powder works in Surrey. Their renewed charter in 1693 contained a clause providing that 500 tons of saltpetre were to be furnished to the ordnance annually, and from this time forward we hear of no difficulty, at least in England, of obtaining the chief ingredient of gunpowder, although on the Continent great attention has been paid to its artificial production; this was especially the case in France during the reign of Napoleon I., when the supremacy of Great Britain at sea for many years prevented the importation of saltpetre by her enemies.

About the year 1590, George Evelyn, grandfather of the celebrated John Evelyn of Wooton, received the royal licence to set up powder mills at Long Ditton and Godstone; the Evelyns are said to have brought the art from Holland. The works at Faversham, afterwards for so many years the Government gunpowder factory, date from Elizabeth’s reign, but were then of secondary importance to those at Godstone. There seems reason, however, to suppose that powder mills existed at Waltham Abbey so far back as 1561, for in that year we find John Thomworth of Waltham in treaty, on behalf of Queen Elizabeth, for the purchase of saltpetre, sulphur, and staves for barrels. Fuller also refers (English Worthies, i. 338) to the powder mills at Waltham Abbey, of which place lie was appointed vicar in 1641. In 1787 they were sold to the crown by John Walton, and reorganized under the superintendence of the famous Sir William Congreve. The old royal factory at Faversham was given up after the peace of 1815, being first let and afterwards sold to the well-known firm of Messrs John Hall & Son; a third Government factory at Ballincollig was disposed of a few years later. The Waltham Abbey works have been greatly enlarged of recent years, and no expense has been spared to render them, by the introduction of new and improved machinery, the most complete as well as the safest in the world. It is impossible to describe in detail the various improvements which have been made in the manu facture of gunpowder, but the most important will be briefly stated when describing the successive processes to which the ingredients are subjected.

The Ingredients and their Action.

The objects to be attained in the production of an explosive agent for artillery and small arms are— (a) the maximum of propelling force; (δ) the minimum of initial pressure in the bore of gun; (c) uniformity of action; (d) freedom from fouling, especially in small-arm powders; (e) durability, i.e., power to bear transport and keep well in store. Of all explosive substances at present known, gunpowder alone can be said to fulfil the first three conditions. Its advantages may be summed up as follows :—(a) the rate of combustion of gunpowder is gradual compared with that of most other explosives; and, both by adjusting the proportions of the ingredients and varying the mechanical processes of manufacture, its explosiveness can be modified so as to suit every description of weapon; (δ) the ingredients are easily procured, and are comparatively cheap; (c) with proper precautions, it is comparatively safe in manufacture, in store, and in transport; it also keeps well in...