Greek fire

The invention of the Greek fire (of Latin græcus , Greek) and the secrecy kept on its composition were capital for the survival of the Byzantine Empire. It was a little the ancestor of the modern Napalm.

The formula is allotted to the “ chemist ” Callinicus originating in Héliopolis in Syria (or in Egypt according to Cédrénus). It would have been elaborate towards 670. This particularly flammable mixture of Naphtha, Salpetre, Sulfur and Bitume has an amazing property: it burns even in contact with the Eau. The Greeks called besides it liquid” or “maritime” fire “. While burning, it produced a thick smoke and a noisy explosion which did not fail to frighten the Barbares.

Gustave Schlumberger written in this connection:

At sea, the Byzantine ships - such as the Dromon and the chelandion - became frightening between all. What made all these ships frightening to the enemies, which had made them give the name of vessels carry-fire or “pyrophori”, it was the special apparatus of which each one was provided, apparatus suitable to project “liquid fire”, the terrible Greek fire. A tube in Lead or Cuivre conveyed the liquid to the prow from where a mouth of lion or any Animal monstrous sprinkled the enemy of flames. They are there famous “the siphons” mentioned by the chroniclers of the wars of the Eastern Middle Ages. By an end, they plunged in vast cauldrons very full with the infernal mixture; by the other, they spit this ignited rain and mortal on the face of the enemy ship, setting fire to, destroying whoever was close. Skilful bomb disposal experts easily directed one edge to the other of the chandelion or Dromon this jet terrible, according to the various vicissitudes of this combat body to body. Sometimes one placed also siphons at the poop and on the two sides of the ship thus transformed into genuine explosive device. In the year of Christ 960, the captain Nicéphore Phocas assembled a fleet thus equipped to go to punish terrible the Pirate S buckwheats of the island of Crete. This forwarding of Crete, apart from a crowd of other species of ships, counted more than two thousand “chelandia” armed with the Greek fire.
This discovery came at the right moment named to resist the Omeyyades at the time of the seat of Constantinople of 674 - 678. It is it amongst other things which allowed Constantin IV to push back the armies of the Caliph Yezid and to prolong the life of the Empire of a few centuries. The Byzantines hid their secrecy with an extraordinary care. The emperors, in their supreme instructions, recommended to their successors to preserve it at all costs and formulated the Anathème against the enough guilty irreligious person to reveal it. When a foreign prince or some other, asked to be initiated, one sent to him tortas full with the murderer ingredient, but one did not deliver to him at any price the manufactoring processes, of the remainder probably rather many.
The contemporaries refer too constantly, in connection with the Greek fire, with phenomena of instantaneous projection, of Explosion force, insistent on the infernal detonations, undergo it and enormous development of Fumée, the fast way like the flash of the ignited matter, so that one is not forced to admit the presence in the preparation of explosive mixtures similar or very close to the powder of modern war, various combinations of niter, of Salpêtre, Soufre, coal. It appears today certain that the naphtha oil or some other bituminous matter liquidates of this kind was to play in the composition of the Greek fire a key role. There is in many contemporary accounts of descriptions of the effects produced by its action, of the details on the nature of the devastations caused by him, which recall in a way completely striking the Incendie S brought by flammable oils and this terrible Pétrole so close to Eastern naphtha. In any case, what is called commonly the Greek fire was not a single receipt, and the truth would be rather, that the Byzantine bomb disposal experts had at their disposal under this generic formula a great number of different preparations, the ones simply flammable, the others at the same time flammable and detonating. Various texts say formally that the frightening matter introduced into the famous flexible tubes or siphons and projected violently through them, thanks to a mechanism which we do not know and which certain writers believed to be able to compare to the play of a pressing Pompe, ignited with the opening even tubes, opening around whose were constantly laid out of the packages of packing soaked with inflammable materials, in a state of slow Combustion. The Greek fire thus obtained burst violently and covered the space of a dreadful mixture of Feu and smoke.
There existed many other means of using of this diabolic machine. One launched it on the bridge of the enemy ships or in the interior of the cities besieged using crossbows to turn or of grosses machines to sling which spread of it of only one blow an enormous quantity locked up in some pot or container, kind of pot of friable matter, genuine box of artifice. The contents, liquid or solid, ignited at one time given by the means of a wick skilfully laid out, burst in the middle of its mad dash, perhaps by the simple action of the shock of the air, making steal in glares its fragile container, and fell down on the unhappy combatants with the state of cloud of fire.
One launched still and extremely often the Greek fire in small tubes to hand, or cheirosiphones . One also furnished some, the point of bludgeons to be sprinkled, or Lance S, arrows covered with packing which one ignited at the time to project them, while directing the flame against the enemy. But one of the processes the most the use was that to lock up the inflammable material in the cavity of small projectiles with hand out of glass or terra cotta with the furnace, the true analogues of the grenades and “kingpins”. The contemporary texts often mention these small machine whose our museums have today some brought back specimens of the East. The travellers could see with Smyrna, with Beirut, Damas, in the merchants of curiosities of Bazar S, of small vases or terra cotta containers, hollow, in the pine cone shape, with wall extremely thick bored at the base of a single extremely narrow opening. One formerly took them for objects of source phenician. But Mr. de Sauley proved in an unquestionable way which they was the famous medieval grenades there that the Arab or Byzantine infantrymen threw in front of them running from there to the attack of a fortress or by climbing the bridge of a ship. “When one had, says it, introduces into this small thick wall container the eminently flammable and detonating matter of a species of Greek fire, the opening was blocked and furnished with a wick or left étoupille, intended to carry fire inside. When the étoupille was lit, the projectile was launched and burst. It is conceived rather easily that the thickness and the compactness of the fragments projected by the explosion were to cause wounds about as serious as the glares of Obus produce. ” Some of these small destroying machines still carry countermarks the names of the Arab cities of them where they were manufactured.
