Nitrate, sulfur and potassium compounds in sulfur, the three main components of gunpowder, are commonly used drugs in alchemy. In the process of alchemy, alchemists found that these ingredients are easy to ignite when mixed together, and they can burn violently or even explode with a little carelessness, so they are called gunpowder. Not later than the Tang Dynasty, gunpowder with three main components of nitrate, sulfur and carbon was born in China.
Around the end of the Tang Dynasty, gunpowder began to be used in weapons manufacturing and put into practice. Before gunpowder was invented, the army used to attack the enemy with fire. The practice is to tie some flammable substances such as grease to the arrow, light it and shoot it with a bow to burn the enemy. But these things burn neither fast nor strongly.
Moreover, gunpowder has a fast burning speed, large firepower and is not easy to extinguish, so it quickly replaced oil and other burning materials and was applied in the military. In 907, God bless the Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty for four years, Zheng led an army to attack (now Nanchang, Jiangxi Province) and set out to burn the dragon shaman in the city. The so-called "starting Fei Huo" is to put gunpowder in a trebuchet, ignite it and throw it out to attack the enemy. This example of war is generally regarded as the earliest record of siege with gunpowder.
During the Song and Jin Dynasties, gunpowder weapons developed rapidly due to frequent wars. In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, the official military encyclopedia "Wu Yao" recorded for the first time the formulas of three gunpowder weapons: artillery gunpowder, poisonous smoke ball gunpowder and tribulus fireball gunpowder.
There are many kinds of firearms in Song Dynasty, which can be roughly divided into three categories. One kind is combustible firearms, which use the combustion performance of gunpowder to burn the enemy or burn and delay the enemy's target, and at the same time have the function of releasing toxic gas, smoke and so on to kill the enemy.
These weapons mainly include fireballs, tribulus fireballs, thunderbolt fireballs, smoke bombs, poisonous smoke bombs, iron-billed firebirds, bamboo firebirds, rockets and artillery. One is the explosive firearm, which uses gunpowder to burn in a closed container to generate powerful heat and gas, which makes the container explode and achieve the purpose of killing the enemy.
At that time, a large number of explosive firearms used in the war mainly included thunderbolt, iron cannon, thunderbolt, artillery and thistle. One is the rocket firearm, which is the earliest jet firearm in the world, by tying a gunpowder barrel to the front end of the arrow shaft, and then using the reaction force of the gas ejected backward after the gunpowder is burned to shoot an arrow.
In the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, tubular firearms began to appear again, mainly muskets and iron cannons. However, the tubular firearms at that time were simple in shape and still in the primary stage.