on the Greeks and Arabs; and they seem to have made no progress in the manufacture of their missiles during the course of the fourteenth.[305] Not until we reach the fifteenth century do we meet with gunpowder and cannon. The Prince of Yen (afterwards the Emperor Yung Loh) is said to have been “defeated by firearms” at the battle of Tung Chang, 1401;[306] but whether these arms were furnished with incendiaries or explosives is doubtful. The first trustworthy account of the use of artillery in China is given in the _Kai-yii-tsung-kao_, published in 1790, by Chao I, a man of considerable ability, and an accomplished antiquarian. He states that in the beginning of Yung Loh’s reign, 1407, cannon were acquired by the Emperor and employed during his campaigns in Cochin China.[307] Whence came these cannon and their ammunition? It is antecedently improbable that the Chinese either invented or manufactured them; for although the Chinese exhibited considerable intellectual power in some fields of investigation, they possessed little genius for mechanical or chemical inventions, and what mechanical ability they had was absorbed in other pursuits. When actually possessed of powder, they seem to have been incapable of making any improvement in its manufacture. “Si la poudre de Chine vaut mieux que la nôtre,” says Father Incarville, the ablest of the Jesuits I have consulted, “cela vien plutôt de la bonté des matières que du soin que les Chinois prennent de la faire bonne; ils la grainent très mal et ne savent pas la lisser.”[308] “Whatever their claims as inventors,” says another writer, “it is certain that the Chinese have made no progress in the art” (of making gunpowder).[309] Even their fireworks were no better than European fireworks. They did not employ stars, and their largest rockets had a length of only five inches, with an internal diameter of eight lines.[310] There is no trustworthy evidence, so far as I am aware, to prove that the Chinese invented gunpowder. The statements of the Jesuits on this particular matter are worthless for reasons already given,[311] and the popular Chinese tradition is deprived of any little weight it might otherwise have had by the disavowal of the invention by sober Chinese historians. On the other hand, we possess a number of facts which point to the conclusion that the Chinese obtained their first gunpowder and firearms from the West. (_a_) It has been already pointed out that the mangonals used at the siege of Siang-yang-fu, 1268-73, were of western origin, and were worked by western engineers. (_b_) The residence of the Polos in China, 1275-92, was by no means an isolated fact. They were but the pioneers of a considerable body of mechanics, missionaries, and merchants who continued their relations with the country for at least half a century.[312] It may be doubted whether the merchants ever lost touch with China.