Talk:Fire lance

Huochong
By Needham p. 222 these are same. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 06:30, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

They are not the same.Huochong is a kind of metal gun.Fire lance is a lance,which mounts flamethrower.霹靂流星 (talk) 13:59, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Ottoman Empire and "first guns"
I am removing the addition of this paragraph: Because it is only partially true. Again, Ottomans did not invent the first gun. They merely adopted it. Reword it to be more accurate and include a reference for verification.-- O BSIDIAN  †  S OUL  05:40, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The Fire lance did not reach up to the specifications of a gun, but it was the first Gunpowder weapon. Modern scientists credit the Ottoman Empire for having developed the first gun, which they used to maximum effect on the battlefields.

So, what is it?
I've always assumed that fire lances are effectively like iron-age flamethrowers, but with an even shorter range and just a few seconds duration at most; someone holding one of these would wait for the enemy to get few yards away to light it and immediately point it at the enemy's face for a moment, and then quickly get on to other ways of fighting. Probably pretty good for sudden shock combat right before melee, but not used anything like a hand cannon -- a ranged weapon.

But I don't really get that from the article. (I don't get much of anything about use.) The current main pic sure doesn't help; it looks like some religious wand. There's one pic of a knight with one that kind of depicts use, but since it's literally a lance with fire, I'd bet this is some medieval creative interpretation (those guys weren't careful about WP:OR).

Myself, I can't improve the article about use, since all I have is my own assumptions. Can anyone else do better? --A&#8239;D&#8239;Monroe&#8239;III(talk) 20:35, 22 October 2017 (UTC)


 * I did my own amateur-level research, and from bits and pieces I've found concluded that my assumptions above seem correct. So, with no response from others, I boldly added this to the lede. I also chose a pic from the gallery that showed a lance with fire, thus a pretty fundamental pic, to the lede, placing the previous one in the gallery.  I think the lede now answers the "what is it?" question readers will have.  But, it's weak on sources, so feel free to update, refactor, or replace as needed.  --A&#8239;D&#8239;Monroe&#8239;III(talk)  13:57, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

"co-viative"
Is this actually a word? It doesn't seem to appear in any dictionaries ( neither does viative or coviative). All the Google hits for it seem to be related to this and related wiki pages that use the word or to the author who seems to have invented it, Joseph Needham. I haven't made any changes because I'm not an expert and I don't know for sure how widely accepted Needham's invented word is the field, but I wonder if it's approprate that the article just uses this word as if it's real and the the reader will know it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.92.221.186 (talk) 06:27, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

About gallery
All images I removed are definite not fire lance images.There are no reason to put many not-fire lance image in fire lance page.Just like no reason to put many automobile images in horse cart page.To avoid making confusion and mislead.The successors of the fire lance be described in text is enough.Pi-li liu-hsiang (talk) 20:57, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:59, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Fire Lance Knight.jpg
 * Fire lance Europe.jpg
 * Lance shield.jpg
 * Two barreled automatic fire lance from the Huolongjing.jpg

European weapons
While the names are different both Tronck and fire pikes (basically toncks with canvas heads) fit within the description of Fire lances given here. They do appear to have been deployed differently (since they were used on a battlefield where firearms were well established) but I don't see any way of excluding them unless we make the article purely about the Chinese weapons and remove all european references.©Geni (talk) 13:05, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 04:38, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Lance shield.jpg