CHAPTER VII

THE CHINESE

China, like India, affords an example of “arrested civilisation:” the Chinese intellect and language became petrified while still in a primitive stage of development. But, unlike the Hindus, the Chinese betook themselves at an early period to historical pursuits. “Debarred both by the nature of the material at their command and by a lack of original genius from indulging in the higher branches of imaginative writing, Chinese authors devoted themselves with untiring energy and with very considerable ability to the compilation of information concerning their own and neighbouring countries.”[281] Among the results of their labours are the “Twenty-One Histories,” from the third century B.C. to the middle of the seventeenth century, sixty-six folio volumes, and a number of vast Encyclopædias, of which the _Koo-kin-too-shoo_, &c., occupies 6109 volumes. From such immense compilations and other sources Chinese scholars have supplied us with much information about the present subject.

Although the invention of gunpowder is disclaimed for his countrymen “by every (Chinese) writer who treats seriously” on the subject,[282] the people cherish the legend that the invention was made by a Chinaman in some forgotten past. The existence of this legend among a people possessed of a deep veneration for antiquity is in no way surprising. Every Chinese custom, art, and institution is supposed to be very ancient, and what is not really old is readily invested with fictitious antiquity. The world as we know it, they tell us, came into being 2,670,000 years before Confucius, who was a contemporary of the prophet Daniel. “The more sober historians, however, are content to begin with a sufficiently mythical Emperor, who reigned only 2800 years before the Christian era.”[283] This insatiable craving for antiquity is shown in all their works. “As with all other arts (the Chinese) have claimed for the manufacture of porcelain an antiquity far beyond the actual facts of the case. This exaggerated estimate of the antiquity of Chinese porcelain was for a long time supported by the supposed discovery in Egypt of certain small bottles made of real porcelain and inscribed with Chinese characters, which were said to have been found in tombs at Thebes, dating as early as 1800 B.C. The fact, however, that they are inscribed with quotations from Chinese poets of the eighth century A.D., and have characters of a comparatively modern form, shows that the whole story of their discovery is a fraud.... During all periods Chinese potters were constantly in the habit of copying earlier styles and of forging their marks, so that very little reliance can be placed on internal evidence. Indeed, the forgeries often deceive the Chinese collectors of old porcelain.”[284]

According to the Jesuits, Chinese history is free from this defect. Father Moyria de Maillac (commonly called Mailla), in the long introductions to his _Histoire générale de la Chine_, begs us to put our full trust in the Chinese historians, and pleads that, however mendacious the lower orders of the nation, the better classes love the truth, and the historians are honest and accurate. But such pleas in bar of investigation and verification are of little weight unless it can be shown that Chinese historians never drew (in good faith) erroneous conclusions, never mistook the meaning of a document, were never misinformed, and never made a slip in writing. As Gibbon clearly saw,[285] the Jesuits were blinded by admiration of the Celestials; their sharp, critical sagacity was blunted by the air of sincerity displayed in Chinese books.[286] But this “accent de sincérité” is ruthlessly treated by MM. Langlois and Seignobos: “C’est une impression presque irrésistible, mais elle n’en est pas moins une illusion. Il n’y a aucun critérium extérieur ni de la sincérité ni de l’exactitude. ‘L’accent de sincérité,’ c’est l’apparence de la conviction; un orateur, un acteur, un menteur d’habitude l’auront plus facilement en mentant qu’un homme indécis en disant ce qu’il croit. La vigeur de l’affirmation ne prouve pas toujours la vigeur de la conviction, mais seulement l’habileté ou l’effronterie. De même l’abondance et la précision des détails, bien quelles fassent une vive impression sur les lecteurs inexpérimentés, ne garantissent pas l’exactitude des faits;[287] elles ne renseignent que sur l’imagination de l’auteur quand il est sincère ou sur son impudence quand il ne l’est pas. On est porté de dire d’un récit circonstancié: ‘Des choses de ce genre ne s’inventent pas.’ Elles ne s’inventent pas, mais elles se transportent très facilement d’un personage, d’un pays ou d’un temps à un autre.—Aucun caractère extérieur d’un document ne dispense donc d’en faire la critique.”[288] In spite of their zeal for the truth, Chinese historians are no more infallible than others, and it is certain that they were unconsciously led into error at times by the change in meaning which military words underwent in China as well as elsewhere. Thus

