Lecture 14 min.
The Mongol bow did not reign over the world for long; as fate would have it, within a century it was replaced by an even more formidable weapon – the arquebus and the cannon. The discoverer of gunpowder was the Chinese alchemist and physician Sun Simiao, who lived in the 7th century; he wrote in one of his treatises that heating a mixture of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal produces a powerful explosion. In battles against the Mongols, the Chinese used gunpowder bombs, which they hurled at the enemy from ballistas – though this did not save them from defeat. From China, gunpowder made its way to the Middle East, where unknown Arab craftsmen created the first cannon – the “madfaa.” At first, the madfaa was a hollowed-out wooden barrel into which gunpowder was poured, a stone was rolled in, and a shot was fired. In the 12th century, iron madfaas began to be made, firing lead pellets known as “nuts.” Then came large bombards weighing several tons, hurling massive stone balls – these weapons were designed to destroy fortress walls. In the 13th century, the Arabs used bombards in the siege of Spanish cities, and then, in the 14th century, the new weapon became known throughout Europe.
One of the first Europeans to learn the secret of gunpowder was the German monk Berthold Schwarz; he practiced alchemy in his monastery and was imprisoned for it, where he continued his experiments. Like all alchemists, Schwarz tried to obtain gold by combining various substances; one day he mixed charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter, set it alight – and barely survived the resulting explosion. Having learned to make gunpowder, Schwarz became a famous cannon master and, entering English service, took part in the Battle of Crécy.
However, in those days there were yet no powder cartridges or cast-iron balls, and loading a cannon took so much effort that in a whole day of battle it could manage only a few shots. Moreover, bombards were very unreliable; they were made of iron strips bound together with hoops and wrapped in leather to contain the powder gases escaping through the seams. The barrel of the bombard was set in a wooden trough, and the cannon was so heavy that changing its position during battle was practically impossible – which is why artillery was used mainly in the siege of fortresses. The bow continued to dominate the battlefield until new revolutionary changes occurred in the founding trade. In the 14th century, artillery masters learned to cast bronze and copper cannons in sand molds. The invention of the cast cannon was a FUNDAMENTAL DISCOVERY that changed the face of human society; knights and archers gave way before the new god of war – artillery. From then on, only those states that possessed a metallurgical industry, artillery, and a professional army could survive. Civilization had, at last, obtained a weapon that stopped the waves of invasions from the Great Steppe.
Firearms were created in the East, and the first army to adopt them was that of the Ottoman Empire. Under Sultan Murad I (1362-1389), the first Janissary units were formed – a corps of regular infantry made up of slave-soldiers raised in barracks from childhood. The discipline, order, and courage of the Janissaries helped them win their battles, but true fame came to them when "new soldiers" were armed with "new weapons." Under Murad II (1421-1451), most of the Janissaries were armed with arquebuses called "tüfenks"; a powerful artillery corps, the "topçu ocağı," was created – thus a regular army armed with firearms came into being.
The cannons of that era were too heavy to move across the battlefield, so they were placed in a central position, usually on a hill. The batteries were shielded by fortifications of wooden shields and wagons, forming a fortified camp; in the trenches in front of the camp and within the camp itself stood Janissary musketeers, while the sipahi cavalry was drawn up on the flanks and behind the camp. The cavalry's task was to engage the enemy and lure their cavalry onto the Janissary fortifications, where it would come under murderous cannon and arquebus fire – after which the cavalry would return and finish off the surviving enemies.
Under Murad's successor, Mehmed II, enormous siege guns were built for capturing cities – including the famous Cannon of Urban, which breached the walls of Constantinople in 1453. This was an 8-meter-long bombard that fired half-ton stone balls; to deliver this giant to Constantinople, the road had to be leveled and bridges reinforced, the cannon was hauled by 60 oxen, and 200 men walked alongside to keep it balanced.
The creation of a regular army armed with firearms was the Ottomans' fundamental discovery; this discovery triggered a wave of Ottoman conquests. Within twenty years of the fall of Constantinople, the Turks conquered Serbia, Greece, Albania, and Bosnia, and subjugated Wallachia and Moldavia. They then turned east, finally subduing Asia Minor, and in 1514, in the great battle on the plain of Chaldiran, crushed the combined forces of the nomads who had dominated Iran. Syria and Egypt were conquered next, and Sultan Selim the Grim (1512-1520) proclaimed himself the Prophet's deputy, the caliph.
News of the Turkish capture of Constantinople struck Europe like a thunderclap; every king rushed to build his own artillery. A new impetus for the development of artillery came from the appearance of blast furnaces and cast-iron casting. In the mid-15th century, the first blast furnaces were built in Westphalia, on the border of Germany and France; they differed from earlier bloomery furnaces in their large size (up to 6 meters in height) and mechanical bellows driven by a water wheel. The high temperatures produced in such furnaces made it possible to obtain liquid cast iron, which was used to cast cannonballs – and later gun barrels as well. Cast iron contained a large amount of carbon and was brittle; to obtain wrought iron, it was remelted in a process known as the finery process.
Another important innovation in artillery was the invention of the wheeled gun carriage. The wheeled carriage appeared in France at the end of the 15th century; its appearance made it possible to take cannons on long campaigns, and in 1494 mobile artillery allowed the French king Charles VIII to conquer Italy. The theory of artillery gradually developed as well. The Italian mathematician Niccolò Tartaglia invented the gunner's quadrant and was the first to attempt to calculate the trajectory of a projectile. Tartaglia established that the weight of a cannonball is proportional to the cube of its diameter and introduced gun calibers.
