In ancient offensive and defensive operations, chemical means such as smoke screens and poisonous gas were often used to make a strange victory day, which has some similarities with modern chemical warfare.
This paper aims to study the use of chemical means in ancient warfare, reveal the main ways and methods of its use, and then enlighten us to pay more attention to the construction of chemical protection.
Both sides of the war always strive to attack the enemy without being prepared to win the victory and achieve the greatest success at a small cost.
Chemical weapons can kill and injure a large number of enemy forces in an instant, drastically change the balance of forces on the battlefield, is an important means of surprising victory, has been valued by military experts since ancient times, and has been used many times in offensive and defensive operations in ancient wars.
In ancient wars, because the chemical industry at that time was not yet developed, the chemical resources that could be used for combat were very limited, mainly some irritating, suffocating, flammable substances and poisons.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >: Smoke Screens – the earliest chemical weapons </h1>
The smoke screen plays a major role in war, confusing the enemy and protecting itself from attack.
China has long understood the role of smoke screens in ancient times, and ancient legends say that "clams can make fog, and soldiers are unconscious." The fog here refers to the application of smoke.
In his book "City Defense", Mo Zhai advocated the use of smoke-emitting equipment to carry out defensive battles of the city. The smoke-producing materials used were firewood, mugwort and young bean leaves, which were ignited and sent to the attacker's tunnel with blowing equipment.
Since the wood is flammable, the young bean leaves are flame-resistant, and carbon dioxide will be released after combustion, and the irritating smoke emitted by the mugwort leaf after combustion, this method of tear-inducing can be said to have laid the foundation for chemical agents.
In addition to being used for the defense of cities and pools, smoke screens were often used to cover attacks in ancient times.
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Qi soldiers occupied Qingshui, and Wei soldiers crossed the Huai River to attack, "planting rafts and grass, setting fire to the wind, burning Qi ships and ships, and advancing straight according to smoke." Flying knives slashed indiscriminately. Qi soldiers routed and fled", which is a typical example of an ancient smoke screen to cover an attack.
The earliest record in the historical records of the use of smoke screens for battle was in 589 AD, when the Sui Dynasty general He Ruobi was ordered to cut down Chen, and when he advanced to the outskirts of the Chen capital, he engaged in an encounter with the Chen army led by the Chen general Lu Guangda.
The Sui army was defeated and retreated several times, with countless dead, and the situation was very critical, at this time He Ruobi made a clever move, "indulging smoke to conceal himself" to confuse Chen Jun.
The Chen army thought that the Sui army had been defeated, that is, holding the heads of the Sui soldiers to ask Lord Chen Hou for a reward, so the position was in chaos, and the Sui army took advantage of the situation to counterattack, turned defeat into victory, and finally captured Lord Chen Hou.
Smoke screens were widely used not only in land warfare, but also in naval warfare to cover attacks, in ancient naval warfare. He had created warships with various fire attacks, and the cabins were filled with thatch, firewood and gunpowder, and when the ships approached the enemy ships, they would fire at the enemy ships and cast smoke.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > two: the killer of poison one offensive and defensive operations </h1>
The use of poisons in combat has a long history, and the use of poisons has undergone a process from point to point.
Initially, due to the limited number and performance of the poison, it was difficult to use it in large quantities, mainly by applying poison to the killing part of the weapon, thereby increasing the killing effectiveness of the weapon and applying it to the operation of key targets.
According to the "Later Exploration Book of Geng Gong Biography", in the eighteenth year of the Later Han Ming Emperor Yongping (75 AD), the Northern Xiongnu attacked Jinpu City (present-day Fuyuan County, Xinjiang), Geng Gong was a lieutenant, and tied the arrow with poison, and the middle arrow was boiling, and (the Xiongnu) was horrified and fled.
Although the casting of a smoke screen can stimulate people's respiratory organs and reduce visibility, it cannot make the enemy lose its combat effectiveness.
Therefore, ancient military experts considered adding poison to the smoke-producing material or combustion material to produce poisonous smoke and poison gas, thereby giving the enemy greater damage.
In 256 AD, the Persians attacked the Roman garrison of the city of Lara-Orops on the upper Euphrates River in Syria, and the Persians adopted a new technique to dig tunnels during the siege.
They dug a tunnel under the city wall by mining, which was 2 meters high and less than 11 meters long, in an attempt to collapse the wall.
Unexpectedly, the Roman soldiers took the initiative to enter the tunnels and attack the Persians. At that time, the Persians immediately mixed asphalt and sulfur together and burned it, sending the resulting toxic gas into the tunnel.
To achieve a "better" effect, the Persians also used braziers and bellows in order to allow more gas to enter the tunnels faster, and the Roman soldiers lost consciousness within seconds of sucking the gas and died a few minutes later.
Obviously, poisonous smoke and poisonous gas can kill and injure living forces on a large scale, greatly improve the efficiency of using poison, and gradually become an important way to use poison.
After the use of gunpowder in the military, the effectiveness of the use of poisons was greatly improved and developed.
According to the "General Outline of the Martial Classics, The First Collection" compiled by Emperor Renzong of the Northern Song Dynasty, there was a kind of "poison smoke ball" similar to a poison bullet at that time, and when the battle was about to use charcoal fire to fire the red cone, the ball cone was induced to fire, and then the poison smoke ball was fired with a cannon, in which the poison burned, evaporated the poison, invaded the nose, poisoned the enemy, bleeded from the mouth and nose, and even died.
The Battle of Zaoyang (present-day Zaoyang, Hubei) in 1219 AD is a typical example of chemical warfare in ancient warfare in China.
