One of these three guns is of a slightly ruder type than the other two. Both the others contain a mechanical feature which this ruder gun lacks, the ratchet on the under-side of the bottom of the boxing of the breech-cavity for engaging the point of an elevating pawl when in battery. A convenient mechanical contrivance like this could not have been introduced into ordnance and then omitted from professional work without providing a substitute, unless the traditions and models of former work had been lost.
Chinese practice, still more than European, would respect the ancient and approved ways, and anybody would leave the better structure alone.
We may then, at this stage of the inquiry, and simply to settle the order of reading from latest to earliest, regard the gun without the ratchet as of earlier date than the guns with ratchets.
THE GUN OF 1680.
All three guns bear inscriptions which have been translated by the accomplished scholar Wong-Chin-Foo, of New York. One of those with ratchets presents the longest inscription—55 characters. This reads:
(Col. 1 at right) K’ang-Hi, 19 year 2 month day. (Col. 2) Tung-Chi-Shi whole company built for Kiang-do-dun its metal top, Fulang-khi number 24 weight one hundred and one catties. (Col. 3) Gien-Chi-Gwen-Gwan-Ja (The casting, General, superintendent acting) Chung Shin Ching. (Col. 4) Chieg managing official Chow-Yi-Ho. (Col. 5) General of division Kiang-Chun. (Col. 6) Master workman Yu-Shun-Jen.
K’ang-Hi was the regnal title employed by the second Emperor of the present dynasty. This title is indicated in this inscription as an imperial regnal title by having its first character slightly above the rest of the inscription; a curious etiquette which prevails in inscriptions, in proclamations, and in formal official documents, but not always in printed books. It is shown, however, in a page of a printed book which illustrates this article. There are now strict and arbitrary rules for this, going much further than mere elevations of single characters. The present etiquette requires full spacing in theelevations. The present rules are recent and of this century. They are analogous to the black and red ink formalities of army papers in the United States.
This Emperor came to the throne in 1662, when eight years old. His nineteenth year would begin in February, 1680. He reigned over sixty years, and on his decease received the temple name of Shen-Tsu-Jen-Hwang-Ti, by which he is spoken of in books written after his death.
He was educated in part by Father Adam Schaal, a Jesuit missionary who had been his father's tutor, and who held, on the demise of the crown, official position in the board of mathematicians.
Under the regency which ensued, and which lasted about four years, there was a religious, perhaps a national reaction. The missionaries fell into disgrace and were imprisoned, but were released and restored to favor in or soon after A. D. well as to reign.
For a century and a half the one undisputed Chinese fact among Europeans has been, that at this period the autochthoaous skill of the Chinaman in ordnance and artillery was very limited, if not quite lacking. Nothing less than most convincing proofs can shake this conclusion. This proof is at Annapolis.
Father Duhalde relates that there were during his residence in China, somewhat later than this date, some bombards at the gates of Nanking and some "Pattereroes" in the buildings on the sea-coast, but not skill enough in China to make use of them. In 1621 the city of Macao gave the emperor, Tien-Ki, three guns; to manage which, Portuguese engineers were taken into Chinese service. These Macao guns proved terrifying to Tartars, so that in A.D. 1636, under the last Ming Emperor, during the Tartar invasion, at a time when there was a persecution of Christians for the purification of the empire, and to appease the divine wrath, Father Schaal was entrapped into admitting that he knew the European method of casting guns, and was ordered by the Emperor, Tsung Cheng, to instruct workmen in the art, and was assigned a proper place near the palace and allowed assistants from the imperial retinue.
Though not directly stated by contemporary European writers, it is believed by Williams and others that some guns were produced by Father Schaal. Duhalde says: "Use was made of this Means to introduce into the Empire a great number of Evangelical Workmen." Whatever was inaugurated by Father Schaal was but temporary, and his laboratory, if any was formed, had been broken up before 1670.
In 1665, Fathers Schaal and Verbiest were imprisoned in fetters, and Father Schaal was tried for his life and convicted, but he was released, pardoned, and died of a good old age, August 15, 1666. While in prison, a controversy arose as to the accuracy of the official almanac, and the Jesuits, excepting Father Schaal, were taken out of prison, brought before the Emperor, and ordered to make a series of instrumental tests of the accuracy of its calculations. The date of this is not given, but it must have been before August, 1666. On proving the error of the official astronomers, Verbiest was ordered to find out the errors and correct the work, and another series of observations was made, the result of which was that in A. D. 1669 Father Verbiest became President of the Board of Mathematics. After this he caused to be made several altitude, azimuth, equinoctial and other measuring instruments, quadrants, sextants, and a celestial globe of great weight and size, from cast brass, with fine modeling and with very decorative features in the Chinese style.
After this work had been done, its mechanical excellence attracted the attention of the Board of War, probably about 1678, because about that time he finished his work on the calendar and presented his book of calculations to the Emperor, and was promoted in rank and awarded a title.
The Board of War obtained an order on Verbiest to instruct workmen in the art of cannon-casting, and "he cast 130 pieces with great success."
After this the Board obtained another order on Verbiest, by his Chinese title of Nan-hoai-jin, given him in 1678, ordering the casting of 320 pieces of various calibers and of the European fashion, and that he should oversee the work. On February 11, 1681, he deHvered the models, which were approved, and the Board of Works was ordered to furnish all that was necessary for the work. The job took over a year. Many difficulties were encountered, attributed to the jealousy of courtiers. One of these troubles enables us to say that these guns were muzzle-loaders. An attempt was made to disable a gun by wedging a shot in the bore. Father Verbiest removed it by the now well-known scheme of loading with powder at the touchhole and firing out the shot. All of Verbiest's guns were blessed and engraved with saints' names in the foundery, and were engraved with proper characters traced by the Father's own hand.
The proof of these guns was made in 1682, and twenty-three thousand practice-shots were fired from them. Father Verbiest was again promoted in official rank to a position equivalent to that of "Viceroys who have deserved well in their government."
On this occasion the Emperor said to Father Verbiest, "The cannons that you made the last year were very serviceable against the rebels, and I am well satisfied with your services," and he gave the Father his furred vest and gown. This dates Father Verbiest's gunfounding work in A. D. 1680 to 1682. It was done in Verbiest's own foundery near the palace. It was muzzle-loading work, and was marked with saints' names.
Neither of our three breech-loaders is so marked, hence neither can be a Jesuit gun of Verbiest's time. They present a special variety of the familiar type of pedrero, of which the Cortes gun now at Annapolis, made probably as early as 1474, is another variety. They are what is called by the English writers of the Tudor and Stuart and early Georgian periods "petereroes," a word which is spelt with a great variety of combinations of t's, e's, r's and a's. Such swivels were familiar to Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as shown by the numerous illustrations of them collected by Fav6 for the late Emperor Napoleon's work on Artillery. Duhalde does not claim that they were introduced by the missionaries, but on the contrary concedes them to have had a more ancient origin.
Duhalde also in his chapter on the History of Corea relates that in the 26th year of Wan-Li (A. D. 1598) the Chinese commander had a cannon shot off as a signal for springing a treacherous ambuscade contrived against the Japanese general, Hing-Chang. Griffis' "Mikado's Empire," p. 246, speaks of a breech-loading Japanese cannon of this period—the Japanese invasion of Corea—still preserved at Kioto. Even earlier than this, one of the generals in Corea had his horse killed by a "canon shot."
