The Byzantine military was the deadly evolution
of its Roman predecessor. Building upon the successful warmachine of antiquity they now
bolstered it with new units of heavy infantry, cataphracts, and Elite Mercenary Corps with which
to dominate the battlefields of the Medieval World. However, few today are aware of just
how far aggressively they pushed the bounds of innovation. Today we will explore the history
of their most experimental units which verge on the border of steam-punk fantasy, the Grenadier
and Flamethrower Units of the Byzantine Army. while fire has long held a reputation as a great
destroyer it can also be used as a life-giver and creator this duality and humanity's
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get a one point free trial enjoy As soon as humans first began to pioneer the
use of fire they would seek to turn its power against their enemies. In these early
days there was little nuance to be had. Arsonists merely lit the flames
and let mother nature do the rest. Naturally, the results were highly uncontrolled
and unpredictable. But that mattered little to the militaries of the age whose targets were
generally static fields, farms, and villages. Precision was not required as they pillaged
and burned their way across the centuries. Even when armies did mature, indiscriminate use
of fire continued to be useful up until even our own time. This was a simple reflection of the fact
that absolutely HUGE levels of destruction could be achieved with very little investment. Laying
waste to the countryside would easily cripple an enemy, dealing economic damage, depriving them
of resources, diverting their attention, and yielding all manner of strategic benefits. It's
for this reason that everyone from the Egyptians, to the Greeks, Mongols, English, and Chinese
used the simple method of fire and forget. That being said, there was always a desire
for some level of control. To this end, people turned to their environment seeking help.
Here, experimentation quickly revealed which natural resources might most readily catch
fire or be used to sustain it. Pitch, oil, resin, animal fat and other similar
compounds were excellent in this regard and would be adopted by virtually every culture
of the world. Using these, one could now coat a surface with flammable material, and better
control the delivery of the incendiary payload. Torches were obvious first candidates but
it proved just as easy to apply the same method to projectiles such as spears, bolts, and
arrows. Fire could now be spread at a distance. This proved particularly useful in situations,
such as sieges, where it was not a simple matter to just walk up and burn your target. Yet even
still, flammable projectiles were not always better. Hollywood depictions would lead you
to believe that such ranged fire weapons were both widely used and super effective. In
reality flammable projectiles were wildly unreliable. Delve into the details of any
Hollywood production and you find that their spectacular scenes require the extensive use
of modern petro-chemicals and visual effects. Thus the reality of ranged incendiaries would
have been far less cinematic than we imagine. But such a disappointment mostly comes from our
own preconceptions. For people in the past, even a small scale display of fire weaponry could prove
devastating both physically and psychologically. Fire for instance was widely deployed as an
anti-elephant tactic in pitched battles and as a wall clearing or structure destroying tool
in sieges. Here militaries got quite creative in their concoctions, creating quicklime and sulfur
fumes which could bathe the enemy in toxic and blinding clouds in preparation for an assault. But
the most relevant example for our episode would have been the device deployed by the Boeotians in
the siege of Delium during the Peloponnesian War. Here they appear to have devised the first
western flamethrower to dig out the Athenians from their entrenched position. Our records
indicate that it consisted of a long tube with hand operated bellows at the back which could
be pumped to blow out air at the front. This gust of wind was in turn directed into a lit
cauldron of coal, sulfur, and tar. The end result was an eruption of flaming material which
leaped out several meters in front of it. The device succeeded in clearing the wooden
wall of defenders and was reportedly later used against stone walls which were said
to have cracked under the intense heat. With this initial proof of concept having been
validated it would now be adopted by other forces. Yet this was a glacial process due to the
fact that the highly customized delivery device prevented its widespread adoption in
the face of simpler and arguably just as effective alternatives. Soon however the
military interest in flamethrowers would be rekindled by the development of new incendiary
fluids in search of dedicated delivery systems. The earliest of these was Naphtha which
appears to have been a natural petroleum product extracted from key locations across the
near east. In his later travels, for instance, Marco Polo describes one source on the border
of Armenia. Quote “to the north lies a fountain of oil which discharges so great a quantity
as to furnish the loading for many camels. The use made of it is not for the purpose of food,
but as an ingredient for the cure of distempers in men and cattle, as well as other complaints; and
it is also good for burning. In the neighboring country no other is used in their lamps, and
people come from distant parts to procure it.” This Naphtha was a sort of catch-all term
applied by the people of antiquity and the middle ages to describe a range of naturally
derived incendiary products. Militaries which could get their hands on these rare resources
quickly used it in their armies. The eastern Parthians and later Sassanids for instance appear
to have begun using Naphtha in sieges and even pitched battles. At first they simply poured
it out on their targets but quickly devised ways to contain it in basic containers which
could be launched at a distance and hopefully ignite upon impact. Apparently the Romans of
the 3rd century AD had become aware of this new technology with the Author Julius Africanus
recording the following incendiary recipe, quote: “take equal amounts of sulphur, rock salt,
ashes, thunder stone, and pyrite and pound fine in a black mortar at midday sun. Also in equal
amounts of each ingredient mix together black mulberry resin and Zakynthian asphalt, the latter
in a liquid form and free-flowing, resulting in a product that is sooty colored. Then add to
the asphalt the tiniest amount of quicklime. But because the sun is at its zenith, one must
pound it carefully and protect the face, for it will ignite suddenly. When it catches fire, one
should seal it in some sort of copper receptacle; in this way you will have it available in a box,
without exposing it to the sun. If you should wish to ignite enemy armaments, you will smear it
on in the evening, either on the armaments or some other object, but in secret; when the
sun comes up, everything will be burnt up. However due to the rarity, high cost,
and unwieldiness of such weapons they still remained quite uncommon. Eventually though,
further experimentation yielded better results. This evolution seems to have eventually
produced the so-called Greek Fire. Originally developed in the near east, one
tradition claims that its inventor was the 7th century Syrian chemist by the name of
Kallinikos. Supposedly he had first proven its efficacy against Arab ships and brought
the technology to the Byzantines just as the eastern forces began to overrun anatolia.