One launched in the same way on the ship where the attacked building of the pots of naphtha or another inflammable materials, not yet lit, and, when one had oil of vast surfaces well, one threw bodies in ignition there, grenades or torches, which put instantaneously fire at all the soaked walls. Lastly, one also directed on the enemy fleet of large scathing attacks ignited and full with terrible liquid fire.
The Greek fire, thus projected or pushed in various ways in extraordinary quantity, crossed space with formidable detonations and extraordinary fulgurations. It set ablaze in one moment, said the popular chronicle, of the ships, of the buildings, even of the whole battalions. Its flame, said one, went in all the directions, bellow as in top; it devoured all, even the stones. All that was certainly extremely exaggerated. But it is extremely wrongly that one wanted to deny at all costs the extraordinary effects of the Greek fire. Why, if this machine had been so inoffensive, it had held such a considerable place in the concerns of the Byzantine men of war and in the armament of their fleets and their material of seat?
The Byzantines had thus, since the seventh century, admirably developed this multiple art of the Pyrotechnie applied to the naval Guerre. The alarming demonstrations, the dreadful devastations of the Greek fire in all its forms communicated to these fights enter Byzantine fleets and sarrasines a seal of tumultuous and fantastic terror whose accounts of the contemporaries left us the good striking testimony. It was to be an infernal scene that this combat body with body of several hundreds of these “chelandia” assembled each one by the many ones and wild combatants, mountain dwellers of Pamphylie or negros of Africa. That one thinks, in the middle of the between-being shocked crashes of all these large ships, the howls of these thousands of warriors running to the boarding, howls such, say the chroniclers, that they covered the acutest sounds and that the commands of the Byzantine captains were to be done by signals by means of the flames of the houses; that one thinks in this immense tumult, in the middle of the noise of the waves, the rattling of so much of various weapons, of the deaf shock of the projectiles launched by the machines, the ceaseless detonations of the Greek fire pots, of the rockets with hand crossing the air with the speed of the flash, bright with the noise of the thunder, illuminating the space of ceaseless gleams such as, still following the contemporary accounts, one saw there of night as in full day, suddenly filling up it enormous clouds of thick smoke, and, on this infernal, red bottom of fire, repugnant vapor black, the naked combatants, lit diabolic colors, clinging, similar with demons, the sides of the ships, fleeing fire, continuing along the ropes, and everywhere, on the peak of the waves, the armours étincelantes of the soldiers “Cataphractaire S”, i.e. vêtus of meshs, on the bridges of the ships, the black or white bodies of the negros of Ethiopia or the fair Scandinavian mercenaries, the Greek flame running étincelante and rapid, being divided into thousand new flames, carrying the destruction everywhere, tearing off thousand cries of pain!
Texts per tens, per hundreds, say to us to satiety this terror that to the soldiers foreign people the effects of the Greek fire inspired. Read the accounts of Joinville. The impression is extraordinary: each time the frightening machine crossed space or illuminated it of its appalling gleam, the good holy Louis and all his valiant knights were thrown to ground, shouting: “Lord, have pity of us! ” Each touched man believed himself lost. Twenty years after the forwarding of Crete, at the time of the terrible attack which directed against Constantinople, under the reign of Constantin Porphyrogénète and the regency of Romain Lécapène, Igor, the Russian prince, with the head of ten thousand boats of war, the immense barbarian flotilla was literally covered of Greek fire.
“As soon as they transfer, Alfred Rambaud, the lights of the siphons says, terror took them. In spite of their heavy helmets and their heavy armours, they were thrown out of their boats, liking better to be drowned in the floods that flarings by fire; pulled by the weight of their weapons, they went down at the sea-bed.” Greek fire, here, of all this immense disaster, which struck especially the imagination of the Russian people and that of his chroniclers. Each survivor told with his/her friends what had occurred: “The Greeks have a fire similar to the flashes in the sky, and, while launching it against us, they burned us; this is why we could not overcome them! ”

It suffices however thereafter for the Moslems to turn over the maritime forces of the Byzantine provinces conquered against their former suzerain to have this technology. The Greek fire was used until the 14th century until the use of a more frightening substance still: the Gunpowder. Its composition was lost after the Chute of Constantinople, in 1453.

Dupre discovered by chance a new Greek fire at the 18th century, and communicated its discovery with Louis XV (1759). The effects were so terrible that, by humanism, the king of France preferred to bury this secrecy in the lapse of memory, and bought the silence of Dupre by giving him a pension of 2000 books.

Sources

Edward Gibbon, History of the fall and the decline of the Roman empire , CH. LII
Gustave Schlumberger, Accounts of Byzance and the Crusades , 1922 Paris, CH. V

Other bonds

the film Prisonniers of time according to a novel of Michael Crichton proposes this technique.
the novel of C.J. Sansom the tears of the devil puts also ahead fire grégois

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