We are now prepared to analyze this inscription. The gun was made about March, 1680, for the Chinese year began in February. Its destination was the metal top of the fort (Dun) at Kiang-Tu (the river capital). It will not be too hazardous a conjecture to say this was a barbette battery at Ngan Kiang Fu, now capital of Ngan- Hwei, then the western capital of Kiang-Nan, There was a large garrison there, a strong and notable fort, and the times required this point to be vigorously maintained. Twice before in the history of China had the control of Poyang Lake and of the river-bend close by seemed decisive of the fate of a dynasty,—when the Mongols obtained and when they lost the empire. In 1680, to the south and southwest of this pass, the organized armies of a Chinese revolted vassal who had assumed the yellow vestments were in full force and concentration, and the Tartar generals had got control of the seacoast and were pushing inland along the southern frontier towards Yunnan, in order to isolate the revolt in an uncultivated mining country, where lack of supplies would in the end compel the rebel chief to risk an engagement on the field of his adversaries' choice or lose his army by famine or desertion. The fort at the Poyang Lake pass is a likely, but not certain, original destination of this piece.
The personages who were responsible for the enterprise were Tung Chi Shi Tsien Zhe. The last two characters clearly signify the whole body or company. Shi is a character which implies civil magistracy. Tung Chi is to-day, as Mr. Mayers' manual of Chinese Governmental Titles informs us, the colloquial designation of the chief military officer of a single province or the second military officer of a viceroyalty. The second column can then be paraphrased in English thus: "The provincial general-in-chief and the whole body of civil magistrates (of the western government of Kiang Nan) built (for) the barbette battery at Ngan-Kiang-Fu, Fulangkhi Number 24, weight one hundred and one catties."
The next notable thing is the height of the succeeding columns. The third column begins abreast of the seventh character of the second. The fourth and fifth begin abreast of the eleventh character of the second column and the fourth of the third. The third, fourth and fifth columns end about even. The sixth has its top two characters lower down than the top of the fifth column and ends a character lower. These are signatory columns, and show that one functionary was of considerably higher rank than all the others, and one of considerably lower rank.
The workman who practically did the work was Ju-Shun-Jen (Col. 6). The principal supervisor was a military mandarin, acting as superintendent, named Chung-Shen-Ching (Col. 3). The next in authority was a Tseng-Twan-Gwan (chief managing magistrate). He was probably subordinate to the Board of Works and may be called the principal director, Chow-Yi-Ho (Col. 4). The third inspector was entitled Tseng-Wan-Hu, and was named Kiang-Zin. This title translates chief of 10,000 families. One must not, however, in Chinese, any more than in English, over-analyze syllabic constituents of a word or phrase. By itself the word "sloop" signifies a fore-and-aft rigged vessel with one mast and a bowsprit, which has her head-sail in one piece, with its tack made fast to the outer end of the bowsprit. "Sloop-of-war " designates a vessel which has none of these characteristics. The English Major-General corresponds to the French General of Brigade. The American Major-General corresponds to the French General of Division. In gunnery we find mentioned in English about a century ago "murderers" and "murdering pieces," as well as "petereroes." They refer to the same sort of gun, a light swivel. Just as the French perrier and the Spanish pedrero have lost their relation with stone shot and now signify only the swivel mounting of the piece, so the coupling by the Spaniard of a pair of swivels into the masculine and feminine or fatherly and motherly relation of padrero and madrero (motherling or pet) gave Jack Barnacle a chance to convert a Spanish jest into an English special noun of appropriate sense for its retained sound, and Diego's mother's darling was transformed, by the English mouth struggling with a Spanish word, into a truculent assassin.
Thus, while the title Wan-Hu recalls the Mongol national organization on a plan of decimal family groups, which forms the basis of the early Hussar or hundredth-man levy of Hungary, and of the Cossack contingent of Russia of to-day, so the families which averaged a soldier apiece have ceased in this title to be an exact description, the myriad has become numerically vague, and the Wan-Hu chief signifies in a society, which has passed from the nomad to the sedentary stage of civilization, such a military officer as would command a force equal to that furnished by 10,000 nomad families. It will not be unsafe to consider this title as that of a Tartar General of Division, or chief of a banner.
This gun is number 24, and its weight is 101 catties (about 135 pounds). The sort of weapon is Fulangkhi. Fulang is now used colloquially to designate the French. It is also used for foreigners generally, as Frank has been used in the Levant for centuries. The selection of characters to form this word would always suggest to the educated Chinaman the ideas of barbarian, spadassin, and beast, while the syllable Khi is so formed as to suggest manufacture, well contrived and weapon.
When the reign K'ang Hi began, the boy Emperor had by no means a well-established throne, far less a prospect of the grandeur and power which he attained. While his court exercised direct sway over part of the provinces north of the Yang-tzee and over one or two south of that river, three Chinese vassal-kings, who owed him little more than homage for investiture, maintained large independent armies, held most of the provinces south of the Yangtzee and west of the Yellow river, and controlled the tea crop, most of the silk crop, a large part of the rice crop, and all the foreign commerce. Each was only less powerful than the Emperor. The three, and probably either two—the other neutral—could overmatch him. The famous Cheng-Chang-Kung was established at Formosa as a sea king, and ravaged the coasts of the imperial provinces so that they were depopulated for three leagues inland and the sea fishery broken up. The Emperor's court was seamed with gentile and sectarian dissensions. The calendar was disgracefully erroneous, and was proved so in 1666 in the presence of the Emperor, with improvised instruments got up over night by men just out of prison. After four -years of regency this boy of twelve dismissed his tutors and guardians and took the scepter himself.
He had been born to good luck. The great Formosa prince had died the year of K'ang Hi's accession. Cheng King-Mai, with less warlike tastes than his father, kept the peace of the sea for ten years.
In 1673 an attempt was made to organize a great gentile movement of China for the Chinese. Wu-San-Gwei, who had a powerful army trained in civil war and fresh from the conquest of a secure frontier on the side of Burmah, put himself at the head of it. He was the most powerful of the vassal -kings and assumed some of the imperial functions. Keng-Tsing-Chung, who had just succeeded his father in Fokien, and Shang- Ko-Ho of Kwang-Tung, the other two vassal-kings, were in the combination, and Cheng- King-Mai sailed to join his forces with those of Fokien, of which he was a born subject. Wu-San-Gwei promptly invaded and occupied the imperial provinces near him. A few questions of etiquette spoiled the combination. The conspirators had not agreed in advance about the yellow vestments or their own respective precedency. Cheng-King-Mai failed to be received at Fokien as an equal and independent prince. ShangKo- Ho of Kwang-Tung preferred a vassalage which had known limits to an undefined and vague future, and refused to change his allegiance prematurely.
The Prince of Formosa, stung by the affront to the past of his family, by force of arms drove Keng-Tsing-Chung to submit to the Tartar and then retired to his island to sulk and die. The armies of Kwang-Tung and of Fokien were soon arrayed under imperial generals against the Prince of Western Peace, and that aged Chinese patriot died in 1679. Two years later the rebelHon was entirely suppressed. The son of Wu-San-Gwei, who had been proclaimed Emperor, committed suicide. Shang-Chi-Sin, who had succeeded his father on the latter's suicide in 1676, in 1680 received the imperial sentence of death, which was mitigated by the imperial present of a red silk cord and a sign-manual permitting suicide, for thus his royalty was acknowledged while his treason was punished. He obeyed the sentence and hanged himself in red silk like a king. Keng-Tsing-Chung, of Fokien, who had been too strong to punish in 1674 when the dynasty was in danger, was executed with ignominy in 1681 and his brothers were beheaded. Conflicting ambitions had swamped a conspiracy which if combined had been stronger than the empire.
