Gunpowder and Ammunition: Their Origin and Progress

Chapter VIII Friar Bacon

Roger Bacon was born at Ilchester, in Somersetshire, in 1214, and died about 1294. If the dedication be authentic, his Epistola de Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturæ et de Nullitate Magiæ, the work with which we are chiefly concerned here, was written before 1249.334

Bacon attacks Magic in this book on the ground that science and art can exhibit far greater wonders than the alleged wonders of the Black Art, and to prove his point he enumerates, in the first eight chapters, a number of wonders which (he believed) art could produce and magic could not. Everything is sufficiently clear until we reach the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters, and they are unintelligible as they stand. Now, it is past belief that a man of commanding genius should have deliberately stooped to write page after page of nonsense. The three chapters, therefore, must have some meaning, hidden from us though it be.335

It is unquestionable that Bacon believed he possessed secrets of vast importance. At the close of Chapter VIII. he tells us by way of warning that he may resort (in the following chapters) to certain cryptic methods, “on account of the magnitude of his secrets” (propter secretorum magnitudinem); and, fearing that ordinary cryptic methods might be too transparent, he wraps up his secrets in an anagram in Chapter XI.

If Bacon were in possession of such secrets, why, it may be asked, did he not publish them openly? The reason was, as he explains repeatedly and at length, that he firmly believed scientific knowledge to be hurtful to the people. He protests in his works again and again against the diffusion of scientific information. “The crowd,” he says, “is unable to digest scientific facts, which it scorns and misuses to its own detriment and that of the wise. Let not pearls, then, be thrown to swine.”336 Elsewhere he says: “The mob scoff at philosophers and despise scientific truth. If by chance they lay hold upon some great principle, they are sure to misinterpret and misapply it, so that what would have been gain to every one causes loss to all.”337 “It is madness,” he goes on to say, “to commit a secret to writing, unless it be so done as to be unintelligible to the ignorant, and only just intelligible to the best educated”;338 and so much in earnest was he upon this point that he enumerates seven methods of baffling public curiosity. A secret may be concealed by making use of:—

(1) Symbols and incantations (characteres et carmina);

(2) Enigmatic and figurative words;

(3) Consonants only, without vowels;

(4) Letters from different alphabets;

(5) Specially devised letters;

(6) Prearranged geometric figures;

(7) Shorthand (ars notatoria).

These are among the means of veiling secrets, he tells us, and “ill will it betide him who reveals them.”339

Bacon was not singular in holding the doctrine of secrecy in matters of science, nor was it peculiar to the age he lived in: it arose ages before his birth, and was held for ages after his death. To any objections that might have been raised against the doctrine, philosophers would probably have replied with Subtle and Mammon:—

       “... was not all the knowledge
Of the Egyptians writ in mystic symbols?
Speak not the Scriptures oft in parables?
Are not the choicest fables of the poets,
That were the fountains and first springs of wisdom,
Wrapp’d in perpetual allegories?
.....
          ... Sisyphus was damned
To roll the ceaseless stone, only because
He would have made Ours common.”340

A man who boldly, even fiercely, avowed such opinions as Bacon’s, was bound in consistency to employ some cryptic method in recording his own secrets; and when we closely examine the course Bacon actually followed, we find that his practice was rigidly in accordance with his theory—in fact, too rigidly. Those steeped in the Cabbala of Alchemy in his own age may have grasped his meaning, but to those who came afterwards it was obscure, if not hidden. Even to the early copyists of his MSS. it was unintelligible. In one of the MSS. consulted by Professor Brewer, the scribe has written on the margin of Chap. IX. of the De Secretis:—Hæc sunt œnigmata; “these things are enigmas,” and enigmas they have remained for seven centuries.

The presence of two anagrams in Chap. XI. is sufficient of itself to arouse a suspicion that some cryptic method (of a different kind) has been employed in Chaps. IX. and X., and this suspicion is strengthened by their whole manner and diction. Their style is involved, and their meaning (as they stand) unintelligible. Bacon passes from one subject to another in bewildering haste; from the unfinished description of one process to instructions about a second, which he leaves half told in order to plunge into a third. Among directions of seemingly primitive simplicity he interpolates such phrases as “catch my meaning if you can” (intellige si potes); “you will see whether I am speaking riddles or the plain truth” (videas utrum loquor œnigmata aut secundum veritatem); and he warns us that the purport of Chap. IX. may wholly escape us, unless we distinguish the (real from the apparent) meaning of his statements (in hoc capitulo decipieris, nisi dictionum significata, distinguas). These special peculiarities of Chaps. IX. and X. can be only explained by the use of some cryptic method, to which Bacon points plainly in Chap. VIII. He there names two cryptographers, Ethicus and Artephius, in connection with the seven cryptic methods already given, and he broadly hints that he may make use of some of these methods (forsan, propter secretorum magnitudinem, aliquibus his utar modis). It is needless to pursue the matter further: Chaps. IX. and X. are not, as they appear to be, nonsense, but the cryptic exposition of some secret which Bacon believed to be of great value.

