1876.] E. Maclagan— On Early Asiatic Fire Weapons. 55 



reason of their aims and requirements, have been more receptive than others 

 of such improvements in military matters. And some, pursuing careers of 

 conquest or of enterprise, have been the chief means of communicating the 

 knowledge of these improvements and inventions, which they themselves 

 had acquired and brought into use. The Arabs early used the resources of 

 the countries in their possession for the preparation of fire compositions for 

 use m war, and, among others, (as we have seen) of gunpowder applied to 

 fireworks ; but their knowledge of the application of gunpowder to artillery 

 there is every reason to believe was derived from Europe. Their active and 

 extensive inroads into other countries, East and West, were long anterior to 

 the days of gunpowder artillery.* The Spaniards, Prescott says, deriving 

 the knowledge of artillery from the Arabs, had become familiar with it be- 

 fore the other nations of Christendom.f This is perhaps not well establish- 

 ed. But the Spaniards and Portuguese, whether or not the knowledge was 

 thus received and thus familiar, were the means of conveying it to eastern 

 and other countries with which they traded and fought, or in which they 

 settled ; and sometimes they found themselves forestalled. If some people 

 were specially apt in adopting the new weapon, in other countries there 

 were hindrances of different kinds in the way of its introduction or general 

 use. Sometimes of course the reason for artillery not being used was that 

 it was not wanted. Then the cannon in early days were very cumbrous and 

 very troublesome. The first field-pieces were so clumsy and so difficult to 

 manage, that (as Prescott mentions) Machiavelli, in his Arte delta Guerra, 

 recommends dispensing with artillery. f Hume believes the French had 

 cannon at the time Creci was fought, but left them behind as an encum- 

 brance. It is not surprising, then, that some Asiatic nations, and others, 

 were slow, as we find, in bringing gunpowder artillery into use. Few of 

 those who had the means, failed, it may well be believed, to adopt this new 

 instrument of war from under-rating its power and importance.^ 



* " What an exalted idea must we not form of the energy and rapidity of such 

 conquests when we find the arms of Islam at once on the Granges and the Ebro, and two 

 regal dynasties simultaneously cut off, that of Boderic, the last of the Goths, of Anda- 

 loos, and Dahir Despati in the valley of the Indus." (A.H. 99., A.D. 718). Tod's An- 

 nals of Rajasthan, I, 243. 



f Ferdinand and Isabella, I, 277. 



X And more probably from the feeling that they were happier days when it was 

 not known : as good George Herbert sings, — 



Deerat adhuc vitiis nostris dignissima mundo 

 Machina, quam nullum satis execrabitur sevum. 

 * * * * 



Exoritur tubus, atque instar Cyclopis Homeri 

 Luscum prodigium, medioque foramine gaudens ! 



