s, the
_liquid_, or _maritime_ fire. For the annoyance of the enemy, it was
employed with equal effect by sea and land, in battles or in sieges. It
was either poured from the rampart in large boilers, or launched in
red-hot balls of stone and iron, or darted in arrows and javelins, twisted
round with flax and tow, which had deeply imbibed the inflammable oil;
sometimes it was deposited in fire-ships, the victims and instruments of a
more ample revenge, and was most commonly blown through long tubes of
copper, which were planted on the prow of a galley, and fancifully shaped
into the mouths of savage monsters, that seemed to vomit a stream of
liquid and consuming fire. This important art was preserved at
Constantinople, as the palladium of the state; the galleys and _artillery_
might occasionally be lent to the allies of Rome; but the composition on
the Greek fire was concealed with the most jealous scruple, and the terror
of the enemies was increased and prolonged by their ignorance and
surprise. In the treatise of the administration of the empire, the royal
author suggests the answers and excuses that might best elude the
indiscreet curiosity and importunate demands of the barbarians. They
should be told that the mystery of the Greek fire had been revealed by an
angel to the first and greatest of the Constantines, with a sacred
injunction, that this gift of _heaven_, this peculiar blessing of the
Romans should never be communicated to any foreign nation; that the prince
and subject were alike bound to religious silence under the temporal and
spiritual penalties of treason and sacrilege; and that the impious attempt
would provoke the sudden and supernatural vengeance of the God of the
Christians. By these precautions the secret was confined, above four
hundred years, to the Romans of the East; and at the end of the eleventh
century, the Pisans, to whom every sea and every art were familiar,
suffered the effects, without understanding the composition, of the Greek
fire. It was at length either discovered or stolen by the Mohammedans;
and, in the holy wars of Syria and Egypt, they retorted an invention,
contrived against themselves, on the heads of the Christians. A knight,
who despised the swords and lances of the Saracens, relates, with
heartfelt sincerity, his own fears and those of his companions, at the
sight and sound of the mischievous engine that discharged a torrent of the
Greek fire, the _feu Gregeois_, as it is s