Few of the difficulties we experience in investigating the meaning of these three chapters were felt by the correspondent to whom the Friar addressed them as letters. He and Bacon had long been in communication with each other, and as both knew the substance which formed the real subject of these letters, Bacon was at liberty to call it chalk or cheese or what he willed. They appear to have had some system of numerical signs, the meaning of which is lost to us. The tenth chapter begins with a reference to a letter received by Bacon from his correspondent in the year 602 A.H., and as the date is given in words, not figures, it can hardly have been mistaken by the scribes. Now the year 602 A.H. began on 18th Aug., 1205 A.D., nine years before Bacon was born. The number 602, therefore, is either a blind, or a conventional sign or key. The same may be said of the number 630 in the first line of Chap. XI., and of the totally unnecessary 30 which occurs just before the anagram in the same chapter—“(sit) pondus totum 30,” i.e. let the total weight be 30. No one can have ever wanted to know the total weight of the mixture in question: every one wanted to know the proportions of the ingredients. Our ignorance of these signs creates difficulties for us which did not exist for the initiated in Bacon’s time.

As will be shown hereafter, Bacon has occasionally availed himself in Chaps. IX., X., and XI. of Nos. 2 and 4 of the cryptic methods he has given us; but these methods apply only to words and phrases, and the wily Franciscan did not think it necessary to allude to the more general method by which he set forth so much of his statement as is contained in Chaps. IX. and X. We cannot discuss cryptograms here: suffice it to say that some of the early methods were too tedious and some too complicated to be employed throughout the whole length of Chaps. IX. and X. The method he appears to have adopted (as the result will show) was that known long afterwards as the “Argyle cipher,” of which the following letter from Thackeray’s “Esmond” is an example. The real contents of this letter are the phrases within brackets:—

“[The King will take] medicine on Thursday. His Majesty is better than he hath been of late, though incommoded by indigestion from his too great appetite. Madame Maintenon continues well. They have performed a play of Mons. Racine at St. Cyr.... [The Viscount Castlewood’s passports] were refused to him, ’twas said; his lordship being sued by a goldsmith for Vaisselle plate and a pearl necklace supplied to Mademoiselle Meruel of the French Comedy. ’Tis a pity such news should get abroad [and travel to England] about our young nobility here. Mademoiselle Meruel has been sent to Fort l’Evesque; they say she ordered not only plate, but furniture, and a carriage and horses [under that lords name], of which extravagance his unfortunate Viscountess knows nothing.

“[His Majesty will be] eighty-two years of age on his next birthday.... All here admired my Lord Viscount’s portrait, and said it was a masterpiece of Rigaud. Have you seen it? It is [at the Lady Castlewood’s house in Kensington Square]. I think no English painter could produce such a piece.

“Our poor friend the Abbé hath been to the Conciergerie [where his friends may visit him. They are to ask for] a remission of his sentence soon.

“[The Lord Castlewood] has had the affair of the plate made up and departs for England.

“Is not this a dull letter?...”—Bk. III. Chap. 8.

