Читать книгу Gunpowder and Ammunition, Their Origin and Progress - H. W. L. Hime - Страница 6

Of the many difficulties that beset the present inquiry, two deserve special mention.

The first is the want of simple exactness in most early writers when recording the facts from which we have to draw our conclusions. At times their descriptions are so meagre that it is difficult, if not impossible, to decide whether certain projectiles were incendiary or explosive. At other times they abound in tropes and figures of speech which amount to an unintentional suggestio falsi. “The missiles spread themselves abroad like a cloud,” says a Spanish Arab; “they roar like thunder; they flame like a furnace; they reduce everything to ashes.”1 A projectile full of blazing Greek fire appeared to Joinville to be of portentous bulk. It flew through the midnight sky with thundering noise like a fiery dragon, followed by a long trail of flame; and it illumined the whole camp as with the light of day.2 Even to approach the truth, we must prune such figures of rhetoric; and this is a dangerous operation, for we may prune too much. The only safeguard against these suggestive metaphors is to keep steadily in view the distinctive peculiarities of incendiary and explosive projectiles.

The incendiary shell was simply an envelope intended to convey into the interior of a fort, ship, &c., a quantity of combustible matter, which burned with such violence as to set fire to everything inflammable that was near it. The primary object of the explosive shell, on the other hand, was to blow up whatever it fell upon. It might occasionally, by the intense heat generated by the explosion,3 set fire to its surroundings when inflammable; but this was a mere incidental consequence of its action. Its aim and end was to explode.

When a musket or cannon was fired there was a bright flash, a loud, momentary report, and a large volume of smoke.4 When an incendiary missile was discharged from a machine there was no flash, but little smoke, and the only sounds were the whizzing and sputtering of the burning mixture and the creaking and groaning of bolts, spars, ropes, &c.:—

“With grisly soune out goth the greté gonne.”5

An explosive missile made its way through the air with little noise6 and less light:7 during its flight the blazing contents of the incendiary shell doubtless gave out much light and made a considerable noise, as described by many early writers. When an explosive shell reached its object there was, sooner or later (if it acted at all), an explosion, occasionally followed by a conflagration: an incendiary shell produced a conflagration only.

The second difficulty arises from the change of meaning which many technical words have undergone in the lapse of years.

The Arabic word barúd originally meant hail, was afterwards applied to saltpetre, and finally came to signify gunpowder. Our own word powder, which at first meant a fine, floury dust (pulvis), is often used in the present day to designate the stringy nitrocelluloid, cordite—smokeless powder. The Chinese word yo means gunpowder now, although its first meaning was a drug or plant. For centuries gunpowder was called kraut in Germany, and to this day it is called kruid in Holland. The Danish krud has not long become obsolete.

The present Chinese word for firearm, huo p’áu, originally meant a machine for throwing blazing incendiary matter. The Arabic word bundúq at first meant a hazel-nut, secondly a clay-pellet the size of a hazel-nut, thirdly a bullet, and finally a firearm.8 The Latin nochus, a hazel-nut, is used, strange to say, to designate a smoke-ball by an old German military writer, Konrad Kyeser, whose “Bellifortis” dates from 1405.9 The word was also applied in Germany to bullets in general, and more particularly to projectiles discharged by machines.

The word Artillery, both in France and England, originally meant bows and arrows. In his original account of the battle of Cressy, Froissart calls the apparatus and bolts of the Genoese crossbowmen leur artillerie; while a few lines further on he speaks of the kanons of the English.10 Ascham, writing in 1571, says: “Artillerie nowadays is taken for two things: gunnes and bowes.”11 Selden reminds us that gonne, our present gun, at first meant a machine of the ballista type.12 It is used in this sense in “Kyng Alisaunder,” 3268, written A.D. 1275-1300, and other metrical romances. Like the Arabic bundúq, the word is occasionally applied to the projectile, as in the “Avowing of Arthur,” st. 65. It is used in the modern sense, as cannon, in the “Vision of Piers the Plowman,” Passus xxi, C text, 293, a poem begun in 1362 and finally revised by its author in 1390; and in all three meanings by Chaucer, in poems written during the last quarter of the fourteenth century;—as a machine in the “Romaunt of the Rose,” 4176, as a projectile in the “Legende of Good Women,” 637, and as a cannon in the “Hous of Fame,” 533.

“When the thing is perceived, the idea conceived,” says Professor Whitney, “(men) find in the existing resources of speech the means of its expression—a name which formerly belonged to something else in some way akin to it; a combination of words,” &c.13 For example, a word, W, which has always been the name of a thing, M, is applied to some new thing, N, which has been devised for the same use as M and answers the purpose better.14 W thus represents both M and N for an indefinite time,15 until M eventually drops into disuse and W comes to mean N and N only. The confusion necessarily arising from the equivocal meaning of W during this indefinite period, is entirely due, of course, to neglect of Horace’s advice to coin new names for new things.16 Had a new name been given to N from the first, no difficulty could possibly have ensued, and our way would have been straight and clear. But as matters have fallen out, not only have we to determine whether W means M or N, whenever it is used during the transition period,17 but we have to meet the arguments of those, never far off, who insist that because W meant N finally, it must have meant N at some bygone time when history and probability alike show that it meant M and M only. Examples, enough and to spare, of such arguments will be met with shortly.

In consequence of the change of meaning which many military words have suffered, no translation of passages in foreign books containing ambiguous words should be relied upon, if access to the originals, or faithful copies of them, can be obtained. As an example of the necessity for this precaution, let us compare a few sentences relating to the siege of Jerusalem, A.D. 70, from the “Polychronicon” of Higden (d. cir. 1363), Rolls Series, iv. 429 ff., with the translations of them by Trevisa, 1385, and by the author of MS. Harl. No. 2261, of A.D. 1432-50.

A

(1) Inde Vespasianus ictu arietis murum conturbat (Higden).

(2) Thanne Vaspacianus destourbed the wal with the stroke of an engyne (Trevisa).

(3) Wherefore Vespasian troublede the walle soore with gunnes and other engynes (MS. Harl.).

B

(1) Josephus tamen ardenti oleo superjecto omnia machinamenta exussit (Higden).

(2) But Joseph threwe out brennynge oyle uppon alle her gynnes and smoot all her gynnes (Trevisa).

(3) Then Josephus destroyede alle theire instruments in castenge brennenge oyle on hit (MS. Harl.).

C

(1) Quo viso tanta vis telorum ex parte Titi proruit, ut unius de sociis Josephi occipitium lapide percussum ultra tertium stadium excuteretur (Higden).

(2) Whan that was i-seie there fil so gret strenthe of castynge and of schot of Titus his side, that the noble knyght of oon of Josephus his felowes was i-smyte of that place with a stoon and flewe over the thrydde forlong (Trevisa).

(3) Titus perceyvenge that, sende furthe a sawte and schotte gunnes to the walles in so much that the hynder parte of the hedde of a man stondenge by Josephus was smyten by the space of thre forlonges (MS. Harl.).

D

(1) Admotis tandem arietibus ad templum (Higden).

(2) At the laste the engynes were remeved toward the temple (Trevisa).

(3) Titus causede his gunners to schote at the Temple (MS. Harl.).

No suspicion rests upon either of these translators; yet, were the original lost, a covert allusion to cannon might be discovered in Trevisa’s translation of B and C, and the Harleian translation of A, C, and D would be put forward as proof positive of their use.