As noted above, gunpowder was invented in China. Another great Chinese invention was printing, which appeared in China in the 11th century. At first, printing used carved wooden blocks, then wooden movable type, and later cast-iron type, credited to the blacksmith Bi Sheng. In Europe, printing was apparently discovered independently, its creator being the craftsman Johannes Gutenberg of Strasbourg. In 1440, Gutenberg built his first printing press, and in 1455 he printed the first book – naturally, the most popular book of the era, the Bible.
We have already noted that in the Middle Ages it was Byzantium that played the role of guardian of ancient knowledge. When in the 15th century hordes of Turks approached Constantinople, learned Greek monks began fleeing to the West. They brought with them precious ancient manuscripts and taught Europeans the Greek language. The city to which the learned Greeks made their way was Florence – Greek was taught at the local university, and the Greeks found a warm welcome there; they translated into Latin the works of Aristotle, Plato, and Polybius that they had brought with them, passing on to the Florentines the innermost thoughts of the ancient philosophers. The ruler of Florence, the famous banker Cosimo de' Medici, was a passionate admirer of Plato and created a circle of antiquity enthusiasts at his villa in Careggi, which was later named the “Academy” after the example of Plato's Athenian school. Cosimo's friends included not only philosophers but also architects, sculptors, and painters who sought to revive ancient models in their works. The architect Filippo Brunelleschi was so enthralled by antiquity that he spent several years among the ruins of the Roman Forum; he measured and sketched the remains of ancient buildings and spent long hours in the Pantheon, which was then considered a wonder of the world: the concrete dome of this temple was 43 meters in diameter, and since that time no master had possessed the knowledge or the courage to create anything like it. When Brunelleschi proposed to erect just such a dome over the enormous Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral, left unfinished since the time of the Plague, the Florentines at first thought him mad – but in the end they allocated workers and money. For fifteen years, all of Florence watched in wonder as the unprecedented construction rose: the dome climbed higher and higher and finally reached a height of 114 meters – it was the most magnificent building ever erected by man up to that time, a new Tower of Babel, a symbol of the dawning Modern Age.
The revival of ancient knowledge and ancient culture – this was the essence and content of the new era, and as fate would have it, the old banker Cosimo turned out to be the man who understood this essence; he was the first to realize how enormous a role the patronage of rulers plays in the fate of culture. He gave money generously to talented people, and by the end of his life he found himself surrounded by people who had wrought a revolution in the world of art. These were all his friends – Donatello, who revived ancient sculpture, and Filippo Lippi, who revived ancient painting. By the end of Cosimo's life, art workshops had appeared in Florence where dozens of future painters trained – this was the beginning of a great era that was later called the Renaissance. In the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, the first experiments with oil paints were carried out; whereas artists had previously painted only wall frescoes on wet plaster, now true paintings emerged, gleaming with brightness and depth of color. This was the birth of a new art, and present at this birth were two of Verrocchio's pupils – Sandro Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci.
The advent of oil paints is an example of how technological discoveries bring about a revolution in the world of art. The artists who were the first to master this technique almost automatically became great masters – like Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael; the rest were fated to become mere imitators. The great masters of that era were not only painters but also sculptors, architects, and inventors. Michelangelo built the largest cathedral in the world – St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, with a dome 130 meters high. Leonardo da Vinci left behind numerous projects – he emulated Archimedes, the creator of ancient mechanics, and designed various war machines. Many of his projects were unrealizable given the technology of the time; but one of his inventions found very wide application – the wheellock mechanism for pistols; it was Leonardo da Vinci who created the cavalry pistol.
The Italian Renaissance was a revival of ancient arts and sciences – including geography. Brunelleschi's friend, Paolo Toscanelli, revived Ptolemy's geography, based on the determination of latitudes and longitudes. Toscanelli installed a gnomon atop the Florence Cathedral and, by measuring its shadow, attempted to recalculate the length of the meridian. Inaccuracies in his measurements led Toscanelli to underestimate the size of the Earth and conclude that the distance from Spain across the ocean to India was only 6,000 miles – a third of the actual distance. Toscanelli's calculations came into the hands of another Italian, Christopher Columbus, who became eager to reach India by this route. This project seemed feasible thanks to the invention of the caravel, a ship with a lateen sail and a stern rudder; the caravel differed from its predecessors in that it could sail against the wind by tacking. In 1492, Columbus set out for India and discovered America. In 1498, Vasco da Gama rounded Africa and opened the true route to India. In 1519, Magellan set out on the first circumnavigation of the globe. The caravel made all the oceans accessible to Europeans and gave them mastery of the seas. The caravel was a fundamental discovery that dramatically expanded the ecological niche of the European peoples. Spain became the possessor of the richest colonies, and hundreds of thousands of settlers set out across the ocean in search of new lands and riches. A century and a half after the discovery of America, Spain was left depopulated – its population halved, while in America thousands of towns grew up, populated by colonists.
A consequence of the discovery of America was the agrotechnical revolution. Europeans became acquainted with new agricultural crops, above all maize and the potato. These crops were significantly more productive than wheat, and bringing them into cultivation made it possible to increase food production. The expansion of the ecological niche was followed by population growth; for example, the population of France grew by half in the 18th century. On the other hand, American plantations became producers of sugar, coffee, cotton, and tobacco – goods that found ready markets in Europe. However, the plantation owners lacked the labor force to establish production of these goods. In the end, they began bringing in slaves from Africa; the growth of the plantation economy led to an unprecedented flourishing of the slave trade. All of this was a consequence of the great fundamental discovery – the invention of the caravel.
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