GTOFOWDER. 



TABLE II. For Projections on Ascents and Descents. Fig. 8, 9. 



GUNPOWDER, a composition of nitre, 

 sulphur, and charcoal, mixed together, 

 and usually granulated. This easily takes 

 fire, and when fired it rarifies or expands 

 with great vehemence, by means of its 

 elastic force. It is to this powder that 

 we owe all the effect and action of guns, 

 and ordnance of all sorts, so that fortifica- 

 tion, with the modern military art, &c. in 

 a great measure depends upon it. 



The invention of gunpowder is ascrib- 

 ed by Polydore Virgil to a chemist, who 

 having accidentally put some of his com- 

 position in a mortar, and covered it with a 

 stone, it happened to take fire, and blew 

 up the stone. Thevet says, that the per- 

 son here spoken of was a monk of Fri- 

 bourg, named Constantine Anelzen ; but 

 Belleforet, and other authors, with more 

 probability, hold it to be Bartholdus 

 Schwartz, or the black, who discovered 

 it, as some say, about the year 1320 ; and 

 the first use of it is ascribed to the Vene- 



tians in the year 1380, during the war 

 with the Genoese. But there are earlier 

 accounts of its use, after the accident of 

 Schwartz, as well as before it : for Peter 

 Mexia, in his *' Various Readings," men- 

 tions, that the Moors being besieged, in 

 1343, by Alphonsus the Eleventh, King 

 of Castile, discharged a kind of iron mor- 

 tars upon them, which made a noise like 

 thunder : and this is seconded by what is 

 related by Don Pedro, Bishop of Leon, in 

 his Chronicle of King Alphonsus, who re- 

 duced Toledo, 'viz. that in a sea combat, 

 between the King of Tunis and the Moor- 

 ish King of Seville, about that time, those 

 of Tunis had certain iron tubs or barrels, 

 with which they threw thunderbolts of 

 fire. 



Du Cange adds, that there is mention 

 made of gunpowder in the registers of the 

 chambers of accounts in France, as early 

 as the year 1338. But it appears that 

 Roger Eacon knew of gunpowder near* 



