The first discovery and use of Huo Yao or gunpowder was an indirect result of the ancient Chinese alchemists’ search for medicinal properties and path to immortality. In the Cantongqi or "The Kinship of the Three" complied in A.D. 142 by Wei Boyang of the Han Dynasty, we have a record of experiments conducted with heat, introduced under three sets of circumstances where in the third set the ingredients were said to "fly and dance" in a violent reaction. We cannot be sure that the ingredients of this third set were those of an early combination of gunpowder but up until more recent centuries, no other combination of natural or easily obtained materials had produced reactions of such a violent nature.

By ca. A.D. 300, Ge Hong an alchemist of the Jin dynasty conclusively recorded the chemical reactions caused when saltpetre, pine resin and certain carbonaceous materials were heated together, in his famous book Baopuzi or "Book of the Master of the Preservations of Solidarity".

10th century A.D. Painted Silk Banner found at Dunhuang of Mara the Temptress and Her Demons Attacking the Meditating Buddha with a Proto-Gun (Firelance) and Bomb.

In another reference to Huo Yao or gunpowder found in a Tang dynasty book dated to ca. A.D. 850 entitled, "Classified Essentials of the Mysterious Tao of the True Origins of Things" we found a warning against the mixing of chemicals that were similar to the basic ingredients that make up modern day gunpowder:

"Some have heated together sulfur, realgar and saltpetre with honey; smoke and flames result, so that their hands and faces have been burnt, and even the whole house where they were working burnt down."

This warning, listed as one of 35 to-be-avoided elixir mixtures for long eternal life, was an apt harbinger of what was soon to be unleashed into the world. The main ingredient of Huo Yao, saltpetre had appeared in Tang alchemy manuals fairly early on. The preparation was apparently a part of the Tang alchemists’ repertoire of skills.

This chance discovery of a new and novel form of combustion by the Chinese soon gave rise, over the centuries, to the four basic forms of containment employed by firework craftsmen that dictate our usage of gunpowder to this day.

1. Complete Enclosure - a complete enclosure with only a fuse for ignition allowed for a lethal buildup of pressures within, limited only by the strength of the container. The stronger the container, the stronger the final resulting explosion. This allowed for ever larger explosives to be made and was the forerunner of the bomb/grenade.
   
   
2. Single Closed End Tube - by channeling the explosion towards the open end of a tube, the resulting flames could be spurted outward in the desired direction. This eventually led to the HuoQiang or firelance.
   
   
3. Single Closed End Tube with Nozzle - a refinement of the simple tube, Chinese Engineers soon realised that Huo Yao burned sequentially when packed into a tube. This created a long sustained stream of fire out of the nozzle end of the tube, generating thrust in the opposite direction. This led to the first rockets.
   
   
4. Single Closed End Tube with Cap - a cross between the bomb and the rocket, this innovation created a buildup of pressures within the container prior to explosion, expelling the cap outwards. Engineers very quickly realised the potential of this energy transfer from chemical forces to mechanical forces of the moving projectile. This was the true forerunner of the gun.

The first military usage of gunpowder by the Chinese was in the late Tang. In an account of a siege in A.D. 904, Tang military Engineers hurled ignited lumps of slow burning gunpowder mixtures in what was called Fei Huo or "Flying Fire" using catapults. The next evolutionary step in the military usage of gunpowder was the development of slow match gunpowder fuses for continuous stream naphtha flamethrowers, the use of which was reliably dated to ca. A.D. 919.

Then we find yet again, in a famous well preserved silk painting of Mara the Temptress and Her Demons Attacking the Meditating Buddha dated ca. A.D. 950, two possible candidates for early gunpowder weapons. These curious weapons could be seen in the hands of two separate demons on the right of the central Buddha figure. One held what looked uncannily like a fire lance, while another seemed to be throwing a grenade or a burning ball. It was unclear whether these were truly gunpowder weapons or merely fantastic representations of supernatural demon weapons. The resemblance was nevertheless obvious.

By the time of the rise of the Song dynasty, the mastery of gunpowder was already well within the Chinese Engineers’ grasp. In A.D. 969, a man by the name of Yo I-fang was said to have received a new type of Huo Jian or fire arrow. This new Huo Jian quite possibly used gunpowder as Song military craftsmen were producing gunpowder-strapped arrows in the thousands by A.D. 1083. In the A.D. 1044 Wujing Zongyao or "Collection of the Most Important Military Techniques", there included were three recipes for Huo Yao, two for making bombs to be thrown by catapults and a third intended to fuel poisonous smoke bombs. All three recipes were however, low in saltpetre content compared to modern gunpowder and the Huo Yao would not have exploded but would have burned furiously and rapidly instead. We then find again in the book "Dreams of the Glories of the Eastern Capital" a description of a military display, held for the Emperor in ca. A.D. 1110, that opened with "a noise like thunder" and fireworks that exploded in the dark night sky.

