68 E. Maclagan— On Marly Asiatic Mre Weapons. r$ \ 



nished the means, as well as suggested the idea, of its use for this purpose. 

 With all the resources of modern skill and appliances, Greek Fire was 

 brought into use at the siege of Charleston in 1863, — not without some 

 expressions of public disapproval. * The secret manufacture of Greek Fire 

 in Dublin, for Fenian use, in 1867 received a check by the arrest of the 

 artist. It is not forgotten how burning petroleum was brought into use 

 in a not very edifying manner, by the communists in Paris in 1870 ; and 

 since that time by more than one party in Spain. 



The occasional revivals of disused weapons and practices of war make 

 but little mark on the line of continuous progress in the art of preparing 

 war fire material. It is likely that the advances from one kind of fire wea- 

 pon and fire composition to another have all been gradual, and that to no 

 definite time or single individual can be attributed the invention or dis- 

 covery of either Greek Fire or gunpowder. The usual account of Greek 

 Fire, which implies that it was one distinct and specific composition, is that 

 it was invented by Callinicus, an architect of Heliopolis (Ba'lbek), who 

 deserted from the service of the Caliph to that of the Emperor Consta'ntine 

 Pogoimtus (the bearded) in the latter half of the seventh century, that its 

 composition was a secret, and the art was preserved at Constantinople, that 

 the secret afterwards passed in some way to the Muhammadans, that the 

 use of the Greek, or, as it may now be called, says Gibbon, the Saracen fire 

 was continued to the time of the invention or discovery of gunpowder, and 

 that the secret has since been lost.f Grose adds another supposition, that 

 it was the invention of Arabian chymists, and the researches made since his 

 time show this to be at least equally likely. 



The various preparations for which receipts are given in the Arabic 

 books quoted by MM. Eeinaud and Fave have probably all been recog- 

 nised as forms of the fire compositions which, under whatever name at the 

 time, caused much terror to those against whom they were used, and were after- 

 wards known by the common name of Greek Fire ; though the fire so called 

 which was most alarming and destructive was liquid, that is, apparently, 



^ * A feeling which had been strongly expressed in a less advanced age. MM. 

 Eeinaud and Fave quote from a manuscript treatise on the Art of War by Christian of 

 Pisa, in the reign of Charles VI, of France (beginning of the fifteenth century), " Mais 

 comme telles choses a faire ne enseigner pour les maulx qui s'en pourroient ensuivre 

 soientdeffenduesetexcommeniees, n'est bon d'en mettre en livres ne plus plainement 

 en reciter, pour ce qu'a crestien n'appartient user de telles inhumanites qui meesmement 

 sont contre tout droit de guerre." On which the modern authors observe—" Eemar- 

 quons que l'auteur ne parle pas du feu grec comme d'une chose inconnue, mais oomme 

 d'un moyen de guerre deloyal." Feu Gregeois, p. 220. 

 f Gibbon, A. D. 668—675. 



BeeJcniann's Hist, of Inventions and Discoveries, IV, 84. 

 Grose's Military Antiquities, II, 309. 



