Warfare A Brief History

Fire and smoke have a long history as a tool of warfare. Petroleum is perhaps the oldest known incendiary used in large-scale combat. Assyrian bas-reliefs dating to the ninth century B.C. show what is believed to be liquid petroleum being used as a fire-assault weapon. Aeneias Tacticus refined the combination of tar, sulfur, and pine resin for use as an incendiary against warships in 360 B.C. 

The ancient and medieval worlds of Europe and the Middle East had discovered the military advantages of their version of napalm long before they knew of gunpowder. Between the period of Muslim expansion and the first 

Crusades, contacts were made between the Islamic world and East Asia. A tribute of 86 bottles containing meng huo (literally fierce fire oil ) was 

Like Roman and Greek combatants before them, the Chinese flamethrowers probably found their most effective use during naval engagements, such as a massive campaign on the Yangtze Paver in A.D. 975. The venerable Chinese scholar Shi Xubai writes about this famous battle in his historical treatise Talks at Fisherman s Rock  

Another story is that the fourteenth-century German monk and alchemist Berthold Schwartz was the inventor of modern firearms. According to this version of events, it was in Freiburg, Germany, about a century after Roger Bacon s forays into the alchemy of explosives, that the black Monk Berthold married gunpowder with a workable firearm. Berthold s ultimate fate is uncertain. He may have either accidentally blown himself up—the most probable outcome, if he had in fact existed at all—or even been executed because of his infernal discoveries. In fact, very little documentation of his life exists at all  

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