page_title: Military history of the Song dynasty
section_title: Fire lance
hierarchical_section_title: Military history of the Song dynasty / Gunpowder weapons / Fire lance
caption_attribution_description: English: Two different types of fire lances. The fire lance was an early gunpowder anti-personnel weapon with a relatively short range. It featured a complex mechanic involving a fuse and a tube containing gunpowder and pellets, stones, or anything really, tied to a spear or sharp thingy of some kind. Once the fuse is lit, you generally want to point the thing at someone you dislike and hope it actually fires and doesn't explode in your face.
context_page_description: The military history of the Song dynasty covers the period of Chinese history from 960 AD to 1279 AD when China was conquered by the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty created by Kublai Khan after the Division of the Mongol Empire.
context_section_description: The fire lance, as implied by the name, is essentially a long spear or pole affixed with a tube of gunpowder, and as it saw more usage, the tube's length became longer and pellets were added to the composition. The earliest confirmed employment of the fire lance in warfare was by Song dynasty forces against the Jin in 1132 during the siege of De'an (modern Anlu, Hubei Province).
  The Jin attacked with wooden siege towers called "sky bridges": "As the sky bridges became stuck fast, more than ten feet from the walls and unable to get any closer, [the defenders] were ready. From below and above the defensive structures they emerged and attacked with fire lances, striking lances, and hooked sickles, each in turn. The people [i.e., the porters] at the base of the sky bridges were repulsed. Pulling their bamboo ropes, they [the porters] ended up drawing the sky bridge back in an anxious and urgent rush, going about fifty paces before stopping." The surviving porters then tried once again to wheel the sky bridges into place but Song soldiers emerged from the walls in force and made a direct attack on the sky bridge soldiers while defenders on the walls threw bricks and shot arrows in conjunction with trebuchets hurling bombs and rocks. The sky bridges were also set fire to with incendiary bundles of grass and firewood. Li Heng, the Jin commander, decided to lift the siege and Jin forces were driven back with severe casualties.
  The siege of De'an marks an important transition and landmark in the history of gunpowder weapons as the fire medicine of the fire lances were described using a new word: "fire bomb medicine" (火炮藥), rather than simply "fire medicine." This could imply the use of a new more potent formula, or simply an acknowledgement of the specialized military application of gunpowder. Peter Lorge suggests that this "bomb powder" may have been corned, making it distinct from normal gunpowder. Evidence of gunpowder firecrackers also points to their appearance at roughly around the same time fire medicine was making its transition in the literary imagination. Fire lances continued to be used as anti-personnel weapons into the Ming dynasty, and were even attached to battle carts on one situation in 1163. Song commander Wei Sheng constructed several hundred of these carts known as "at-your-desire-war-carts" (如意戰車), which contained fire lances protruding from protective covering on the sides. They were used to defend mobile trebuchets that hurled fire bombs.
caption: Two different types of fire lances. The fire lance was an anti-personnel gunpowder weapon with a relatively short range. Considered by many to be the first proto-gun.
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