China had invented flamethrowers by A.D. 975. Here is a description of a battle on the Yangtze presented by Shih Hsu Pai in his book Talks at Fisherman’s Rock:
Chu Lung-Pin as Admiral was attacked by the Sung emperor’s forces in strength. Chu was in command of a large warship more than ten decks high, with flags flying and drums beating. The imperial ships were smaller but they came down the river attacking fiercely, and the arrows flew so fast that the ships under Admiral Chu were like porcupines. Chu hardly knew what to do. So he quickly projected petrol from flame-throwers to destroy the enemy. The Sung forces could not have withstood this, but all of a sudden a north wind sprang up and swept the smoke and flames over the sky towards his own ships and men. As many as 150,000 soldiers and sailors caught in this are overwhelmed, whereupon Chu, being overcome with grief, flung himself into the flames and died.12
Excavations of Kublai Khan’s fleet, which was wrecked in 1281 by a kamikaze wind off Takashima, Japan, have revealed that the fleet was armed with exploding mortar bombs. The Chinese used this weapon against the Mongols in 1232 in the siege of the northern capital, Kaifeng. Chinese history tells us:
Among the weapons of the defenders there was the heaven-shaking thunder crash bomb. It consisted of gunpowder put into an iron container; then when the fuse was lit and the projectile shot off there was a great explosion the noise whereof was like thunder, audible for more than a hundred li [about forty miles] and the vegetation was scorched and blasted by the heat over an area of more than half a mou [many acres]. When hit, even iron armour was quite pierced through.13
Rockets and gunpowder missiles had been known since 1264. In his thirteenth-century book Customs and Institutions of the Old Capital, Chou describes gunpowder weapons. “Some of these were like wheels and revolving things, others like comets and others again shooting along the surface of the water.”14
Gunpowder was used in celebrations, as well, though not always with the intended results. Here is Robert Temple’s account of the empress’s retirement party at the Imperial Palace in 1264. “A display of fireworks was given in the courtyard. One of these, of the ‘ground rat’ type went straight to the steps of the throne of the Emperor’s Mother, and gave her quite a fright. She stood up in anger, gathered her skirts around her, and stopped the feast.”15
By Zheng He’s era, China had acquired centuries of experience in producing all manner of gunpowder weapons. Zheng He’s fleets were armed with rockets that sent sprays of burning paper and gunpowder to set fire to the enemies’ sails; grenades soaked in poison; mortars packed with chemicals and human excrement; shells filled with iron bolts to scythe men to pieces; archers with flaming arrows; sea mines to protect his ships; flamethrowers to incinerate the opposition; and rocket batteries to terrify them. Heaven help their enemies!16
Europeans could hardly have failed to notice this terrifying armory when they met Zheng He’s fleets, whether in Calicut, Cairo, Alexandria, Venice, or The Hague.
The first European books on gunpowder weapons were published in about 1440, one by an anonymous Hussite engineer, the second by the Venetian Giovanni Fontana, and the third by our old friend Mariano di Jacopo ditto Taccola.
Fontana described and illustrated many machines, which he called “innovations of impiety no less than genius.” He marveled that so much explosive force could be generated by such a weak powder.17 Ex quibus est orrida machina quam bombardam appellamus ad dirvendam omnem fortem dvrittiem etiam marmoream turrem non minus impietatis quam ingenii fuisse existimo qui primo adinvenerit tantam vim habeat a pusillo pulvere.”18
By the time Fontana’s book was published, some gunpowder weapons had already been used in Italy, including rockets at the battle of Chioggia in 1380. It could have been mere coincidence that his book appeared shortly after Zheng He’s visit to Venice. However, Fontana’s Liber de omnibus rebus naturalibus throws out a number of other clues.
