Download PDF | Axel Müller - Gunpowder Technology in the Fifteenth Century_ A Study, Edition and Translation of the _Firework Book_ (Royal Armouries Research Series, 3)-Boydell Press (2024).
389 Pages
Introduction
Gunpowder technology has often been identified as one of the key catalysts for the transition from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period. By 1620, the natural philosopher Francis Bacon had placed gunpowder as one of the tripartite symbols of technological advancement: ‘Printing, gunpowder, and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world.” As Kay Smith put it in 2010, regarding the crucial role that gunpowder played in the development of the exploitation of energy resources from ancient times to the present. It marks the beginning of the change from animal, mechanical, or natural sources of energy [...] to the apparently unlimited power and mobility of chemical energy.”
However, when and how gunpowder technology emerged and spread to all corners of Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is far less clear. Gunpowder’s early origins in China are well-known, but we know surprisingly little about how this technology was transferred across Eurasia, and even less about the way that early gunpowder weapons performed in practice.’ This lack of understanding has had a significant effect on research into warfare in the late medieval and early modern period. Kelly DeVries and Kay Smith list a number of guns and gunners from 1326 onwards, and by the fifteenth century gunpowder artillery ‘had led to significant changes on battlefields and at sieges’ and ‘affected every kingdom and principality’.* Surviving records of master gunners are sparse from the late fourteenth century, becoming increasingly more substantial by the mid-fifteenth century, but still only amount to a patchwork of individual mentions of gunners in widely dispersed employment across Europe.* While the Tower of London recorded gunpowder production from 1346, increasing considerably between 1400 and 1410, the records say very little about purchase, storage, maintenance, and use.° In recent decades, scholars have become aware of both the gap in knowledge and the social history potential of gunpowder technology. For example, in 1996 Brenda Buchanan pointed out:
‘The history of gunpowder making is a comparatively neglected subject, yet this was a technology of international significance in terms of the intellectual transfer of ideas and techniques, and the practical transfer of raw materials and finished goods across continents and oceans. Unlike many industries its product supplied a diversity of markets which mirrored the cultural, social, and economic conditions in which it flourished.’
Since then, a wide range of scholars from different disciplines (military history, medieval studies, manuscript studies, sinology, economic history, history of science and technology) have contributed to the field and further demonstrated the significance of gunpowder technology to warfare, trade, intellectual exchange, culture, and society. However, they have naturally interpreted the evidence from the standpoint of their particular disciplines, often retrospectively applying modern science to medieval contexts and materials.’ And, until recently, there has been little about gunpowder technology in the early fifteenth century available in English. To try to understand gunpowder technology — including its introduction, use, trade, and significance — it is crucial to study a wide range of texts and records, as well as artefacts and experimental archaeology.’
While there is some information to be gleaned from fragments in local chronicles and other written evidence, as well as from isolated surviving artefacts, it is arguably through the study of military manuscripts that we can obtain the most comprehensive insight into military techniques in the fifteenth century and the emergence of this technology. Particularly valuable is the genre of technical manuscripts known as the Firework Book (one of the first surviving group of manuals written for gunpowder technology).'° However, no sustained, comparative analysis of the Firework Book genre has yet been undertaken. Accordingly, this book aims to answer some of the basic questions about gunpowder and early artillery in order to create a solid foundation of good hard evidence and research for others to build on. Future research would benefit from a multidisciplinary approach integrating the results of documentary and archival research, experimental work, and test firing of actual weapons.
It is clear that this technology was changing society, but little is known about the speed and format of the change. Gunpowder technology was transformative for every aspect of how wars were fought, because it had a substantial impact on resources, training, and construction. Some scholars have identified a ‘Military Revolution of the sixteenth century, in which gunpowder technology was one of the key components, but the evidence discussed in this book shows that whatever was happening was already well underway in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.'’ Whether the Firework Book can be viewed as a contribution to an earlier ‘Military Revolution’, or was part of a gradual change in society, will be a topic of discussion. Technological changes certainly contributed in major ways to how military interaction was conducted, and by the later fifteenth century gunpowder technology was omnipresent in Western Europe and no self-respecting local ruler could afford not to have access to gunpowder technology. There certainly was a demand for and supply of new technology such as the use of gunpowder artillery, with the consequent and overwhelming need to preserve and disseminate this knowledge, resulting in a wide range of manuals on military matters. The Firework Book is part of a genre emerging in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, which contains other texts related to technical military instructions such as the Bellifortis and the Buchsenmeister Books.”
