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.