From this date on, to the end of his almost unequaled reign of sixty years in 1722, the Emperor showed himself a vigorous, enterprising and intelligent prince. He was athletic in person and proud of his strength and skill as an archer. He was a bold huntsman and did not hesitate to encounter the tiger with sword and spear. He studied and promoted the arts and sciences. He was versed in the literature of his empire, and personally and almost daily supervised the compilation of the great Chinese dictionary, a work unrivaled in western nations till the publication of the encyclopedic dictionaries of the present day. He instituted an elaborate topographical survey of the empire, and caused to be collected statistics of its resources and requirements. He re-established, revised and regulated a system of posts, post-roads and signal-stations for visual telegraphy, managed by squads of soldiers always on duty. He repelled from the borders of the empire the dangerous tribes of barbarians, and established the bounds and limits of the nomads across the frontier, so that friendly clans and tribes attached to the fortunes of China by similarity of race, by family relations, by social rites, by ties of hospitality, and by the ambition or interests of chiefs, should range along the boundary and the jealous and ill-disposed be kept at a distance. Corea, Tonquin and Annam sent him tribute. Thibet yielded to his arms and received his frontier garrisons. He negotiated with foreign powers, had treaty relations with Holland, Russia, Portugal and the Pope, and had a correspondence with France. He pacified the empire, readjusted the boundaries of the provinces, and fixed the present administrative system with its all-pervading dual executive staff of functionaries of the dominant and subordinate races. His manners were popular, affable and dignified. He was an economist and an able financier. He utilized the army in the postal service, as a rural and municipal police, as exterminators of beasts of prey, as gatherers of the products of the deserts and the forests, and made the soldiers cultivate on military reservations some part of their subsistence. He paid great attention to justice. Most of this great work was done later than 1681.
We have seen from the dates that it was almost impossible that Father Verbiest should have made this gun of 1680, but that if he did it was of the first lot of 130. Doubt can only arise from the very explicit statement of the Jesuit fathers that the Board of War sought the aid of the fathers for instruction in the art, as if they were ignorant of it.
Of what were the Chinese ignorant? Certainly not of the art of moulding, melting and pouring copper alloys, for under the Emperor Yung Loh, nearly three centuries before, five great bells had been cast which weighed 120,000 pounds each. Marvellous bronze vases of great size and great bronze lions are spoken of in contemporary works of missionaries who make no mention of any metallurgy of copper save that derived from Europeans. But the plunder of the Summer Palace, with its dated masterpieces, has long convinced Europe that the bronze founder of China has been possessed of great technical skill from generation to generation for about a thousand years. The only things they needed to learn were the shapes to be moulded and the alloy required.
Europeans worked at random in the metallurgy of bronze till the present century, using old metal without quantitative assay or analysis for a large part of their material, and their proportions of copper in guns varies from 75 to 88 per cent, of tin from 7 to 15, of zinc from 5 to 15, and there were usually traces of iron and a notable trace or percentage of lead. The definite mixture of the present century had no place in the arts of Europe before 1800. The Chinese knew the crucible as well as any. They needed most of all a pattern-maker, a designer of new forms of artillery. This they found in Father Verbiest. He did not make breech-loaders.
THE GUN OF 1665.
Let us now turn to the other gun with a ratchet, and see if the gun first under consideration was of the European model introduced by the missionaries.
The inscription reads : K'ang Hi, fourth year Yih Chi, fourth month (Jiaama) day Tung Ying So cast. (Col. 2) Fifth class Fulangkhi, number 19, weight eighty-eight catties. (Col. 3) Gien-Chi-Gwen- Gwan (casting superintendent general) Shen-Khi-lik. (Col. 4) District Magistrate Li-Shun-Jing. (Col. 5) Master workman Kin-Ngai-Bong.
We have here a different formula. The date is May, A. D. 1665, which is determined by the regnal year, fourth,—1662 being the first,—and also by the cyclical words Yih Chi, which denote the forty-second year of the cycle of sixty then current, of which 1624 was the first year.
At this date, 1665, we are explicitly told by Duhalde, the persecution of the missionaries was at its height. Father Schaall was in prison and was soon afterwards sentenced to death. Father Verbiest and two others were also in prison "loaded with nine chains." This work then, made before Father Verbiest did any bronze casting at all, five years before he cast his first lot of guns, and six years before he delivered his perfected patterns to the Emperor, owes nothing of its technique to him.
The contribution of Father Schaal in and after 1636 to the defensive strength of China is nowhere definitely stated. It is said that the order to do the work was the occasion of importing "evangelical workmen" or missionaries. Father Verbiest's practical results are enumerated, and he was arraigned before Christendom for violating a canon of the Church which forbids Christians to aid infidels in. war, and defended himself with the argument that the infidels aided were warring with infidels, and the work done enabled the Christians to attain among these infidels a footing otherwise impossible. No such arraignment of Father Schaall was made, no specification of any but the evangelical results of his work is found. He is not cited as a precedent by Verbiest.
Schaal's work in the last years of the Ming dynasty was, therefore, without consequence in the ordnance department of China.
Yet in 1665, when he was in prison, we find five classes of "Fulangkhi" in use, we find them cast in the presence of local magistrates, and we find a department in charge of the work.
Kin-Ngai-Bong was the artisan, Li-Shun-Jing was the local magistrate, and Shen-Khi-Lik was the Gien-Chi-Gwen-Gwan, not "acting" as was in 1680 Chung Shen Ching, but the regular officer. He was a Gwen or military mandarin. The board, however, which did the work was not the Tung Che Shi Tsien Zhe of 1680, the high provincial magistracy, but was the Tung-Ying-So. "Ying" signifies a battalion or division; "So" is an office, chamber or station which performs or forwards government business. It is also a station on the canal. Ying always implies an officialism which has to do with troops. In the title Ying-Ping-Han, conferred about B. C. 60 on Chao-Chung-Kwoh, and rendered the Marquis Organizer of Peace, this character Ying certainly refers to the military system which makes peace permanent. The French-drilled division of guards of to-day is the Shen-Ki Ying.
The force of the character "Tung" seems always to be that of high military designated or assigned duty in a capacity less than that of command in chief but greater than that of executing orders given in detail. One cannot say it always implies provincial authority. But if it does not, it implies connection with the Board of War. As good a translation of this part as can now be suggested is "Bureau of the select battalions," that is, selected soldiers for ordnance and artillery work. The "arsenal" is a good rendering.
The fact is now plain that the "petereroes in their buildings on the coast," spoken of by Duhalde, were a sort of gun which the Chinese knew well how to make as early as 1665, and called them Fulangkhi. These petereroes had been systematically classified, and those of the fifth size weighed rather less than a hundred and twenty pounds (88 X 1.33= 117.33).
For the model or metallurgy of the Fulangkhi or light breechloading swivel, the Chinamen were not indebted to the Jesuit fathers, but this sort of gun was older than any gun-founding for which they were responsible either as instructors or superintendents, and was of a different class from any recorded to have been done by them, all theirs being muzzle-loading work.
