1830.] The Greek Fire. 155 



knowledge might still add, in a most important degree, to our command 

 over nature. 



But, for the present, we shall content ourselves with an effort to 

 ascertain the remaining knowledge of one of the most formidable, yet 

 least known instruments of ancient warfare, the famous Greek Fire. 



The powers of this fire have been celebrated in an extraordinary degree 

 by the historians of the empire. According to them, it was utterly 

 irresistible; flung on a ship, the vessel was inevitably consumed, and 

 only ashes indicated the spot where the proud galley and its proud war- 

 riors had the moment before dashed away like the chariot of Neptune 

 himself, through the roaring waves. Flung on a fortress, a sudden 

 blaze rolled up, a scorching heat melted, or turned the stones into lime, 

 and a cloud of dust that hovered above the fated spot, bore up, as it 

 were, the soul of the expiring city into the elements. Exaggerations of 

 this kind are the native results of great terror and great surprise, acting 

 upon the vividness of the Eastern imagination ; yet even the sober Euro- 

 pean could see in its effects something more resembling the influence of 

 a demon than of human ingenuity. The rockets, or cases, containing 

 the Greek fire, are compared by De Joinville, to " fiery dragons rushing 

 through the air ;" and the terror in the French camp at Acre was so much 

 allied to superstition, that on the appearance of one of those tremen- 

 dous ministers of evil on the wing, St. Louis was accustomed to throw 

 himself on his knees, and tell his rosary to a long roll of his favourite 

 saints, to avert misfortune from his cavaliers. The flight of those 

 carcases was rare, from the awkwardness of the whole machinery of war 

 in those days ; so that St. Louis was not forced to the duty of saying his 

 protecting prayers too frequently for royal leisure. But we may be 

 assured, that the phenomenon which could thus mystify a bold and con- 

 fident monarch, had no want of wonderers and alarmists in the " general 

 camp, pioneers, and all." 



The Greek fire is usually conceived to have been one distinct and spe- 

 cific composition. This is an error. There appear to have been various 

 kinds of it, used in different forms, and of a very various compound. In 

 the attack of a fleet, it was shot from the ship's sides through long tubes, 

 from which it was propelled by some contrivance that has escaped 

 history. It was also flung on board the enemy in large balls of iron. 

 Those contrivances almost suggest the idea of the modern cannon and 

 shell. The usual mode, in defending a fortress, was to arm the walls 

 with it in large flaming reservoirs, with a fire underneath. The material 

 was thus ready to be poured down on the head of the assailants. It was 

 sometimes fixed on the points of arrows, and shot off against towers and 

 battering machines. 



The chief use of the Greek fire was against ships ; its chief adoption 

 having probably been in the various attacks on Constantinople, which 

 was at that period most accessible by sea, and most in alarm at the fleets 

 of the Mediterranean States. Its common designation was the Maritime 

 Fire ; and from its liquid state, Dr. Maculloch, who is equally entitled to 

 be listened to as a chemist and an antiquarian, conceives it to have been 

 in general a resinous compound, sometimes with naptha and nitre, and 

 sometimes without either, according to occasion. 



" Procopius, the most intelligent of the Greek chroniclers, or Byzan- 

 tine historians, describes a composition of this kind as in an oily state, 

 which in conformity to the habits of his time, connecting its powers with 



X 2 



