The fire lance or fire spear is one of the first gunpowder weapons

Gunpowder warfare

Early modern warfare is associated with the start of the widespread use of gunpowder and the development of suitable weapons to use the explosive, including artillery and handguns such as the arquebus and later the musket, and for this reason the era is also summarized as the age of gunpowder...

 in the world.

Description

The earliest fire lances were spear-like weapons combining a bamboo

Bamboo

Bamboo is a group of perennial evergreens in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family....

 tube containing gunpowder and projectiles tied to a Chinese spear

Qiang (spear)

Qiang is the Chinese term for spear. Due to its relative ease of manufacture, the spear in many variations was ubiquitous on the pre-modern Chinese battlefield...

. Upon firing, the charge ejected a small projectile or poison dart along with the flame. These fire lances had a range of only a few feet. Being a weapon that combines with a spear, it was initially used as a hand-to-hand weapon with the gunpowder shot designed to give the wielder an edge in close-quarter combat.

Inventors soon saw the merit in the gunpowder/tube design and fire lances then appeared independent of the spear.

Diagrams, illustrations and books from the 10th century show the fire lance being used in battle, but it saw the most prolific usage during early to mid Song Dynasty

Song Dynasty

The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...

, when various northern peoples encroached on Chinese soil. These short-ranged, one-shot, disposable weapons were often held in racks on city walls and gave Chinese defenders a tremendous tactical and psychological advantage when fired in volleys. They were ideal for dealing with enemies trying to scale city walls, or for holding the enemy at bay behind a breached gate.

History

The first fire-lances were seen in China during the 10th century, but by about 1260 they had developed into a variety of forms and although normally associated with peasant rebels, regular Song troops also used them, their use by cavalry being described at the siege of Yangzhou

Yangzhou

Yangzhou is a prefecture-level city in central Jiangsu Province, People's Republic of China. Sitting on the northern bank of the Yangtze River, it borders the provincial capital of Nanjing to the southwest, Huai'an to the north, Yancheng to the northeast, Taizhou to the east, and Zhenjiang across...

 in 1276. They were cheap and popular for several centuries sometimes being used in racks to defend cities and remained in use until well after the Ming period. The development of gunpowder in the fire lance to have enough force to hurl a killing projectile was a key step along the development of the first true guns.

This weapon paved the way for further improvements to gunpowder weapons and is the direct ancestor of the modern-day firearm

Firearm

A firearm is a weapon that launches one, or many, projectile at high velocity through confined burning of a propellant. This subsonic burning process is technically known as deflagration, as opposed to supersonic combustion known as a detonation. In older firearms, the propellant was typically...

 and artillery

Artillery

Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...

.

The weapon seems also to have evolved into rocket

Rocket

A rocket is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust from a rocket engine. In all rockets, the exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction...

s, which were used as a weapon in their own right.

See also

• Gunpowder warfare
  Gunpowder warfare
  Early modern warfare is associated with the start of the widespread use of gunpowder and the development of suitable weapons to use the explosive, including artillery and handguns such as the arquebus and later the musket, and for this reason the era is also summarized as the age of gunpowder...
  
  
• Technology of the Song Dynasty
  Technology of the Song Dynasty
  The Song Dynasty provided some of the most significant technological advances in Chinese history, many of which came from talented statesmen drafted by the government through imperial examinations....
  
  
• Jiao Yu
  Jiao Yu
  Jiao Yu was a Chinese military officer loyal to Zhu Yuanzhang , the founder of the Ming Dynasty . He was entrusted by Emperor Hongwu as a leading artillery officer for the rebel army that overthrew the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, and established the Ming Dynasty...
  
  
• Huolongjing
  Huolongjing
  The Huolongjing is a 14th century military treatise that was compiled and edited by Jiao Yu and Liu Ji of the early Ming Dynasty in China...
  
  

External links

• Little Bit of Info on the Fire Lance
• Medieval Chinese Armies, 1260-1520 (Men-at-arms S.) by Chris J. Peers. ISBN 1-85532-599-3
• Chinese Siege Warfare: Mechanical Artillery & Siege Weapons of Antiquity