The arquebuse à croc sometimes weighed from fifty to sixty pounds, measured from five to six feet in length, and in principle was chiefly adapted for firing from a wall; it was lightened a little that it might be used by foot-soldiers, who, however, never fired it without a fixed or a movable rest.
The inconvenience of applying fire with the hand, which, moreover, prevented the right direction of the missile, was soon partially superseded by adapting to the barrel a stock to fire from the shoulder, and a lock for a match, called a serpentin, which had only to be let down to ignite the powder at the touch-hole. This was the matchlock arquebus still used by certain Eastern nations in our time, and which secured victory to the Spaniards at the battle of Pavia.
Although the matchlock arquebus, which was made lighter, and was then called mousquet, continued to be the usual arm of infantry until the time of Louis XIII., many serious objections to the use of the serpentin continued. It compelled the soldier always to have a lighted match, or some means of striking a light. Besides, for nearly each shot it was necessary so to regulate the match that the end of it, which was placed in the head of the serpentin (lock), should come exactly into the priming-pan; then the priming-pan had to be opened; these operations were, so to speak, impossible for mounted men, who at the same time had to manage their horses.
Fig. 69.—Arquebus with Wheel and Match.
About 1517 the Germans invented the screw-plate called à rouet,—wheel-lock ([Fig. 69]).
To the Spaniards is due the merit of the improvement that followed, the type of which is still in a measure perpetuated in our percussion guns; which, in their turn, have just been replaced by the needle-gun. The Spanish screw-plate, often called the miquelet screw-plate, had on the outside a spring, which pressed, at the extremity of its movable limb, on one of the catches of the hammer; when the gun was cocked the other catch pressed against a pin which projected from the inside and traversed the screw-plate; this pin could be removed, and then the spring acted on the hammer, which was no longer held back; the flint (for at that time a flint was fitted to the gun) struck upon a ribbed plate of steel forming part of the cover of the priming-pan, the action of the flint on the plate produced the fire.
Among the arms in use during the sixteenth century was one called petrinal or poitrinal (petronel), on account of the bent stock, which rested on the chest. This short and heavy arquebus, which could only throw balls, but of a very large size, to a short distance, was usually suspended from the shoulder by a strap or a broad cross-belt.
Light troops were armed with these guns, and took the name of carabins; from this the weapon was next called carabine—a designation which since then has received quite another meaning.