First, he exhibited knowledge of America forty years before Columbus “discovered” it. Describing the Atlantic, he wrote, “Et ab eius occasu finitur pro parte etiam terra incognita” (In the west the Atlantic is bordered by an unknown land).19
Second, he knew of Australia two centuries before Tasman. Fontana wrote that “recent cosmographs and especially those who owe their information to true experience and distant travel and diligent navigation have found beyond the equinoctial circle to the south (south of 23o20' S) a notable habitable region not covered by water and many famous islands.”20
Third, he exhibited a solid knowledge of the Indian Ocean forty years before Vasco da Gama’s exploration of the area. Taking the evidence as a whole—that Zheng He’s gunners would have used all the machines described in Fontana’s book and would have carried many of them aboard, that Fontana’s book was published in Venice shortly after Zheng He’s squadron reached Venice, and that Fontana knew of America, the Indian Ocean, and Australia, all at that time unknown to Europeans, it seems to me reasonable to assume that Fontana gained his knowledge of many gunpowder weapons from Zheng He’s gunners.
Taccola provides corroborative evidence. He introduced Europe to a Chinese innovation from the early 1400s—a derivation of arsenic to improve the power of gunpowder. As Needham writes:
München Codex 197 is a composite work, the notebook of a military engineer writing in German, the Anonymous Hussite, and that of an Italian, probably Marianus Jacobus Taccola, writing in Latin; it contains dates such as + 1427, + 1438 and + 1441. It gives gunpowder formulae and describes guns with accompanying illustrations. A curious feature, very Chinese (cf. pp. 114, 361), is the addition of arsenic sulphides to the powder; this dates from fire-lance days but probably had the effect of making it more brisant, hence it could have been useful in bombs and grenades. The + 15th century Paris MS, supposedly before + 1453, De Re Militari, perhaps by Paolo Santini, shows a gun on a carriage with a shield at the front, mortars shooting incendiary “bombs” almost vertically to nearby targets, a bombard with a tail (cebotane or tiller), and with a mounted man holding a small gun with a burning match.21
Florentines now had steel and gunpowder to enable them to make bombards and cannons, which Francesco di Giorgio quickly put to good use.
Francesco di Giorgio
In the 1430s and 1440s, the gunpowder weapons drawn by Fontana and Taccola had not yet been “invented.” However, that changed over the next forty years, as we know from the records of Francesco di Giorgio regarding the siege of Castellina in August 1478. The Pazzis, backed by Pope Sixtus V, had initiated an armed uprising against the Medicis in Florence. The north of Italy was soon ablaze. Southerners seized their chance and marched on Tuscany. Francesco was appointed to defend the Tuscan cities.22
Here is Weller’s description of the Neapolitan siege of Colle val d’Elsa, a hill town near Florence:
This terrifying prototype “dragon torpedo” would have smashed and sunk enemy boats without mercy.
This European dragon kite does not seem so frightening!
Duke Federigo had with him for siege purposes five bombards with most terrifying names, such as “Cruel,” “Desperate,” “Victory,” “Ruin” and “No nonsense Here” and which, without doubt, were beautifully decorated, as was the fashion with the Italian cannon at this time: they discharged great balls of stone weighing 370–380 pounds, and their own weight was considerable, the tubes, when nine feet long weighed some 14,000 pounds and the tail 11,000, so that it required more than one hundred pairs of buffaloes to drag them into position
The art of casting these early cannons in two portions, the tube and the tail, was pursued in Siena; and though they might not have had much effect on the result of a modern battle, at this time they were a formidable novelty. Francesco di Giorgio in the siege of Castellina (Aug 14–18, 1478) planted a battery of these Sienese and Papal bombards.23
The Chinese may not have invented trebuchets, but they were certainly in widespread use by the fourteenth century.
Di Giorgio’s detailed treatise on machines of war incl
uded many trebuchets.
Francesco’s cannons are illustrated in the Institute and Museum of the History of Science, Florence.24 Below them is a print of the “thousand ball thunder cannon,” 1300–1350.25 Taccola’s and di Giorgio’s drawings are accompanied by the weapons that were fired—exploding missiles and powder kegs.