Duhalde complains that Verbiest was treated unfairly, that he was chidden for delays, that the metal was stolen, and that attempts were made to disable the guns. One can hardly take these complaints seriously, they so betray the writer's ignorance of business. Of course the inspectors wanted to show that muzzle-loading guns were not as good as breech-loaders and tried to disable one of them. Of course the metal fell short. It always does, unless the melting is twice the weight of the finished article, and a wastage of ten per cent on a melting is not unusual. As late as the beginning of this century the natural deterioration and loss of metal in making the incrustation of the column Vendome caused the temporary disgrace and nearly caused the professional ruin of a French artillerist. Nothing but the discoveries of the great chemists of the time saved a very honest man from indictment as a swindler and fraud because of the natural deterioration and waste of bronze and brass in recasting.
THE GUN OF 1313.
The third gun of this Corean capture has a sturdiness of modeling which may indicate an earlier date of manufacture. The lack of the ratchet for the elevating pawl strengthens this conclusion. This gun bears a six-column inscription, the characters of which are evidently cut with a graver, and are of a shape said by a competent critic to be of ancient style.
Two characters of the Hia Tse series (cycle of sixty) date it in the Kwei Chow, or fiftieth year of the cycle. It has no regnal title at the head of the date-column. Hence, aalltthhoouupg-hh the absolute nplace of the date in some cycle is clear, the determination of the relative position of this year in any chronology requires a marshaling of evidence.
The inscription reads: (Col. 1) Kwei Chow, 8 month day, made cast. (Col. 2) 4 class Fulangkhi number two hundred twenty-nine, weight one hundred catties. (Col. 3) Make cast superintendent Tseng-Tsien Shi (Chief Assistant Privy Councillor) Shen Khi Lik. (Col. 4) Pen Fu Gwen Gwan (General of Ordnance superintending), Chief Assistant Privy Councillor Kin Tack Yuan. (Col. 5) District Magistrate Sung Si Lien. (Col. 6) Master Workman Kin Gai Lik.
The first notable thing about this inscription is that there is no regnal title at the head of the date-column, and that the date-column is one character shorter than the next adjacent column on its left. If this were done for a reason and we knew why, it might assist in dating the piece.
At Fort Monroe there is a gun from this same Corean capture of this same size and shape which carries an incised inscription in six columns, the characters of which are of the same general style as those on the gun at Annapolis. The first, third, fifth and sixth columns contain respectively the same characters as the corresponding columns on the Annapolis piece; the second column differs only in the number of the piece, 194. The fourth is devoted to some sort of functionary, the "Pen Fu Gwen Gwan," and to the same "Kin Tack Yuan" as before, but his rank in the empire differs. When the Fort Monroe gun was made he was a Tseng Wan Hu. When the Annapolis gun was made he was a Tseng-Tsien She.
The characters Kwei Chow, which begin the date-column, are in the Fort Monroe gun, as in that at Annapolis, a character below the head of the next adjacent column on the left.
There can be no doubt that these two contemporaneous records of identical formulae, which mention four different men in four different responsible positions, three of them, as the old English phrase goes, places of worship, two of them ranking as Assistants to the Privy Council, memorizes a time when there was an organized gun manufacture producing thirty-five guns or more a month. Kin Tack Yuan, one of the managing officers, was promoted during the month.
The fact that both guns lack the regnal title shows that it was omitted purposely. The fact that the date-columns are shortened by one character at the top shows an intent to fill them afterwards.
It will not be worth our while to search for this Kwei Chow year earlier than the crusade of St. Louis nor later than the epoch K'ang Hi. Within these limits the eighth month of a Kwei Chow year might fall about September in any of the years A. D. 1253, I3i3> 1373, 1433, 1493, 1553, 1613, 1673.
The inference is unavoidable, however, from the structure of these date-columns, that while the same foundery was at work under the same superintendency casting at the rate of thirty-five small guns a month of successive numbers, melting two or three tons of brass each month, and about the beginning of the eighth month of the year, some event happened which rendered the engraver doubtful about the regnal title, and caused him to leave a blank in this part of the inscription, to be filled when the doubt was solved.
Such a doubt could only arise on an impending change of regnal title. If, therefore, we can find some Kwei Chow years after the institution of the Pen Fu office in which, in the eighth month, a change of regnal title was impending, we shall have an indication to assist us to the exact cycle of sixty to which these two guns belong.
An emperor of China is nameless during his reign. After his death his family confer a title by which he is inscribed in the ancestral temple and by which historians may speak of him. Usually this name is not one which has been associated with him in his lifetime. An emperor is spoken about in his lifetime by various titles, such as Son of Heaven, Autocrat, Dragon's Throne, and he refers to himself as The Solitary, or by some epithet deprecating divine visitation.
Every emperor, however, on ascending the throne, decrees the phrase by which the epoch of his reign shall be known till further orders, and determines whether this epoch shall begin at once or in the future.
Usually the new epoch begins on the next New Year's Day. This epochal phrase continues in use with the years numbered in series under it till a new epochal name is adopted. That may go in use at once or at a later day, usually New Year, and the years of the new epoch are numbered in series beginning again at one. Some rulers have had great versatility in these regnal titles, using three or four in some years, and averaging one a year for ten or fifteen years, as for example the Empress Wu-How. Others kept the same regnal title Kang-Hi, or Kien Long, for sixty years. If, therefore, a change of regnal title took place in the last part of a Kwei Chow year, or at the beginning of the next year, while the Pen Fu office was active, it would be a pregnant indication.
In A. D. 894, the year succeeding a Kwei Chow year, the Emperor Chow Chao Jung changed his regnal title, King Teh, to Kien Ming.
In A. D. 953 an emperor died, and his successor proclaimed his regnal title as Hien Teh, to take effect on New Year's Day, 954.
In A, D. 1074, on New Year's Day, the Emperor Liao Tao Jung (a sort ofside-show emperor of an intrusive house) changed his regnal title from Hien Yung to Ta Kang.
In A. D. 1314, on New Year's Day, the Emperor Jen Tsung of the Yuan dynasty changed his regnal title from Hwang King to Yen Yew.
No other change of regnal title was made in a Kwei Chow year, or a year next succeeding a Kwei Chow year, from A. D. I3i4till now.
Unless, then, it is absolutely incompatible with other indications, the second year Hwang King (A. D. 1313) is probably the Kwei Chow year in question.
To satisfy this or any other assumed date of manufacture four other things must concur. There must have been a Pen Fu department at the time, and in that department two officers of the rank of Tsien Shi and one of the rank of Wan-Hu. If these officers or the department did not exist in any of the Kwei Chow years, such years would be excluded from consideration.
The late Chinese Minister at Washington, Mr. Chang Yin Hoon, at request of Secretary Bayard translated the Fort Monroe inscription, and with a politeness characteristic of his nation declared to the Secretary that he was "grateful for being permitted to share in the pleasure of perusing the curious inscription." To his research is due the discovery of an ancient ordnance department and its organization. His communication could not be published without violating the customs of diplomacy and the rights of authorship, and yet a paper on this subject which did not accord to him the credit of the discovery would fail in honesty as much as it would in politeness or gratitude. To him, therefore, in consequence of this discovery, the following argument owes its fundamental fact, and so most of its force.
The great emperor of the Mongol dynasty, Kublai Khan, then employing the ruling title of Che Yuan, in the eleventh year of that part of his reign (A. D. 1274) established a department for the control of gunners. The siege of Siang Yang Fu, when he is said to have taken Western engineers into his service, was then pending.
