By the 12th century, the Chinese were using crude hand grenades and were starting to use the earliest forms of rockets and cannons. The energy from the burning gunpowder, packed into a gun barrel, generated enough pressure to drive a cannon ball at high speed.
The oldest metal gun, marked with a date of 1298, is the bronze Xanadu gun from northern China. It is 34.7 cm long and weighs 6.2 kg. But Chinese records indicate Yuan dynasty troops were using hand cannons in 1288. (The military term, "gun" means a cannon with a high muzzle velocity and a flat trajectory. Howitzers and mortars are designed to lob shells over obstacles and have lower muzzle velocities).
Metal cannons were mounted on the Great Wall of China to protect it from the Mongolian hordes but the Mongols quickly learned the technology after Genghis Khan invaded China in 1205. In 1279 Kublai Khan completed the conquest and attempted to invade Japan in 1274 and again in 1281 CE.
During the second invasion (in 1281), the Mongol general Arakhan, with 4400 ships and 142,000 soldiers and sailors, attacked Tsushima on 9 June and Iki Island on 14 June 1281. According to the History of Yuan, the Japanese commander Shōni Suketoki with a force in the tens of thousands was defeated when the Mongol forces discharged their firearms.
Unfortunately for the Mongol army, on 15 August, a great typhoon, known in Japanese as the kamikaze, devastated the fleet at anchor, while some of the ships managed to sail away, abandoning more than 100,000 troops to die. Chinese and Mongol sources record a casualty rate between 60 and 90 percent.
Although unsuccessful, the invasions were one of the first use of gunpowder in war outside China. In particular, the Mongols used hand-thrown bombs; the first grenades.
In Europe, the first cannon was depicted in 1326 and by the end of the century cannon were widespread throughout Europe and Asia.
In 1346, the British used cannon to defeat a large force of French crossbowmen at battle of Crecy during the Hundred Years' War. In Europe, guns were used against infantry until about 1374 when heavier cannon began battering castle walls for the first time. The British also rediscovered the Chinese technique of using cannon for defence by shooting fire at wooden siege towers, setting them on fire before they could be dragged close to castle walls.
John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, landed on the coast of France, near Bordeaux, with a force of 3,000 men on 17 October 1452. Taken by surprise, King Charles VII of France was unable to counter-attack until 1453 but, on July 8, he laid siege to the English garrison in Castillon (East of Bordeaux). Meanwhile, Talbot, with an additional 3,000 man reinforcement, set out to relieve the garrison and arrived at Libourne late on July 16 with only 500 men-at-arms and 800 mounted archers. Despite earlier plans to wait, Talbot, believing the French were retreating and expecting his reinforcements to arrive soon, order an attack.
Unfortunately for Talbot, Charles VII's ordinance officer, Jean Bureau, had built an artillery park containing up to 300 guns of various sizes, and this was well protected by a deep trench and the steep bank of the River Lidoire.
The French guns obliterated the advancing British soldiers and as Talbot's reinforcements arrived they met the same fate. After more than an hour, Breton cavalry forced the surviving British to retreat. It was the end of the Hundred Year War.
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Middle Era
Non-FictionJesus and Muhammad adopted the Hebrew's belief in one God and Christianity and Islam spread throughout the world. The Chinese were using gunpowder in the 9th century and, by the 13th , cannon dominated the battlefields. Paper money appeared in China...
