CHAP Invention and use of fire. or molestation; but an army of their brethren had been cut in pieces on the side of Bithynia, and the remains of the fleet was so repeatedly damaged by tempest and fire, that only five gallies entered the port of Alexandria to relate the tale of their various and almost incredible disasters.P In the two sieges, the deliverance of Constanthe Greek tinople may be chiefly ascribed to the novelty, the terrors, and the real efficacy of the Greek fire. The important secret of compounding and directing this artificial flame was imparted by Callinicus, a native of Heliopolis in Syria, who deserted from the service of the caliph to that of the emperor. The skill of a chymist and engineer was equivalent to the succour of fleets and armies; and this discovery or improvement of the military art was fortunately reserved for the distressful period, when the degenerate Romans of the East were incapable of contending with the warlike enthusiasm and youthful vigour of the Saracens. The historian who presumes to analyze this extraordi In the second sie Constantinople, I have followed Nicephorus (Brev. p. 33-36); Theophanes (Chronograph. p. 324-334); Cedrenus (Compend. p. 449-452); Zonaras, (tom. ii, p. 98-102; Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 88); Abulfeda (Annal. Moslem. p. 126); and Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 130), the most satisfactory of the Arabs. 4 Our sure and indefatigable guide in the middle ages and Byzantine history, Charles du Fresne du Cange, has treated in several places of the Greek fire, and his collections leave few gleanings behind. See particularly Glossar, Med. et Infim. Græcitat. p. 1275, sub voce Пup Jaλasosov, vypov. Glossar. Med. et Infim. Latinitat. Ignus Græcus: Observations sur Villehardouin, p. 305, 306. Observations sur Joinvilles, p. 71, 72. Theophanes styles him apXTEXTWY (p. 295). Cedrenus (p. 437), brings this artist from (the ruins of) Heliopolis in Egypt; and chemis try was indeed the peculiar science of the Egyptians. LII. nary composition, should suspect his own ig- CHAP. norance, and that of his Byzantine guides, ro prone to the marvellous, so careless, and, in this instance, so jealous of the truth. From their obscure, and perhaps fallacious hints, it should seem that the principal ingredient of the Greek fire was the naptha, or liquid bitumen, a light, tenacious, and inflammable oil, which springs from the earth, and catches fire as soon as it comes in contact with the air.— The naptha was mingled, I know not by what methods or in what proportions, with sulphur and with the pitch that is extracted from evergreen firs." From this mixture, which pro t 'The naptha, the oleum incendiarium of the history of Jerusalem (Gest. Dei per Francos, p. 1167), the Oriental fountain of James de Vitry (l. iii, c. 84), is introduced on slight evidence and strong probability. Cinnamus (l. vi, p. 165), calls the Greek fire wug Mŋdinov; and the naptha is known to abound between the Tigris and the Caspian sea. According to Pliny (Hist. Natur. ii, 109) it was subservient to the revenge of Medea, and in either etymology the λov Mndias or Mnas (Procop. de Bell. Gothic. 1. iv, c. 11) may fairly signify this liquid bitumen. t On the different sorts of oils and bitumens, see Dr. Watson's (the present bishop of Llandaff's) Chemical Essays, vol. ii, essay i, a classic book, the best adapted to infuse the taste and knowledge of chemistry. The less perfect ideas of the ancients may be found in Strabo (Geograph. 1. xvi, p. 1078), and Pliny (Hist. Natur. ii, 108, 109).— Huic (Naptha) magna cognatio est ignium, transiliuntque protinus in eam undecunque visam. Of our travellers I am best pleased with Otter (tom. i, p. 153 158). "Auna Comnena has partly drawn aside the curtain. AT TES πεύκης, και άλλων τινων τοιύτων δενδρον αειθαλων συναγεται δακρυον ακαυςον. Τετο μετα θεια τριβόμενον εμβαλλεται εις αυλιοκες καλαμων και εμφυσαται παρα τα παίζοντος λαβρω και συνεχει πνευματι (Alexiad. l. xiii, p. 383). Elsewhere (l. xi, p. 336) she mentions the property of burning, xara ro @paves naι 80° Enarspa. Leo, in the xixth chapter of his Tactics (Opera Meursii, tom. vi, p. 843, edit. Lami. Florent. 