All the gunlocks we are accustomed to associate with hand-guns were used with ordnance; they were fixed to the vent-field by pins passing laterally through it, or by side screws.
The first mention of bombs occurs in 1588.
Artillery had now become an important and independent arm in all campaigning, and it will be seen how numerous cannon had become when it is stated that the train of guns attached to the army of the Emperor Ferdinand in 1556 consisted of fifty-four heavy and one hundred and twenty-seven light pieces of artillery.
Rifled cannon, the principle of which was first applied to hand-arms in Germany, were introduced in this century; examples of which may be seen in the arsenal at Berlin, and in the museums of Nuremberg and the Hague.
Viscount Dillon, P.S.A., writing in Archæologia, vol. li., quotes Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who consulted the records for the compilation of his history of the reign of Henry VIII. Lord Herbert writes that “great brass ordnance, as cannons and culverins, were first cast in England by one John Owen in 1535; and that about 1544 iron pieces and grenades were first cast.” Viscount Dillon remarks “that the facts as to time and place seem to be different, for in September 1516 there occurs a payment of £33 6s. 8d. to John Rutter of London, for “hurts and damages by him sustained in a tenement to him belonging wherein the king’s great gun called the ‘Basiliscus’ was cast, and for rent.” In 1532 Carlo Capello, the Venetian, writes that Henry “visited the Tower daily to hasten the works then going on there, and was founding cannon and heavy gunpowder made.” This was in anticipation of the Scottish war.
A valuable account of the guns in the Tower, numbering 64 of brass and 351 of iron, of which follow some abridged extracts, may be seen in some notes by Viscount Dillon, appearing in Archæologia, vol. li., pp. 223–225. He states “that there are two bronze guns, octagonal externally, with bores 2½ and 2¾ inches, corresponding in form with types of 1500–1530, presumably of Venetian make. The ‘Brode Fawcon, shooting iij shotte,’ is rectangular externally, has three bores side by side, and the three spaces for placing the three chambers, as in early breech-loading cannon. The ‘French gonnes of Brasse’ may have been part of the spoils of Boulogne in 1554, or else the work of the same Peter Bawde who cast brass guns for King Henry at Houndsditch as early as 1525.” His lordship is of opinion that the seventeen “Scottishe gonnes of Brasse” would include some of the pieces taken at Flodden, which, according to Hall, consisted of “5 great curtalls, 2 great culverynges, 4 sacres (hawks), and 5 serpentynes, etc.” Viscount Dillon mentions in his notes that the Scotch made cannon in 1460, and that the iron guns in the Tower comprise eleven of the numerous varieties in use in Henry VIII.’s time, and he gives the names of makers of that period, both English and foreign. These notes, of which this is but a very imperfect outline, should be read in extenso by all specially interested in the subject.
PART XXV.
EARLY HAND-GUNS.
The invention, or at all events the first application of these weapons for the purposes of warfare, in the sense of the use of detonating gunpowder for the discharge of projectiles, in contradistinction to those applied merely for setting fire to buildings, is probably due to the Flemings or Italians, but the approximate date of their introduction is very difficult to trace, as early writers on the subject so often confound hand-guns with cannon, and vice versâ; besides, some of the earlier guns were innocent of any projectile whatever, being simply used for frightening horses, an office at that time far from being contemptible in repelling an onset of men-at-arms. The earliest mention of hand-guns occurs in connection with Perugia as early as 1364,[53] and an inventory of Nuremberg, of 1388, refers to forty-eight of these weapons as being in the possession of that city. There are other examples of the use of what would appear to be hand-guns occurring in Italian, French, and German manuscripts of the last quarter of the century, but it is rarely absolutely clear whether artillery or hand-guns are meant, especially when the word “bombard” or “bombarde” is used, unless, as in the case of Perugia, where the dimensions are given. In German MSS. the use of the word “handbüchsen” is, of course, conclusive; and such a case occurs in connection with Ratisbon in 1379. These early “handbüchsen” or “handbombards” could not be very heavy, as there exist several “illuminations” at Vienna, where one of the two gunners who served the piece holds the weapon with his right hand, with the round thin stock against his breast; his colleague stands apart with the ramrod in his hand, apparently after having loaded the piece. One of these “illuminations” shows that the charge is being ignited near the mouth of the piece, which might go to show that the gun was innocent of projectile. These pictures would seem to date very early, probably not later than 1350–60. Juvenal des Ursins mentions a hand-gun as being in use in 1414. A Florentine writer states that these weapons were used at the siege of Lucca, in 1430; and what is still more to the point is that an actual and early specimen, made of brass, was found among the débris at Tannenberg, a castle besieged and demolished in 1399: this weapon was probably of as early make as the Nuremberg guns. It was only with great difficulty that the early rough hand-guns made their way at all against those weapons where manual or mechanical force was used. Both the longbow and crossbow were infinitely superior to the clumsy tube stuck on to the end of a stick, not only in regard to precision of aim, but also in the number of missiles that could be discharged within a given time, and it was principally on this account that these firearms are so rarely mentioned by mediæval writers. Actual specimens preserved are few and far between, and this is not surprising when one considers how very soon the weapons became obsolete in the rapid improvements that took place.
There is a connecting link between early artillery and hand-guns in various weapons from the small elementary semi-portable cannon fixed to the end of a long wooden shaft, and fired from a forked support or from a wall; and later, large models of guns of the harquebus type manipulated in the same manner. The latter form was the “arquebus à croc,” weighing up to sixty pounds, and was from five to six feet long. This class of weapon was much used in sieges, and they were sufficiently portable to be carried and worked by three or four men. Most national collections contain specimens of these firearms.