Mao-yiian-i erroneously believed that _huo-p’áu_ meant _cannon_ in old times, as it did in his own. But from a sketch he has fortunately given of one (reproduced by Romocki, i. 41) it is clear that it originally meant a machine for scattering blazing incendiary matter.

The first two questions that present themselves are: (1) Did the Chinese make use of gunpowder in a very distant past? and (2) did they possess an explosive shell in 1232?

The Chinese annals give no support to the hypothesis that gunpowder was known in China in very early times. Currency was given to the popular legends about it by such writers as Father Gaubil, who declares that gunpowder had been in use for 1600 years when he wrote, and Father Amiot, who fully accepts a much earlier date. With reference to Koung-ming, who is said to have employed earth-thunder (_ty-lei_) about 200 A.D., Amiot says: (_a_) “Les auteurs qui parlent de Koung-ming ne le font pas l’inventeur de cette manière de nuire à l’ennemi. Ils disent, au contraire, qu’il l’avait puisée dans les ouvrages des anciens guerriers; ce qui est une preuve sans réplique que les Chinois connaissaient la poudre à tirer ... bien longtemps avant que cette connaissance fût parvenue en Europe.... (_b_) Les anciens Chinois employaient la poudre (_chen-ho-yen_), soit dans les combats, soit pour mettre le feu au camp des ennemis.... (_c_) Cette poudre (_ny-foung-yo_) a une vertue qui, ce me semble, pourrait être d’une très grande utileté dans nos armées; c’est que la fumée va également contre le vent.”[289] In (_a_) and (_c_) of these extracts the true note of legend is audibly sounded, and the tacit assumption that _ty-lei_ was an explosive is to be noted. As to (_b_), Amiot was unwittingly describing some early incendiary similar to that of Marcus Græcus, No. 2: “Ignis quæ comburit domos inimicorum.” Such is Father Amiot’s “preuve sans réplique” that the Chinese possessed gunpowder in the times of the pre-adamite Sultans. It must be put aside; and with it must be laid the evidence of Fathers Maillac and Gaubil. First, their critical faculty became paralysed when dealing with Chinese history. Secondly, they evidently did not understand the difference between an explosive and an incendiary. Thirdly, without questioning their good faith, they are open to the charges brought against them by MM. Reinaud and Favé, when speaking of M. Quatremère’s dating Artillery in China at the thirteenth century: “(Il) ne s’est pas aperçu que PP. Mailla et Gaubil avaient traduits différement certains passages des Annales chinoises, et qu’ils y avaient même ajouté tantôt des expressions de leur cru, et tantôt des interpolations de la version tartare-mandchou, version qui date seulement d’un peu plus d’un siècle, et qui, par consequent, n’a aucune autorité.”[290]

Had the Chinese an explosive shell in 1232?

