Firearms by Joe the Smith

Contents Introduction and Bylaws Interpretive Clothing Scottish Culture History Music and Dance Military Life Language Bibliography, Sources and Library Materials

The earliest handgun was the hand cannon.  A hand cannon was just a thick walled iron tube on a stick, with a touch-hole for a slow-match (smoldering, saltpeter soaked cord).  The bore was usually ½ to ¾ inches.  A lousy gun but probably a better club.  The earliest reference to them is dated to 1381.  Around 1400 the “serpentine” gun was introduced.  It just added a lever that pivoted the match to the touch hole. Around 1425, the spring-powered matchlock was introduced, and the first sights came in.  In the late 1400s, the shoulder stock was introduced (earlier guns were fired off the chest or had a hook beneath the barrel to brace the gun over a support or wall).  The curved shoulder stock gave the new gun its name “hook gun” in English, “Hackbutt” in German, and “Arquebus” in French.  They were usually about three feet long, weighed ten pounds or less, and had a bore of about ¾ inches (similar to a modern 12-guage shotgun). Around 1540 came the musket.  These guns were up to six feet long, weighed fifty pounds, and threw a two-ounce ball with a diameter of a quarter.  One contemporary writer said they could “spoil man or horse at six hundred yards.”  The harquebus and musket were matchlocks.  The wheel lock, rather delicate and expensive, never saw much use in common soldier’s arms (the Rieter’s pistols may have been the exception).     The flintlock (“firelock” was the period term) had been invented by the end of the 1500s in both Spain and the Netherlands.  Legend has it that they were invented by theives who did not want to risk having the glowing ember of a matchlock seen at night.  However, these early flintlocks were not very reliable, whereas even if the mechanism of a matchlock failed, the match could still be moved by hand to set off the charge.  Even so, flintlocks were favored by the guards of artillery units because they lacked the smoldering match that could accidentally set off the powder used in cannons. The big muskets may have been the reason for the abandonment of the armored knight.  After the age of full armor, military guns became much lighter.  A Brown Bess introduced in the early 1700s was about five feet long and nine pounds, and about the same twelve-gauage bore as an arquebus.