Gunpowder

Gunpowder is the name for a class of low-explosive mixtures used as propelling charges in guns and as blasting agents in mining. The first such explosive was black powder, a mixture of saltpetre (potassium nitrate), sulfur, and charcoal. Black powder is relatively insensitive to shock and friction and must be ignited by flame or heat.

Although smokeless powder has largely supplanted black powder as a propellant in guns, black powder is still widely used for ignition charges, primers, fuses, and blank-fire charges in military ammunition. Its history reaches back to China, where it was used in fireworks and signals by the 10th century.

Black powder is a mechanical mixture rather than a chemical compound, and its behaviour depends on the balance of its three ingredients. The standard proportions are 75 percent saltpetre, 15 percent charcoal and 10 percent sulfur. On combustion the charge yields about 40 percent gaseous and 60 percent solid products, the latter mostly whitish smoke.

Because the burning of black powder is a surface phenomenon, a fine granulation burns faster than a coarse one. In the 1850s Thomas J. Rodman of the U.S. Army developed black powder grains shaped to provide a progressively greater burning surface as combustion progressed.

Gunpowder is commonly counted among the Four Great Inventions of China, and its invention is placed in the late Tang dynasty in the 9th century; the Chinese called it huoyao, meaning fire medicine. The Chinese had unintentionally invented firecrackers around 200 BC by tossing bamboo into fire. When the powder was packed into bamboo or paper tubes and lit on fire, history had its first fireworks.

Gunpowder entered warfare first as an incendiary compound rather than a propellant. Small packages of it, wrapped in paper or bamboo, were fastened to arrows and lit with a fuse, while bombs combining gunpowder with scrap iron were launched from catapults. A further device, the fire-spurting lance, used bamboo or metal tubes to direct the burning mixture. The earliest surviving chemical formula appears in the Wujing Zongyao, the Song military manual of 1044, which records the first true gunpowder formula and describes its large-scale production. Song military engineers went on to develop early rockets, cannons, bombs, and mines.

The first recorded military use of gunpowder came as fire arrows at the siege of Yuzhang in 904. The fire lance is first confirmed at the siege of De'an in 1132, in modern Hubei. Between the 10th and 12th centuries the huo qiang emerged as a short-range proto-gun that channeled explosive power through a cylinder, initially a bamboo tube. By the late 13th century, true guns were being made of cast brass or iron.

Knowledge of gunpowder travelled quickly across Eurasia, carried in part by the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century. The Mongols were ready adopters of new military technology, and they captured Chinese engineers and gunners to secure the skills they needed. Chinese and Mongol forces alike made extensive use of gunpowder weapons during that century. In the Muslim world the formula was acquired between 1240 and 1280, the period in which Hasan al-Rammah set down Arabic recipes and instructions for purifying saltpetre.

The earliest European reference appears in Roger Bacon's Opus Majus of 1267, which mentions a firecracker toy found in various parts of the world. Guns had reached the West by 1304, when the Arabs produced a bamboo tube reinforced with iron to shoot an arrow. The earliest known European depiction of a gun follows in a manuscript associated with Walter de Milemete in 1326.

During the 15th century, guns evolved into large artillery pieces known as bombards, a development pioneered by states such as the Duchy of Burgundy. Cannons had been in use from the 13th century, dangerous and inaccurate at first but dramatically improved by the 15th century. Two brass cannons were cast in Florence in 1326, and the Tower of London possessed cannons in 1338. The first recorded European battle where cannons were used was the Battle of Crecy in 1346 CE, where they helped the English defeat a larger French and Genovese army. One of the largest cannons produced was Mons Meg, made for James II of Scotland in 1449 CE, which could fire stone balls weighing 180 kilos over a distance of around 250 metres.

The Ottoman artillery at Constantinople demonstrated the new power of the bombard. The army of Mehmed II fielded 62 cannons in 1453, the largest so mammoth it could be fired only seven times a day. The Hungarian engineer Urban offered his cannons first to the Byzantines before selling his expertise to the Sultan. The Theodosian Walls were blasted into rubble and the city was conquered on 29 May 1453. From the 15th century, cast iron balls came into use, and when batteries of huge cannons firing balls weighing over 100 kilos came into wider use in the 15th century CE, the days of static siege warfare effectively came to an end. In response, walls were thickened and heightened, and defenders' windows were altered.

