Many people know that firearms originated in China, and later spread to the west, and were carried forward by Europeans. After the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, they evolved into what we later knew. But maybe everyone is still a little confused about the earliest origin of firearms. Let's first look at how firearms were first developed and how they spread to Europe.
Generally speaking, we think that musket is the first kind of gun, which is recorded in the History of Song Dynasty 150 and 1 1.
During the reign of Kaiqingyuan (1259), the musket he described was made of bamboo and filled with a pile of rubble, and the fireworks and rubble ejected together after being lit.
But firearms were used in war before the Song Dynasty. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, in 904 AD, Yang Xingmi, King of Wu Xiaowu, led an army to attack Zhang Yu, which is described as follows:
Fei Huo, who set the fire, burned the dragon and the shaman, and led the strong men to log in to the city first, worrying about the quilt.
Although it is impossible to know what this Fei Huo starter is, at least it is the earliest military application of gunpowder. At the same time, there is a mural in Dunhuang during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Watch out for the ghost with the fire stick in the upper right corner. I think this is the earliest gun that can be verified. It is about three centuries earlier than the musket in the Song Dynasty.
Until the Song Dynasty, holding firearms-that is, guns in the modern sense began to enter the growth stage. The murals and muskets on them are all bamboo tubes, and the powder ratio is not good, so the chamber pressure is very low, so you can only paste other people's faces with powder residue and gravel at close range. In the Song and Yuan Dynasties, people added more nitrate as oxidant to gunpowder, so the expansion efficiency of gunpowder was much faster instantly, and the bamboo barrel could no longer bear this kind of bore pressure, so in the late13rd century, a kind of "pistol" with metal barrel appeared. In order to make full use of the propulsive force of gunpowder combustion, those broken stones were replaced with complete pellets.
This is the bronze spear of Yuan Dynasty unearthed in Acheng District of Harbin. By the end of the Yuan Dynasty, there were iron spears, and firearms were very common.
At the same time, Middle Easterners, who have always been keen on business, also brought this kind of firearm from China to the Arab region (there is also a saying that it is a Mongolian expedition to the west). People over there call it motorized wool, and the picture below is the one quoted in the "Essentials of Firearms Technology in 750" written by Ma. I really can't find any other pictures about motor hair. ....
At that time, once the good things from China spread to the Middle East, they would certainly spread to the West. After all, people are businessmen. The earliest recorded "pistol law" in European history appeared in Italy in 1284. Although some scholars believe that European firearms were brought there by Mongolia's western expedition, I think Italian hand guns should be brought there by Middle Eastern people through trade according to their geographical environment.
By 1347, the siege of Calais at the beginning of the Hundred Years' War between Britain and France was the first recorded use of firearms in Europe. But they used guns. ...
By the second half of the14th century, hand-held firearms began to appear all over Europe. For example, the thing 1389 appeared in Russia, which is called тюяки in Russian, but it's actually just Turkey's tüf? The Russian transliteration of K means small gun (which can be understood as gun) in Turkish. It can be inferred that Russian firearms are related to Turkic or Ottoman Turkey.
At the same time, British pistols and German pistols also appeared in Britain and Germany (Holy Roman Empire) in 1380.
Archaeologists also found fragments of firearms in the ruins of 1398 Otpei Castle in Estonia, and the repaired metal part is roughly like this.
If the whole picture is restored, the picture of soldiers shooting with guns is as follows. y
It looks highly similar to the ancient firearms in China or the motor hair in Arabia, that is to say, the firearms in Europe were basically bought and copied by buy buy in the enlightenment period of14th century. Moreover, the firearms in this period were all fired by the fire door, and there was no trigger and other mechanisms, which was very primitive and not enough to shake the cold weapons.