This letter shows very clearly that the Argyle steganogram is one which it is almost impossible to solve without the key, unless the matter to which it relates is known beforehand341—a difficulty to which Bacon’s correspondent was not exposed, for he knew well what the subject of Bacon’s communication would be. Here, then, we should have found ourselves left in utter darkness were it not for a ray of light afforded by Chap. XI. There we are told that something, in connection with saltpetre and sulphur, produces an explosion,342 and we know that this something is charcoal. Since Chap. XI. is concerned with the composition and effects of this mixture, what more probable than that Chaps. IX. and X. should deal with its ingredients separately—or at least with saltpetre and charcoal, for sulphur was so simple and common a drug that Bacon was not likely to dwell upon it? Now, towards the end of Chap. X. Bacon speaks without disguise of charcoal under the name of the wood from which it is made,343 and mentions the two trees, hazel and willow, which give the best. He significantly adds that when charcoal is added to proper proportions of certain other substances, something noteworthy happens (si vero partes virgulti coryli aut salicis multarum justâ rerum serie apte ordinaveris, unionem naturalem servabunt: et hoc non tradas oblivioni, quia valet ad multa). Since, then, charcoal is one of the subjects of these two chapters, it becomes all the more probable that saltpetre forms another. Bacon was writing but a few years after its discovery, and nothing could be more natural than that the great alchemist should bestow his attention upon the preparation of the new salt. This hypothesis explains simply and completely the most remarkable feature of Chaps. IX. and X.—the series of common and well-known alchemical terms and phrases, referring undoubtedly to the preparation of either saltpetre or gold, which are scattered and hidden among incoherent maunderings about chalk and cheese, philosophic eggs and Tagus sand, Adam’s bones and aperient medicine. But how could the preparation of gold lead up to the recipe for an explosive with which Chap. XI. ends? There is no connection whatever between gold and gunpowder, while the connection between saltpetre and gunpowder is of the closest possible kind. Before giving a recipe for gunpowder it was absolutely necessary for Bacon to describe the method of refining the lately discovered saltpetre, without which his recipe would have been worthless; and he took advantage of the close similarity between the alchemical preparation of gold and the refining of saltpetre to conceal the real import of his tract. By the title of the last three chapters—“On the Method of Making the Philosopher’s Stone”—and by constantly harping on gold, he endeavoured to distract and deceive his ordinary readers, leading them to believe that he was writing about gold when he was really treating on saltpetre.

The unnamed substance saltpetre, then, is the principal subject of Chaps. IX. and X., and our course is clear. We must treat these chapters as we should treat Col. Esmond’s letter were the brackets omitted344-we must make shift to insert them. We must bracket together the phrases and sentences relating to the real subject of these chapters, the familiar alchemical expressions relating to saltpetre. On doing so we shall find a connected and rational method of refining the salt.

In the following reproduction of Chaps. IX. and X. I have used the Esmond brackets, but I have not thought it necessary to reprint all the padding which connects them. All omissions, however, are shown by dots. No word of the bracketed phrases has been changed, altered, added, or suppressed, nor has the order of the words been altered. Nothing has been done but to indicate by brackets the misleading interpolations.

Cap. IX

De modo faciendi ovum philosophorum.

Dico igitur tibi quod volo ordinari quæ superius narravi exponere, et ideo volo ovum philosophorum et partes philosophici ovi investigare, nam hoc est initium ad alia. [Calcem345 igitur diligenter] aquis alkali et aliis aquis acutis [purifica], et variis contritionibus cum salibus confrica346 et pluribus assationibus concrema, [ut fiat terra pura penitus liberata ab aliis elementis347], quam tibi pro meæ longitudinis statura dignam duco. Intellige si potes, quia proculdubio erit compostum ex elementis, et ideo est pars lapidis qui non est lapis,348 et est in quolibet homine et in quolibet loco hominis.... Deinde oleum ad modum crocei casei et viscosi accipias,349 primo ictu insecabile, cujus tota virtus ignea dividatur et separetur per distillationem; [dissolvatur350 autem in aqua] acuta temporatæ acuitatis [cum igne levi,351 ut decoquatur quatenus separetur pinguedo sua352], sicut pinguedo in carnibus.... Melius est tamen ut decoquatur in aquis temporatis in acuitate [donec purgatur et dealbetur]. Aqua vero salutaris exaltatio fit ex igne secco vel humido; et [iteretur distillatio] ut effectum bonitatis recipiat sufficienter [donec rectificetur: rectificationis novissima signa sunt candor et crystallina serenitas353]; et cum cætera354 nigrescunt ab igne hoc albescit, mundatur, serenitate nitescit et splendore mirabili. [Ex hac aqua] et terra sua argentum vivum generatur, quod est sicut argentum vivum in mineralibus, et quando incandidit hoc modo [materia congelatur. Lapis vero Aristotelis, qui non est lapis, ponitur in pyramide in loco calido355].

Cap. X.356

De eodem, sed alio modo.

