The rapid expansion of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century cannot be attributed
to a single new military invention providing technological supremacy over their enemies.
Still, the Mongols were adept in employing the tools of their foes.
As historian Timothy May wrote, the Mongols rarely met a weapon they did not like.
In todays entry in our series on the Mongol army, we will examine the Mongol Empires
use of and possible role in the transmission in gunpowder and gunpowder weapons over the
13th and 14th centuries.
Speaking of the explosive action, this video is kindly sponsored by Conquerors Blade!
This excellent tactical MMO set in a vast open medieval world is available for free
on PC and its Season 8 called Dynasty just launched on July 8th, and you can download
it via our link in the description.
In Conquerors Blade you select from more than 10 warlord types and more than 85 units
and fight 15 vs 15 player versus player medieval sieges!
Create or join a House to ally with other players and fight in massive, bi-weekly server-wide
battles known as Territory Wars!
Conquerors Blade is updated all the time, and the 8th season inspired by the Tang follows
the rise of a dynasty, of its heroes and warriors, through years of chaos and war to a time of
order and prosperity.
The update adds Longting and Hao Jing regions to the game, alongside the pike weapon class
for the warlords, new units including Cudgel Monks, Greyhair Garrison, Modao Battalion,
and the legendary Linwu Fortress as a siege map.
The battle pass unlocks 100+ season-exclusive rewards from including new Hero Attire, weapon
skins, Emotes, and so much more!
Register through the link in the description and get a free 7-day Premium account, which
includes 30% boost to earned Hero and Unit XP, Bronze Coins, and Honour, as well as additional
Vault Keys for the completion of Weekly Quests!
For some historians, like J.J.
Saunders or Kate Raphael, the idea of the Mongols as both users of gunpowder and transmitters
of its knowledge to the west is a total negative or extremely unlikely.
But the great British sinologist Joseph Needham demonstrated thoroughly that the Mongols used
a variety of gunpowder weapons during their wars in China, while more recent historians
such as Iqtidar Alam Khan, Thomas T. Allsen and Stephen G. Haw, have argued that the Mongols
carried a number of gunpowder weapons, such as bombs, fire-lances and rockets, west in
their conquests over the rest of Eurasia.
The first recipe for gunpowder appears during the Tang Dynasty in the 8th century CE, in
a Taoist work urging alchemists not to mix saltpetre (potassium nitrate), sulphur and
carbon-rich materials like coal, and to especially not add arsenic to the mixture, as the result
would light aflame.
The Chinese quickly found the energy produced by these materials quite mesmerizing when
used in fireworks display, and in civil engineering projects and mining.
Contrary to some popular sentiments that the Chinese only used it for peaceful purposes,
it did not take long for it to be turned to warfare.
By 1044, possibly in reaction to military defeats against the Tangut Xi Xia, the Song
Dynasty was presented a collection of nine kinds of gunpowder weapons and three distinct
gunpowder recipes in the Wujing Zongyao.
This technology advanced under the Song Dynasty, which faced a collection of ever-more fearsome
foes on its northern borders.
These weapons took a number of forms . Bombs thrown from catapults (huopao), enclosed in
pottery or fragmenting metal shells.
Arrows (huojian) with incendiary packages strapped to them, launched from bows or massive
mounted crossbows, developing into early rockets over the twelfth century.
Most infamous was the fire-lance (huojiang): a bamboo or metal tube capable of shooting
a jet of flame three metres in length, sometimes with shrapnel and toxic materials packed into
the tube to form a terrifying, flame-spouting shotgun . some to explode and throw armour
piercing shrapnel, some to spread flame and destroy buildings, with others to have a choking,
blinding gas dispersed by the explosion to envelop and confuse the enemy.
The Song Dynasty government was so terrified of their foes acquiring them- that it prohibited
the sale of any of the materials composing gunpowder to the Khitan Liao Dynasty or Tangut
Xi Xia in the 11th century.
Both lacked access to natural reserves of saltpetre producing lands.
But with the Jurchen conquest of the Liao and Northern Song in the early 12th century,
the newly formed Jin Dynasty seized not only stores of these weapons, but the knowledge
and resources to produce their own.
The first textual references to fire-lances, rockets, and new kinds of bombs appear as
Song forces desperately resisted Jin invasions.