The Chinese had dozens of illustrations of exploding missiles and powder kegs in the Huo Lung Chung published circa 1421; and in the Wu Ching Tsung Yao, a Sung dynasty manual originally of 1044 updated in 1412. The “bamboo fire kite” and “iron beaked firebird,” incendiary projectors and “thunderclap bomb” from the Wu Ching Tsung Yao, and the bone-burning and bruising fire-oil magic bomb from the Huo Lung Chung are shown beside di Giorgio’s projectiles.
Chinese mastery of gunpowder led to the development of many effective and deadly weapons.
Taccola’s fire lances do not seem so fierce!
Another interesting similarity between di Giorgio’s designs and the Chinese gunpowder cannon may be seen in the curious bulbous shapes of both. Di Giorgio illustrated five different types of bombard in MS Palatino 767 (BNCF). This curious vase shape is shown in the Huo Lung Chung.26 At that stage, the Chinese had not yet mastered making steel strong enough to cope with the expansion of gas in the explosion chamber once the gunpowder was ignited. The bulbous shape allowed for thicker metal than in the barrel.
By 1400, the early Ming era, this problem had been solved, enabling the Chinese to produce “thousand ball thunder cannon,”27 which Francesco copied in his later drawings.28 Francesco’s cannons have beautiful embellishments. However, remove the embellishments, and what remains is the shape of Chinese cannons.
Chinese naval technology had been far superior to that of Europe’s for centuries.
An armored boat as featured in a military treatise penned in 15th-century Italy.
Gunpowder, steel, cannons, and explosive shells were not the only weapons that Taccola, Francesco, and Fontana copied from the Chinese. Within a generation after the Chinese visit of 1434, Florentines were using a variety of Chinese methods to smelt iron and were using Chinese-designed gunpowder to produce exploding shells from cannons identical in design to their Chinese counterparts.
Chinese mobile siege ladders and offensive weaponry.
Di Giorgio’s illustration of mobile siege ladders.
Chinese mobile shields could be effective when both attacking and defending positions.
Di Giorgio’s shields were not as visually arresting.
Illustrations of crossbows from the Nung Shu.
One of Leonardo’s three illustrations of crossbows.
Chinese horses and oxen could become dangerous weapons!
Compare Taccola’s drawings—they are strikingly similar.
Both the Chinese and the Europeans used fire-bearing animals to devastating effect.
An impregnable border fortress.
A similar fortress by di Giorgio, from his treatise on architecture and machines.
20
PRINTING
There are many definitions of printing. The one I have adopted is “a process in which ink is set on paper by physical or chemical means.” There are four principal methods by which this may be achieved: copper plate, in which the words are engraved on the metal and filled with ink; lithography, a chemical method using the repulsion between grease and water; xylography, or block printing, in which the subject is first carved on a wooden block, which is then coated with ink; and typography, or moveable type printing, in which a separate wooden block is carved for each character or letter.1
There is no dispute that block and moveable type printing were invented in China. The Cultural China Series, Ancient Chinese Inventions, explains its evolution:
Block printing was probably invented between the Sui and Tang dynasties, based on the technique of transferring texts and pictures cut in relief on seals and stone pillars to other surfaces that was developed in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. The invention of paper and improvement of ink led to the advance of block printing….
Movable type printing was then invented [by] Bi Sheng (c. 1051)…In his Mengxi Bitan (Dream Pool Essays), Shen Kuo writes about Bi’s moveable type printing…made of a mixture of clay and glue hardened by baking. He composed texts by placing the types side by side on an iron plate coated with a mixture of resin, wax, and paper ash. Gently heating this plate and pressing the types with a smooth plate to ensure they are on the same level, and then letting the plate cool, and the type was solidified. Once the impression had been made, the type could be detached by reheating the plate. Bi prepared two iron plates to be used in turn to speed up the whole printing process. He also prepared different numbers of types for characters according to their frequency of use in texts, and arranged them in an orderly way to facilitate composing. Shen noted that this technique was most efficient in printing several hundred or several thousand copies.