Reprints of 3 Different Gunpowder Formulae from the "Wujing Zongyao" ca. A.D. 1044

In the preceding century, wave after wave of northern invasions stimulated the rapid development of gunpowder weapons from iron casing grenades to the proto-gun. This tremendous escalation of warfare however, could not stem the unstoppable tide of Mongol expansion. In A.D. 1257, a Song government official complained that Song arsenals were woefully lacking in the newest Huo Yao weapons, namely iron bombs and gunpowder Huo Jian. This lack soon proved fatal to the Song dynasty, which crumbled to the Mongols under Kubilai Khan not long after, and become the latest addition to the growing Mongol empire.

Amongst a group of demon statues in the Buddhist cave-temples in the Lung Kang complex of Sichuan Province, is observed what is possibly the world's earliest depiction of a handgun. The bulbous shape of this weapon and the faint outline of a round ball the approximate size of the bore shown riding a ray of flame shooting out the open flared barrel certainly meets the definition of a handgun. The actual dates of the statues are unknown, dating at the latest to the late Song period of the mid 13th century A.D., and at the earliest to the Northern Song of the late 10th century A.D.

The TuHuoQiang or "Fire Spitting Spear" of A.D. 1259, which was a bamboo tube capable of firing a single projectile was probably the earliest confirmed discovery of a handgun. However, the earliest existing handgun was one bearing a serial number 2,565 and an inscription date of A.D. 1271 used during the Southern Song. This copper gun recently discovered in A.D. 2004 in Ningxia province was shaped like an elongated vase 34.6cm long, weighs 1.55kg and has a caliber of 2.6cm.

Picture of a Chinese Cast Iron Gun with the Earliest Dated to A.D. 1288

These tentative and innovative steps that begun during the Song were to blossom during the brief Mongol reign. By the close of the century, hooped cast-iron guns were already being manufactured. The world's oldest existing hooped handgun was dated A.D. 1288 at the start of the Yuan era. But these great strides in progress were not without their pitfalls. In A.D. 1280, the Mongol overlords, distrusting their Chinese vassals, replaced the Chinese Engineers manning a Huo Yao arsenal with Mongol workers. The resulting explosion caused many loss of life, bringing a new and painful lesson to the new inheritors of the Chinese explosive legacy.

Europeans had by the 13th century A.D. knowledge of the mysterious powder from the East, a knowledge likely to have spread from Arab sources who had by A.D. 1240 acquired the knowledge of saltpetre which they referred to as "Chinese snow". The Arabs also adopted rockets and fireworks, which they respectively labeled "Chinese Arrows" and "Chinese Flowers". The current standard Arabic of today use the term "barud" for gunpowder, and "milh al-barud" (salt of gunpowder) for saltpetre. However, a less used term "dawa" (drug) is also sometimes used, evoking the historical link with the Chinese term Huo Yao or Fire Drug. In the Arabic world, the literary monument which first recorded the formula for gunpowder must surely be the Kitab al-Furusiya wa'l-Munasab al-Harbiya or Treatise on Horsemanship and Stratagems of War, written by Hassan al-Rammah Najm al-Din al-Ahdab ca. A.D. 1280. Chinese influence in his formulas were obvious because in his compositions, the inclusion of various noxious chemicals such as arsenic sulphide, lacquer and camphor were much the same as those of early Chinese designs.

Arab armies had since very early times incorporated for their use early Chinese gunpowder weapon designs. Hence early gunpowder weapons were in use side by side with the mechanical catapults of the day. In the "History of the Berbers and the North African Kingdoms" written ca. A.D. 1382, we find mention of a year-long siege of the city of Sijilmasa east of the Moroccan Atlas mountains by Marinid Sultan Yakub:

"There were madjanikh (catapult) and harradat (ballista) but also a hindam al-naft (naphtha engine), which hurled a kind of hasa al-hadid (iron gravel). This grape shot is thrown out from the khazna (tube/chamber) of the thing by means of an inflamable barud (powder), the extraordinary effects of which rival the powers of the Creator himself."

The terminology used was a little confused but it was clear that this naphtha engine was not naphtha based and that the terminology had yet to catch up with the new gunpowder technology. What was telling was apparently the ability of this hindam al-naft to shoot out hasa al-hadid when the barud was lit. This pointed to either an early eruptor or a fire lance that threw flaming materials and grapeshot out its barrel.

