214 



ON HI K WEAPONS USED 



bustible into Western warfare, and that it was before his time 

 employed in the East. At all events it was a most powerful 

 preparation for the destruction of the enemy, and the terror 

 it spread among the troops of Louis IX before Damietta is 

 graphically described by contemporaries. It seems to have 

 even been used in European wars, for, according to Pere 

 Daniel, the king Philip Augustus of France had brought 

 home some of it from Acre, and used it at the siege of 

 Dieppe against the English ships there at anchor. 85 It is said 

 that Napoleon the Great became acquainted with the real 

 composition of the Greek fire, but that he pronounced it 

 inapplicable ; one of the chief reasons for his decision being 

 probably the fluid state of the combustible. 



There exists an old tradition, according to which the Arabs 

 possessed at an early date a knowledge of the manufacture of 

 gunpowder, and that they obtained it originally from India, 

 with which country they had an active commercial inter- 

 course. They are even said to have improved on the original 

 manufacture. That the Arabs received their earliest gun- 

 powder supplies from India, and that this country was the 

 original seat of its invention was very strongly urged so 

 early as the end of the last century by M. Langles in a 

 paper read in the French Institute in 1798. This opinion 

 is also upheld by Johann Beckmann (1739-1811), whose 

 well known " History of Inventions and Discoveries " 

 (Beitrage zur Geschichte der Erfitidungen) has passed through 

 many English editions. He says there : " In a word, I 

 am more than ever inclined to accede to the opinion of those 

 who believe that gunpowder was invented in India, and 

 brought by the Saracens from Africa to the Europeans ; 

 who, however, improved the preparation of it, and found out 

 different ways of employing it in war, as well as small arms 

 and cannons." 



95 See Projectile Weapons of War and Explosive Compounds, by J. 

 Scoffern. m third edition, London, 1858, pp. 50-60, 



