"On this subject (length of range) the engineers and experts of the army
should employ their very sharpest wits. For if the shot of one army,
whether engine-stones or pointed projectiles, have a longer range than the
shot of the enemy, rest assured that the side whose artillery hath the
longest range will have a vast advantage in action. Plainly, if the
Christian shot can take effect on the Pagan forces, whilst the Pagan shot
cannot reach the Christian forces, it may be safely asserted that the
Christians will continually gain ground from the enemy, or, in other
words, they will win the battle."
The importance of these machines in war, and the efforts made to render
them more effective, went on augmenting till the introduction of the still
more "villanous saltpetre," even then, however, coming to no sudden halt.
Several of the instances that we have cited of machines of extraordinary
power belong to a time when the use of cannon had made some progress. The
old engines were employed by Timur; in the wars of the Hussites as late as
1422; and, as we have seen, up to the middle of that century by Mahomed
II. They are also distinctly represented on the towers of Aden, in the
contemporary print of the escalade in 1514, reproduced in this volume.
(Bk. III. ch. xxxvi.)
(Etudes sur le Passe et l'Avenir de l'Artillerie, par L. N. Bonaparte,
etc., tom. II.; Marinus Sanutius, Bk. II. Pt. 4, ch. xxi. and xxii.;
Kington's Fred. II., II. 488; Froissart, I. 69, 81, 182; Elliot,
III. 41, etc.; Hewitt's Ancient Armour, I. 350; Pertz, Scriptores,
XVIII. 420, 751; Q. R. 135-7; Weber, III. 103; Hammer, Ilch. II.
95.)
NOTE 4. - Very like this is what the Romance of Coeur de Lion tells of the
effects of Sir Fulke Doyley's mangonels on the Saracens of Ebedy: -
"Sir Fouke brought good engynes
Swylke knew but fewe Sarazynes -
* * *
"A prys tour stood ovyr the Gate;
He bent his engynes and threw thereate
A great stone that harde droff,
That the Tour al to roff
* * *
"And slough the folk that therinne stood;
The other fledde and wer nygh wood,
And sayde it was the devylys dent," etc.
- Weber, II. 172.
NOTE 5. - This chapter is one of the most perplexing in the whole book,
owing to the chronological difficulties involved.
SAIANFU is SIANG-YANG FU, which stands on the south bank of the River Han,
and with the sister city of Fan-ch'eng, on the opposite bank, commands the
junction of two important approaches to the southern provinces, viz. that
from Shen-si down the Han, and that from Shan-si and Peking down the
Pe-ho. Fan-ch'eng seems now to be the more important place of the two.
The name given to the city by Polo is precisely that which Siang-yang
bears in Rashiduddin, and there is no room for doubt as to its identity.
The Chinese historians relate that Kublai was strongly advised to make the
capture of Siang-yang and Fan-ch'eng a preliminary to his intended attack
upon the Sung. The siege was undertaken in the latter part of 1268, and
the twin cities held out till the spring [March] of 1273. Nor did Kublai
apparently prosecute any other operations against the Sung during that
long interval.
Now Polo represents that the long siege of Saianfu, instead of being a
prologue to the subjugation of Manzi, was the protracted epilogue of that
enterprise; and he also represents the fall of the place as caused by
advice and assistance rendered by his father, his uncle, and himself, a
circumstance consistent only with the siege's having really been such an
epilogue to the war. For, according to the narrative as it stands in all
the texts, the Polos could not have reached the Court of Kublai before
the end of 1274, i.e. a year and a half after the fall of Siang-yang, as
represented in the Chinese histories.
The difficulty is not removed, nor, it appears to me, abated in any
degree, by omitting the name of Marco as one of the agents in this affair,
an omission which occurs both in Pauthier's MS. B and in Ramusio. Pauthier
suggests that the father and uncle may have given the advice and
assistance in question when on their first visit to the Kaan, and when the
siege of Siang-yang was first contemplated. But this would be quite
inconsistent with the assertion that the place had held out three years
longer than the rest of Manzi, as well as with the idea that their aid had
abridged the duration of the siege, and, in fact, with the spirit of the
whole story. It is certainly very difficult in this case to justify
Marco's veracity, but I am very unwilling to believe that there was no
justification in the facts.
It is a very curious circumstance that the historian Wassaf also appears
to represent Saianfu (see note 5, ch. lxv.) as holding out after all the
rest of Manzi had been conquered. Yet the Chinese annals are systematic,
minute, and consequent, and it seems impossible to attribute to them such
a misplacement of an event which they represent as the key to the conquest
of Southern China.
In comparing Marco's story with that of the Chinese, we find the same
coincidence in prominent features, accompanying a discrepancy in details,
that we have had occasion to notice in other cases where his narrative
intersects history. The Chinese account runs as follows: -
In 1271, after Siang-yang and Fan-ch'eng had held out already nearly three
years, an Uighur General serving at the siege, whose name was Alihaiya,
urged the Emperor to send to the West for engineers expert at the
construction and working of machines casting stones of 150 lbs.
