Standing Well Back
1800-1810

French Technical Intelligence on a Command-initiated IED, 1801

I have written before about the IED attack on Napoleon Bonaparte on Christmas Eve 1800, and I am slowly uncovering more and more details.  These include:

  • Detailed costs of medical support and pensions for the families of victims.
  • Details of the 25 houses damaged by the explosion, and examples of that damage.

In the investigation that followed, a gentleman called Chevalier was arrested, and an “infernal machine” in his possession was seized.  This was a command initiated device, and “Citizen Monge” a member of the office of the Prefect of Paris was assigned to examine it.

The device was described as follows:

This infernal machine consisted of a barrel hooped with iron, and filled with balls, maroons and gunpowder. To this machine was attached a gun barrel, heavily loaded. This machine was placed on a wagon, laid on purpose to intercept the way and discharged by the aid of a pack thread from a neighbouring house. The intent: was, that its discharge should overturn  and destroy everything that was near it.

A separate report has Chevalier admitting that it contains six or seven pounds of powder, then:

In this barrel is securely fixed a musquet loaded, but with the stock cut off. This machine is placed on a small carriage, which unexpectedly, and at a given signal is pushed into the street to obstruct the passage, and then by means of a string the trigger of the musquet is pulled and the whole machine blows up.

The use of a trigger mechanism from a firearm is of course well known and I have blogged before, several times :

So who was this Citizen Monge to whom the task of examining the device was given?  It turns out Gaspard Monge was a technical and scientific adviser to Napoleon and a famous scientist. He was held in very high regard by Napoleon.  Monge was interested in explosives, and ordnance and wrote books and papers on the subject.   Monge was tasked earlier in 1800 by Napoleon to consider Fulton’s inventions.

Once again I’m struck by several issues:

a. Technical examination of IEDs goes back over two hundred years.

b. Simple adaptation of firearms to initiate IEDs can be found repeatedly over history.

In doing this research I’ve uncovered much more about Fulton and his devices – which I’ll return to in future posts

1640-1650

Twin IEDs in 1645

Here’s the story of a twin IED attack on Swedish ships in 1645.  Two senior Swedish officers were in the port of Wismar in what is now Germany. Gustav Wransel, the Swedish Master-General of Ordnance was on board the Swedish vessel the “Lion” and the Swedish Admiral Blume was on board the “Dragon”, both about to set sail for Sweden. Here’s the story:

1900-1910

Multiple suicide bomber attacks in 1904 or 1905

This is very intriguing – a second hand report about Japanese troops using multiple suicide bombing as a tactic against the Russians in 1904 or 1905. I’ve spent a few hours looking for a primary source or even a better secondary source and can’t find one – vague references to the tactic but no specifics.  Fascinating in its implications.   Rather than lift the story, here’s a straight image from the book, as is.

 

1900-1910

A most unusual IED attack from the Russo-Japanese war

I’ve found a new source of interesting historical explosive incidents that will fill several blog posts.  But I couldn’t resist posting this story straight away. (It’s a little apocryphal I admit). Stand-by for more from this source.

During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, a certain Russian officer was an impatient, overbearing martinet. He took particular pleasure in treating his Chinese servants with the utmost of harshness, for the slightest delinquency or indeed for no reason at all.  One of his favoured forms of punishment was to dismiss his servants and as they left kick them roundly around the backside as they left through the door.

 On of his servants became very irritated with this treatment, and one day related the circumstances to a man he met who happened to be a Japanese spy. The spy gave the Chinese servant much sympathy and promised him a solution – a pair of padded breeches which he would supply himself the following day. A rubber hot water bottle was filled with absorbent cotton wool and topped up with nitroglycerine. An initiation system using a percussion cap was fitted alongside such that any blow would cause detonation. The unfortunate Chinese servant was oblivious to this, thinking that he had a fine, but bulky new pair of trousers which would protect him. 

At the next meeting the servant inadvertently spilled a little tea on the officer’s uniform. Thereupon the master raged and raged and dismiised the servant in the usual way, but with perhaps a little more precipitation than usual.

One of the officer’s legs was blown off, an arm was crushed, four ribs were broken and the Russian was unconscious for a good period of time. When he came to, he found himself a prisoner of the Japanese who had overrun the hospital.  The Chinaman, well, he was never seen…

1770-1780

An American terrorist in England

A friend of mine asked me my opinion on the most significant terrorist attacks in history. Here’s one which had pretty significant implications.

“John the Painter ” aka James or John Aitken, aka Jack the Painter, aka John Hill aka James Hinde was born a Scotsman but adopted America as his cause.  A petty, and not so petty, criminal he made his living as a painter and clearly his daily dealing with turpentine and flammable liquids prompted a thought.  He was also seized with enthusiasm for the cause of Independence for America, having arrived there in 1775. He became a prototype lone wolf terrorist.

In 1776 he knocked on the door of the leading American diplomat in Paris, France, Mr Silas Deane, and with a little encouragement described a plot to set on fire the key naval dockyards in England, thus crippling the British Royal Navy. He showed Deane his incendiary device:

Producing a portable infernal machine of his own invention, he explained his scheme. The machine consisted of a wooden box to hold combustibles, with a hole in the top for a candle, a tin canister, no larger than a half-pound tea can and perforated for air, to cover it; the whole to be filled with inflammable materials—hemp, tar, oil and matches. The candle, having been lighted, would burn down until it ignited the inflammable materials, and these exploding would scatter the fire for yards around.  

Deane gave him a little encouragement and a little money and sent him on his way.  On returning to England, John the Painter successfully burnt down the Rope House at Portsmouth Naval dockyard. He also set a number of fires in Bristol.  This created the public impression that gangs of American revolutionaries were active in the country. The King himself offered a reward for his capture and demanded daily briefings.

 

In an early form of Weapons Intelligence Investigation a failed device of the same design was discovered in an adjacent building to the burnt down rope house and subsequently witnesses attested that John the Painter had had it made in Canterbury.   John the Painter was hunted, arrested and tried – the transcript of his trial is available on line in Cobbett’s State Trials.  The device is described very clearly on a number of occasions by witnesses. An intriguingly thorough trial even down to the calling of a witness from whom he had bought matches.

He was duly transported to Portsmouth where he was strangled at the gates to the Naval Dockyard then hoisted up the 64 foot mizzenmast of the HMS Arethusa [specially unbolted and placed on land for the occasion]  then they eviscerated his body, tarred it, hauled it back up the mast and left him to waft in the wind for years as a warning to all and sundry.

The mast was the highest gallows in England’s history. 20,000 people attended the execution (quite a number, given the population of Portsmouth was 13,000)

So, why was this so significant in its implications? Here’s why:

  1. The fires in Portsmouth and Bristol caused terror across England. Vigilante groups patrolled the streets of ports.  Thus the arson attacks really did terrorize the nation.
  2. The attacks turned the public opinion – there had been significant support for the American revolution, especially in Bristol, but this public support was turned on its head. Had this not occurred, and more negotiated independence may have been achieved. Who knows what that may have looked like?
  3. The public mood allowed the production of the 1777 Treason Act and for years after the death sentence for murder in the UK had been abolished in 1965, the death sentence was still permitted for treason, and explicitly included in the list of treasonous acts was arson in the naval dockyards.

 A newspaper of the time stated:

“Of all bad characters, an incendiary is the foulest. He acts as an assassin armed with the most dreadful of mischiefs, and in executing his diabolical purposes, involves the innocent and the guilty in the same ruin.” 

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