Gunpowder and Ammunition, Their Origin and Progress

Hansard gives a plate of an English archer, 1250, with spicula ignita, or arrow tipped with wildfire.382 Sir R. W. Payne-Gallwey gives a sketch of a slur-bow. It is a cross-bow, with a barrel and a single string which works in two slits cut in the sides of the barrel.383

Fire-lances were used, perhaps for the last time, at the first siege of Bristol, 1643. There, Prince Rupert tells us, “Captain Clerk, Ancient Hodgkinson, and some others running in upon (the Royalists) with fire-pikes, neither men nor horses were able to endure it. The fire-pikes did the feat.”384

Fire-arrows had a longer spell of existence, and were used by the Chinese against the French in 1860.385

Hand Grenades

Incendiary hand grenades are of great antiquity. We have seen that earthenware grenades were used at the siege of Salonika,386 904. Towards the end of the thirteenth century Hassan er-Rammah describes grenades made of bark, papyrus, or glass—materials well adapted to break up on impact and scatter about their burning contents.387 They were used at the passage of the Lys in 1382:—“Adonc vinrent arbalêtriers et gens de pied avant; et si en y avait aucuns qui jetait de bombardes portatives et qui traioient grands quarriaulx empennés de fer,” &c.388 By a common figure of speech Froissart calls the grenade a bombard, just as the author of the “Avowing of Arthur” calls a shot a gun:—

(A gun came flying by and gleamed like lightning.)

The plate from the MS. of Kyeser’s Bellifortis, 1405, given by Herr von Romocki (i. 169), shows three projectiles which were unquestionably hand grenades. Figs. 25 and 30 are provided with spikes, like crow’s-feet.390 Fig. 27 is a flask or bottle of the same family as Hassan’s grenades, and was probably made of earthenware. It was by an explosive earthenware grenade that Del Vasto was severely wounded in 1528, during the sea-fight between the French and Spaniards off Cape Campanella.391 The Comte de Rendan was killed by a grenade of unknown construction at the siege of Rouen, 1562,392 and grenades were freely used at the siege of Famagusta, 1572. Du Bellay tells us that grenades were made in large quantities at Arles in 1536.393 As it is improbable that iron grenades could have been turned out in large quantities in the first half of the sixteenth century, we may conclude that they were either earthenware or some form of brittle brass. This is rendered probable by Whitehorne’s remarks on the subject. He says that “earthen bottles or pottes,” filled with incendiary or explosive matter, had been formerly used; but he recommends “hollow balles of metal, as bigge as smal boules and ¼ in. thick, cast in mouldes and made of 3 partes of brasse and 1 of tinne.” Their charge consisted of “3 partes serpentine, 3 partes fine corne pouder, and 1 part rosen.” A little fine corned powder was used as priming; and he directs the grenades to be “quickly thrown,” as they will almost immediately “breake and flye into a thousand pieces.” The want of a proper fuze rendered their use so dangerous that he advises trials to be made with them, “to see how long they will tarry before they breake.”394

Major Ralph Adye mentions that grenades were supposed to be capable of being thrown 13 fathoms, or 26 yards.395

Evelyn says in his “Diary” that on 29th June 1678, he saw at the Hounslow Camp certain soldiers “called granadiers, who were dexterous in flinging hand-granades.” In the Archæological Journal, xxiii., 22, will be found a plate “Blow your Match,” after a sketch by Lens, “limner to His Majesty” George II., which represents a grenadier of the 1st Regiment of the Guards in 1735, grenade in hand.