The following is a translation by M. Stanislas Julien of a passage in the Encyclopædia entitled _Tung-Chien-Kang-Mu_, relating to the siege of Pien-king (now Kai-fung-fu) in 1232, given by Reinaud and Favé in the _Journal Asiatique_, Oct. 1849: “A cette époque on faisait usage de _ho-pao_ ou _pao à feu_, appelée _Tchin-tien-louï_, ou ‘tonnerre qui ébranle le ciel,’ On se servait pour cela d’un pot en fer que l’on remplissait de _yo_. A peine y avait-on mis le feu que le pao s’élevait, et que le feu éclatait de toute part. Son bruit ressemblait à celui du tonnerre, et s’étendait à plus de cent _lis_ (_i.e._ thirty-three English miles); il pouvait répandre l’incendie sur une surface de plus d’un demi-arpent (_i.e._ about one-third of an acre).... Les Mongols construisirent avec les peaux de bœuf un couloir qui leur permit d’arriver jusqu’an pied des remparts. Ils se mirent à saper les murs, et y pratiquèrent des cavités, où l’on pouvait se loger sans avoir rien à craindre des hommes placés en haut. Un des assiégés proposa de suspendre à des chaînes de fer des pao à feu, et de les descendre le long du mur. Arrivés aux endroits qui étaient minés, les pao éclataient et mettaient en pièces les ennemis et les peaux de bœuf, au point même de ne pas en laisser de vestige.” There is another account of the shell in the _Wu-pei-chi_, published in 1621, but (as one gathers from Mr. Mayers[291]) it is so similar in the details that the two accounts cannot be taken as independent. They merely quote some common document or repeat some common tradition.

Like the _Liber Ignium_ of Marcus Græcus, the _Tung-Chien-Kang-Mu_ is not the work of one man or of one period. The original portions (the “Old Recipes” of Marcus) were written by Ssu-ma-kuang, 1019-86, and were named _T’ung-Chien_, or the “Mirror of History,” by the reigning Emperor. The book was brought up to date by Chu-hsi, 1130-1200, and was afterwards continued, with commentaries, by various writers, up to the seventeenth century. The above-quoted passage belongs to the commentators,[292] and was written by some one whose date, name, and authority for his statement are alike unknown to us; but it was presumably written long after the event it records.

We have seen in Julien’s translation what the encyclopædist actually says, but what meaning did he intend to convey by his words? Did he mean to say the shell exploded? The passage may be divided into two clauses: in the first he explains generally the action of the ho-pao, and in the second he gives a particular example of its use. In the first clause he says that “no sooner was a light applied to it than the fire burst forth on all sides” (_le feu éclatait de toute part_): in the second clause he says, “the pao burst forth” (_les pao éclataient_). But the effect produced by the shell shows that this latter phrase is simply an elliptical way of saying, “the fire of the mixture contained in the pao burst forth.” On this point Reinaud and Favé are clear: “_Les pao à feu éclataient_ s’applique aux éclats de la flamme qui sortait par les ouvertures,”[293]—holes in the shell which were probably numerous. Mayers agrees: the pao were lowered into the excavations, “when the fire burst out from them, utterly destroying every fragment of the hides,” &c.[294] The Chinese writer was describing an incendiary, not an explosive. Gunpowder would have left in the hiding-place of the Mongols a tangled mass of charred human remains and scorched cowhide: only an incendiary could have destroyed its contents so that “not a vestige remained.” Father Gaubil and M. Berthelot acquiesce in this conclusion:[295] Herr von Eomocki dissents from it.[296]

There is nothing in the military history of China in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to lead us to suppose that the Chinese possessed an explosive during that period. In 1255 Prince Hulágu had 1000 Chinese arbalisters in his pay to work his incendiaries,[297] and it may be presumed that he would have learnt the secret of gunpowder from them if they had known it; but he possessed no explosive. Father Carpini, _cir._ 1250, states that when hard-pressed the Tartars had recourse to incendiaries, and Rashid ed-Din, in his history of Hulagu’s campaign of 1260, makes no allusion to explosives.[298] The Chinese had only reached the same stage as Marcus Græcus in 1257: in this year they had Roman candles.[299] During the siege of Siang-yang-fu, 1268-73, “Khubelai sent to his nephew Abaka, in Persia, for engineers skilled in making catapults, called mangonals[300] by Marco Polo. Two such engineers were sent.”[301] We have three different notices of this siege, Chinese, Persian, and Venetian, and “they all concur as to the employment of foreign engineers from the West,”[302] but none of them mentions the use of explosives by either side. “The Chinese at that period,” says Sir John Davis, “were as little acquainted with firearms as Europeans.”[303] When Chang-chi-ki’s fleet on the Kiang River was destroyed a few years afterwards by Atchu, it was by means of fire-arrows.[304] In a word, during the thirteenth century, the Chinese made a free use of various incendiaries already noticed in the chapters on the Greeks and Arabs; and they seem to have made no progress in the manufacture of their missiles during the course of the fourteenth.[305] Not until we reach the fifteenth century do we meet with gunpowder and cannon.

