C 168 ] 

 CHAP. XIII. 



GUNPOWDER. 



SECTION I. 

 Of the time when gunpowder waijftrst discovered. 



A HE history of the discovery of gunpowder is involved in much 

 obscurity ; the most ancient authors differing from each other in 

 their accounts of this matter, and many of them confounding two 

 distinct inquiries ; the discovery of the composition of gunpowder; 

 and the discovery of the means of applying it to the purposes of 

 war. 



Father Kircher* affirms, that without controversy we ought to 

 attribute the invention of gunpowder to Barthold Schwartz, or 

 Barthold the black, a monk of Goslar in Germany, and a profound 

 alchemist. This man having mixed together, with a medical view, 

 nitre, sulphur, and charcoal, a spark accidentally fell upon the 

 mixture, blew up the pot in which it was contained, and caused a 

 dreadful explosion. The monk, astonished at the event, made se. 

 veral repetitions of his experiment, and thereby fully discovered 

 the n^"re of cunpowder, in the year 1354- Kircher gives us also, 

 out ( : i very old German book which he professes to have read, a 

 monkish account of the first use which Schwartz maue of his gun- 

 powder ; he employed it to frighten some robbers from their haunts 

 in the woods. 



Sebastian Munster says, that he was well informed by a very 

 eminent physician, that the Danes used guns in naval engagements 

 in the year 1354, and that a chemist, called Schwartz, was the 

 first inventor of them +. Pontanus, the Danish historian, accedes 

 to this opinion. 



Polydore Virgil, who died in the year 1555, attributes the dis- 



Kirch. Mun. Sub. p. 487. 



f Achilles Gassaruf, medicinae doctor, ft histori?raphus, diligcntissirae 

 <- rip-it inihi, Bom hard as 311110 Christ! 1354, in usu apud mare Danicum fuisse, 

 priinumque invpntorctn ct autorem cxtitisse chymistam quondam nomine Bar- 

 t 'loldum Schwartzum monacbum. Munster. Coranogr. Univ. Lib. 3. C. 174, 