Eleven years later (22d year of Che Yuan) he reorganized the department (A. D. 1284). At the head of it was a Ta-su-ko-shi. It had a Wan-Hu and a vice-Wan-Hu. Attached to it were two Privy Councillors, Shu-Mih-Yuan or Shu-Mih-Shi, and two assistants, Tsien Yuan or Tsien Shi.
Abbe Grosier in his "Description Generale de la Chine," Paris, 1795, relates that Kublai's armies under Sotou had in the year 1283 been repulsed in Cochin China by the "Mahommedan cannon" of the Annamese. Late in 1281 the Japanese expedition had been destroyed after lying off the shores of Japan for weeks unable to effect a landing. It is perhaps fairly doubtful whether the fleet carried guns, but Griffis, in the "Mikado's Empire," gives an engraving from a Japanese picture of the repulse of the Mongols which represents junks in the offing wreathed in cannonsmoke.
The title Pen Fu implies personal imperial relations and is very nearly equivalent to Ministry of the Household. Privy Councillors and Assessors of the Privy Council, as officials, indicate importance, and a Wan Hu, as a subordinate, also indicates this. A Wan Hu at this time must be taken as equivalent to the chief of a banner of Mongols.
Such a bureau so elaborately organized would not fall into decay in the six years which elapsed before the death of Kublai, nor in the twenty years from Kublai's death to Jen Tsung's accession.
Our Kwei Chow year of 1313 occurs at a period when every criterion is satisfied. There is in the State a Pen Fu department with its two Assessors of the Privy Council, and Wan Hu as officials, and there was, near the close of the year, an impending change of regnal title which was a sufficient reason for leaving a blank for the two missing characters. One might well doubt if he was in the epoch called Hwang King or in that called Yen Yew, if the change had been determined on. To prepare and print the calendar for distribution on the first of the tenth month, two months' time for drawing every page, for cutting the blocks, for printing, binding and assorting for delivery many thousand copies, is not too much time, and this carries us back to the eighth month as a necessary time for determining the text of the new phrase.
Previous Kwei Chow years are already excluded by the lack of the bureau and its officers. Later years will not furnish the reason for a blank. But if they also lack the ordnance office of the Mongols, the date of 1313 will become certain.
Before taking up the direct evidence on this point let us consider a little the state of China when the Mongols obtained and while they held and when they lost the throne. For over two hundred years before the time of Kublai there had been two bitterly antagonistic emperors in China, and for the thousand years before, it was only at intervals that any ruler pretended to exercise more than a tax-taking jurisdiction over this vast territory. Some attempts at imperial legislation had been made. Some efforts, by establishing inspection circuits, had been had at uniformity of administration and regularity of justice. But China was not yet a nation such as England has been since the days of Edward III.; such as France became through the seismic politics of the Revolution, the Empire and the Restoration; such as Japan became on the restoration of the Mikado ; such as America is since the experience of the Civil War.
Zenghis had marched to its conquest early in the century, when it comprised two sovereignties, the Sung, which ruled south of the Yang Tsee Kiang, and the Kin, which ruled the northern provinces. The Kins were intrusive Tartars. The two kingdoms were normally at war from the policy of the Kins, and the boundary between them was defined rather by present prowess than by monuments or treaties respected by both sides. An attempt to introduce a militia system in the Sung empire at the close of the eleventh century had strained the sinews of loyalty and shaken the imperial throne. The Sungs encouraged the Mongol war upon the Kins for the sake of present rest.
As general for his uncles and for his own brother, Kublai, before he became emperor, had reduced the remote western and southern provinces of the Sung empire without more resistance than could be offered by the levies of local authorities, and without stimulating the Sung emperor to great warlike preparations.
The Mongols, bred for ages to a nomad and pastoral life, dwellers in tents, hunters and warriors, united by families into clans, tribes, hordes or banners, and into a confederacy of greater or less strength according to the ability of the leader, were always a migrating nation. They took what they needed and passed on. They enslaved their prisoners, and promoted their slaves by adoption. The national organization was merely military. The national revenue was plunder. Sharing the loot paid the soldier and his officer. They swept a country clean as they went through it. Kublai's military system and that of his generals was to enter a province, summon the towns, take possession of the provincial government, receive the attornment of the authorities, disband the local army, put a Mongol detachment with a Mongol leader in charge, and move on. The disbanded soldiery generally incorporated themselves with the moving army, because the Sung system had been to consider a soldier as a bandit hired on the side of lawful authority instead of arrayed against it.
Recalled from his southern expedition to assume the throne, Kublai left his general Pe-yen to practice the same policy, and himself led the northern army to the conquest of the province of Houquang. Siang Yang Fu was taken after a five years' siege, and subsequent operations gave Kublai control of the Yang-tsee above Nanking. The Sung emperor had left only the provinces of Che-Kiang, Fokien and Kwang-tong, all on the sea-coast, all self-supporting, all populous, and all of them commercial and industrial as well as agricultural. Again Kublai attacked in detail, sending Peyen into Fokien and going himself to Che-Kiang. Six years more of war against three baby-emperors ended the struggle. But if, after the complete conquest of the Kins, it had taken twenty years to subdue the southern empire, where there was so little national spirit and no large mutual helpfulness, so that the invader could take it province by province as he would eat an artichoke, leaf by leaf—the simile is Caesar Borgia's—what could he have done against a China as united, as single in purpose, as patriotically devoted to its emperor as the Mongols were?
His imported Mongolian alloy was perhaps one or two per cent of the population, certainly not more. He could not breed a nation in many generations. He must educate one. He established a provincial system directly dependent on the central power at Peking. He united the north and the south by the greatest of engineering works of that and, till recently, perhaps of any day,—the great canal. He tried to secure public confidence by giving his administrative and judicial offices to natives of Chinese race, while he kept the purse and the sword in the hands of Tartars, or, in some few instances, of devoted foreigners. He was lavish in succoring popular distress. He adapted his methods to Chinese customs, and celebrated all the Chinese worships with a catholic or indifferent spirit quite paralleled by the policy of Henry of France when he thought "the good city of Paris was worth a mass."
The roads, the bridges, the system of post-houses and of scattered military posts a league or so apart along the highways and canals, doing the duty of messengers, signal men and rural police; the public granaries, which sold the tribute corn in times of dearth at moderate price; the slack -water navigation inaugurated or enlarged and maintained by Kublai, all kept in full view of the people and paid for by the public revenue, show his centralizing policy, his determination that in his conquest at least there should be no question who was the head of the State.
Artillery, for a hundred years after it was introduced into European war, was a special profession quite distinct from soldiery. The professional artillerist was gun and bullet founder, powder-maker and combatant. The profession first became truly military under Louis XIV., and it is only within a hundred years that artillery-drivers have been enlisted men. Kublai, in the interests of his centralization, nationalized the profession as a branch of his household ministry.
Jen Tsung, when he came to the throne, resolved to open the career of native talent still wider. He ordered the Sung history to be compiled as a concession to Chinese glory, and entrusted the service to Chinese. He instituted more rigid examinations in the civil service, and removed from the lists many officials who could not pass the new ordeal. He appointed men of Chinese race to places of power as well as of responsibility. He found the centralized provincial policy of Kublai unpopular, and modified it in the interests of local authority. His successors still further relaxed the control of the capital. Yet in 1355, under Shunti, the last Yuan emperor, a preponderant Mongol officialism was one of the great complaints.
The Yuan dynasty from Kublai's reception of the southern kingdom in 1280 to the accession of Shunti in 1333, was generally satisfactory to China, and probably a model administration for the Orient.