CHAPTER XI

WAR ROCKETS

Incendiary rockets were known in the East from an early time, and they are frequently mentioned at later periods; but we are told so little about the loss they inflicted upon an enemy that one is inclined to suspect their effect was confined to wounding a few men and frightening elephants and horses. They are said to have been used by the Chinese against the Tatars in 1232.396 The Malzufat-i Timuri and the Zafarnama leave us in doubt whether Timur’s rockets were used or not at the great battle of Delhi, 1399.397 The effect produced by a single rocket led to the fall of the strong fort of Bitar in 1657, but this result was purely accidental. The commander of the fort, foreseeing that an assault would be made upon one of the bastions which had been much damaged by artillery fire, ordered a hole to be dug in it and filled with gunpowder, grenades, &c., intending to blow up the besiegers when they entered. Just before the assault was made, one of the besiegers’ rockets fell by accident into this pit and fired its contents, creating thereby so much loss and confusion among the garrison that the place was carried after a short struggle by Aurangzeb’s troops.398

In the West, rockets were employed as early as 1380,399 if not earlier; but they were never looked on with favour, and they appear to have been seldom, if ever, used between the earlier part of the fifteenth century and our bombardment of Boulogne with Congreve rockets in 1806. Dunois’ capture of Pont Audemer in 1449 was a consequence of a fire that broke out in the town; but the fire appears to have been caused by a hand-grenade or fire-arrow, not by a rocket. However, the exact meaning of the word fusus is so doubtful that the matter is not worth pursuing.400

Towards the close of the eighteenth century rockets were almost forgotten in the one European city where they were most likely to have been remembered—Constantinople. In 1783-84 Tipu Sultan sent a mission to the Sultan of Turkey, and of the presents which they offered “none were so much admired as the Rockets, of which there were none in that country.”401

We find traces of the employment of rockets, both incendiary and explosive, in India in this very year, when some “rocketeers ... threw confusion and dispersion into the masses of the Mahrattas.”402 Nothing can be more probable: the army of the Mahrattas was an army of cavalry, and horses are terrified by fire in any form. The Indian rocket at this time had a tube of 8” length and 1.5” diameter,403 and it does not appear to have been a very effective missile. Speaking of our loss during the attack on Seringapatam, 1792, Colonel Dirom says: “(We had) a good many wounded, though in general but slightly, chiefly by rockets.”404 Within the next few years, however, rockets were much improved, and an eye-witness speaks of the use of “rockets of an uncommon weight” at the siege of Seringapatam, 1799.405 These were undoubtedly explosive rockets, for Col. Gerrard saw one of them kill three and wound four of our men.406

Shortly after the taking of Seringapatam the Ordnance Office applied to the Laboratory, Woolwich Arsenal, for the services of some one who understood the manufacture of war rockets. The Laboratory referred the Ordnance to the East India Company, who replied that they knew of no one who possessed such knowledge.407 This state of things led Colonel Congreve to turn his attention to the subject. It is not correct to say that he brought rockets from India,408 for he never was there. He knew of course—the whole world knew—that war rockets were employed there: “I knew that rockets were used for military purposes in India, but that their magnitude was inconsiderable and their range not exceeding 1000 yards.”409 His object was to make large incendiary and explosive rockets with a range of 1000-3500 yards, and he succeeded, perhaps, as well as the materials at his disposal permitted. He never laid claim to the invention of war rockets: “What I have done,” he says, “towards the perfection of this weapon is as much my own as if the original invention of rockets in general were mine.”410

Oberst-Lieutenant Jähns tells us that, from a certain point of view, the Emperor Caligula’s rockets were on a level with those of Congreve.411 It may be doubted, however, whether Caligula’s rockets would have produced the same effect as the Congreve rockets at Copenhagen in 1807,412 or at Walcheren in the same year, when the French Commandant, General Monnet, protested against their use. They did good service at the passage of the Adour in 1813, and at the battle of Leipsig, where Captain Bogue, who commanded the Rocket Brigade, was killed. A French infantry brigade in the village of Paunsdorf, “unable to withstand the well-directed fire (of rockets), fell into confusion, began to retreat,” and ultimately surrendered to the Rocket Brigade.413 Two years afterwards, at Waterloo, the rockets, under Sergeant Daniel Dunnett, proved very effective.

Of late years rockets have fallen into disrepute everywhere, owing to radical defects explained by Captain C. O. Browne, R.A.;414 and their use is unlikely to be revived until the chemists make some unforeseen and astonishing discovery.

