The first documented battlefield use of gunpowder artillery took place on 28 January 1132, when Song General Han Shizhong used huochong to capture a city in Fujian. The world 's earliest known hand cannon is the Heilongjiang hand cannon dated 1288, which was found in Mongol - held Manchuria. The first known illustration of a cannon is dated to 1326. In his 1341 poem, The Iron Cannon Affair, one of the first accounts of the use of gunpowder artillery in China, Xian Zhang wrote that a cannonball fired from an eruptor could "pierce the heart or belly when it strikes a man or horse, and can even transfix several persons at once. ''
when was gunpowder invented in the middle ages
The first documented battlefield use of gunpowder artillery took place on 28 January 1132