The timing was fortuitous as the Emperors of Constantinople were in desperate need of some
new X-factor to regain the edge in their war against the Arabs. Such was the importance of this
event that later sources claimed it was evidence of divine intervention with embellishments
claiming an angel had actually been the one to deliver the weapon to the Christian
forces for use against their pagan enemies. Whatever the truth of its origins,
once in Byzantine possession, Greek Fire became a highly classified weapon.
Extreme measures were put in place to preserve its secret art of production. Though some sources
leave clues as to its possible composition, to this day we are left in the dark about
its exact nature. Thus, within top secret laboratories and military facilities the
Byzantine began to perfect its application for both land and naval warfare. We will have
an entire video dedicated to the branch of this technology which eventually gave rise to
the infamous Fire Ships. For this episode though we will follow the branch of Greek Fire
which was adopted by Byzantine land forces. The first of these were the grenadiers.
The basic idea here was not entirely new as various units of hand thrown explosives
had already been deployed across the east for centuries at this point. However Greek Fire
seems to have allowed the projectiles to become even more potent than its predecessors. This
had to do with the description of the liquid as an intense, long burning substance capable
of torching everything it came in contact with. There was also the factor of quantity
in that the state adoption of Greek Fire ensured its mass production. As evidence of
this, archeologists have found the remains of many ceramic grenades which would
have been filled with the substance. From our written records we
can also confirm their use. For instance in the 10th century “Praecepta
Militaria” of Nikephoros II Phokas, the Emperor dedicated a whole section
to the use of land based fire weapons. Here he suggests that Byzantine battalions
should carry with them incendiary grenades to be used in a variety of tactical situations.
Their use in sieges should be quite self evident. However his description of their use in pitched
battles is more interesting. Here Nikephoros for example mentions how grenades could be launched
in volleys to break up and demoralize enemy troops before charges. Such seemingly modern tactics are
incredible to imagine in a medieval battlefield and seem plucked right out of some what-if fan
fiction. Yet here it is written before us in surviving texts from the period. That being said
we should restrain our imaginations somewhat as it seems that the use of these grenadier type units
was incredibly rare. Along those lines, it will be worth mentioning an even more rare brother of the
Byzantine Grenadier, the Byzantine Flamethrower. This unit has far less evidence surrounding it in
the sense that we have no archeological remains of the supposed flamethrower and precious
few descriptions of what it actually was. That being said we do know that they existed from
both written and artistic references which we can now review. For example in the same “Praecepta
Militaria” of Nikephoros which described the use of grenadiers, he also mentions the use of
portable, Greek Fire projecting devices known as Cheiromangana. Scholars debate just how portable
these really were with some arguing they were more akin to the ship-based siphons we have better
evidence for aboard the Byzantine fire ships. However this illustration by Hero of Byzantium
in his 10th century text, the Poliorcetica, clearly depicts a soldier using some kind
of hand-held device. Such illustrations are very exciting and make the imagination run wild.
However we must express some restraint as these sorts of illustrations could often be prone to
the misinformation or exaggeration of the artist. The shortfall of this image becomes
evident when we try to deconstruct the actual mechanisms of what looks
like a flame spewing hair dryer. Researchers have attempted to draw up potential
schematics with some teams actually managing to test various theoretical recreations. If we follow
their lead and take the illustration literally, this portable flamethrower was probably built
like a modern squirt gun. It would have had some reservoir for holding the liquid with a
pumping action which allowed it to be forced out through a narrow tube. As for ignition, it
may have lit upon impact or through contact with heat as with earlier incendiary devices but may
also have been ignited by a flame at the barrel’s outlet. A critical eye will doubt just how
reliable or safe such a device would be. Even under the best of circumstances we should
imagine it as only being useful in short bursts at relatively close distances.Unfortunately it seems
that we shall never know its exact incarnation and thus are left with a spectrum of steam-punk
looking interpretations of dubious authenticity. But whatever its true form it
does look like this device did indeed make its way onto Byzantine battlefields.
For example these appear to be the Cheirosiphona which gets mentioned by Leo the 6th in his
passages on siege warfare from the famous “Tactica” of the early 10th century. Here is
an excerpt from one of these passages, quote: “If the enemy construct machines, prepare
in advance pine torches and tow and pitch and Cheirosiphona and divide the troops
into more sections and assign some to the task of fighting and others to the
burning machines. And if this is done, with God’s help, the spirits of the enemy will be
broken and they will despair of taking the city, but those within will take heart
and become more courageous” Besides this tease, details are incredibly
sparse and so we are left in the dark about their specific uses in battle. As such there will be
little more we can say regarding the organization, training, tactics, or service history of these
fascinating Units of History. Whatever impact they had on the battlefield has been lost
to the ages and we will simply never know how much of our modern trajectory was impacted by
these first units of Grenadiers and Flamethrowers. Nonetheless we hope you’ve enjoyed this
foray into the more experimental spectrum of ancient warfare. Stay tuned for more
episodes as we cover the Byzantine Fire ships and other types of ancient chemical warfare. What
units of history would you like us to cover next? A huge thanks to the Patrons for funding
the channel and to the researchers, writers, and artists for making this episode
possible. Be sure to like and subscribe for more content and check out these other
related videos. See you in the next one.
