<P> 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 . '' </P>
when was gunpowder invented in the middle ages
The first documented battlefield use of gunpowder artillery took place on 28 January 1132