In March of that year, the Jin soldiers, under the leadership of Yan Erke, laid siege to Zaoyang.
Under the cover of crossbows, the Jin soldiers used cloud ladders and overpasses to climb the city unsuccessfully, and Ji'er recruited silver ore workers to dig tunnels day and night to attack the city. The Song general Meng Zongzheng dug a deep pit to prevent tunnels, and cast poisonous smoke and fire to it, causing the Jin soldiers to suffer a crushing defeat.
Later, the Jin soldiers blocked the tunnel with wet felt to prevent the poisonous smoke from choking, and continued to dig tunnels to attack the city, collapsing the city wall for a while.
At this time, the Song army ignited the pile of magic materials, causing a volcano to stop the Jin soldiers, and at the same time built more than 100 meters of the Moon City in the city, blocking the collapsed city wall.
Because the Song army cast a variety of poisonous fire and poisonous smoke in the battle, it forced the Jin soldiers to wear thick armor and wear masks to fight.
The two sides fought bloody battles under Zaoyang City for more than eighty days, and finally with the cooperation of reinforcements, they attacked inside and outside, causing more than 30,000 deaths and wounds to the Jin soldiers.
Due to the huge killing power of poisons and the complex production process, in ancient times, they were often used as a kind of killer skill, which was used in key targets and key seasons of combat.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > three: burning equipment, an important means of decisive victory </h1>
In ancient warfare, incendiary equipment was widely used in addition to smoke screens and poisons.
Initially, in the battle of defending the city, boiling water was generally used to burn the enemy climbing the city, and because the boiling water was easy to cool, it was later switched to boiling oil, and sometimes iron juice.
In 715, when the Tang general Zhang was guarding Huaiyang (淮陽, in modern Shangqiu, Henan), he poured iron juice from the city and burned the siege wooden donkey of An Lushan.
In the fifth dynasty, Zhou Dewei defended Youzhou (present-day northeast of Miyun, Beijing), and also used iron juice to resist the siege of the Khitan army.
The use of incendiary equipment to carry out fire attack, in ancient times, there is no shortage of examples, but fire attack to use the method, usually there are five kinds, namely burning man, fire accumulation, fire reed, fire depot, fire team.
The burning man is to burn the soldiers of the other side, the fire is to burn its accumulation, the axis of fire is to burn its weight, the fire storehouse is to burn its treasury, and the fire team is to burn its team.
When chu and Han were fighting, Peng Yue burned Chu accumulation to destroy his karma. Emperor Fusong set fire to Bocai's camp, Cao Cao ji burned Yuan Shao's bird's nest grain depot, and Lu Xun burned the Shu army's company camp for seven hundred miles, all of which belonged to the method of burning.
The emergence of oil greatly improved the performance of incendiary weapons, oil in ancient China is also known as fierce fire oil, the period of greatest role in warfare, is the five dynasties and the Song, Jin, Liaoyuan period.
In 917, Yang Longbin, the king of Wu, sent emissaries to send fierce fire oil to the Khitan lord, "besieging the city, burning the building with this oil, and the enemy fertilized the water, and the fire became more and more blazing."
In 919, the general Hou Jin He Gui led a water army to attack Hou Liang Desheng Nancheng, and the situation in Hou Liang was tight, "Bei will attack Desheng Nancheng, with the battle eye Ye Yu ship." Bamboo is narrow and narrow, strangling the Jin Road, and Wang Shi is not allowed to cross. The stones in the city will be exhausted, and the defenders of the city will continue to reward the danger."
At the critical moment, the Later Jin general Li Jianhe put fire oil in an urn, and then "ordered the upper stream to have an urn, accumulate wages on it, and set fire to the downstream to attack his ships." Whiskers, smoke blazing. Liang Jun broke the cable and fled, built the southern city of Nairen, and He Zhen broke the siege and left. ”
The "Greek oil" used in ancient wars in the West is similar to the Chinese "fierce fire oil".
In 678 AD, the Arabs attacked Constantinople, which had been besieged for many days by the Byzantines.
At the beginning of the battle, The Byzantines sailed some small boats close to the Arab warships, and the soldiers sitting on the small boats held a long pipe in their hands, and after approaching the enemy ships, they only listened to a command, and from the pipes held by the soldiers, a burning flame erupted.
Some of these flames burst directly into the approaching Arab ships, which were mainly made of wood at that time, so that as soon as they burned, the Arab fleet fell into flames, and about two-thirds of the ships were burned.
The Byzantine navy took advantage of the attack and once again used their mysterious flames near Silevkia, wiping out the Arab navy that had once dominated the sea.
The defeat was the most serious setback at a time when Arab military expansion was in full swing, and the Arabs' plan to conquer Europe was interrupted.
The ecstatic Byzantines called the mysterious flame that had saved their fate the "fire of the sea," while the Arabs called this weapon of terror the "Greek fire."
As the "Greek fire" showed by the "Greek fire" that blocked the arab process of military expansion, incendiary weapons are an important means of decisive victory and, if successfully used, can deal a fatal blow to the enemy.
Due to the underdeveloped chemical industry in ancient times and the limited chemical resources, chemical warfare was not carried out on a large scale, usually only as a means of outsmarting and winning.
With the development of the chemical industry, the resources available for chemical warfare are becoming more and more abundant.
In 1915, a large-scale German chemical attack near Ypres opened the prelude to a modern academic war.
Of course, today's chemical warfare is very different from ancient times, but its tactical principles, scope of use, and types of chemical weapons are still basically the same, which has a certain enlightening effect on our chemical protection today.
Remarks: This article is a reprinted article