When Chinggis Khan invaded the Jin Dynasty in 1211, whole companies of Chinese siege
engineers entered into his service , bringing with them knowledge to construct Chinese siege
machines.
One such Chinese siege specialist who willingly deserted, Guo Baoyu, accompanied Chinggis
Khan west on his campaign against the Khwarezmian Empire.
According to his biography in the Yuanshi, when the Mongols attempted to force a crossing
of the Amu Darya, a number of Khwarezmian ships blocked their path.
Guo Baoyu ordered a volley of huojian to be launched against the fleet.
The ships were all set aflame, allowing the Mongols passage.
While huojian originally and literally meant fire arrows, according to Joseph Needham,
Jixing Pan, and Thomas Allsen, over the twelfth century the term came to signify rockets,
when powdered gunpowder mixtures with higher percentages of saltpetre, charcoal and less
sulphur made for effective rocket propellants .
While Chinggis Khan certainly brought Chinese siege engineers westwards with him, gunpowder
was not a key component of his tactics.
Likely, Chinggis lacked the resources to manufacture gunpowder and gunpowder weapons, and if he
was making use of them, it was in limited quantities and quickly depleted.
After Chinggis Khans death in 1227, his son and successor Ogedai completed the war
with the Jin Dynasty, in the process acquiring greater experience with gunpowder weapons,
as well as the natural and manpower resources to produce them.
In 1231, for instance, the Jin utilized a new development in bomb technology, the heaven-shaking
thunder-bomb (zhen tien lei), to sink Mongol ships in a naval engagement.
These were bombs with high nitrate content encased in a cast-iron shell.
When set off, they created a monstrous noise like thunder, splintering the iron shell into
a wave of armour and flesh tearing shrapnel, an early fragmentation grenade.
In 1232, the great Mongol general Subedei besieged the Jin capital of Kaifeng, in a
year-long siege in which both sides utilized gunpowder weapons.
Subedeis catapults launched bombs into the city, while the Jin defenders annihilated
mobile shelters pushed up to the walls by dropping thundercrash bombs on them via an
iron chain.
The defenders also employed a number of flying-fire-spears (feihuojiang).
Depending on the interpretation, these were fire-lances packed with wads of shrapnel and
arrows which when fired acted like a flaming shot gun, while others like Jixing Pan suggest
these were rockets.
At one point in the siege, a Jin commander took 450 men armed with flying fire-lances
into the Mongol encampment, a surprise attack resulting in hundreds of Mongol troops killed
or drowned then they tried to flee.
It was remarked that the thundercrash bombs and flying-fire-lances were the only two weapons
the Mongols feared.
Yet, these devices could not arrest the fate of the dynasty .
The reliability of these weapons was questionable.
Different proportions of the chemicals, might result in a device going off early, too late,
or not at all.
The range of these weapons was short, and they were best utilized in the defense, in
situations where their effect on enemy morale could be maximized.
These bombs were not yet the secret to destroying city walls, though they could damage wooden
structures, towers or gates along the battlements.
Regardless, they were a frightful weapon when used properly.
Thus it seems unusual that Subedei, the commander of the final campaigns against the Jin who
faced these gunpowder weapons, made little use of them in the great western campaign
begun a few years later.
Though specialized Chinese artillery was employed against the Alans of the north Caucasus, Rus
principalities and Hungarians, there is little direct indication of the use of gunpowder
weaponry in the west.
Many of the mostly wooden cities of the Rus principalities were burned, but the Rus
sources generally offer no description of how this occurred.
A possible indication is supplied by the Franciscan friar John de Plano Carpini, who travelled
through the Rus principalities late in the 1240s bearing messages from the Pope to
the Great Khan.
In his report Carpini very accurately describes Mongol battle and siege tactics, with the
intention that his observations would help prepare Christendom against further attacks.
He wrote that the Mongols threw Greek fire onto cities, in addition to melted down fat
from prisoners, a combination which was very difficult to extinguish.
As the Mongols, as far as is known, did not use Greek Fire, it seems that Carpini attempted
to describe an incendiary of unusual properties using cultural terms he was familiar with.
As Carpinis knowledge of Mongol siege tactics came from survivors in the Rus territories,
it seems to imply that a special type of fire-causing weapon was used against the Rus: quite
possible gunpowder weapons Subedei had brought from China.
