Fan-ch'eng was
first taken by assault, and some weeks later Siang-yang surrendered.
The shot used on this occasion weighed 125 Chinese pounds (if catties,
then equal to about 166 lbs. avoird.), and penetrated 7 or 8 feet into
the earth.
Rashiduddin also mentions the siege of Siangyang, as we learn from
D'Ohsson. He states that as there were in China none of the Manjaniks or
Mangonels called Kumgha the Kaan caused a certain engineer to be sent
from Damascus or Balbek, and the three sons of this person, Abubakr,
Ibrahim, and Mahomed, with their workmen, constructed seven great
Manjaniks which were employed against SAYANFU, a frontier fortress and
bulwark of Manzi.
We thus see that three different notices of the siege of Siang-yang,
Chinese, Persian, and Venetian, all concur as to the employment of foreign
engineers from the West, but all differ as to the individuals.
We have seen that one of the MSS. makes Polo assert that till this event
the Mongols and Chinese were totally ignorant of mangonels and trebuchets.
This, however, is quite untrue; and it is not very easy to reconcile even
the statement, implied in all versions of the story, that mangonels of
considerable power were unknown in the far East, with other circumstances
related in Mongol history.
The Persian History called Tabakat-i-Nasiri speaks of Aikah Nowin the
Manjaniki Khas or Engineer-in-Chief to Chinghiz Khan, and his corps of
ten thousand Manjanikis or Mangonellers. The Chinese histories used by
Gaubil also speak of these artillery battalions of Chinghiz. At the siege
of Kai-fung fu near the Hwang-Ho, the latest capital of the Kin Emperors,
in 1232, the Mongol General, Subutai, threw from his engines great
quarters of millstones which smashed the battlements and watch-towers on
the ramparts, and even the great timbers of houses in the city. In 1236 we
find the Chinese garrison of Chinchau (I-chin-hien on the Great Kiang
near the Great Canal) repelling the Mongol attack, partly by means of
their stone shot. When Hulaku was about to march against Persia (1253),
his brother, the Great Kaan Mangku, sent to Cathay to fetch thence 1000
families of mangonellers, naphtha-shooters, and arblasteers. Some of the
crossbows used by these latter had a range, we are told, of 2500 paces!
European history bears some similar evidence. One of the Tartar
characteristics reported by a fugitive Russian Archbishop, in Matt. Paris
(p. 570 under 1244), is: "Machinas habent multiplices, recte et fortiter
jacientes"
It is evident, therefore, that the Mongols and Chinese had engines of
war, but that they were deficient in some advantage possessed by those of
the Western nations.