CHAPTER XII

GUNPOWDER

The oldest recipe for gunpowder is Roger Bacon’s. If the solution of his anagram which I have ventured to propose be accepted, the proportions of the ingredients in 100 parts were:—

The French recipe of 1338 being incomplete (Table VIII.), the next complete recipe for gunpowder is that given in the MSS. of Dr. John Arderne of Newark, who began to practise as a surgeon before 1350:415— “Pernez j. li. de souffre vif; de charbones de saulx (i. weloghe) ij. li.; de saltpetre vj. li. Si les fetez bien et sotelment moudre sur un pierre de marbre, puis bultez le poudre parmy vn sotille couer-chief; cest poudre vault à gettere pelottes de fer, ou de plom, ou d’areyne,416 one vn instrument qe l’em appelle gonne.” This gives in 100 parts:-

The word gonne, in the sense of cannon, must have been commonly known during the last quarter of the fourteenth century; for Chaucer uses it with this meaning in the “Hous of Fame,” iii. 553, cir. 1380—

and Langley uses it with the same meaning in the C text of his “Vision of Piers Plowman,” xxi. 293, cir. 1393:—

Now the explanatory phrase, “qe l’em appelle gonne,” shows that gonne was but little known when the above recipe was written. We may therefore date it at 1350.

It will be observed that down to the word marbre, the recipe is a literal translation of a receipt for rocket composition given by Marcus Græcus.417 Yet the two powders, although made of nominally the same ingredients in the same proportions, did not produce the same effects when fired; for gunpowder will not propel a rocket, and rocket composition will not project a cannon-ball. The difference in their effects was probably due to the researches of Roger Bacon, who had discovered the importance of using pure saltpetre and of thoroughly incorporating the ingredients. It is improbable that Arderne’s recipe represents the powder used in the cannon of his time. Its proportions are so entirely out of keeping with those of the French powder of 1338 (Table VIII.) and those of Whitehorne’s powder of 1560 (Table VII.), that we may regard it as no more than a laboratory receipt.

It needed but little experience to show how far short of perfection serpentine powder fell.

While the fouling of dry, well-incorporated powder is comparatively trifling, a damp or slow-burning powder, such as serpentine, leaves a much larger residue. The consequence was that, after a few rounds, it was exceedingly difficult to reload small arms, a considerable part of the loose, floury charge sticking to the fouling.418 The remedy for this evil was the use of cartridges. Whitehorne mentions “bagges of linnen or paper” for the charges of cannon in 1560,419 and in 1590 Sir John Smythe speaks not only of cartridges, but of composite cartridges for small arms—“cartages with which (musketeers) charge their peeces both with powder and ball at one time.”420

There are payments for talwood (faggots) “for drying powder” in the English store accounts 1372-74,421 and in 1459 the Scotch Government were endeavouring to keep their powder dry by storing it in waxed canvas bags.422 An official recommends the English Privy Council in 1589 to sell certain “bad powder” at Dorchester, adding, “the longer it is kept the worse yt wilbe.”423 The Navy were of course, then and always, the chief sufferers from damp powder. Serpentine powder, Sir Henry Manwayring tells us in 1664, was never taken to sea (after big guns had become strong enough to stand corned powder) “both because it is of small force, and also for that it will, with the aire of the sea, quickly drie and lose its force.”424 But corned powder was by no means proof against damp. In the action fought off Grenada in July 1779, Bishop Watson says “the English shot would not reach” the French. The powder, it was found, “had concreted into large lumps, in the middle of which the saltpetre was visible to the naked eye.”425 Between the years 1790 and 1811, 189,000 whole barrels of powder, “which had formed into lumps from the damp of H.M.’s ships of war,” and had consequently been returned into store as useless, were rendered serviceable in the Government powder factory.426

Being merely a loose mechanical mixture of three substances with different specific gravities, serpentine powder had a tendency, when shaken in transport, to resolve itself into three strata, the heaviest substance (the sulphur) settling down to the bottom, and the lightest (the charcoal) remaining at the top. This meant, practically, that on coming into the enemy’s presence the ingredients had to be incorporated afresh. To save trouble, and to avoid the danger of a second mixing, it was for a long time customary to carry the ingredients separately,427 or, at least, to carry the charcoal apart from the saltpetre and sulphur. There was another argument, however, in favour of this course. While serpentine powder, however tightly secured, gave out a large quantity of impalpable dust which might cause an explosion at any moment, no explosion was possible so long as the ingredients were kept asunder. But whatever was the reason for resorting to such an expedient, it is evident that the remedy was nearly as bad as the disease.