The famous smoke screen employed by Mongol forces at the battle of Liegnitz in Poland
in April 1241 may also have been a type of gunpowder weapon, as suggested by Stephen
Haw.
Devices to deploy toxic smoke and smoke screens have been used in Chinese warfare since at
least the 4th century CE, but during the Song Dynasty more effective versions were developed
with gunpowder.
In easily shatterable pottery containers, these weapons were packed with poisons, foul-smelling
ingredients, shrapnel, arsenic and lime.
Dispersed by the force of the explosion, these bombs unleashed a cloud or fog of painful
gas which blinded, disoriented and confused enemy forces- very similar to the smoke weapon
described at Liegnitz.
Not understanding it was a gunpowder weapon, either a bomb via a small catapult or modified
fire-lance, the Poles focused on the most visible tool as the origins of the smoke,
mistakenly identifying a Mongolian horse-hair standard as the device .
Lacking words for these new devices, which the Mongols were unwilling to let non-military
individuals examine, it is hard to determine when a medieval author is using a familiar
term, such as Greek Fire or Naptha, to refer to a new technology which served a similar
purpose.
In some cases, it is even hard to tell if it is just a dramatic description.
Such is the case of the Persian writer Juvainis account of Hulegus campaign in the 1250s,
to which he was a direct eye-witness.
Juvaini writes of how Hulegu was provided by his brother, the Grand Khan Mongke, a thousand
households of Chinese catapultmen, as well as naptha throwers.
At the siege of the Nizari Assassin fortress of Maymun Diz, Juvaini mentions a large crossbow-like
weapon deployed by Hulegus Chinese siege engineers, which he called an ox-bow , a direct
translation of the Chinese term for the weapon ba niu nu.
Juvaini writes that it delivered meteoric shafts which burnt the enemy, in comparison
to stones lobbed by the defenders, which did little but harm a single person.
These ox-bows in Chinese warfare, as described by the Wujing Zongyao, could have gunpowder
packages attached to the bolts, and were used in the same manner as Juvaini describes.
While some historians like Stephen Haw see this as a clear usage of gunpowder, it must
be remarked that Juvainis tendency for over-flowery language makes it difficult to
gauge how literal this passage must be taken, though he was an eye-witness to the siege.
Generally it seems that gunpowder was little used in the Mongols western campaigns.
Likely difficulties in travelling with it prevented them from taking great quantities
of it, and at the time of the conquests there was not sufficient knowledge in the west that
allowed them to procure more supplies.
The matter was very different in the continuing Mongol wars in China, where under Khubilai
Khan bombs were a main component of the wars against the Song Dynasty, which also employed
them.
Thousands of bombs were made every month in the Song Dynasty, though getting them to where
they needed to be was another matter.
One Song official in 1257 inspecting the border arsenals lamented how poorly supplied these
vulnerable sites were in these weapons, and how repeated requests to the central government
were fruitless.
The Song continued to throw whatever they could against the Mongols as they advanced
deeper into southern China, but by then the Mongols not only had ample supplies of these
weapons for war in China, but manpower reserves, a powerful military structure and a leadership
hell-bent on overrunning the south, driven by the energetic Khubilai who believed in
the eventuality of his conquest.
Khubilais great general Bayan set up ranks upon ranks of huopao during his drive to Hangzhou,
lobbing stones to pound down the walls, gunpowder bombs to annihilate gates and towers and terrify
the defenders within.
Against such an implacable foe, the last of Song resistance was ground to dust .
It appears that an advance in gunpowder weapons was made sometime in the late thirteenth century.
Near the ruins of Khubilais summer capital of Shangdu, the earliest confirmed cannon
has been found.
Bearing a serial number and an inscription in the Phags-pa script dating it to 1298,
weighing 6 kilograms (13 lb 11 oz) and just under 35 cm (approx.
14 in) in length, it suggests a product of considerable experimentation and systemization.
Much more primitive and rougher versions have been found that seem to date to the last years
of the Tangut Xi Xia Dynasty, crushed in 1227 by Chinggis Khan.
It is probable that the evolution of fire-lances from bamboo to metal tubes was a stepping
stone to larger metal tubes capable of larger gunpowder charges and projectiles, brought
on by the emergency of the Mongol invasions.
