"At the campaign of Yuzhang, he ordered his troops to propel the flying fire' on the besieged city...."
Compendium of Important Military Techniques (1044)
In 904 at the siege of Yuzhang, in southeastern China, attacking troops were ordered to launch "flying fire" on the city gates, burning them down and allowing their army to enter and capture the city. This is the first use of "fire arrows," a term that originally meant an arrow carrying a tub of gunpowder that would explode when the arrow impacted.
The Compendium of Important Military Techniques (1044), written by Tseng Kung-Liang, gives details of how to launch fire arrows by gunpowder rather than using bows. By 1232, when the Chinese were fighting the Mongols, a much more recognizable rocket was being made using the exploding tubes to propel the arrows. The tubes were capped at the top, but open at the bottom, and tied to the top of an arrow that, when lit, would ignite the powder and produce thrust. Whether the rockets themselves did much physical damage in the war is unclear, but the psychological effect was formidable. After seeing it used against them, the Mongols quickly developed their own versions that they used throughout their empire, and this spread the technology across the Middle East and on to Europe. By the twelfth century rockets arrived in European arsenals, reaching Italy by 1500, and then Germany, and later England. The use of the Iron Rocket against the British in India in the eighteenth century led to the development of the technology.
