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Arquebus (Edited from Wikipedia)

Arquebus (Edited from Wikipedia)

(Edited from Wikipedia)

SUMMARY

The arquebus is an early muzzleloaded used in the 15th to 17th centuries. An arquebus was originally a gonne with hook, and later a firearm. Like its successor the , it is a firearm, but was initially lighter and easier to carry.

It is a forerunner of the and other longarm . An improved version of the arquebus, the caliver, was introduced in the early . The word is derived from the English corruption of calibre as this was of standard bore, increasing as troops could load that would fit their (before, they would have to modify to fit, force it in, or cast their own before the battle).

HISTORY

Hand (Or Gonne)

A hand or gonne (also spelled handgonne to distinguish the device from modern ) is one of the early forms of firearm. [This is where the word “gun” comes from.] It is possibly the oldest type of small arms, as well as the simplest type of early firearm, as most examples require direct manual external ignition through a without any form of firing mechanism. It may also be considered a forerunner of the . The was widely used in East Asia and later throughout until at least the , when it was supplanted by matchlock firearms. The oldest surviving hand cannon is the hand cannon, which was manufactured no later than 1288.

The general consensus is that hand cannons originated in and were spread from there to the rest of the world. The earliest surviving firearm is the Heilongjiang hand cannon, which was manufactured no later than 1288. The earliest reliable evidence of hand cannons in Europe comes from the , during which time both Europeans and appear to have begun using them. In East Asia, the Koreans acquired knowledge of the hand cannon from China in the 14th century. Japan was already aware of warfare but did not massproduce firearms until 1543, when the Portuguese introduced .

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The hand cannon was a simple , effectively consisting of a barrel with some sort of handle, though it came in many different shapes and sizes. Although surviving examples are all completely constructed of metal, evidence suggests that many were attached to some kind of , usually wooden. Other examples show a simple metal extension from the barrel acting as the handle. In fact, not all hand cannons used metal at all in their construction, as some Chinese illustrations demonstrate tubes being used instead.

For firing, the hand cannon could be held in two hands, while a helper applied the means of ignition. These could range from smoldering or coal, redhot rods, to slowburning . Alternatively, the hand cannon could be placed on a rest and held by one hand, while the gunner applied the means of ignition himself. used in these were varied, with many utilizing a variety of different . Rocks or pebbles found on the ground could be fired from hand cannon, while more sophisticated ammunition such as iron or stone in the shape of balls and could also be used.

Later hand cannons were made with a attached to the barrel and a touch hole drilled through the side wall of the gun instead of the top of the barrel. The flash pan had a leather cover and, later on, a hinged metal lid, fitted to keep the priming powder dry until the moment of firing and to prevent premature firing. These features were carried on over to subsequent firearms.

Due to the poor quality of powder that was often used in these weapons and their crude construction, they were not effective missile weapons, as early examples often lacked sufficient power to punch through light armor. All were inaccurate, due to the awkward handling as well as the aforementioned poor quality of the weapons. While the noise and flash may have had some psychological effect on the enemy, many early hand cannons were utilized in a minor capacity and so lacked battlefield presence.

The invention of corned powder, the slow , and the serpentine in mid Europe led to much more effective firearms and eventually to increased adoption. It also prompted the development of the first matchlock firearms, which could be more effectively aimed and fired than hand cannon. Gradually, the hand cannon became obsolete, although it found use in some locales up until the 20th century.

2 Arquebus

The first usage of the arquebus in large numbers was in Hungary under king Matthias Corvinus (r. 1458–1490). Every fourth soldier in the Black Army had an arquebus in the , and every fifth regarding the whole army, which was an unusual ratio at the time. Although they were generally present in the battlefield King Mathias preferred enlisting shielded men instead, as the arquebus had a low . Even a decade after the disbandment of the Black Army, by the turn of the 16th century, only around 10% of the soldiers of Western European armies used firearms.