The Prince of Yen (afterwards the Emperor Yung Loh) is said to have been “defeated by firearms” at the battle of Tung Chang, 1401;[306] but whether these arms were furnished with incendiaries or explosives is doubtful. The first trustworthy account of the use of artillery in China is given in the _Kai-yii-tsung-kao_, published in 1790, by Chao I, a man of considerable ability, and an accomplished antiquarian. He states that in the beginning of Yung Loh’s reign, 1407, cannon were acquired by the Emperor and employed during his campaigns in Cochin China.[307] Whence came these cannon and their ammunition?

It is antecedently improbable that the Chinese either invented or manufactured them; for although the Chinese exhibited considerable intellectual power in some fields of investigation, they possessed little genius for mechanical or chemical inventions, and what mechanical ability they had was absorbed in other pursuits. When actually possessed of powder, they seem to have been incapable of making any improvement in its manufacture. “Si la poudre de Chine vaut mieux que la nôtre,” says Father Incarville, the ablest of the Jesuits I have consulted, “cela vien plutôt de la bonté des matières que du soin que les Chinois prennent de la faire bonne; ils la grainent très mal et ne savent pas la lisser.”[308] “Whatever their claims as inventors,” says another writer, “it is certain that the Chinese have made no progress in the art” (of making gunpowder).[309] Even their fireworks were no better than European fireworks. They did not employ stars, and their largest rockets had a length of only five inches, with an internal diameter of eight lines.[310]

There is no trustworthy evidence, so far as I am aware, to prove that the Chinese invented gunpowder. The statements of the Jesuits on this particular matter are worthless for reasons already given,[311] and the popular Chinese tradition is deprived of any little weight it might otherwise have had by the disavowal of the invention by sober Chinese historians. On the other hand, we possess a number of facts which point to the conclusion that the Chinese obtained their first gunpowder and firearms from the West.

(_a_) It has been already pointed out that the mangonals used at the siege of Siang-yang-fu, 1268-73, were of western origin, and were worked by western engineers.

(_b_) The residence of the Polos in China, 1275-92, was by no means an isolated fact. They were but the pioneers of a considerable body of mechanics, missionaries, and merchants who continued their relations with the country for at least half a century.[312] It may be doubted whether the merchants ever lost touch with China.

(_c_) Yung Loh, the first Chinese Emperor who possessed _ts’iang_, or cannon, had agents in Malay, Delhi, Herat, and Mecca,[313] and his agent in the latter city could hardly have failed to hear of, and report on the use of firearms in the West. If such were the case, there was nothing to prevent the Emperor from obtaining small guns by land, or guns of any size by sea. There had been communication by land between China and Europe from the time of the early Roman emperors of the West.[314] It was seriously interrupted, no doubt, by the disorders which broke out in China at the close of the ninth century, but it was re-established when they came to an end in the middle of the thirteenth.[315] Mr. F. Hirth proves in his “China and the Roman Orient” that there was communication by sea between China and Europe at a very early date. Masudi speaks of the communication in his own time, the tenth century. The Arab and Chinese ships met, he says, at a port called Killat, half-way between Arabia and China, where they transhipped their cargoes.[316] There was constant communication between China and the west coast of India in the first half of the fifteenth century. Abd ur-Razzak says the men of Calicut were bold navigators, and adds that they were called (in compliment) “the sons of China.” When John Deza destroyed the Zamorin’s fleet there, it was commanded by a Chinaman, Cutiale.[317]

(_d_) The Chinese made their charcoal from young shoots of the willow in the eighteenth century,[318] and “as they seldom change anything,”[319] they probably did so from the beginning. Twigs of willow are recommended for this purpose by Roger Bacon and Hassan er-Rammah (pp. 149, 24.)