Shortly before the accession of Shunti, earthquakes and floods had devastated the northern provinces, and the provincial revenues of food and money had been exhausted. Vast sums were needed to repair the disasters, and policy required and necessity obliged local remissions of tribute from the impoverished. Before full succor could be brought, thousands of houseless, masterless peasants had taken to brigandage for a livelihood, and on the repetition of the disasters the number of husbandmen turned robbers yearly increased. They went south. To collect the tribute in the maritime provinces and in the interior, to bring it north and distribute it, needed all the forces of the empire administered by Tartar energy. There was war with Corea, and the imperial armies were disastrously defeated. The Kin Tartars had again got their breath and invaded China to play again for the lost kingdom. The Emperor began to meet this situation as a boy of thirteen. His ministers, his generals, his armies, his provincial system made head against revolt at home and invasion from abroad for thirty-five years. The general who finally dethroned him was a native Chinese, Chu Yuen Chang. He had been bred a priest, had enlisted under Kwoh Tsee Hing, a revolted chief, was promoted for merit, and married his patron's daughter. In 1355 Prince Kwoh died, and General Chu took the command of an army with the rest of his wife's inheritance. The unfrocked bonze took the side of order, and adopting Kublai's strategy, moved from province to province. He set up and made efficient the administration of each province, and gave the executive officers a sufficient rural police, thus localizing part of his army under competent command. He re-established the course of trade, restored interrupted communication by caravan and canal, and allowed the customary tribute to go forward to Peking. He claimed only to be duke of a province, a mere feudal chief, and to act only when the legal authority had been disturbed, and then only to restore it by appointing a new magistracy, which was always Chinese. Two upstarts prematurely announced themselves claimants of independent sovereignty. One of these, Chen Yeo Liang, took possession in 1363 of the narrow gorge at the corner of the three present provinces of Hupeh, Kiang-Si and Ngan Hwei, through which a third of the trade of China must pass,—the surplus and the imports of two-thirds of an hour of longitude and of about eight degrees of latitude—a defile controlling the water transportation west of longitude 116° and south of latitude 32°, and held it by a fleet on the Yang-tsee Kiang and Poyang Lake. The fleet was captured or destroyed in a series of naval engagements relentlessly prosecuted day after day till the ships were burned or sunk and the claimant drowned in the lake. The artist of the battle represents his wild-eyed head as the single object above the surface of a broad waste of waters to show the fulness of the victory. After this Chu refused to claim the Dragon Throne. The other claimant, Chang She Cheng, challenged in 1367 the authority of General Chu by proclaiming himself king of Wu, and was promptly crushed. In the rejoicing over this victory the soldiery demanded an end of subjection. For thirteen years they and they only kept the peace of the empire south of the Yang-tsee. No imperial army had aided or opposed them. What if Shunti were Emperor, he was a Tartar, and it was time that China should be for the Chinese. The yellow mantle was assumed and the dragon-flag displayed on New Year's day, 1368, and the revolted power of southern and western China marched on Peking. An advance up the canal converted much of the empire into the commissariat of the insurrection. A heavy flanking column moving through Honan captured the river and canal system from that province and from Shensi. Within four months the larder of Peking belonged to the insurgents. The Emperor held only the capital, its magazines, a few square miles around it, and the relics of his Tartar army. One last spring at the throat of his adversary and at the fleet of supply-boats on the canal was defeated, and Shunti and his court retired to the north, leaving his capital to the victor. China had united against Yuan, and the Mongol had yielded. The Chinese say that the armies of Shunti were well supplied with artillery.
With the brilliant men who had aided to establish the Ming dynasty, the Hung-Wu epoch had no difficulty in forming an efficient ministry and an able provincial administration. The Emperor trusted them more than had been customary for nearly a century, and devised a system which made the provinces almost independent principalities, owing to the Empire, after their magistrates were appointed, nothing but homage and tribute. The Emperor's family became powerful princes, with governments and independent revenues derived from the taxes of their government. He established his own court at Nan-King, and gave his fourth son, Fo, the northern subdivision, with the title of King of Yen. This prince, who inherited much of his father's genius for war, was sent into Tonquin with an army in 1401, and was defeated with great slaughter by the "fire-weapons" used by the enemy. In 1403 Prince Fo ascended the throne by the regnal title of Yung-lo. He employed cannon in his revolt against his nephew. His generals four years afterwards used fire-weapons to secure victory over the Tonquinese. The Ming historians who relate this say that these instruments were called Shen Khi (divine machinery) and that the Shen Khi Ying was organized by the Emperor to have charge of them. The Ming historian attributes to this war in Cochin China and to the Shen Khi brigade the introduction of firearms and war-rockets into China, and goes on to explain that they were kept a State secret for many years, and, although known to high authority and used in the armament of forts, they were not allowed to be made away from the capital, or to be publicly seen until after the beginning of the sixteenth century, and were not generally introduced in the army before 1522.
Mr. Mayers, of the English legation, read before the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1869 a paper "On the Introduction and Use of Gunpowder and Firearms among the Chinese." This was published in the Society's Journal and also as a separate pamphlet. It may be consulted at the Boston Public Library, and also in the library of the Artillery School at Fort Monroe.
Mr. Mayers was unable to admit an earlier use of rockets or guns than that of 1403, in the reign Yung-lo. Dr. Edkins, of the London Mission, in a paper printed in U. S. Ordnance Notes No. 312, of July 6, 1883, reviews the ground and concludes in favor of a use of projectile artillery by the Sungs before 1280, but thinks the secret was lost under the Mongols.
In transmitting a Chinese print of Shunti, Mr. Wong writes, using the Chinese characters for the name, "Shunti was the Emperor whose armies were amply provided with guns."
The evidence above cited is ample to state these propositions as facts:
1. There was an ordnance and artillery department in China called Pen Fu, as part of the Ministry of the Household, as early as 1284.
2. As early as 1284 firearms were well known to the higher army officers, and just before that year had been successfully employed against Chinese armies.
3. This ordnance department continued as an active organization into the reign of Shunti, who fled in 1368 into Tartary.
4. In reorganizing the administration of China, on the decentralizing plan of the Mings, this department was not continued, probably for the reason that most if not all of the personnel had fled across the frontier with the dethroned emperor.
5. When artillery is next needed in the reign of Yung-lo, a new artillery and ordnance office is created under a new name, which keeps the manufacture of cannon quite secret till about 1522, or about the time the Portuguese arrive in China.
This state of facts, or of facts and high probabilities, exclude all Kwei Chow years from and after A. D. 1273 inclusive, for we have the flight of the Mongol Emperor and his personal ministry in 1368 and 1369, and the reorganization of the government of China at Nan-king and the establishment of a less dependent provincial system in 1368-9.
For some years there was no central ordnance or artillery department. When it reappeared it was by a different name. Curiously enough the revival is first mentioned in the revolting army of Prince Fo, King of Yen, just before he becomes Emperor. It was therefore first reorganized as part of his great northern establishment, and perhaps, indeed probably, was got together by collecting the workmen, the models and the traditions left behind by the Mongols. If so, a Shen Khi could probably have been found at Peking to organize a brigade of gunners, the sound of whose name expressed in other characters could well express the "divine machinery" then introduced.
The Ming provincial system, when administered by less energetic men than its founders, did not yield peace and order within or without the empire, and to its inefficiency may be attributed the disorganization which led to the substitution of the present dynasty.
