Many of my readers will perhaps be desirous to know in what manner our gun-flints are prepared. Considering the great use made of them, it will hardly be believed how much trouble I had to obtain information on this subject. One would laugh were I to repeat the various answers which I obtained to my inquiries. Many thought that the stones were cut down by grinding them; some conceived that they were formed by means of red-hot pincers; and many asserted that they were made in mills. On the least reflection it may be readily conjectured, that the double cuneiform shape is given to these stones without much labour, because they are so cheap; and as every country, at all times, with whatever other it may be engaged in war, can obtain them in sufficient quantity, no nation can have an exclusive trade in them. It is nevertheless difficult to discover the places whence they are procured; and in works which give an account of the different articles of merchandise they are not named. The best account with which I am acquainted, is that collected by my brother, and published in the Hanoverian Magazine for the year 1772. Shepherds, and other persons who gain little by their service, break the flint-stone merely by manual labour, and chiefly in Champagne and Picardy. Some years ago, Gilbert de Montmeau, a merchant at Troye, carried on the greatest trade with them, and sold them at the rate of five livres six sous per thousand. The Dutch always buy up large quantities of them, which they keep in reserve, in order to sell them when the exportation of them is forbidden by France, in the time of war. Savary, however, relates that the largest quantity and best stones come from Berry, and particularly the neighbourhood of St. Agnau and Meusne. I know also that a great many are made at Stevensklint in Zeeland[1314], and exported from that country. In the year 1727, the chancery of war at Hanover sent some persons to learn the art of breaking flints; but after their return, it was given out that our horn-stone was unfit for that purpose. It is possible that those stones which occur in continued veins may be split easier in any required direction than those found in single pieces, as it appears to me that the latter are harder and more compact than the former. Perhaps the case is the same with flints as with vermilion, the preparation of which we endeavoured to learn from the English and Dutch, though from the earliest periods it had been made better in the very centre of Germany than anywhere else.
That stones were used at least in the middle of the sixteenth century, is confirmed by the account of an ingenious Italian, named Francis Angelerius. This artist had constructed a short piece of wood, to which he applied a wheel, and instead of a cock substituted a dog, which held the stone in its mouth, the whole so ingeniously made, that a person who appeared with it at a masquerade was arrested by the guard, because it was considered to be a real pistol[1315]. I have thought it proper to mention this circumstance, because it proves that the wheel was then invented and known under the appellation of pistol. In old arsenals and armouries, large collections of arms with the wheel are still to be seen. I have inspected those preserved in the arsenal at Hanover. What I consider to be the oldest, have on the barrel the figure of a hen with a musket in its mouth, because perhaps they were made at Henneberg. A pistol of this kind was entirely of brass without any part of wood, and therefore exceedingly heavy. On the lower part of the handle were the letters J. H. Z. S. perhaps John duke of Saxony. A piece with a wheel, which seemed to be one of the most modern, had on the barrel the date 1606.
Together with fire-stones, properly so called, pyrites, which is sometimes named fire-stone, continued long in use. In the year 1586, under duke Julius of Brunswick, when abundance of sulphureous pyrites was found near Seefen, the duke caused it to be collected, and formed it himself into the necessary shape, though in doing so he often bruised his fingers, and was advised by the physicians not to expose himself to the sulphureous vapour emitted by that substance.
[The use of flint-locks to guns has, within the last few years, been almost entirely laid aside in this country; the percussion- or detonating-lock being substituted for it. The certainty and rapidity with which the discharge takes place, gives them a very great superiority. This ingenious invention belongs to a Scottish clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Forsyth, minister of Belhelvie in Aberdeenshire, but it has since received some great improvements, especially in the application of the copper cap, to which indeed may be attributed all its superiority.—Brande.]
FOOTNOTES
[1303] A figure and description of the Hakenbüchse, the bock, the wheels and key, may be found in Daniel Histoire de la Milice Francaise. Amst. 1724, 2 vols. 4to, i. p. 334. At Dresden there is still preserved an old Büchse, on which, instead of a lock, there is a cock with a flint-stone placed opposite to the touch-hole, and this flint was rubbed with a file till it emitted a spark.
[1304] [The musquet or musket is said to be a Spanish invention, and to have been first used at the battle of Pavia. They were so long and heavy as to require the support of a rest. In the time of Elizabeth and long after, the English musqueteer was very different from one at the present day. In addition to the musquet itself, he had to carry a flask of coarse powder for loading, and a touch-box of fine powder for priming; the bullets were contained in a leathern bag, the strings of which he had to draw to get at them; while in his hand was his burning match and musquet-rest.]
[1305] De Civitate Noribergensi Commentat. 1697, 4to, p. 150: In chronico quodam MS. legitur: the fire-locks belonging to the shooting tubes were first found out at Nuremberg in 1517.
[1306] Raetia das ist Beschreibung, &c. Zurich, 1616, fol. p. 152.
[1307] Appenzeller Chronik. St. Gall, 1740, 8vo, p. 194.