(_e_) The Chinese strained the mother-liquor of their saltpetre through straw;[320] so also did Whitehorne (A., p. 20).

(_f_) They employed animal glue, or charcoal, to remove the insoluble impurities of the mother-liquor,[321] just as Bacon did, if the explanation of the word “Phœnix” given in Chap. VIII. be accepted (p. 154).

(_g_) They incorporated the ingredients of gunpowder on a _marble_ slab,[322] as directed by Marcus Græcus, recipes 4 and 13, for incendiaries, and by Arderne for gunpowder (p. 177).

(_h_) They passed their rocket composition through a sieve of fine silk,[323] the counterpart of Arderne’s “sotille couerchief” (Ib.).

(_i_) They occasionally added camphor and mercury to their powder,[324] like Kyeser and many other westerns (Romocki, i. 157).

(_j_) They called their powder _yo_, “the drug,” as did the Germans, Danes, and Dutch (p. 6).

(_k_) They used varnishes,[325] of the same family as the _lutum sapientiæ_, Marcus Græcus, recipe 1.

(_l_) An Encyclopædia, quoted in the _Pai-pien_, 1581, states that “on the walls of Si-ngan there was long preserved an iron _chen-tien-lui_ = heaven-shaking thunderer, which in shape was like two cups”[326]—the shell of Valturio (p. 221).

(_m_) Bits of metal, _mitraille_, were added to the charge of Chinese shells,[327] after the manner prescribed in a German Firebook (Romocki, i. 189).

(_n_) The shell were loaded with the _maximum_ charge that could be rammed into them,[328] as directed in the same Firebook (ib.).

(_o_) For repairing and closing the interstices of their built-up bombards, the Chinese appear to have used the same materials the Scotch used for Mons Meg; and it is noticeable that the Chinese preferred “western iron” for this purpose: “Ils emploient pour les confectionner du cuivre rouge. Dans les interstices apparents, ceux qui emploient du fer se servent de fer doux et malléable pour consolider (ces machines). Le fer de l’Occident est le meilleur qui puisse être employé à cet usage.”[329] In the “Chronicles and Memorials of Scotland,” vol. vi., for July 1459, we find: “For the repair of the great bombard at Edinburgh, brass, copper and iron, _so much_” [_pro expensis factis circa eandem emendacionem (magni bumbardi ante castellum de Edinburgh) in ere, cupro et ferro_].

(_p_) In 1520 the heavy guns of the Portuguese ships at Canton “attracted considerable attention, and soon acquired the name of ‘Franks.’... The Chinese seem to have subsequently availed themselves of the assistance of the Portuguese, and of their wonderful guns, to punish their own pirates”;[330] a circumstance which recalls the expedition of Mahmoud of Gujarat against the Bulsar pirates in 1482 (p. 116). These “Franks,” we learn from the _Wu-pei-che_, “were of iron, 5 or 6 _ch’ih_ (6 or 7 ft.) long.... Five small barrels (chambers) were used, which were placed (successively) inside the body of the piece from which they were fired off.”[331]

(_q_) The Chinese guns manufactured in 1618 were cast under the superintendence of the Jesuits at Peking.[332]

The general conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing inquiry is virtually Gibbon’s, which may be expressed in somewhat firmer language than he has used, since we possess many facts which were unknown to him. It is highly probable that the invention of gunpowder was carried from the West to China, by land or water, at the end of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century, and “was falsely adopted as an old national discovery before the arrival of the Portuguese and the Jesuits in the sixteenth.”[333]