Arquebusiers [soldiers who were armed with an arquebus longarm] were effective against and even other infantry, particularly when placed with pikemen in the and shot formation, which revolutionized the Spanish . An example of where this formation was used and succeeded is the decisive Battle of Cerignola (1503), which was one of the first battles to utilize this formation, and was the first battle to be won through the use of gunpowderbased small arms.

A form of arquebus called pishchal also evolved in in the early 1500s as a smaller version of a larger, handheld weapon. The arquebusiers were seen as integral parts of the army. Their use of mounted troops was also unique to the time period. The Russians developed their arquebusiers as a skilled tradesman and gave them extra incentives through farming and made their trade something passed on from father to son and not something for which one was conscripted.

Arquebuses were used in the Italian of the first half of the 16th century. One of the first to perform with them was in the (1522). Portuguese and Spanish conquerors also made use of the weapon overseas. were carried by some of the soldiers of Hernando Cortés in his conquest of Mexico in the 1520s, and arquebuses played an important role in the victories of Cristóvão da Gama's small and outnumbered army in his 1541–42 campaign in Ethiopia. Arquebuses were also used in the Moroccan victory over the Songhai at the Battle of Tondibi in 1590.

Arquebuses were introduced to Japan in 1543 by Portuguese traders, who landed by accident on , an island south of Kyūshū in the region controlled by the Shimazu clan. By 1550, copies of the Portuguese arquebus referred to as "tanegashima, teppō or hinawaju" were being produced in large numbers. The tanegashima eventually became one of the most important weapons in Japan. revolutionized musket tactics in Japan by splitting loaders and shooters and assigning three guns to a shooter at the Battle of Nagashino in 1575. Tanegashima were widely used during Hideyoshi's unification of Japan and later the Japanese invasions of in 1592.

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Maurice of Nassau increased the effectiveness of the arquebus in military formations when he adapted standardized weaponry and utilized volley fire techniques [see below for more about volley fire]. After outfitting his entire army with new, standardized arms in 1599, Maurice of Nassau made an attempt to recapture Spanish forts built on former Dutch lands.

In the in 1600, he administered the new techniques and for the first time. The Dutch marched onto the beach where the fort was located and fully utilized the countermarching tactic. By orienting all of his arquebusiers into a block, he was able to maintain a steady stream of fire out of a disciplined formation using volley fire tactics. The result was a lopsided victory with 4000 Spanish casualties to only 1000 dead and 700 wounded on the Dutch side. Although the battle was principally won by the decisive counterattack by the Dutch cavalry and despite the failure of the newfangled Dutch infantry tactic in stopping the veteran Spanish soldiers, the battle was a decisive step forward in the development of warfare, with infantry armed with firearms taking on an increasingly larger role in the centuries following.

GOVERNMENTS BENEFIT FROM CHEAP GUNS

Firearms, of which the hand cannon was an early example, gradually came to dominate European warfare. The hand cannon was inexpensive and easy to massproduce. At the same time, the forging methods required meant that centralized governments had a measure of control over their manufacture (and especially the manufacture of ammunition—an important consideration in a medieval Europe wracked by rebellion). They had superior armorpenetration capability; the was effective against mail armor and plate, thanks to the bodkin point, and the very effective against heavy armor. The hand cannon could act as a terror weapon to troops and horses that had never seen the weapon before. Much like the crossbow, the weapon could be effectively used by new recruits and non professional soldiers.

The other handoperated ranged weapons of the time had their own drawbacks. had superior accuracy and similar power as compared to early hand cannons. However, they were expensive to make, slow to reload and their performance was almost as severely affected by wet weather as that of hand cannons. While the hand cannon could not match the accuracy nor speed of fire of the longbow, gunners did not require the special training and continuous practice from childhood required of an expert bowman . Yew, the primary stavemaking material for the European longbow, became scarcer as the medieval period progressed. Firearms only supplanted in England after almost all European yew supplies had been exhausted.