Serpentine powder had another drawback,—it required very careful ramming home. “Thrust the pouder home fair and softly,” says Whitehorne.428 “The powder rammed in too hard and the wad also,” says Bourne in 1587, “it will be long before the peece goeth off.... The powder too loose ... will make the shotte to come short of the mark.... Put up the powder with the rammer head somewhat close, but beat it not too hard.”429 By beating it too hard the interstices between the particles through which the flame permeated the charge were diminished in size, and if beaten sufficiently hard the mixture tended to become a solid which burned away without exploding. Finally, the combustion of serpentine, at the best, was so slow that a large volume of its gas escaped wastefully through the vent.

These evils were in some cases much lessened, and in others quite got rid of by the gradual introduction of corned powder, which is mentioned in 1429 in the Firebook of Conrad von Schongau,430 and was in use for hand-guns in England long before 1560. Corned powder (1) deposited less fouling than serpentine; (2) it was less susceptible to damp, especially after the introduction of glazing;431 (3) it did not resolve into strata in transport; (4) it gave out less dust; (5) it was much less affected by hard ramming; (6) owing to the larger interstices between the grains,432 it burned so quickly that there was little or no waste of gas through the vent, and it was consequently so strong that 2 lbs. of corned did the same work as 3 lbs. of serpentine powder.433 It was, in fact, too strong for cannon for a long period: Chemistry had outrun Metallurgy. “If serpentine pouder should be occupied (used) in handguns,” says Whitehorne, “it would scant be able to drive their pellets434 a quoit’s cast from their mouths; and if handgunne (i.e. corned) pouder should be used in pieces of ordnance, without great discretion, it would quickly break or marre them.”435 Here we have the cause which necessitated the general retention of serpentine powder for cannon until the first half (or middle) of the sixteenth century, after which it is heard of no more except for secondary purposes, such as priming, &c. We must not overlook the importance of Whitehorne’s remark. He was an educated man of sound, practical sense, who had been a student of Gray’s Inn, and whose experience was not confined to the English Artillery, for he had seen service in the Low Countries. What he says is a sufficient safeguard against inferring too much from Schongau’s mention of corned powder in 1429. It came slowly into use for hand-grenades and small arms in the fifteenth century; but no country then possessed cannon strong enough to stand its explosion, and it did not come into general use for another century.

In addition to its being at first too strong for big guns, corned powder had the disadvantage of being dearer than serpentine. The latter was sold in 1569 at £80 the last (2400 lbs.); the former in 1570 at £90.436 The following Table gives the price of English powder at various times:—

TABLE V.

Price of English Gunpowder per lb.

The remarkable uniformity in the prices of English powder has been noticed by Prof. Rogers in his “History of Agriculture and Prices,” iv. 631. He thinks that “fine” powder meant priming powder, because infantry soldiers were usually served out with 1 lb. “common” (corned) powder and ¼-lb. “fine” powder. It doubtless did at one time; but the term was applied to all small-arm powder eventually.445

The prices of the first two powders have necessarily been calculated. The price of charcoal in 1347 was .013d. per lb.; in 1378 it was .02d.446 The prices of sulphur and saltpetre in 1347 were 8d. and 18d. per lb. respectively;447 in 1378 they were (for large quantities) 4d. and 20d. respectively.448 From an English MS., quoted by the Emperor Napoleon III., it appears that the cost of manufacturing powder at Southampton in 1474 was .864d. per lb.;449 and, as it is the only fact available, I have been obliged to assume that this was the cost of making powder in 1347 and 1378. But it is probably not far from the truth. The proportions taken for the 1347 powder are Arderne’s, 6-2-1; those for 1378, 3-1-1. From these data we have:—

The price of French powder in 1375 was 120d. per lb.;450 but in order to be able to compare it with the price of English powder in 1378, we must know the ratio of French to English money at that period. The French Troyes livre then contained 5760 gs.; the English Tower pound 5400 gs. Therefore—

1 livre (pure silver) = 16/15 pound (pure silver).

