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CONTENTS
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A Fatal Irony
The origin of gunpowder and how it was perceived in its early stages
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Combustion Europe
How Europe was changed by this new weapon
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Remember Remember
Why we celebrate bonfire night on the 5th of November
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Changed Forever
A look into the impact of gunpowder on our history
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Gunpowder Today
What uses has gunpowder got in today’s world?
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A FATAL IRONY
In 850 AD, during the Tang Dynasty, Chinese alchemists were trying to discover the elixir of immortality. This elixir was made from a variant of three ingredients, coal, sulphur and saltpetre, also known as potassium nitrate. Ironically, these alchemists did not only fail to discover an elixir which would extend the life
In 904AD, Emperor Taizu realised the military implications this new compound had. For the
Mongols, China’s primary enemy, this was
a disaster. Early gunpowder weapons were used to great effect, with weapons such as
Fei Huo (Flying fire), which was a flaming
arrow with a burning cylinder of gun powder attached. To the Mongols and their horses,
this ‘new magic’ was terrifying as nothing was
of anyone who drank it, but instead unlocked
seen like this before.
something a lot more deadly. Once a spark or heat was added to this otherwise harmless concoction, the powder would ignite rapidly and create a great amount of smoke. The earliest name given to this new commodity was ‘Flying Fire’ and was said to ‘fly and dance’. Early appliances of
gunpowder were only in celebration, until the Song Dynasty.
The Chinese used gunpowder to make fireworks for celebrations, and the white man came along and said, Holy Shit, we can use this to kill people. What better what to celebrate than that?
- Jarod Kintz
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O! Curs’d device! Base implement of death! Fram’d in the black Tartarean realms beneath! By Beelzebub’s malicious art design’d To ruin all the race of human kind. - Ludovico Ariosto
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S
alt peter was
was needed to move the
sold to foreigners
as cannon balls.
banned from being
and gunpowder remained pretty much a Chinese
Monopoly up until the 13th, until knowledge of this
new weapon of destruction travelled down the Silk
Road, a trade route linking
the Eastern kingdoms to the Western world.
Gunpowder was first
referenced in 1267, and
in 1280 the first recipe for
the explosive mixture was published. Europeans
created a process of creating corned gunpowder, by first
wetting and then drying the gunpowder which was said
to be 3 times as effective as gunpowder. This meant that less amount of gunpowder
same size projectiles, such By 1350, gunpowder was
common place in European
armies, such as England and France, and made a huge
impact in such conflicts as the Hundred Year’s War. In the mid-15th century
gunpowder was added to
a tiny hand held barrel and the first ‘hand cannons’
were invented. These were named so either due to the
Czech word píšťala, meaning flute, or taken from pistolese named after the city of Pistoia, credited with
a lot of the arms production in the renaissance period. The chivalrous nature of
warfare would never be the same again.
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REMEMBER, REMEMBER In the year 1605, a plot was forming to blow up James I, the protestant English King.
His treatment of Catholics in England had reached boiling point, which was forcing
the hand of some of the more prominent
Catholics. John Grant and Robert Gatesby, the main conspirators along with 11 others
planned this high treason against the King. Their plan was to blow up the Houses of
Parliament, with the King, along with other Protestants, still inside.
For this deadly explosion, the conspirators need a lot of gunpowder, someone with
knowledge of it and who was willing to light
the match. This is where Guy Fawkes steps
in. He was a mercenary, not part of the
conspiracy, but simply a hired gun, paid to
light the fuse. 36 barrels were planted under the Houses of Parliament, and all that was
needed was to wait for the King to make his
address to parliament and light the fuse. But things didn’t go to plan.
An anonymous letter was sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, to warn
him away from Parliament on the date of
detonation. Being a high-ranking Catholic,
the conspirators didn’t want any unwarranted Catholic blood on their hands. But this
backfired, and Parker warned his king,
James I. Guy Fawkes was discovered waiting in the cellars, by the guards, with 36 barrels of gunpowder and a fuse lighter.
After a long, drawn out and painful torture, Guy Fawkes was forced to give up the
names of the conspirators, before being
hung, drawn and quartered. The conspirators were rounded up, some tried to flee and
some even took their own life, but all followed
be a celebration on the 5th of November, in remembrance of his victory over the
conspirators. A large bonfire would be lit with,
“
A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy.
- Guy Fawkes
“
Guy Fawkes’ fate. James I ordered there to
originally, an effigy of the pope, which later
turned into an effigy of Fawkes. To this day
the story is told to young children of Britain, who are told to ‘remember, remember, the 5th of November’.
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CHANGED FOREVER Castle Defences were of little help against continuous cannon fire. - Chris Trueman
After the invention of gunpowder, warfare completely changed, it
was no longer
the up-close and
personal
affair. It was similar
to the
ranged warfare
we are
accustomed to today,
although it was
no were near the firepower and accuracy of present day weaponry. Plate armour, the horse and lance were rendered obsolete. No longer was it a race to build the biggest army, but equipment the troops you did have with this new super weapon, as it was a lot harder to
train infantry with a bow or
spear, as it was to train them with a rifle. The artillery that spawned from the introduction of gunpowder also made castles and fortified
towns, irrelevant.
No longer was
it safe for Lords
or Kings and
their subjects
to hide behind
the protection
of their high walls, sieges that would usually have taken months, would now take days. This in turn also encouraged urban sprawl, which was the settlement of populations, further away from fortifications. Why would you bother to settle near a castle, if it provided no protection?
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COLONIAL BOOM Arguably, the biggest effect of gunpowder is the ability to settle and colonise, previously un-colonisable regions, whether that be due to the original inhabitants or the dangerous wildlife. Now a man with a gun could defend himself against many, or dangerous wild animals. This enabled the Europeans to colonise and subjugate larger, less technologically advanced nations, such as the Native Americans, Africans and Australians etc. No longer were numbers, the key to success and this helped shape the world as it is to day and kick-start globalisation. Modern day America was founded not on freedom or ideology but on the back of gunpowder.
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GUNPOWDER TODAY Gunpowder has been developed, since it’s introduction to European, into the highly
technical killing instruments they are today.
Gunpowder is most commonly used in bullet
cartridges to propel bullets at a high velocity. Used in conjunction with other chemicals,
When used in different concentrations,
colourful explosions in the sky. The Chinese
and smoke effects, in stage movies and
gunpowder can be used to create brilliant and first developed this, but they need not
exclusively use gunpowder for this purpose, as most people would believe. Chinese
also created the first primitive weapons with gunpowder.
gunpowder can be used to create explosions television.
For the space of half a year, the gunpowder lay as harmless as sand, because no fire came near to explode it.
- Emily Bronte, Withering Heiughts
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Gunpowder in its simplest form can be
Gunpowder set out in a line or entwined
used as explosions for mining. When lit in a
with string can be used as a fuse to either
contained environment, this explosion will
light explosions from a great distance or
propel or break rock, which is used to great
as timing to light fireworks. Today we have
effect when mining.
more technical ways to light explosions
For decades, field medics in warzones, used gunpowder to cauterize wounds in emergency situations. This put simply, just meant that it would seal a wound and stop the majority of the blood loss, and reduce the risk of death.
from a distance, such as radio frequency or sending an analogue signal down a wire. But gunpowder is still used in the lighting of fireworks, the reason it burns fast but doesn’t explode is due to the fireworks not being in that enclosed space where explosive pressure can rapidly build up.
“
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The real use of gunpowder is to make all men
TALL.
- Thomas Carlyle
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