Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Manual on Explosives
It remained, however, for the German monk Schwarz to first utilize this explosive mixture as a propellant to throw a mass of stone or iron through the air in a more efficient manner than had been possible with the purely mechanical means formerly employed, such as the catapult and the crossbow.
Schwarz's invention of firearms is now generally concluded to have taken place about the year 1313, and shortly afterwards, in the reign of Edward 111, we find in the accounts of the -royal Household items relating to the purchase of sulphur and saltpetre for the guns, and it is a further established fact that guns or bombards, _ as they were then called, were used by the English at the Battle of Cre in the year 1346. From that time onwards.
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