Medieval Artillery - Early Use in China and East Asia

Early Use in China and East Asia

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For more details on this topic, see History of gunpowder. See also: Gunpowder artillery in the Song Dynasty and Technology of Song Dynasty

The first documented battlefield use of gunpowder artillery took place on January 28, 1132, when Song General Han Shizhong used huochong to capture a city in Fujian. The world's earliest known cannon, dated 1282, was found in Mongol-held Manchuria. The first known illustration of a cannon is dated to 1326. In his 1341 poem, The Iron Cannon Affair, one of the first accounts of the use of gunpowder artillery in China, Xian Zhang wrote that a cannonball fired from an eruptor could "pierce the heart or belly when it strikes a man or horse, and can even transfix several persons at once."

Read more about this topic: Medieval Artillery

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