Under Philip of Valois (1328-50) the livre was debased to 1/12 its original value,451 and almost simultaneously the pound was debased by Edward III. to 4/5 its primitive value.452 Or 1 good livre was worth 12 bad livres, and 1 good pound was worth 5/4 of a bad pound. Therefore—

12 livres = 16/15 (5/4 pound) = 4/3 pound; or 9 livres = 1 pound.

Dividing the price of 1 lb. French powder, 1375, by the price of 1 lb. English powder, 1378, we get 120/13.664 = 8.7; so that the French powder at this period was somewhat cheaper than the English. As the purchasing power of fourteenth-century money was about ten times that of ours, the French powder of 1375 cost about 11s., and the English powder of 1378, 11s. 4½d. per lb.

The high price of early gunpowder resulted from high freights and (in the case of saltpetre) the rapacity of Eastern merchants. We may form some notion of the price they exacted for their saltpetre which cost them little,453 from the price they put upon their naphtha which cost them next to nothing. “Another fountayne there is towarde the Oryent whereof is made fyre grekysshe, with other myxtyons (mixtures) that is put thereto; the which fyre when it is taken and lyght is so hote that it can not be quenched with water, but with aysel (vinegar), urine or sande only. The Sarasynes sell this water dere, and derer than they do good wyne.”454

The manufacture of gunpowder soon became a trade. We find a powder-mill in Ausburg in 1340, in Spandau in 1344, and in Liegnitz in 1348.455 There was a gunmaker in Stockholm in 1430, who was very probably a powder-maker too;456 and it is certain that there was a powder-maker there in 1464—Mäster Berend.457 Nor were Governments blind to the importance and the profit of the trade. Beckmann states that the Archbishop of Magdeburg in 1419 only permitted the collection of saltpetre on payment of a license,458 and Clarke informs us that the Pope and the Archduke of Bavaria engaged themselves in powder-making at an early date.459 Louis XI. appointed commissioners in 1477 to collect all the saltpetre they could find, with power to force an entry wherever they suspected it was stored.460

During the Ancient Period, say 1250-1450, when serpentine was exclusively used, one powder could only differ from another in composition, that is, in the proportions of the ingredients used, supposing them to be equally pure; during the Modern Period, say 1700-1886, the powders used (in each individual State) differed only, as a general rule, in the size of the grain;461 during the Transition Period, 1450-1700, they generally differed both in composition and grain.

The proportions of the ingredients were quite arbitrary during the Ancient Period, and not only Governments, but private manufacturers, had their special recipes. As late as 1628 Norton says there were “infinite recipes for making of powder, but most states have enjoyned a certain proportion.”462

The introduction of corning, far from curbing the lawlessness of the Ancient Period, made confusion worse confounded. Then there was but one variable—the proportions of the ingredients; now a second independent variable was introduced—the size of the grain. But a reaction was at hand, which set in first in France, where corned powder had been adopted in 1525.463 It appears to have been noticed during the second half of the fifteenth century that large-grained powder was the fittest for big guns, and this fact the French utilised in 1540 by officially restricting the service powders to three, of uniform composition but different-sized grains.464

The largest-grained powder was used for the largest guns, and the composition was 80.7 salp., 11.5 char., and 7.8 sulph., which closely corresponded to Whitehorne’s (corned) hand-gun powder—78.3 salp., 13 char., and 8.7 sulph.465 It may be questioned, however, whether the French, official injunctions notwithstanding, confined themselves very religiously to powders of uniform composition. Boillot, whose work was published at Chaumont in 1598, says the grain for big guns was as large as a pea, that for medium guns the size of hempseed, and that for serpents, &c., still smaller. But from a remark he makes on reaching the manufacture of powder—“vous viendrez à la composition (de la pouldre), mais par poix et mesure, selon que vous voudrez faire les pouldres”466—it is clear that powders for all purposes were not of the same composition.

