British and Foreign Arms & Armour

by Charles Henry Ashdown

4. Heaume from Rotunda.

Cannon have been made of various materials apart from iron and bronze, such as wood, paper, and rope, the outside covering being of leather. All the early guns used in England were obtained from abroad; the first foundry in England was that of Hugget of Uckfield, Sussex, in 1521, who cast cannon in brass and iron, using the Sussex iron smelted with charcoal. There are some pieces of ordnance preserved in the Rotunda at Woolwich which are of this age, and may possibly have come from the Sussex foundry. Examples of early cannon are rare in England, but on the Continent many may be found, especially in Belgium. The Rotunda and the Tower of London probably contain the finest specimens in the British Isles. In the Royal Arsenal at Madrid is preserved a small piece of ordnance dating from late fifteenth century. It is double-barrelled and breech-loading, and exhibits a wealth of ornamentation upon almost every part ([Plate XXXVII.*]). A breech-loading peterara of forged iron of the time of Edward IV. is in the Rotunda, and is illustrated in [Plate XXXIX]. It is made of longitudinal bars of iron hooped together with iron rings; the powder-chamber with its lifting handle is seen in position, and a simple locking arrangement prevented its blowing out upon the discharge. Trunnions are affixed to the piece, and the metal by which it was attached to the long-decayed wooden gun-carriage is still preserved. The length of the gun is 3 feet and the calibre 2½ inches, while the name implies that the shot was of stone. This very rare piece of ordnance is in excellent condition.

The progress in artillery was very slow, but gradually cannon became mounted upon wheels and rude carriages, an advance upon the logs and cumbrous beds of the preceding period, while iron was substituted for stone in the projectile. The engagement of trained professional gunners in place of the civilians who had managed the artillery in the fourteenth century, was another step which led to improvement, Dutch artillerymen being employed by Henry VIII. Charles VIII. and subsequent French monarchs undoubtedly did much for the improvement of the weapon; they adopted light guns for field artillery, and introduced the system of rapidly taking up different positions from which to assail the enemy. The Civil War in England found a great scarcity of cannon, and more particularly of efficient gunners, and generally it may be stated that the English use of artillery was much behind that existing upon the Continent until the middle of the eighteenth century.

PLATE XL

The “Creçy” Bombard, temp. Edward III. Arbalestier, Fifteenth Century. (Rotunda, Woolwich)

The existence of cannon in the mediæval period would naturally suggest a weapon that might be used in the hand, and from a very early period hand-guns have been in evidence. They are rarely mentioned by writers of the time, and very few illuminations are extant showing the weapons then employed, which would tend to show that their use was restricted, and their efficacy valued but little. The earliest were simply tubes affixed to a stick and fired by means of a lighted match; some of them were ignited from the muzzle, thus indicating that they were shotless and only used to frighten horses in a cavalry charge. The long-bow and arbalest were of infinitely greater efficacy than the early hand-gun, and it is a matter for wonder that the latter held a place at all in the armies of the period. It was made in various shapes, but that generally shown in contemporary illustrations is depicted in [Fig. 339], the piece being discharged by means of a touch-hole on the top of the barrel near the breech. The earliest use of a hand-gun is involved in obscurity; there can be no doubt that many attempts were made to introduce such a weapon, but the first mention that occurs is in the reign of Edward III., when they were brought into England from Flanders. They were in use by both horse and foot soldiers, the stock in the first case being shortened so that it could be placed against the chest, while in the second it passed under the right arm, the left hand being used to grasp it and the right to hold the discharging match. The gun was supported in the case of cavalry by a forked rest which projected from the saddle. In all these guns the powder-chamber was smaller than the calibre of the barrel. In some cases the hand-gun was used as a mace after being discharged.

Hand Culverin.—A larger hand-gun was subsequently evolved, which was much in use during the second half of the fifteenth century, and necessitated the presence of two men for its manipulation. It was called the hand culverin, and had a bore of about three-quarters of an inch; it was constructed of forged iron, and was attached by bands to a straight stock of wood. This weapon was fired from a rest. It was subsequently improved by the addition of a pan and touch-hole at the side and a modification of the stock, while the barrels were often of brass or bronze, and polygonal in section. Their weight varied from ten to sixteen pounds, and a variety which was carried on horseback at times weighed nearly sixty pounds. Warwick the King-maker employed “Burgundenses” or Burgundian hand-gun men in the Second Battle of St. Albans, 1461, and culveriners formed a part of the forces under Edward IV. in the later battles of the Wars of the Roses.

The Serpentin, Matchlock, or Arquebus.—An improvement was made about the year 1500, whereby the slow match, hitherto held in the hand, was affixed to a lever bent into the form of a serpent and fastened by the centre to the stock on a pivot; by pulling the lower portion the upper end carrying the match was made to descend upon the priming powder. Subsequent innovations consisted of a sliding cover over the flash-pan, and the jointing of the serpentin to increase the leverage. The matchlock was in use for about two centuries, in spite of the cumbersome nature of the weapon, the slow rate of its discharge, the trouble involved in keeping the match alight during boisterous or rainy weather, and the heavy rest for holding it when loading and taking aim. The greatest merit was undoubtedly its simplicity and cheapness. The arquebus shown in [Plate XXVII.], p. [322], is of the sixteenth century, time of James VI., and is in the Edinburgh Museum. The figure of an arquebusier may be discerned in [Plate VIII.], p. [64], under the horse’s head of the Bayard figure. The arquebus is seen poised upon its rest with a piece of loose tow hanging from the barrel; the arquebusier is in the act of taking aim, and is accoutred in seventeenth century military dress. In [Plate XXXIX.] a wall arquebus is shown from the Rotunda, which is nearly 9 feet in length and weighs 87 lbs. It is fitted with a tube sight and an arrangement for pivoting in an iron socket upon a wall or in an embrasure. Its calibre is 1.3 inches. These pieces were at times carried into the field and required three men to manipulate them.