[584] See the accounts of the bailiffs of St. Omer in 1342, in Napoleon III., iii. 77.
[585] Ib., p. 149.
[586] Reinaud and Favé, p. 158.
[587] Whitehorne, c. 25.
[588] Portfires go back to about 1700. Muller’s “Treatise on Artillery,” p. 202.
[589] The battle of Uddevalla in Sweden, 1677, was decided by armes blanches, a prolonged storm of rain having put a stop to all firing. Crichton and Wheaton’s “Scandinavia,” p. 109.
[590] Père Amiot, in Reinaud and Favé, p. 183.
[591] Hassan, ib., 37.
[592] Nye, p. 68 bis, where it is called “priming.”
[593] “Quickmatch,” in official “Treat. on Ammunition,” p. 430.