After Bi Sheng, other people invented types cut out of wood. In about 1313 Wang Zhen, an agronomist of the Yuan Dynasty, printed his work Nung Shu (Treatise on Agriculture) with movable wood types, and wrote about his innovation in an appendix to the treatise. He also invented horizontal compartmented cases that revolved about a vertical axis to permit easier handling of the type. Wang tested his technique, and printed in a month one hundred copies of the 60,000-character Jing doe Xianzhi (Jingde County Annals), which was quite a remarkable achievement at that time.2
The Development of Printing in the Early Ming Dynasty
According to Joseph Needham:
Ming printing was distinguished by the extended scope of its subject matter and by its technical innovations and artistic refinement. In contrast to that of previous periods, the printing under the Ming included not only the traditional works in classics, history, religion and literary collections but also such new subjects or fields as popular novels, music, industrial arts, accounts of ocean voyages, shipbuilding and scientific treatises from the West, which had never before been seen in print in China….
Ming printers introduced metal typography, improved the multicolour process of block printing, refined the woodcut for book illustrations and used xylography for facsimile reproductions of old editions.3
Needham also registered the monumental contributions of Zhu Di. Between 1405 and 1431, Zhu Di assembled a team of three thousand scholars to compile the Yongle Dadian, an encyclopedia of a scale and scope unparalleled in history. This gigantic work included a huge amount of information garnered from Zheng He’s voyages and included a total of 22,937 passages extracted from more than 7,000 titles from classics, history, philosophy, literature, religion, drama, industrial arts, and agriculture. It was a work of 50 million characters bound in 11,095 volumes, each sixteen inches high and ten inches wide. This massive endeavor was deposited in the Imperial Library in the Forbidden City when it was inaugurated in 1421.
It is generally accepted that moveable block printing reached Europe from China at about the same time that Zheng He’s ambassador reached Florence in 1434. There seem to be three principal contenders for the distinction of being the first European to use moveable block printing, the claimants being Laurens Janszoon Coster, Johannes Gutenberg, and an unknown printer in Venice or Florence.
Laurens Jonszoon Coster’s Claim
In the center of old Haarlem on the North Sea coast of Holland stands a substantial house just across the square from the Great Church. On its walls the curious may view this inscription:
MEMORIAE SACRUM
TYPOGRAPHIA
ARS ARTIUM OMNIUM
CONSERVATIX
HIC PRIMUM INVENTA
CIRCA ANNUM MCCCCXL
(In sacred memory of typography, the preserver of all other arts, first invented here about the year 1440).4
The adherents of Coster, the subject of this inscription, say that he was walking in the woods between 1420 and 1440 when he cut bark from a tree and formed it into mirror images of letters, which he pinn
ed together to print words on paper. His son-in-law helped him to experiment with different inks to improve the quality of the print. Next he carved out pictures and explained them in words. His first printed book was said to be Spieghel onzer Behoudenisse (Mirror of our salvation). The papers were printed on one side, and the blank sides were pasted together to form the page. Junius, centuries later, recounts what happened next: “The new invention thrived because of the readiness with which the people bought the novel product. Apprentices were taken on—the beginning of misfortune, for amongst them was a certain Johann…. This Johann, after he had learned the art of casting types and combining them—in fact the whole trade—took the first available opportunity of Christmas Eve, when everyone was in Church, to steal the whole type supply with the tools and all the equipment of his master.”5
The story continues that Johann went first to Amsterdam, then to Cologne, and finally to Mainz, where he opened a printing establishment. Gutenberg financed Johann and eventually acquired his business.
Gutenberg’s Claim
Gutenberg was some thirty years younger than Coster. He was born in 1398, of Frielo Gensfleisch (gooseflesh) and Elsa Gutenberg (good hill). In those days, sons could take their mother’s maiden name if there was a possibility of the name dying out.6
Gutenberg’s claim to primacy was carefully examined by Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Paul Needham of Princeton University. They have found by computer analysis that the Gutenberg Bible was not set from moveable type, nor were a dozen of Gutenberg’s other early books. If these scholars are correct, Gutenberg’s claim is demolished.7
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