Col. Fave, who completed the Emperor Napoleon III.'s elaborate treatise on Artillery, investigated this subject of early artillery with great care, and found saltpeter mentioned as early as 1240 in Arabic literature. It had then been long known in Egypt as Chinese snow. Before the end of another quarter of a century, directions had been given for purifying it and for combining it with alder or willow char coal and with sulphur, in proportions, fit for rockets, of six parts niter, one part sulphur and two parts charcoal. Crackers and serpents were also described. Before the end of the century the rocket was described by another Arab as the "arrow of Cathay." About the beginning of the next century (A. D. 1300) a breech-loading gun was described as an arrow-shooting "Mad-faa," and a drawing of it was given. The drawing was a mere diagram, about as good as Benton's in the U. S. Ordnance Manual, and was evidently made by a person who had seen the machine. The description as evidently was written by a man who was struggling with a subject imperfectly understood. It requires the breech-block to be tied in place by a raw-silk cord, and prescribes that the shaft of a spear shall be bored out for the barrel and recessed for the reception of the breech-block. The name Mad-faa is quite beyond any real etymology. Yet seemingly our study suggests an explanation.
The sound "Pao" signified in Chinese at a very early period a machine for throwing stones. The same sound has been continued for the stone-throwing cannon, as for the stone-throwing catapult. The character which represents this sound has suffered these modifications as the generic idea has changed. Mr. Mayers brought this out clearly in his paper.
The elements of these characters receive no phonetic notice from the Chinaman, but they suggest ideas to him as he reads.
This archaic ideograph made known by Mr. Mayers fully explains the situation which gave Col. Fav6's Arabic author his name, his accurate picture, his confusing description.
Three people at least were concerned in it—a Chinaman who made the drawing and described it in Chinese and wrote out the Chinese name, an Arab who put the questions about the drawing and wrote out the answers in Arabic in a connected form, and an interpreter who had probably an imperfect knowledge of both languages. The Chinaman would have no conception that any one would want to give a phonetic value to the ideographic elements of the written character. The Arab would, from the structure of his Semitic language and alphabet, lack the conception of a character in which the elements were not phonetic. The interpreter would fail to make two minds come together or appreciate their degree of separation.
The very syllable that is redundant in a Chinese etymology betrays the Chinese source of the Arab's information, and the diagram of the machine shows the breech-loading system we are considering. The item about the silk cord will be considered later.
We have found this type of piece existing early in the fourteenth century and described by a name fairly traceable to a Chinese origin by a Western writer of the period. We are now prepared to believe the statements of Dr. Edkins, that Western cannon were used in 1234 at Tsai Chew, and that a " fire exciting hand gun," or, as Col. Fave calls it, a "furious firing spear," was known as early as 1259. This last was said to be made of a large thick bamboo, and to have had a projectile called by Fave a nest of seeds, and by Dr. Edkins thought to be an explosive bullet. The many fanciful names given to cannon in Europe which have finally settled into "cannon" (great reed) should prevent any surprise at the description of a gun-barrel as a bamboo. Marco Polo's statement that the Chinese used in war bamboos, the explosion of which could be heard for leagues, may lead us to imagine that some such word was employed in this sense in the thirteenth century.
To explain this statement about the "furious firing spear," Admiral Rodsfers brought us another witness.
THE CHARLESTOWN GUN OF 1607.
There is at the Charlestown yard a curious bronze gun from the same Corean capture.
It is about eighteen inches long. It weighs some fourteen pounds. It is double-barreled. It has three reenforces on each barrel. Each reenforce has a vent, those of the left-hand barrel on top, those of the right on the right side. The barrels are modeled to represent stocks of bamboo, and reenforces to represent root-knots. It has a hollow cascabel and no trunnions. The cascabel is very much worn and grooved as if by a lashing of small stuff which had attached it to a shaft (the raw silk cord of the "madfaa"). It bears an inscription on the cascabel, of course much abraded, but still legible in most of its important parts. It was made in 1607.
It reads: (Col. 1) Double-sighted six shooter, weight eleven catties. (Col. 2 is nearly illegible, most probably it once read) Tcha Fu Shi San Chuen (the Tea Prefect San Shuen or of San Chuen). (Col, 3 is quite legible) Wan Lik thirtyfourth year, tenth month day. (Col. 4) master workman Chu.
Wan Lik was the regnal title from 1573 to 1620 of an emperor in whose reign the Japanese invaded Corea. History records that in this war, in 1593, a general's horse was killed by a cannon shot, and in 1598 a cannon shot was used as a signal. .Griffis' "Mikado's Empire" states that a breech-loading cannon is still preserved in Japan as a relic of this invasion.
This curious early repeater fully illustrates the furious firing spear with its nest of seeds and its bamboo barrel of the Sung period, and we are no longer obliged to reject the evidence of the writers of the Sung, Kin and Yuan histories because we do not understand it.
We have also discovered another thing, that some scion of the Shen Khi family of 1313 must have remained in China, because we find one of that name in 1665 at work manufacturing guns, and it is possible that the Shen Khi brigade may have been originally named for one of them before it got its literary form. This, however, is mere conjecture.
All these breech-loading guns were called by the founders by the special name Fulangkhi. Mr. Mayers cites a Chinese author who wrote about 1517 concerning the Portuguese. He spoke of their guns by this name, and said that this name was rightly a name of a country and not of cannon. Mr. Mayers conjectured that the Portuguese had been called Franks by some person, and the name had been transferred to the guns. No evidence is found anywhere that the Portuguese were ever called Fulangkhi's, and Mr. Mayers apparently did not know that the term continued to be an official term for guns as late as 1680. The Portuguese guns are said to have been of iron, jacketed with wood and strongly hooped. This hardly was the model from which to make a brass gun like these of this museum.
Again, these Chinese Fulangkhi differ from the pedreros of Europe by having hollow instead of solid cascabels, which seems to imply a different course of development. Undoubtedly Fulangkhi might mean French. As undoubtedly, in some of the treaty ports to-day, Fulang is taken for France, and for foreign generally. Probably when the set of characters were devised to designate the machine it was believed to have come from abroad with some barbarian invader from the West. When an Arab calls the rocket the Arrow of Cathay, and the breech-loading cannon Mad-faa, he goes far to admit an early use of gunpowder in China wars; and when the Chinaman speaks of Western and of Mahommedan cannon and of Fulangkhi, he goes far towards calling the instrument an imported article. We are not called upon to settle the place of origin of this class of weapon exactly, but only to date one gun.
Our date for that has been fixed at A. D. 1313, and the only catalogued gun older than this is the Fulangkhi of Fort Monroe, made in the same month.
It is pretty clear from some old bills and accounts that gunpowder artillery was used in European war before 1300. It is not disputed that the hand-grenade was used in China as early as 1233. We have no drawings of any gun except the "madfaa" earlier than the fifteenth century.
Some ancient guns are preserved in Europe and Asia, and the Royal Artillery Institute have published a series of papers by Lieut. Brackenbury which describe and illustrate some of the most curious of them. They date as follows:
1318. Bombard at Amberg, Bavaria.
1379. Wooden-cased gun at Venice.
14th century. Tower guns, London.
1423. The Michelettes at St. Michel.
1430. La Dritte Geriete of Ghent.
1460. Mons Meg at Edinburgh.
1464. Turkish guns at Constantinople.
1475. Captured in 1476 and 1477. Guns of Charles of Burgundy at Morat and Neustadt.
1478. A gun of Louis XI. in the Paris Museum of Artillery (structure not described.)
1535-1539. Two sakers at Woolwich.
