82 



R. Maclagan — On ~Early Asiatic Fire Weapons. 



[No. 1, 

 This 



feeding the fire in the projectile, but as the agent for discharging it. 

 last is the great step from medieval to modern artillery. 



The advance from one kind of fire-missile and fire material to others 

 more effective has not, there is reason to believe, been made by immediate 

 Invention or discovery. Local conditions have originated, and practical 

 experience has extended and modified, the use of various preparations 

 and contrivances for this purpose. M. Remand, in the work* issued 

 jointly by him and Colonel Fave in 1845, has brought together a 

 number of extracts from Arabic works giving receipts for the prepar- 

 ation of war-fire of sorts, showing that the compositions which it has been 

 the custom to call Greek Fire were various, and that many of them con- 

 tained one or two or all of the ingredients of gunpowder, before the times 

 to which the invention of gunpowder is ordinarily ascribed. From these 

 early receipts for fire-works and fire-missiles, and from the various accounts 

 of Greek Fire and its effects, it would appear that modifications of these 

 compositions, introduced from time to time, led up to the preparation of 

 gunpowder ; which yet was not what we understand by gun-powder till it 

 came to be prepared in a form adapting it for use as the propelling agent 

 in guns, and to be so used. 



From very simple and rude arrangements for using the aid of fire in 

 fighting, gradual progress in various ways had been generally made before 

 gunpowder times ; yet simple and rude arrangements continued fco be used, 

 even after better devices were known, when these were not available, or 

 when the others were sufficient and suitable for the occasion. Sufficiently 

 primitive was the method adopted by Timur, of carrying fire into the ranks 

 of an enemy, when, in his battle before Dihli in A. D. 1399, he caused a 

 number of camels to be laden with dry grass and driven towards the oppos- 

 ing force with the grass set on fire, on sight of which the enemy's elephants 

 fled.f This was a resort to a very rude contrivance at a time when modes 

 of projecting fire to a distance were well known, and when fire was employed 



* Historie de l'Artillerie, Ire partie. Du Feu Gregeois, &c, pp. 25 et seq. 

 Some notices of the early use, among the Arabs, of the ingredients of gunpowder, are 

 given in a " History of the Art of War and Organisation of Armies in Europe" by Dr. 

 Hermann Meynert ; a book I have not seen and only know of from a newspaper 

 notice. 



f This is one of the incidents of the Indian expedition related to Clavijo when he 

 was residing at the court of Timur at Samarqand. {Embassy of Buy Gonzalez de Clavijo 

 to the Court of Timour, A. D. 1403-6, p. 153.y/ According to other accounts, they were 

 buffaloes that he used, tied together in pairs with burning bushes between them (Mau- 

 rice's Modern History of Hindostan, II 9 20J. Somewhat similar, but with a different 

 purpose, was Hannibal's device when in camp before Q. Fabius Maximus, B. 0. 200. 

 Obducta nocte, sarmenta in cornibus juvencorum deligata incendit, ejusque generis mul- 

 titudinem magnam dispalatam immisit. (Corn. Nep. } Hann. V.J 



