Soldiers of the Dragon

Extract from ‘Medieval Chinese Armies’

The aspect of military technology most often associated with China in this period [the Ming dynasty] is of course the use of gunpowder. Probably invented accidentally by alchemists under the T’ang, gunpowder was first used for fire-arrows and in impregnated fuses for flamethrowers soon after the end of that dynasty. The flamethrower, a borrowing from the Byzantines, was common in naval and siege warfare from that time on; and by the 11th century the Sung were using explosive bombs thrown from siege engines. The Mongols were terrified by these weapons when they first met them in China, but by Kubilai’s time had adopted them from the Kin and were using them against the Sung. Bombs with metal casings, which burst to scatter lethal splinters, were now common, a famous illustration of one appearing on the Japanese Mongol Invasion Scroll of 1293 (see MAA 105, The Mongols). These were mass-produced in tens of thousands and were made in a variety of sizes, ranging from enormous bombs which had to be hauled by draught animals to grenades which could be thrown by hand. The Ming sometimes strapped them to oxen which were driven into an enemy camp. The same technology also gave rise to defensive mines, made from lengths of bamboo filled with powder, which by the late 14th century could be buried under gates and at frontier passes and exploded by a tripwire attached to a flint-and-steel detonator.