History of Cannon - Development in China

Development in China

Prior to the invention of the cannon, projectile weapons existed using compressed air and steam. The invention of the cannon, driven by gunpowder, was first developed in China. Like firearms, cannon are a descendant of the fire-lance, a gunpowder-filled tube used as a flamethrower. Shrapnel was sometimes placed in the barrel, so that it would fly out along with the flames. Eventually, the paper and bamboo of which fire lance barrels were originally constructed came to be replaced by metal. The earliest known depiction of a firearm is a sculpture from a cave in Sichuan, dating to the 12th century, that portrays a figure carrying a vase-shaped bombard, firing flames and a cannonball. The oldest surviving gun, dated to 1288, has a muzzle bore diameter of 2.5 cm (1 in); the second oldest, dated to 1332, has a muzzle bore diameter of 10.5 cm (4 in).

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."

Joseph Needham suggests that the proto-shells described in the Huolongjing may be among the first of their kind. The Chinese also mounted over 3,000 bronze and iron cast cannon on the Great Wall of China, to defend themselves from the Mongols. The weapon was later taken up by both the Mongol conquerors. Chinese soldiers fighting under the Mongols appear to have used hand cannon in Manchurian battles during 1288, a date deduced from archaeological findings at battle sites.

The Red Turban Rebellion saw the application of early, arrow-firing cannon to both siege and naval warfare in the Southern area of conflict. Following the ascendancy of the Ming Dynasty, cannon were restricted at first to operations pacifying the southern border, including a resounding victory over a band of war-elephants in the 1380s. Cannon made their way to the northern border by 1414, where their noise had great effect on the Oirats, in addition to reportedly killing several hundred Mongols.

In the 1593 Siege of Pyongyang, 40,000 Ming troops deployed a variety of cannon to bombard an equally large Japanese army. Despite both forces having similar numbers, the Japanese were defeated in one day, due to the Ming advantage in firepower. Throughout the Seven Year War in Korea, the Chinese coalition used artillery widely, in both land and naval battles.