During the first half of the seventeenth century the French official powder was weaker than the above—75.6 salp., 13.6 char., and 10.8 sulph.—and for big guns had grains as large as hazel-nuts.467 At Pont-à-Mousson, just across the German border, powders of different compositions were in use in 1620;468 and east of the Rhine powder for different guns probably varied in grain, and certainly varied in composition. “Of the various powders now made,” says Furtenbach in 1627, “the following are generally employed:469—

The information given to us about granulation by the early English gunners is neither clear nor full.

When Whitehorne tells us that the method of corning “all sorts of powder” was the same, namely, by means of a sieve and a few heavy metal balls,470 what meaning did he intend to convey by the phrase “all sorts of powder”? There can be little doubt that he meant “powders of whatever composition, and whatever the size of the grain to be produced;” first, because it would be preposterous to assume that all the sieves of his time had meshes of equal size; and secondly, because there is abundant evidence to show that, long after Whitehorne’s time, the powders for different guns in England (and elsewhere) varied both in composition and grain. In 1620 Thybovril and Hanzelet tell us that powder to be granulated is to be passed through a sieve with holes “de la grosseur que vous desirez votre poudre”;471 and eight years afterwards Norton uses the very same ambiguous phrase, “a syve ... made full of holes of the bignesse you desire your cornes.”472 Did they mean that the size of the grain in their time was purely arbitrary and might be of any magnitude whatever? A passage in Boillot’s (earlier) work explains their meaning much better than they have done it themselves. He first tells us that the sieve is to have holes “de telle grosseur que vous voudrez,” and he then goes on to explain the proper size of grain for use in the different classes of ordnance, as given here on a previous page. In a word, three or four kinds of sieves (differing in the size of their meshes) were procurable—some for graining powder for big guns, others for graining powder for medium guns, &c. &c.—and having fixed upon the gun from which your powder (when grained) was to be fired (and consequently upon the size of the grain), you were to select those sieves which had meshes “of the bignesse you desired your cornes.”

From the phrase used above by Norton, it is certain that several powders, differing in grain, were in use when he wrote; from the evidence of Norton,473 Nye,474 and others, it is equally certain that several different receipts for making powder were in use during their time. The conclusion is that during the first half of the seventeenth century powders made in England for different guns varied both in composition and size of grain.

The lawlessness in composition and grain during the greater part of the Transition Period was the natural consequence of the absence of any instrument to measure the comparative strength of different powders, and enable gunners to establish some standard for the proportions of the ingredients and the size of the grain.

The earliest instrument proposed for testing the strength of powder was, I believe, Bourne’s “engine or little boxe,” which, he says, was “very necessarie to be used.”475 Whether he invented it himself or not, it is impossible to say: he tells us, “some of (the inventions) I have gathered by one meane and some by another, but the most part of them hath been mine own.”476 The engine was a wretched one. The powder to be tested was ignited in a small metal cylinder with a heavy lid (working on a hinge) which when raised could not shut of itself. The angle through which the lid was raised by the explosion indicated the strength of the powder.

A better instrument was that described by Furtenbach in 1627.477 It differed from Bourne’s “little boxe” in that the lid was only laid upon the cylinder. When the powder exploded the lid was blown upwards along two vertical wires which passed through it; but it could not descend again of itself, being held in the place it reached by iron teeth (like those which supported the lid of Bourne’s box). Nye describes this instrument, and suggests that the comparative strength of powders should be further tested by measuring the penetration of pistol balls into clay, and the ranges of projectiles fired from a small mortar.478 This is, I believe, the first proposal of the mortar éprouvette, 1647. The French certainly adopted them before 1686, often though it has been said that they then introduced them. On the 18th September of this year Louis XIV. published an ordonnance complaining of “the variety of eprouvettes” in use for testing powder, and directing that for the future no powder should be accepted unless 3 oz. of it could throw a ball of 60 lbs. 50 toises (320 ft.) from the Government pattern mortar.479 In a previous ordonnance (April 16, 1686) the King had protested against the bad charcoal (de méchante qualité) constantly employed; against impure saltpetre (rempli de graisse et de sel), insisting upon the exclusive use of saltpetre “de trois cuites”; and against insufficient incorporation (dix ou douze heures ... au lieu de ... vingt quatre heures).480 But he marred the reforms he made by taking the unaccountable step of introducing one powder, of the same composition and size of grain, for all arms.481 For this blunder the French afterwards paid in blood, especially during the Peninsular war.482