In Europe, where they were skeptical of an oriental origin for this deadly gunpowder compound due to the simplicity of its mixture, the mythical Berthold Schwartz also known as Black Berthold or "der Schwartzer" was often cited as the inventor of gunpowder and the gun in the West. A 17th century A.D. historian by the name of William Camden declared skeptically in A.D. 1605 that:

"Some have sayled a long course as farre as China, the farthest part of the world, to fetch the invention of guns from thence, but we know the Spanicsh proverb 'long waies, long lies'. One writeth, I know not upon whose credit, that Roger Bacon, commonly called Friar Bacon, knew how to make an engine which with saltpetre and Brimstone, should prove notable for Batterie, but he, tendering the safety of mankind, would not discover it. The best approved authors agree that guns were invented in Germanie, by Berthold Swarte, a Monke skilful in Gebers Cookery or Alchimy, who tempering Brimstone and saltpetre in a mortar, perceived the force by casting up the stone which covered it, when a sparke fell upon it...."

There was however, no proof that Berthold ever existed eventhough for 500 years his legend held sway in Europe. Berthold was in fact, an archetypal stand-in for all the curious and ingenious experiments related to the new and dangerous mixture of saltpetre, sulfur (brimstone) and carbon.

The first written evidence of gunpowder in Europe came from the letters of Roger Bacon to Pope Clement. In one of his letters ca. A.D. 1267, written to the Pope, Bacon wrote:

"... a child's toy of sound and fire made in various parts of the world with powder of saltpetre, sulfur and charcoal of hazelwood."

Unfortunately for Bacon, Pope Clement died without ever reading his letter with the reference to the "child's toy of sound and fire". Contrary to popular belief, nowhere in his writings did Bacon ever write a formula for gunpowder although he was the first European to pen the three exact ingredients together, showing that knowledge of gunpowder was indeed already available by the mid 13th century A.D. Europe.

The Liber Ignium, a collective work which spaned a few centuries and was attributed to yet another fictitious figure, Marcus Graecus or Marcus the Greek, contained in its final chapters, written ca. A.D. 1280, the first European formulae for gunpowder. These formulae showed compositions containing mixtures of between 60-68% saltpetre, a concentration which would have resulted in great deflagration although still not close enough to the required optimum of 75% saltpetre to be able to explode.

Sixty-six years later in the summer of A.D. 1346, the era of gunpowder had finally arrived in European battlefields. The English King Edward III mounted a campaign to enforce his claim to the throne of France, landing in Normandy with around 10,000 men. Arrayed together with his knights and longbowmen against the French led by King Philip VI at Crecy, was a new and terrifying class of weapons. As supplies for his invasion, King Edward III had 912 lbs of saltpetre and 846 lbs of sulfur sent to him for making gunpowder. When French knights charged towards the disciplined English ranks, they soon met the full fury of the next evolutionary step in warfare when specialised gunners manning crude but novel gunpowder weapons, opened fire.

English Cannon Balls Unearthed from the Crécy Battlefield of A.D. 1346.
From left: 120mm diameter / 1.84kg cannonball, and 80-90mm diameter / 1.64kg cannonball
(Photographs courtesy of Ingénieur général (Major-General) Jean Laporte, whose family still owns land in Crécy)

While King Edward III stood and watched the new changing face of warfare in that distant battlefield in France, mid 14th century A.D. China was in the throes of yet another upheaval. The Mongol overlords, their once mighty armies overextended and China suffering from decades of mismanagement, were unable to stem the tide of discontentment. Peasant armies and regional warlords were soon to rise again in rebellion. This time however, things were different. The short 89 year rule of the Mongol Yuan dynasty had seen the entry of small cannons and simple guns into the Chinese arsenal.

Illustration of a Ming Dynasty Cannon

Near the end of Mongol rule, three major combatants for the control of China, the Han, the Wu and the Ming, were in full conflict with one another. At the siege of Nanchang just prior to the famous naval battle of Boyang Lake, the Han under Chen Yuliang had besieged the Ming garrison there. Cannons and catapults must have been present because, firing from their ships from the water's edge, the first Han assault opened a gap of over thirty chang in the city wall which was only refortified by the defenders with a new palisade of wood and earth after very intense fighting between the two combatants. Bogged down at Nanchang, the Han fleet was eventually trapped on Boyang Lake in a famous showdown with a smaller Ming fleet during which fire catapults and cannons were used side-by-side in battle for the very first time in naval history.

Reprint of Records of ZhengHe’s Voyages. ZhengHe's Gunpowder Armed Fleets Sailed the Indian Ocean from A.D. 1403 to 1433
From left: Navigational Aid for the Sri Lanka-Sumatera Route from the WuBei Zhi, and Record of an African Giraffe Brought Back to the Ming Imperial Court

The Ming dynasty, mindful of the power of the new chemical weapons, was quick to incorporate the use of gunpowder into its armies. Ming armies were the first Chinese armies to have been armed with guns, rockets and cannons, which slowly but surely displaced the traditional arms of the ancient Chinese army. By the time of the Wokou pirate raids of the East China Sea of the mid 16th century A.D., all mention of mechanical artillery had vanished from Chinese records, closing an illustrious chapter in the history of Chinese Artillery and beginning the next chapter of Gunpowder powered arms.