Spread of Rocketry To Europe

Date: 1488 A.D.
Author: Historical Account

     Soon after, in the early centuries of the first millennium, rocketry spread to the Mongols who attacked Budapest in 1241 with the terror weapons and later Baghdad, to the Japanese when China invaded it in 1281, and to the Arabs who employed "eggs that spit fire propelled by three rockets." 
     By the end of the thirteenth, rocketry had spread to Europe due to warfare and various writings. The English monk Roger Bacon wrote in 1248 of the preparation and chemical composition of the gunpowder used in rockets. In 1270, the Greek writer Marcus Graecus wrote similar but more detailed accounts about the powder and how different rocket designs and chemical mixtures can affect a rocket's flight path and its effectiveness. Finally in 1295, the Syrian scholar Al-Hassan-al-Rammah composed a book called The Book of Fighting on Horseback and with War Engines.
     By the end of the fifteenth century, rockets had reached an arsenal in Aragon, Spain. Soon though, rocket use began to decline and was gradually replaced by conventional firearms and artillery. However, the nineteenth century would beckon the rocket's return when the Englishman William Congreve brought about its revival by improving its range and effectiveness.