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Tipu Sultan (November 1750, Devanahalli – 4 May 1799, Seringapatam), also known as the Tiger of Mysore, was the de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore. He was the son of Hyder Ali, at that time an officer in the Mysorean army, and his second wife, Fatima or Fakhr-un-Nissa.<br/><br/> Tipu was given a number of honorific titles, and was referred to as Sultan Fateh Ali Khan Shahab, Tipu Saheb, Bahadur Khan Tipu Sultan or Fatih Ali Khan Tipu Sultan Bahadur.
Qing Imperial court portraits of senior Manchu military officers, known as Bannermen, mid-18th century.<br/><br/> From the time China was brought under the rule of the Qing dynasty (1644 – 1683), the banner soldiers became more professional and bureaucratised. Once the Manchus took over governing, they could no longer satisfy the material needs of soldiers by garnishing and distributing booty; instead, a salary system was instituted, ranks standardised, and the Bannermen became a sort of hereditary military caste, though with a strong ethnic inflection.<br/><br/> Banner soldiers took up permanent positions, either as defenders of the capital, Beijing, where roughly half of them lived with their families, or in the provinces, where 18 garrisons were established.<br/><br/> The largest banner garrisons throughout most of the Qing dynasty were at Beijing, followed by Xi'an and Hangzhou. Sizable banner populations were also placed in Manchuria and at strategic points along the Great Wall, the Yangtze River and Grand Canal.
The Wujing Zongyao (simplified Chinese: 武经总要; traditional Chinese: 武經總要; pinyin: Wǔjīng Zǒngyào; Wade–Giles: Wu Ching Tsung Yao; literally: 'Collection of the Most Important Military Techniques') is a Chinese military compendium written in 1044 CE, during the Northern Song Dynasty.<br/><br/> Its authors were the prominent scholars Zeng Gongliang (曾公亮), Ding Du (丁度) and Yang Weide (楊惟德), whose writing influenced many later Chinese military writers. The book covered a wide range of subjects, everything from naval warships to different types of catapults.<br/><br/> Although the English philosopher and friar Roger Bacon was the first Westerner to mention the sole ingredients of gunpowder in 1267 (i.e. strictly saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal) when referring to firecrackers in 'various parts of the world', the Wujing Zongyao was the first book in history to record the written formulas for gunpowder solutions containing saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal, along with many added ingredients.<br/><br/> It also described an early form of the compass (using thermoremanence), and had the oldest illustration of a Chinese Greek Fire flamethrower with a double-acting two-piston cylinder-pump that shot a continuous blast of flame.