All of these texts emerged at what was clearly a crucial point of development in this technology. It is less clear, however, what was the actual purpose of producing these texts.’ Realistically, there are three possible explanations: a) the Firework Book marks the recording of a fully-fledged technology which had already been in use for decades by the early fifteenth century, well before it has been assumed by modern historians to have occurred; b) it was the result of a substantial change in gunpowder manufacture and technology, which required a tool to disseminate knowledge of the change; or c) it is a textual anomaly which does not reflect actual practice at the time.
‘This study will show that the third explanation can be ruled out because the text does relate to operating tasks within gunpowder technology and contains well-documented ingredients, as well as recipes and instructions which work and can be recreated. It is more likely a combination of a) and b), in that it was written at a turning point of a change in technology or technological knowledge transfer, at a time when gunpowder technology had been in use for some decades. The Firework Book demonstrates both a demand for this type of knowledge about gunpowder technology, and that this specialist knowledge was already well established. The texts appeared during the period when vernacular writing, including the written recording (as opposed to oral transmission) of technical knowledge, was starting to appear across Europe. This was also the time when the profession of master gunner became widespread.
Manuscripts and Editions
In the Royal Armouries manuscript collection in Leeds there is a complex fifteenth-century vernacular text in German, catalogued as MS 1.34, called the Firework Book (in German: ‘Feuerwerkbuch’). It has not previously been edited and thus far has only been cursorily studied.
‘This study sets out to create a diplomatic edition and translation of 1.34, the sole exemplar of a Firework Book in the United Kingdom and a unique example of the corpus as a whole. This work is crucial for a more complete understanding of Firework Books, in view of the paucity of editions of this genre. Only three modern editions in New High German of the Freiburg manuscript Ms. 362 of the Firework Book have been produced, together with one translation into English, based on one of these modern editions. The first modern edition, printed in 1941, was the work of a civil servant, Wilhelm Hassenstein, with limited historical and scientific knowledge but working in a military context.”
The second and third editions were produced by the physicist Ferdinand Nibler (also translated into New High German) and the chemist Gerhard Kramer (who also added a partial translation into English). Both possessed scientific knowledge but lacked sufficient historical background to understand the need for accuracy in translation.’ In contrast, the choice here has been to offer a translation close to the original, dealing with inconsistencies when they occur, as well as rendering the sometimes monotonous and repetitive style as closely as possible to the original. This method provides scholars with greater insight into what the text actually states, rather than what modern scholars have interpreted it to be.
All 65 surviving versions of the Firework Book were produced in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in various dialects of Early New High German (defined as the version of German used between 1350 and 1650). On the basis of the predominant vernacular adopted, they may be traced to the south-western region of present-day Bavaria. Using the didactic format of a dialogue between a master gunner and an apprentice, the Firework Book has deservedly been described as ‘the most frequently copied, changed, and extended book about the art of gunnery and chemistry of the period’.!’7 However, it was frequently restructured and repackaged, with the result that no two surviving texts are identical in content.'®
An important element of the present study is the critical examination of the content of 1.34, relating it to a significant subset of the other 64 surviving manuscripts of the Firework Book genre, thereby providing a comparative analysis of this genre and related subject areas, as well as giving a better understanding of its technical content. This study presents substantial evidence that Firework Books were widely popular and often reproduced, although their role and function have gradually been forgotten over time.