Transactis annis Arabum sexcentis et duobus, rogasti me de quibusdam secretis. [Accipe igitur lapidem357 et calcina ipsum] assatione leni et contritione forti sive cum rebus acutis. [Sed in fine parum commisce de aqua dulci; et medicinam laxativam358 compone de] septem rebus... vel de quot vis; sed quiescit animus meus in [duabus rebus quarum proportio melior est in sesquialtera proportione359] vel circiter, sicut te potest docere experientia. [Resolve360] tamen aurum361 [ad ignem et mollius calefac]. Sed si mihi credas, accipias unam rem, hoc est secretum secretorum, et naturæ potens miraculum. [Mixto362 igitur ex] duobus, aut ex pluribus, aut [Phœnice363], quod est animal singulare, [adjunge, et incorpora per fortem motum; cui si liquor calidus adhibeatur,364 habebis propositum ultimum365]. Sed postea cœlestis natura debilitatur si aquam infundis ter vel quater. Divide igitur, debile a forti in vasis diversis,366 si mihi credas. [Evacuato367 igitur quod bonum est.] Iterum adhibe pulverem, et aquam quæ remansit diligentur exprime, nam pro certo partes pulveris deducet non incorporatas. Et ideo illam aquam per se collige, quia pulvis exsiccatus ab ea habet incorporari medicinæ laxitivæ.... [Regyra cum pistillo,368 et congrega materiam ut potes, et aquam sepera paulatim] et redibit at statum. Quam aquam exsiccabis, nam continet pulverem369 et aquam medicinæ, quæ sunt incorporanda sicut pulvis principalis.

The phrases within brackets, which constitute the recipe, will be found collected together and translated in their proper place in Chap. II.

It would be presumptuous to suggest that the foregoing solution of Bacon’s Argyle steganogram is free from error; but I may express a hope that the errors are few and inconsiderable—a hope founded upon the completeness of the method disclosed. Whatever errors may be found, there can at least be little doubt that the occult meaning of the two chapters is the refining of saltpetre. One sentence, two sentences, or even more, might be selected from the description of almost any long chemical process which would apply with equal propriety to some other process; but it is incredible that a long, varied, and connected process, such as the refining of saltpetre, could be extracted by any method from documents professedly devoted to the philosopher’s stone, unless this process had been designedly inserted there, piecemeal or whole, by the author himself. For the figurative interpretation given of two or three words and phrases, we have Bacon’s own warrant. He threatened to employ verba œnigmatica and verba figurativa, and he has been taken at his word; with the result that a rational chemical process has been extracted from what was previously unintelligible.

Having said all he had to say about the ingredients, Bacon proceeds to deal with their mixture in Chap. XI., in which he employs a cryptic method without disguise:—

Cap. XI

De eodem, tamen alio modo.

Annis Arabum 630 transactis, petitioni tuæ respondeo in hunc modum.... Item pondus totum 30. Sed tamen salis petræ370 LURU VOPO VIR CAN UTRIET sulphuris; et sic facies tonitruum et coriscationem, si scias artificium. Videas tamen utrum loquor œnigmatate aut secundum veritatem.

Omitting the anagram, the translation is:—“In this 630th year of the Higira I comply with your request as follows.... Let the total weight (of the ingredients) be 30. However, of saltpetre... of sulphur; and with such a mixture you will produce a bright flash and a thundering noise, if you know ‘the trick.’ You may find (by actual experiment) whether I am writing riddles to you or the plain truth.”

The mention of the flash and the noise indicates at once that we have here to do with an explosive. But saltpetre and sulphur when mixed together do not form an explosive. We may feel sure, therefore, that the name of the one substance necessary to convert the incendiary mixture of saltpetre and sulphur into an explosive, namely charcoal, is included under some form in the anagram—either as carbo, or the name of the wood from which it is made. The et sic facies of the second clause shows that there must necessarily be in the first clause, and consequently in the anagram, some verb in the imperative mood, such as mix or take. We may expect a word for a weight (libræ, unciæ, &c.), or the word partes. As regards the proportions, the earliest we are acquainted with approximate more or less closely to 2:1:1, Arderne’s recipe being merely a laboratory recipe. The proportions of the ingredients, therefore, if included in the anagram, will probably not differ much from 2:1:1.

Rearranging the letters of the anagram, we get—

RVIIPARTVNOUCORULVET,

or since U and V are interchangeable,

R. VII PART. V NOV. CORUL. V ET; i.e.
r(ecipe) vii part(es), v nov(ellæ)371 corul (i), v et.

The whole passage in the original therefore reads:—

“sed tamen salis petræ recipe vii partes, v novellæ coruli, v et sulphuris,” &c.; that is—

“but take 7 parts of saltpetre, 5 of young hazel-wood, and 5 of sulphur,” &c.;

i.e. 1-2/5 sp., 1 char. and 1 sulph.

R. was the common contraction for recipe, and may be seen in Marcus Græcus’ first recipe (Berthelot’s text). Nov. Corul. could have presented no difficulty to Bacon’s correspondent, seeing that in the previous letter, Cap. X., Bacon had spoken of virgulti coryli. There he writes coryli: in his Opus Majus he wrote coruli (ii. 219, Bridges ed.).