The broader military transformation saw gunpowder-projected missiles become the norm, ending the knight's and bowmen's domination of the medieval battlefield. The star fort or bastion fort, popular in Europe during the 16th century, was a response to artillery. Small handheld cannons weighing up to 15 kilos were used from the 14th century, probably introduced by Arab armies. More accurate handguns known as arquebus or hackbut appeared from the 15th century, and matchlock, wheel lock and flintlock weapons were developed in Europe.

Grinding the ingredients became a mechanized operation when water-driven wooden stamp mills came into use beginning in the 15th century; these were in turn replaced by power-driven metallic crushing devices in the 19th century. Black powder served as a useful explosive for breaking up coal and rock deposits until the early 20th century, when dynamite gradually replaced it for most mining purposes.

Sicilian sulfur found uses in vineyard pest control and in gunpowder, helping exports increase about sixfold between 1840 and 1900 and beyond.

The plot was organized by Robert Catesby to end the persecution of Roman Catholics by the English government, intending to blow up the entire English Parliament at the state opening of 1605 and kill King James I. The conspirators believed that in the chaos of an incinerated House of Parliament they could replace the dead King James with his daughter, the nine-year-old Princess Elizabeth. Around midnight on 4 November 1605 one of the conspirators, Guy Fawkes, was discovered in the cellar of the Parliament building with barrels of gunpowder.

Fawkes died on 31 January 1606 when he jumped from a ladder while climbing to the gallows and broke his neck. Parliament established November 5 as a day of public thanksgiving in 1606, and the first celebration of Gunpowder Treason Day followed in November 1606, a custom that continued. The authorities encouraged bonfires on the evening of the 5th of November, starting a tradition that continues. A tradition that originated from the Gunpowder Plot is the ceremonial search of the Palace of Westminster by the Yeomen of the Guard before the State Opening of Parliament.

Gunpowder irrevocably changed warfare in Europe during the sixteenth century, but literature lagged behind. Face-to-face combat between knights became obsolete, yet nostalgia for that older mode of fighting held on in writing. Gunpowder culture meant shot, cannons, muskets, harquebusiers, a turn to siege warfare, massed infantry tactics, and a radically different sort of naval battle. Even jousting carried on as the wheel-lock pistol made actual cavalry charges suicidal.

Gunpowder, together with paper, printing, and the compass, became familiar in Europe. Paper and gunpowder, both Chinese inventions, had a much greater impact on culture than silk. The nation-states with access to gunpowder had obvious advantages in war, and the export of gunpowder had an enormous impact on the political history of Europe.

• c. 200 BC
  Firecrackers from bamboo
  Bamboo thrown into fire produced the earliest firecrackers.
• 808
  Earliest recorded formula
  The earliest recorded gunpowder formula appears in a Daoist text.
• 904
  Fire arrows at Yuzhang
  Fire arrows were used at the siege of Yuzhang.
• 1044
  Wujing Zongyao
  The Wujing Zongyao records gunpowder formulas.
• 1132
  Fire lance at De'an
  A fire lance was used at the siege of De'an.
• 1240–1280
  Hasan al-Rammah's treatise
  Written formulas appeared in the Middle East in a treatise by Hasan al-Rammah. ^{8History of gunpowder · Wikipedia ↗}
• 1267
  Roger Bacon's Opus Majus
  The earliest European references to gunpowder appear in Roger Bacon's Opus Majus, which mentions a firecracker toy found in various parts of the world. ^{8History of gunpowder · Wikipedia ↗}
• 1326
  Walter de Milemete manuscript and Florence cannons
  The Walter de Milemete manuscript depicts a cannon, and two brass cannons were being cast in Florence. ^{9Artillery in Medieval Europe · World History Encyclopedia ↗}
• 1338
  Tower of London cannons
  The Tower of London had its own cannons. ^{9Artillery in Medieval Europe · World History Encyclopedia ↗}
• 1346
  Battle of Crecy
  Gunpowder weapons were used at the Battle of Crecy.
• 1449
  Mons Meg
  Mons Meg, a large bombard, was built.
• 1453
  Ottoman cannons at Constantinople
  Ottoman cannons were used at the siege of Constantinople.
• 1605
  Gunpowder Plot
  The Gunpowder Plot attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
• 1662
  Waltham Abbey mills
  The Waltham Abbey mills were first recorded.
• 1787
  Crown purchase of Waltham Abbey
  The Crown purchased the Waltham Abbey mills.
• 1816
  Britain's Sicilian sulfur treaty
  Britain secured a treaty for Sicilian sulfur.