1542. The Mary Rose guns at Woolwich. All by Arcano de Arcani.
1546. Czar Pooschka at Moscow.
16th century. Malik y Mydan at Benares.
Besides these is the double-barreled draconcillo cast at Liege in 1503, now at Madrid, and the Bartemy de Pins gun of 1490 at Paris, and the banded gun in the Tower, about 1545.
Probably the above list contains more than half of all the guns now extant made before 1500. There may be fifty guns now extant made in the sixteenth century.
De Saulcy declared that the most important improvement in field artillery was the introduction of trunnions and the flask or bracket trail system of mounting, and that the origin of the improvement is unknown.
One gun of Charles of Burgundy, a cast-iron piece, may fairly be said to have this improvement. The Bartemy gun was doubtless so mounted.
Both these guns, however, were preceded in Europe by the swivel system, illustrated by the Cortes guns at Annapolis and Washington, which are undoubtedly older than 1474, when Isabella acceded to the throne of Castile. By her marriage contract it was provided, in 1469, that after her access the arms of Aragon should always be associated with those of Castile and Leon, and, as these guns were marked with Castile and Leon only, this fact dates them earlier than 1474.
The pedigree of the Bartemy gun and of most European artillery is traced to the wooden-stocked guns of Burgundy by the adjustment of their trunnions lower than the axis of the piece, while the independent origin of the Cortes swivel, of the Madrid draconcillo and of the Fulangkhi's appears by the emplacement of their trunnions abreast of their bores.
Without attempting to account for the origin of the name Fulangkhi, it is worth remembering that the earliest illustration we have of the landing of St. Louis at Damietta represents his army as provided with cannon.
The war of Cortes in Mexico is a remote American event. It began twenty-six years after the first voyage of Columbus, nearly three and three-quarters centuries ago. The oldest Fulangkhi was then as old as the Cortes swivel was in the reign of Queen Anne. The year of Hwang King, called Kwei Chow, was at a notable period in the history of the world.
The Crusades were over. The modern period had begun. Robert Bruce was King of Scotland, and in another year he would win the independency of his kingdom at Bannockburn and strike down before both armies Sir Henry Bohun, the English champion, break ing his axe in the blow. Edward II. was then King of England, and English people were still discussing the recent fall and execution of Gaveston. Henry VII. of Luxemburg was Emperor, Dante was in his prime, and Petrarch was a schoolboy. Clement V. was Pope, and the Papacy was settled at Avignon under the protection of Philip the Fair. The order of the Temple had just been dissolved. De Molay was to mount the scaffold in a year, and to summon Philip in judgment at a year and a day of essoin, and Philip would be laid in his coffin in two years' time. The Polish mortgage to Brandenburg, never redeemed, had just laid the foundation of Prussian power. Russia then paid tribute to the posterity of Zenghis. The Arabic caliphates of Cordova and Grenada survived in Spain, and the last sigh of the Moor would not breathe farewell to the Alhambra for a century and a half, leaving its name to the overhanging hill. The grandsons of Rudolph held petty principalities in Germany, but the Hapsburgs were not a reigning family. Charles of Anjou ruled Hungary. Venice was sovereign over most of the Greek Empire, and Athens was an independent principality of a French duke. Tamarlane would be born in a quarter of a century, but a hundred and forty years would elapse before the cannon of Mahommed II. should batter the walls of Constantinople.
Pope Sylvester had invented a mechanical clock, but a child born in this year 1313 would be over sixty years old before any French church would have one on its tower. It was two centuries before Europe knew of printing by movable types. Paper had been invented, was made in Spain, but France and Germany would not make it for a year, nor England for a century. Coal was only in use in the districts where it could be quarried. The use of waterpower was confined to the blowing engine called the trompe, and to driving the wipers of small trip-hammers. Road-making was a lost art. Wheel-carriages were unknown or of the rudest sort, and transportation in Europe per ton per mile was paid at the rate of thirty cents of our money. The impossibility of an internal commerce made local dearths and famines severe and frequent. No postal service existed, no common carriers of freight or passengers. Floors were strewn with rushes and walls hung with carpets. Sugar was a confection, and two centuries would elapse before it would be a food. No forks were used at table. Every guest brought his own knife. Many European nations would not arrive at the accomplishment of making soap for centuries.
Of the things quite unknown in those days, but quite usual to-day, were alpaca, coca, coffee, cacao, and chocolate, cochineal, jalap, logwood, maize, manila or sisal hemp, Peruvian bark and the cinchona and quinine alkaloids, potatoes and yams, tea, tobacco and tapioca. Among those quite rare were cotton cloth and indigo. Canned meats and vegetables were quite unknown, and more than three-fourths of all the food was heavily salted or smoked, often both. It was before the days of the whale fishery. Street lamps were unknown, and houses imperfectly lighted. There was no window-glass, almost no drainage, and chimneys were very poor.
To reduce the commonest and plainest people of to-day to the supplies of the luxurious of 131 3 would be to deprive them of many of the necessaries of life.
What shall we say of the metallurgic skill, of the mechanical advances which had been made, as shown by the gun itself? Drills, files, gravers, modeling in sand, coring, dry distillation, winning of sulphur from the volcano and of niter from the earth, a selection among charcoals for special properties, all must have been contrived, learned and practised before this gun was made.
Why, with this great advance thus early, has the Chinese development of firearms been so slow and apparently retrograde?
First. The national policy did not permit the use of firearms to the people, or to any but a limited part of the army.
Second. The soldier till quite recently was required to purchase the materials of his powder and to make it himself. We learn from Barrow that as late as 1793 a formula was in use which was deficient in saltpeter and called for an excess of sulphur and of charcoal. Moreover, the purification of the niter was defective. Granulation has not been thought important.
Third. Mechanical improvements have been neglected, and no attempt made to get a more modern type of gun than the matchlock. Small-arms of inconvenient weight have been preferred, and the cartridge was never thought desirable.
Fourth. Candidates for commissions or promotion have been deterred from attempting improvement by the rigid formalism which required adherence to the ways of the past at the age of acquisition, as a condition of success in the schools.
Fifth. A preference of provincial authorities for local economy rather than for national efficiency and power. This again is but another name for the unsympathetic selfishness which Kublai meant to correct.
Sixth. The peaceful relations of China with the rest of the world other than Asiatic nations unskilled in mechanics have made the situation of comparatively small consequence till recently.
The tributary relation of Corea to China accounts for the presence of these weapons in that kingdom.
It is, however, strange that an American naval force should have captured in one day five guns, all of them older than the time when white men first occupied the great Mississippi River system, the cotton and corn field of the world.
Two of these guns were far older than the time when America was first brought to the knowledge of Europe; a third, the Charlestown repeater, was made in the very year in which Virginia was planted; a fourth, in the year when arbitrary government was threatened to Massachusetts by the appointment of the Carr-Maverick commissioners; and the fifth, in the year the first royal government was established by the charter of New Hampshire, and the only feudal government ever set up in the old United States territory was established in the Massachusetts province of Maine. It is strange that this force from the New World should have brought them from that Far Cathay, whose fame was the cause of the expedition of Columbus, and it is stranger still that men should be living to-day, still in active service, who can say they have heard the hostile roar and have been exposed to the peril of shot projected from the oldest extant pieces of artillery of the world.