210 



ON THE WEAPONS T T SED 



tants in the manufacture of better gunpowder or of projectile 

 weapons of superior quality. 



When missiles despatched from projectile weapons by 

 means of gunpowder easily penetrated the knights clad in 

 their strongest suit of armour, while the persons who used 

 those arms were quite beyond the reach of their physically 

 perhaps stronger foes, no wonder that armour was discarded 

 in course of time, and the mediaaval knight, who had hitherto 

 without much difficulty maintained his supremacy single- 

 handed against a multitude, found his former superiority 

 gone, and disappeared gradually from the scene. Fortresses, 

 which, before the invention of gunpowder, had been regarded 

 as impregnable, lost their reputation as safe strongholds, and 

 new schemes and practices had to be devised to obviate the 

 difficulties of the altered situation. 



Slight improvements in the construction or manipulation 

 of firearms produced often most important alterations in 

 the political history of the world. Frederick the Great is 

 said to have owed in his earlier campaigns many of his 

 victories to the quicker mode of loading adopted by the 

 Prussian army ; and it is not so long ago that we ourselves 

 have witnessed a rearrangement of the map of Europe, 

 partly effected by means of superior weapons being used 

 by one nation against another. It is therefore natural that 

 a general interest should be more or less taken in all important 

 advances made in this subject, which, if well studied and 

 applied, provides a nation with the means of ensuring its free- 

 dom, independence, and supremacy, so long as actual strength 

 is regarded as the only recognized claim to independent 

 political existence. 



The invention of gunpowder has been ascribed to different 

 individuals belonging to different countries, and as the 

 question as to its authorship and antiquity is still an open 

 one, we shall discuss this mooted point and shall endeavour 

 to prove that the oldest documents mentioning and describ- 