4 [Which also led to the development of coke which factored into the progress of the iron industry with the blast furnace. JKL]

The development of the hand gun did not directly to the decline and eventual disappearance of bow and arrows. They coexisted for several generations, each using different tactics. Bows could take advantage of their superior range while hand cannons could be used in a similar manner to how combat would be used today. Improvements in hand cannons – better gunpowder, shot ammunition, and development of the flash pan – led to 16th century arquebusiers, deployed on the flank of pike block in formation. While hand cannon gradually became staple arms of the early modern warfare, bow and crossbow fell out of favor as they lacked the superior penetration that hand cannon offered.

ARQUEBUS EFFECTIVENESS AND MECHANISM

As a lowvelocity firearm, the arquebus was used against enemies who were often partially or fully protected by plate armor. Plate armor worn upon the torso was standard in European combat from about 1400 until the middle of the . Good suits of plate would usually stop an arquebus ball at long range. It was a common practice to "proof" (test) armor by firing a or arquebus at a new breastplate. The small dent would be circled by engraving to call attention to it. However, at close range, it was possible to pierce even armor, although penetration is heavily dependent on the power of the arquebus and the quality of the armor. This led to changes in armor usage, such as the threequarter plate, and finally the retirement of plate armor from most types of infantry.

The development of volley fire — by the Dutch in Europe, and by the Japanese and the Portuguese in Asia — made the arquebus of practical advantage to modern . Arquebus volley fire, in evidence on European battlefields as early as the 1520s, allowed armies to turn their usual formation into a rotating firing squad with each row of soldiers firing a shot then marching to the back of the formation to reload.

The arquebus had a larger bore than its predecessors. Until the middle of the 16th century, they were fired by a matchlock mechanism, after which the newer mechanisms were used instead. The flared muzzle of some examples made it easier to load the weapon. The name 'hook gun' is often claimed to be based on the bent shape of the arquebus' butt. It might also be that some of the original arquebuses had a metal hook near the muzzle that may have been used for bracing against a solid object to absorb . Since all the arquebuses were handmade by various , there is no typical specimen.

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The mechanism of an early arquebus most often resembled that of a crossbow: a gently curved lever pointing backward and parallel to the stock. Squeezing the lever against the stock depressed a which was in turn linked to the base of the serpentine that held the match. The serpentine then brought the match into the flash pan to ignite the priming, firing the weapon. By the later 16th century, gunsmiths in most countries had begun to introduce the short trigger perpendicular to the stock that is familiar to modern shooters. However, the majority of French matchlock arquebuses retained the crossbowstyle trigger throughout the 17th century.

THE

The Italian Wars, often referred to as the Great Italian Wars or the Great Wars of and sometimes as the Habsburg–Valois Wars or the Renaissance Wars, were a series of conflicts from 1494 to 1559 that involved, at various times, most of the citystates of Italy, the , most of the major states of (, , the , England, and ) as well as the .

Originally arising from dynastic disputes over the Duchy of and the Kingdom of , the wars rapidly became a general struggle for power and territory among their various participants, and were marked with an increasing number of alliances, counter alliances, and betrayals.

By their end, the French monarchy was thrown into turmoil, which increased further with the outbreak of the in 1562. The states of Italy were reduced to secondrate powers and Milan and Naples came under the rule of the Spanish Habsburgs.

[The Wars of Religion in France in 1562 was part of the Protestant Reformation. It was the French Protestants, who were Calvinists, against the Roman Catholic Church. In Germany, it was the German Protestants, who were Lutherans, against the Roman Catholic Church. The French Calvinists were called . JKL]

The Italian Wars had a number of consequences for the work and workplace of Leonardo da Vinci; his plans for a "Gran Cavallo" big horse statue in 1495 were dropped when the seventy tons of intended for the statue were instead cast into weapons to save Milan. Later, following a chance encounter with Francis I after the , Leonardo agreed to move to France and bring along his

6 masterpiece Mona Lisa which has remained in France to this day. Leonardo spent his final years in France in a house provided by Francis I.

Additionally, the Italian Wars represented a revolution in military and tactics——so much so that some historians consider these wars the dividing point between modern and medieval times. [One potential dividing point of many which are contested by scholars. Some consider the fall of the Byzantine Empire the end of the Medieval Era. JKL]

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