The second anagram (in Greek, Roman, and Anglo-Saxon letters) seems to be a note to the first and need not detain us, since we have already got the names and proportions of the ingredients.

In deference to those readers who may reject the preceding attempts to read Bacon’s riddles, we now proceed to show, on grounds independent of the steganogram and anagram, that Bacon was in possession of an explosive.

The igneous bodies of which Bacon speaks fall into two classes. The first class are incendiaries. “Incendiaries,” he tells us, “may be made from saltpetre, or petroleum, or maltha,372 or naphtha, mixed with other substances.... To these are allied Greek fire and many other incendiaries373.... (Burning) maltha, if thrown upon an armed soldier, will cause his death.... It is difficult to extinguish, water being useless for this purpose.”374

But side by side with these passages we find descriptions of igneous compositions of a totally different kind. “There are other natural wonders. We can produce in the air sounds loud as thunder and flashes bright as lightning—nay, even surpassing the powers of nature. A small quantity of (a certain) composition, no bigger than one’s thumb, will give forth (on ignition) a deafening noise and a vivid flash.”375 We have, too, the passage, already quoted, in the eleventh chapter, where he says that saltpetre and sulphur and something else give forth (on ignition) “a thundering noise and a vivid flash.”376 Again: “Some compositions (when ignited) make an unbearable noise.... No other sound can be compared with it. Others produce flashes more fearful to behold than real lightning.... We may exemplify these effects with a child’s toy which contains within it a quantity of saltpetre (mixture) the size of one’s thumb. In the bursting of this bauble, made only of parchment, there are given forth a noise louder than the mutterings of thunder and a flash brighter than the brightest lightning.”377 It will be evident on a moment’s consideration that the charge of this toy must have been an explosive. Had it been an incendiary, the paper would have taken fire long before the pressure of the gases generated by the combustion had increased sufficiently to burst the case, and there would have been no loud report.

The consequences of igniting these two classes of composition are described so clearly as to preclude all possible misunderstanding:—the incendiary burns fiercely, while the other mixture gives forth a bright flash and a loud noise. In the latter case, Bacon was describing an explosion, and, as he has elsewhere spoken of saltpetre, charcoal, and sulphur, the reasonable conclusion is that the explosive was gunpowder.

It has been said that the first of the foregoing passages—“there are other natural wonders,” &c.—describes a rocket. As everybody knows, a rocket in its flight makes a whizzing noise and is followed by a trail of heated gas and sparks. The whizzing noise can only be compared to thunder by a total disregard of fact, for no sound resembles thunder less. Does thunder whizz? The fiery trail can only be called a flash by an equal disregard of fact: it gives a continuous light. But if the rocket carries a bursting charge which explodes in mid-air, the explosion may, with venial exaggeration, be said to produce a flash like lightning and a noise like thunder. Bacon was alluding to a bursting charge consisting of an explosive, and that explosive was gunpowder.

Was Bacon aware of the projective force of gunpowder? There is nothing in his works (so far as I am acquainted with them) which suggests that he was. He knew that gunpowder exploded, and he believed that an army might be either actually blown up by it, or put to flight by the terror inspired by its explosion;378 but he seems to have gone no further. He experimented, probably, with very small quantities of it; and the behaviour of gunpowder when fired in large quantities under pressure is so unlike its behaviour when fired in small quantities in the open air, that its projective force could neither have been predicted by abstract reasoning nor realised by even his powerful imagination.

If a surmise be permissible, Bacon did not invent, he discovered gunpowder. Experimenting with some incendiary composition, prepared with pure instead of impure saltpetre, the mixture exploded unexpectedly and shattered all the chemical apparatus near it, thereby laying the foundation of the mediæval legend about the destruction of the Brazen Head. This suggestion, if correct, only adds one more item to the long list of accidental discoveries. The laws of the structure of crystals were discovered by Haüy’s accidentally letting fall a piece of calc-spar, which broke into fragments. Malus, chancing to look through a double refracting prism at the light of the setting sun, reflected from the windows of the Luxembourg Palace, discovered the polarisation of light. Galvani discovered galvanism by mere accident. The decomposition of water by voltaic electricity was accidentally discovered by Nicholson in 1801.

However, whether as discoverer or inventor, Roger Bacon made and fired the first gunpowder. It fell to the lot of a persecuted English monk to fulfil the prophecy of Prometheus, that in the latter day there should appear “a wondrous being, who should call forth flashes brighter than lightning and sounds louder than thunder.”379