See _Grenada Handbook_ (London, 1905). GRENADE (from the French word for a pomegranate, from a resemblance in shape to that fruit), a small spherical explosive vessel thrown by hand. Hand-grenades were used in war in the 16th century, but the word "grenade" was also from the first used to imply an explosive shell fired from a gun; this survives to the present day in the German _Granate_. These weapons were employed after about 1660, by special troops called "grenadiers" (q.v.), and in the wars of the 17th and 18th centuries they are continually met with. They became obsolete in the 19th century, but were given a new lease of life in the 20th, owing to their employment in the siege of Port Arthur in 1904, where hand-grenades of a modern type, and containing powerful modern explosives, proved very effective (see AMMUNITION, _shell_). Hand-grenades filled with chemicals and made of glass are used as a method of fire-extinction, and similar vessels containing a liquid with a very strong smell are used to discover defects in a drain or sewer. GRENADIER, originally a soldier whose special duty it was to throw hand-grenades. The latter were in use for a considerable time before any special organization was given to the troops who were to use them. In 1667 four men per company in the French _Regiment du Roi_ were trained with grenades (siege of Lille), and in 1668-1670 grenadier companies were formed in this regiment and in about thirty others of the French line. Evelyn, in his _Diary_, tells us that on the 29th of June 1678 he saw at Hounslow "a new sort of soldiers called granadiers, who were dexterous in flinging hand-granades." As in the case of the fusiliers, the French practice was therefore quickly copied in England. Eventually each English battalion had a grenadier company (see for illustrations _Archaeological Journal_, xxiii. 222, and xlvii. 321-324). Besides their grenades and the firelock, grenadiers carried axes which, with the grenades, were employed in the assault of fortresses, as we are told in the celebrated song, "The British Grenadiers."