Artillery
Invention of gunpowder

Early Chinese artillery had vase-like shapes. This includes the "long range awe inspiring" cannon dated from 1350 and found in the 14th century Ming dynasty treatise Huolongjing. With the development of better metallurgy techniques, later cannons abandoned the vase shape of early Chinese artillery. This change can be seen in the bronze "thousand ball thunder cannon", an early example of field artillery. These small, crude weapons diffused into the Middle East (the madfaa) and reached Europe in the 13th century, in a very limited manner.

In Asia, Mongols adopted the Chinese artillery and used it effectively in the great conquest. By the late 14th century, Chinese rebels used organized artillery and cavalry to push Mongols out.

As small smooth-bore barrels, these were initially cast in iron or bronze around a core, with the first drilled bore ordnance recorded in operation near Seville in 1247. They fired lead, iron, or stone balls, sometimes large arrows and on occasions simply handfuls of whatever scrap came to hand. During the Hundred Years' War, these weapons became more common, initially as the bombard and later the cannon. Cannon were always muzzle-loaders. While there were many early attempts at breech-loading designs, a lack of engineering knowledge rendered these even more dangerous to use than muzzle-loaders.
language:response_language[Latin], detectable_content:number_placeholders[5], combination:repeat_prompt