1745), speaks of the new invention of πυρ μετα βροντης και καπνά. These are genuine and Impe rial testimonies: .... LII. CHAP. duced a thick smoke and a loud explosion, proceeded a fierce and obstinate flame, which not only rose in perpendicular ascent, but likewise burnt with equal vehemence in descent or lateral progress; instead of being extinguished, it was nourished and quickened, by the element of water; and sand, urine, or vinegar, were the only remedies that could damp the fury of this powerful agent, which was justly denominated by the Greeks, the liquid, or the maritime fire. For the annoyance of the enemy, it was employed with equal effect, by sea and land, in battles or in sieges. It was either poured from the ramparts in large boilers, or launched in red-hot balls of stone and iron, or darted in arrows and javelins, twisted round with flax and tow, which had deeply imbibed the inflammable oil: sometimes it was deposited in fire-ships, the victims and instruments of a more ample revenge, and was most commonly blown through long tubes of copper, which were planted on the prow of a galley, and fancifully shaped into the mouths of savage monsters, that seemed to vomit a stream of liquid and consuming fire. This important art was preserved at Constantinople, as the palladium of the state; the gallies and artillery might occasionally be lent to the allies of Rome; but the composition of the Greek fire was concealed with the most jealous scruple, and the terror of the enemies was encreased and prolonged by their ignorance and surprise. In the treatise of the administration of the empire, the LII. royal author suggests the answers and ex- CHAP. cuses that might best elude the indiscreet curiosity and importunate demands of the barbarians. They should be told that the mystery of the Greek fire had been revealed by an angel to the first and greatest of the Constantines, with a sacred injunction, that this gift of heaven, this peculiar blessing of the Romans, should never be communicated to any foreign nation: that the prince and subject werè alike bound to religious silence, under the temporal and spiritual penalties of treason and sacrilege; and that the impious attempt would provoke the sudden and supernatural vengeance of the God of the christians. By these precautions, the secret was confined, above four hundred years, to the Romans of the East; and, at the end of the eleventh century, the Pisans, to whom every sea and every art were familiar, suffered the effects, without understanding the composition, of the Greek fire. It was at length either discovered or stolen by the mahometans; and, in the holy wars of Syria and Egypt, they retorted an invention, contrived against themselves, on the heads of the christians. A knight, who despised the swords and lances of the Saracens, relates, with heartfelt sincerity, his own fears, and those of his companions, at the sight and sound of the mischievous engine that discharged a torrent of the 65. * Constantin. Porphyrogenit. de Administrat. Imperii, c. xiii, p. 64, LII. CHAP. Greek fire, the feu Gregeois, as it is styled by the more early of the French writers. It came flying through the air, says Joinville, like a winged long-tailed dragon, about the thickness of a hogshead, with the report of thunder, and the velocity of lightning; and the darkness of the night was dispelled by this deadly illumination. The use of the Greek, or, as it might now be called, of the Saracen fire, was continued to the middle of the fourteenth century,* when the scientific or casual compound of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal, effected a new revolution in the art of war, and the history of mankind.' Constantinople and the Greek fire might exclude the Arabs from the eastern entrance of Europe; but in the West, on the side of the y Histoire de St. Louis, p. 39. Paris, 1668, p. 44. Paris de l'Imprimerie Royale, 1761. The former of these editions is precious for the observations of Ducange; the latter for the pure and original text of Joinville. We must have recourse to that text to discover, that the feu Gregeois was shot with a pile or javelin, from an engine that acted like a sling. z The vanity, or envy, of shaking the established property of Fame, has tempted some moderns to carry gunpowder above the xivth (see Sir William Temple, Dutens, &c.) and the Greek fire above the viith century (see the Saluste du President des Brosses, tom. ii, p. 381); but their evidence, which precedes the vulgar æra of the invention, is seldom clear or satisfactory, and subsequent writers may be suspected of fraud or credulity. In the earliest sieges, some combustibles of oil and sulphur have been used, and the Greek fire has some affinities with gunpowder both in nature and effects: for the antiquity of the first, a passage of Procopius (de Bell. Goth. 1. iv, c. 11); for that of the second, some facts in the Arabic history of Spain (A. D. 1249, 1312, 1332, Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. ii, p. 6, 7, 8), are the most difficult to elude. That extraordinary man, Friar Bacon, reveals two of the ingre dients, saltpetre and sulphur, and conceals the third in a sentence of mysterious gibberish, as if he dreaded the consequences of his own discovery (Biographia Britannica, vol. i, p. 430, new edition.) |