1434 (26 page)
Authors: Gavin Menzies
By 1400, the early Ming era, this problem had been solved, enabling the Chinese to produce “thousand ball thunder cannon,”
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which Francesco copied in his later drawings.
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Francesco's cannons have beautiful embellishments. However, remove the embellishments, and what remains is the shape of Chinese cannons.
Chinese naval technology had been far superior to that of Europe's for centuries.
An armored boat as featured in a military treatise penned in 15th-century Italy.
Gunpowder, steel, cannons, and explosive shells were not the only weapons that Taccola, Francesco, and Fontana copied from the Chinese. Within a generation after the Chinese visit of 1434, Florentines were using a variety of Chinese methods to smelt iron and were using Chinese-designed gunpowder to produce exploding shells from cannons identical in design to their Chinese counterparts.
Chinese mobile siege ladders and offensive weaponry.
Di Giorgio's illustration of mobile siege ladders.
Chinese mobile shields could be effective when both attacking and defending positions.
Di Giorgio's shields were not as visually arresting.
Illustrations of crossbows from the
Nung Shu
.
One of Leonardo's three illustrations of crossbows.
Chinese horses and oxen could become dangerous weapons!
Compare Taccola's drawingsâthey are strikingly similar.
Both the Chinese and the Europeans used fire-bearing animals to devastating effect.