While Royal Armouries manuscript 1.34 shares the same core content with most Firework Books, it also has several distinctive and unique features which make it an ideal case study. In addition to transcribing, translating, and interpreting 1.34, this study aims to move beyond textuality to explain the technical content of these manuscripts and offer an interpretation of the development of early gunpowder weaponry. In contrast to most other Firework Books, 1.34 is compiled with associated elements of text which offer a deeper insight into the knowledge of gunpowder technology and, more particularly, into the production and possible use of the Firework Book in the fifteenth century. 1.34 contains several distinct parts of text (the second part of 1.34 has long been viewed as unique) and a substantial number of images which are referred to in the manuscript text — such features are unusual for most Firework Books. ‘The images vividly show the various production techniques of gunpowder explosives and their use in battle, combined with technical illustrations of mounting the equipment.” It is hoped that a detailed analysis will lead to a better understanding, not only of how the emergence of literacy contributed to the production of the Firework Books, but also of plausible theories as to their production, authorship, readership, reception, and other uses.
The approach does not follow the conventional type of textual study which compares multiple manuscripts in detail. A few previous attempts have been made to compare a number of manuscripts, both by the heading to each chapter and by the texts of each subheading.” In fact, Ferdinand Nibler embarked on this work but only partially completed it — demonstrating the complexity of the extant corpus and providing information which is partial at best, as each Firework Book manuscript differs from the next.’ Furthermore, the considerable number of subtle differences (which increase the further one gets into the text) make this kind of study unfeasible, while the benefits would certainly be limited. Previous scholars have merely listed these variations, without comment, in the order of the key components, highlighting elements listed in one and not the other, thus providing only partial information on a text corpus.” Understanding the extent to which the manuscripts differ is only possible if all of them are compared, side by side — a daunting task given the number of extant manuscripts.
What emerges from my examination of the corpus of Firework Book manuscripts is a high proportion of similarities, albeit with sometimes subtle, sometimes more substantial differences. A comprehensive comparative analysis is beyond the scope of this study, and would likely be of limited value in any case. Instead, this focused analysis of one manuscript provides a thorough basis on which to explain the origins, use, circulation, and subsequent life-story of the Firework Book. Taking 1.34 as an exemplar for all Firework Book manuscripts, this study provides a textual analysis of the single manuscript and, through comparative works of secondary material, evaluates its content, role, and function within the context of technological and military development. 1.34 is ideal for the purpose, as it provides the traditional Firework Book components, along with an additional explanatory text. Almost all manuscripts include a series of questions, often referred to as the Master Gunner’s Questions. These vary in length and content, and in the number of key elements that are omitted or added. The core, however, remains the same, giving a description of the ingredients of gunpowder, and its various uses.
Whether these practices were actually used, or were imagined enhancement or wishful thinking, will be discussed in Chapters 2 and 5. MS 1.34 — like all other manuscripts of the Firework Book — has its own order of paragraphs and thematic groupings of paragraphs, as well as distinctive additions and omissions within paragraph content, accompanied by an unusual second part and provides valuable insight into the possible uses of the text.
Chapter 1 discusses the complex tradition of the Firework Book with reference to the 65 extant manuscripts, of which I have examined 63. Also considered are how the Firework Book fits into the wider genre of fifteenth-century military manuals and technical writings, and how it has been studied by modern scholars. Chapter 2 provides a summary of evidence of the audience for whom the Firework Books were produced and what happened to individual manuscripts of the Firework Books. Chapter 3 gives a physical description of Royal Armouries’ manuscript 1.34, outlining its contents and its provenance. Chapter 4 provides editorial and translation notes, followed by a line-by-line transcription and translation of 1.34. The text has to be viewed in its entirety to provide a thorough understanding of the Firework Book format and content, and it is essential to read it before the technology — both its terminology and its usage — can be discussed. Chapter 5 examines the key elements in the text to analyse the information that they provide and what they tell us about fifteenth-century gunpowder technology.
In summary, as the history of gunpowder technology to date has been a sort of jigsaw puzzle composed of pieces from various disciplines, the present publication aims to further our understanding of it by using 1.34 as an exemplar of a Firework Book (albeit a unique one). Combining literary and linguistic source criticism, along with historical analysis and fieldwork, it demonstrates the role of the Firework Book as an essential link in the consolidation of gunpowder technology.
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