About the beginning of the eighteenth century most countries had reduced their powders to two or three, which were of the same composition, and differed only in grain. In 1742 Benjamin Robins, by his “New Principles of Gunnery,” placed gunnery upon a strictly scientific basis, and by his epoch-making invention of the ballistic pendulums483 enabled gunners for the first time to measure the muzzle-velocity of projectiles with considerable accuracy. It may have been owing to the lessons taught by this instrument that, between 1742 and 1781, we changed the proportions of the ingredients of our powder from 75—12½—12½ to 75—15—10. Profiting by the rapid progress of electricity during the first half of the nineteenth century, Sir Charles Wheatstone proposed in 1840 his electro-magnetic chronoscope,484 which registered to the 1/730 part of a second, to replace Robins’ ponderous pendulum.

Wheatstone’s instrument was not adopted by our Government, but his idea was followed up and improved upon by Captain Navez, of the Belgian Artillery, who in 1847 brought forward his electro-ballistic pendulum.485 Only one instrument was now wanting to enable the mechanical effect of the explosion to be directly and completely observed—an instrument to measure the pressure upon the bore of the gun; and this want was supplied in 1861 when Captain T. J. Rodman, Ordnance Department, United States Army, produced his Indenting Apparatus and his Internal Pressure Gauge.486 The following Table gives the results of some experiments with the new instruments:—

TABLE VI.

Showing the connection between the Size of the Grain, Muzzle Velocity, and Pressure on Bore.

This Table shows that as the size of the grain slowly increases, the muzzle velocity decreases very slowly, and the pressure on the bore decreases very quickly. The consequence of this discovery was the manufacture of various very large grained powders such as pebble powder, &c., for heavy guns. But the thorough knowledge of the mechanical effect of the explosion of gunpowder gained by the use of the Navez and Rodman instruments, was of little avail to anybody, for gunpowder had nearly run its course. Just twenty-five years after the introduction of the pressure gauge M. Vieille put the French Government in possession of a nitrocellulose explosive,487 and gunpowder was added to the list of things that were.

Throughout the whole gunpowder period enthusiasts seem never to have been wanting who believed in the possibility of making smokeless powder and noiseless powder. Castner’s powder, which contained only 3 per cent, sulphur, seems to have been the nearest approach to the former, but no powder containing sulphur could be absolutely smokeless. Whether early gunners suspected this or not I do not know; certain it is, however, that sulphurless powder was under discussion centuries ago. Rabelais (who may have heard soldiers talking about the matter) alludes jokingly to “pouldre de canon curieusement composée, degressée de son soulfre.”488 In 1756 the French actually experimented with sulphurless mixtures, one of which (80 per cent. sulph. and 20 per cent. ch.) gave good results in range, with very little smoke. It proved to be worthless for military purposes from the difficulty of corning it, and from its crumbling to dust during ordinary transport.489 The belief in a noiseless powder was scoffed at by Whitehorne: “There be many who bring up lies, saying that they can tell how to make pouder that shooting in gunnes shall make no noise, the which is impossible.” A century afterwards Sir Thomas Browne believed means might be adopted, if not to stifle the sound altogether, at least “to abate the vigour thereof, or silence its bombulation.”490

Tables VII. and VIII. give the composition of gunpowder at various times.

TABLE VII.

English Gunpowder.

N.B.—All these writers give the proportions of gunpowder in their own times.

TABLE VIII.

Foreign Gunpowder.

CHAPTER XIII

SHOCK PROJECTILES

The nature of the first Artillery projectiles was determined by the nature of the small-arm missiles in use when cannon were introduced by the Germans. To use the bulky and ponderous projectiles of the machines in these small and feeble pieces was out of the question; nothing remained, therefore, but to adopt the darts, bolts, or quarrels which produced such deadly effect when shot from cross-bows:—