t before his first
visit (I believe in 1866) a discovery had been made in the city of a
quantity of treasure buried at the time of the siege. One of the local
officers gave Mr. Wylie one of the copper coins, not indeed in itself of
any great rarity, but worth engraving here on account of its connection
with the siege commemorated in the text; and a little on the principle of
Smith the Weaver's evidence:--"The bricks are alive at this day to testify
of it; therefore deny it not."

[Illustration: Coin from a treasure hidden at Siang-yang during the siege
in 1268-73, lately discovered.]

[1] And to the Bern MS. which seems to be a copy of it, as is also I think
(in substance) the Bodleian.

[2] In this note I am particularly indebted to the researches of the
Emperor Napoleon III. on this subject. (_Etudes sur le passe et
l'avenir de l'Artillerie_; 1851.)

[3] Thus Joinville mentions the journey of Jehan li Ermin, the king's
artillerist, from Acre to Damascus, _pour acheter cornes et glus pour
faire arbalestres_--to buy horns and glue to make crossbows withal
(p. 134).

In the final defence of Acre (1291) we hear of balistae _bipedales_
(with a forked rest?) and other _vertiginales_ (traversing on a pivot)
that shot 3 quarrels at once, and with such force as to _stitch_ the
Saracens to their bucklers--_cum clypeis consutos interfecerunt_.

The crossbow, though apparently indigenous among various tribes of
Indo-China, seems to have been a new introduction in European warfare
in the 12th century. William of Brittany in a poem called the
_Philippis_, speaking of the early days of Philip Augustus, says:--

"Francigenis nostris illis ignota diebus
Res erat omnino quid balistarius arcus,
Quid balista foret, nec habebat in agmine toto
Rex quenquam sciret armis qui talibus uti."
--_Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Script._, V. 115.

Anna Comnena calls it [Greek: Tzagra] (which looks like Persian
_charkh_), "a barbaric bow, totally unknown to the Greeks"; and she
gives a very lengthy description of it, ending: "Such then are the
facts about the _Tzagra_, and a truly diabolical affair it is."
(_Alex._ X.--Paris ed. p. 291.)

[4] The construction is best seen in Figs. 17 and 19. Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
in the cut are from Chinese sources; Figs. 6, 7, 8 from Arabic works;
the rest from European sources.

[5] Christine