Only in the last years of the 13th century did these models reach a level of standardization
and sophistication to become true bombards, and more and more sophisticated models are
known from over the fourteenth century.
There are a few passages from 13th and 14th century Chinese texts which may indicate the
usage of these cannons, usually in naval engagements; where muzzle flashes seem to be described
when Mongol ships fire upon fleeing Jin ships, or with small vessels at the blockade of Xiangyang
bearing huopao, but from ships too small for catapult.
Much like the western texts, the Chinese did not yet have a name for this new technology
though.
Calling them huopao, the same name for the catapults which threw gunpowder bombs, it
is impossible to know, unless a description is given, which texts refer to bombs, and
which to early cannons.
From 1288 we have perhaps the earliest description of small hand-held guns or cannons.
In the war against his rebel cousin Nayan, Khubilai Khan led his army against Nayan himself,
but attacked from multiple fronts.
One such operation was led by a Jurchen commander in Khubilais service, Li Ting.
Using the word for fire-catapult or cannon, huopao, Li Ting and his small squad of Korean
soldiers one night snuck into an encampment of Nayans men in Manchuria and set off
these weapons to great effect.
From the context, it is clear that these weapons are too small and mobile to be catapults.
In further support of this interpretation, it appears one of these actual weapons was
found.
Discovered in 1970 in Heilongjiang province, near where Li Tings troops fought Nayan,
a small bronze cannon or handgun has been discovered from an archaeological site supporting
a late thirteenth century context.
Weighing 3 and a half kilograms, 34 cm in length, with a bore of 2 and a half centimeters,
these were small, anti-personnel weapons.
Not much use against walls, but devastating against men and horses.
The Yuan Dynasty continued to produce cannon over the fourteenth century.
One well known example from 1332 bears an inscription with its date and purpose of manufacture,
intended to be used on board a ship for suppression of rebels.
By the rise of Zhu Yuanzhang and the Ming Dynasty in the late fourteenth century, cannons
and other firearms were standard features of Chinese armies.
So did the Mongols spread gunpowder westwards?
Recipes for gunpowder and even the first gunpowder weapons appear in Europe, the Islamic World
and India late in the thirteenth century and early fourteenth centuries, after the Mongol
expansions.
However, the diffusion is difficult to track due to the already mentioned ambiguities in
terminology.
Its likely the Mongol armies did not travel with great quantities of powder and were reluctant
to share its knowledge.
It is notable though that when perhaps the earliest recipe for gunpowder is recorded
in Arabic in 1280 by Hasan al-Rammah, he records the ingredients as being Chinese in origin,
with saltpetre for instance called Chinese snow, or rockets as Chinese arrows.
A common word for gunpowder in Arabic and Persian meant drug , a literal translation
of the Chinese huoyao, fire-drug which implies that knowledge was transmitted directly from
Chinese engineers in Mongol service.
By the start of the fourteenth century, fireworks appear as objects of regular entertainment
in the Ilkhanate.
Many diplomats, travellers, priests and merchants made the trek from Europe across the Mongol
Empire and back, and many brought gifts from the Khans with them, or observed closely the
Mongol army in an attempt to learn its secrets.
The Franciscan friar, William of Rubruck, spent time with a European goldsmith in Mongol
service, William Buchier, the man who made the famous Silver Tree of Karakorum.
Buchier appears to have worked often in conjunction with Chinese artisans in his work for the
Mongols.
Though Rubruck does not describe gunpowder, he did meet, while back in Paris, the first
European who did: Roger Bacon, who later describes with amazement his experience viewing Chinese
firecrackers going off in Europe.
Even if the Mongol army itself did not directly or intentionally transfer gunpowder, or use
it in quantities to replace their own bows and arrows, they opened the pathways that
allowed its knowledge to move across the Eurasian continent.
Over the early decades of the fourteenth century, fearsome hand guns and bombards became regular
features of battlefield across the continent, the secret to gunpowder no longer restricted
to Chinese dynasties.
More videos on Mongol history are on the way, so make sure you are subscribed and have pressed
the bell button to see the next video in the series.
Please, consider liking, commenting, and sharing - it helps immensely.
Our videos would be impossible without our kind patrons and youtube channel members,
whose ranks you can join via the links in the description to know our schedule, get
early access to our videos, access our discord, and much more.
This is the Kings and Generals channel, and we will catch you on the next one.
