1434 (25 page)
Authors: Gavin Menzies
Rockets and gunpowder missiles had been known since 1264. In his thirteenth-century book
Customs and Institutions of the Old Capital,
Chou describes gunpowder weapons. “Some of these were like wheels and revolving things, others like comets and others again shooting along the surface of the water.”
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Gunpowder was used in celebrations, as well, though not always with the intended results. Here is Robert Temple's account of the empress's retirement party at the Imperial Palace in 1264. “A display of fireworks was given in the courtyard. One of these, of the âground rat'
type went straight to the steps of the throne of the Emperor's Mother, and gave her quite a fright. She stood up in anger, gathered her skirts around her, and stopped the feast.”
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By Zheng He's era, China had acquired centuries of experience in producing all manner of gunpowder weapons. Zheng He's fleets were armed with rockets that sent sprays of burning paper and gunpowder to set fire to the enemies' sails; grenades soaked in poison; mortars packed with chemicals and human excrement; shells filled with iron bolts to scythe men to pieces; archers with flaming arrows; sea mines to protect his ships; flamethrowers to incinerate the opposition; and rocket batteries to terrify them. Heaven help their enemies!
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Europeans could hardly have failed to notice this terrifying armory when they met Zheng He's fleets, whether in Calicut, Cairo, Alexandria, Venice, or The Hague.
The first European books on gunpowder weapons were published in about 1440, one by an anonymous Hussite engineer, the second by the Venetian Giovanni Fontana, and the third by our old friend Mariano di Jacopo ditto Taccola.
Fontana described and illustrated many machines, which he called “innovations of impiety no less than genius.” He marveled that so much explosive force could be generated by such a weak powder.
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Ex quibus est orrida machina quam bombardam appellamus ad dirvendam omnem fortem dvrittiem etiam marmoream turrem non minus impietatis quam ingenii fuisse existimo qui primo adinvenerit tantam vim habeat a pusillo pulvere.”
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By the time Fontana's book was published, some gunpowder weapons had already been used in Italy, including rockets at the battle of Chioggia in 1380. It could have been mere coincidence that his book appeared shortly after Zheng He's visit to Venice. However, Fontana's
Liber de omnibus rebus naturalibus
throws out a number of other clues.
First, he exhibited knowledge of America forty years before Columbus “discovered” it. Describing the Atlantic, he wrote,
“Et ab eius occasu finitur pro parte etiam terra incognita”
(In the west the Atlantic is bordered by an unknown land).
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Second, he knew of Australia two centuries before Tasman.
Fontana wrote that “recent cosmographs and especially those who owe their information to true experience and distant travel and diligent navigation have found beyond the equinoctial circle to the south (south of 23
o
20' S) a notable habitable region not covered by water and many famous islands.”
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Third, he exhibited a solid knowledge of the Indian Ocean forty years before Vasco da Gama's exploration of the area. Taking the evidence as a wholeâthat Zheng He's gunners would have used all the machines described in Fontana's book and would have carried many of them aboard, that Fontana's book was published in Venice shortly after Zheng He's squadron reached Venice, and that Fontana knew of America, the Indian Ocean, and Australia, all at that time unknown to Europeans, it seems to me reasonable to assume that Fontana gained his knowledge of many gunpowder weapons from Zheng He's gunners.
Taccola provides corroborative evidence. He introduced Europe to a Chinese innovation from the early 1400sâa derivation of arsenic to improve the power of gunpowder. As Needham writes:
München Codex 197
is a composite work, the notebook of a military engineer writing in German, the Anonymous Hussite, and that of an Italian, probably Marianus Jacobus Taccola, writing in Latin; it contains dates such as + 1427, + 1438 and + 1441. It gives gunpowder formulae and describes guns with accompanying illustrations. A curious feature, very Chinese (cf. pp. 114, 361), is the addition of arsenic sulphides to the powder; this dates from fire-lance days but probably had the effect of making it more brisant, hence it could have been useful in bombs and grenades. The + 15th century Paris MS, supposedly before + 1453,
De Re Militari,
perhaps by Paolo Santini, shows a gun on a carriage with a shield at the front, mortars shooting incendiary “bombs” almost vertically to nearby targets, a bombard with a tail (cebotane or tiller), and with a mounted man holding a small gun with a burning match.
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Florentines now had steel and gunpowder to enable them to make bombards and cannons, which Francesco di Giorgio quickly put to good use.
Francesco di Giorgio
In the 1430s and 1440s, the gunpowder weapons drawn by Fontana and Taccola had not yet been “invented.” However, that changed over the next forty years, as we know from the records of Francesco di Giorgio regarding the siege of Castellina in August 1478. The Pazzis, backed by Pope Sixtus V, had initiated an armed uprising against the Medicis in Florence. The north of Italy was soon ablaze. Southerners seized their chance and marched on Tuscany. Francesco was appointed to defend the Tuscan cities.
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Here is Weller's description of the Neapolitan siege of Colle val d'Elsa, a hill town near Florence:
This terrifying prototype “dragon torpedo” would have smashed and sunk enemy boats without mercy.
This European dragon kite does not seem so frightening!
Duke Federigo had with him for siege purposes five bombards with most terrifying names, such as “Cruel,” “Desperate,” “Victory,” “Ruin” and “No nonsense Here” and which, without doubt, were beautifully decorated, as was the fashion with the Italian cannon at this time: they discharged great balls of stone weighing 370â380 pounds, and their own weight was considerable, the tubes, when nine feet long weighed some 14,000 pounds and the tail 11,000, so that it required more than one hundred pairs of buffaloes to drag them into position
The art of casting these early cannons in two portions, the tube and the tail, was pursued in Siena; and though they might not have had much effect on the result of a modern battle, at this time they were a formidable novelty. Francesco di Giorgio in the siege of Castellina (Aug 14â18, 1478) planted a battery of these Sienese and Papal bombards.
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The Chinese may not have invented trebuchets, but they were certainly in widespread use by the fourteenth century.
Di Giorgio's detailed treatise on machines of war included many trebuchets.
Francesco's cannons are illustrated in the Institute and Museum of the History of Science, Florence.
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Below them is a print of the “thousand
ball thunder cannon,” 1300â1350.
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Taccola's and di Giorgio's drawings are accompanied by the weapons that were firedâexploding missiles and powder kegs.
The Chinese had dozens of illustrations of exploding missiles and powder kegs in the
Huo Lung Chung
published circa 1421; and in the
Wu Ching Tsung Yao
, a Sung dynasty manual originally of 1044 updated in 1412. The “bamboo fire kite” and “iron beaked firebird,” incendiary projectors and “thunderclap bomb” from the
Wu Ching Tsung Yao
, and the bone-burning and bruising fire-oil magic bomb from the
Huo Lung Chung
are shown beside di Giorgio's projectiles.
Chinese mastery of gunpowder led to the development of many effective and deadly weapons.
Taccola's fire lances do not seem so fierce!
Another interesting similarity between di Giorgio's designs and the Chinese gunpowder cannon may be seen in the curious bulbous shapes of both. Di Giorgio illustrated five different types of bombard in MS Palatino 767 (BNCF). This curious vase shape is shown in the
Huo Lung Chung
.
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At that stage, the Chinese had not yet mastered making steel strong enough to cope with the expansion of gas in the explosion chamber once the gunpowder was ignited. The bulbous shape allowed for thicker metal than in the barrel.