50 Weapons That Changed Warfare Read online

  A burning match could not be easily poked into a touch-hole, so gunmakers built guns with a small pan above the touch-hole. When gunpowder in this “priming pan” ignited, the fire would flash into the main charge.

  The gun, though, was still no easier to aim. Then some genius built a gun with a pivoted arm that would swing the burning end of the match right into the pan. The arm was fastened to the wooden stock, so the pan and the touch-hole were moved to the side of the gun. That made construction of the swivel simpler, but, more important, it made aiming the gun easier — the swivel didn’t interfere with the line of sight.

  While these improvements had been going on, guns got longer and heavier.

  Their long barrels could propel a bullet with enough force to be deadly at a distance. Fitting a trigger to let the gunner move the swiveled arm with one finger made aiming still easier. Gunsmiths used a variety of trigger arrangements. The simplest was extending the swiveling arm below the pivot so the gunner could lower the match by pulling the bottom of the arm. That made an awkward reach for the trigger finger, and it required the touch-hole to be too far forward for efficiency. More efficient was the system that put the trigger at the center of the bottom of the stock and had it move the match-holder with an arrangement of levers. A spring returned the match-holder, or “serpentine,” to its original position when the gunner released the trigger. It finally became easy to aim and fire a gun — as easy as aiming and shooting a crossbow. To further aid the process, gunsmiths began fitting sights to their products.

  The Portuguese brought this more efficient gun to India, and Indian gunmakers were still building this type of weapon well into the 19th century.

  Another, somewhat later development of the matchlock caught on in Japan, where, again, the Portuguese introduced it. This was the “snapping matchlock.”

  The gunner cocked the serpentine as if he were firing a single-action revolver.

  When he squeezed the trigger, the serpentine brought the match into the pan with a snap, propelled by a spring. That made it possible for a gunner to fire the instant he lined up his gun on the target. The Japanese were still using this type of gun when Commodore Perry arrived. The snapping matchlock later went out of fashion in Europe because the serpentine sometimes snapped the match into the priming pan hard enough to put the match out.

  European gunsmiths continued to improve what had now become the most important weapon on the battlefield. Barrels with spiral rifling appeared. Spinning the bullet gave it far more accuracy: A shot was effective at much longer ranges. These early rifles were difficult to load, however. The bullet had to be bigger than the bore so the rifling would cut into it and make it spin when fired.

  That meant the bullet had to be pounded down the barrel. And the rather crude gunpowder of the time clogged up the rifling after a few shots making the gun impossible to load until the bore was cleaned. Some wealthy hunters bought rifles, but soldiers continued to use smoothbores. Loading a matchlock was slow enough, even without the need to pound a bullet down the barrel and clean it after every three or four shots. For safety, a soldier had to take the match off his gun before loading, hold it at a safe distance while he poured loose powder down the barrel, rammd a bullet and wad on top of that, and put more powder in the priming pan.

  He then put the match back on the serpentine, blew on it to expose the burning coal, and aimed it at the target. Prince Maurice of Nassau, a 17th-century Dutch general, prescribed 43 separate movements for his musketeers’ drill.

  Musketeers used muskets — the latest development of the matchlock. A musket was exactly the same as the earlier and lighter arquebus, but it was bigger. It was so heavy the musketeer had to fire it from a rest — a long forked stick or metal rod. The advantage of the musket was that its heavy bullet would penetrate armor at 200 yards. One marksman wasn’t likely to hit an individual enemy at 200 yards with a smoothbore musket, but infantry and cavalry in those days fought in dense masses that made large targets. A volley of musket balls would have a devastating effect on charging heavy cavalry or armored pikemen.

  The matchlock quickly replaced the crossbow in continental armies, largely because it penetrated armor better. It didn’t make armor disappear, but it required soldiers to wear ever-heavier armor. By the time the musket appeared, most soldiers had stopped wearing most armor. Eventually, infantry wore little more than a helmet and the heaviest cavalry wore only metal cuirasses. Although for centuries, the English had an almost religious belief in the supremacy of the longbow over all other hand weapons, in the early 16th century, the gun replaced the longbow in England. As guns got better and better, armies included higher and higher proportions of arquebusiers and musketeers to other troops.

  The use of muskets on a large scale required more complicated and rigor-ous training for infantry. Just to use their slow-loading weapons efficiently, soldiers had to be drilled until they could perform processes like Prince Maurice’s 43 motions almost subconsciously. Masses of musketeers had to be drilled so they could perform the loading and firing motions simultaneously, because generals had found that volleys had a greater shock effect on enemies than individual fire. The drilling of musketeers and arquebusiers had to be done with pikemen because they had to be protected from cavalry by pikemen while they were reloading. The musketeers had to learn how to move into or behind pike formations while loading and how to suddenly reappear and fire volleys when their pieces were loaded.

  Warfare had become a lot more complicated. No longer could a country such as England field a highly effective militia whose main training was shooting arrows every Sunday afternoon. Even guard duty had become complex. Here’s what Virginia had to say about sentinels:

  …he shall shoulder his piece, both ends of his match being alight, and his piece charged, and primed, and bullets in his mouth, there to stand with a careful and waking eye, untill such time as his Corporall shall relieve him.

  To speed reloading, soldiers literally spit bullets into the gun. The idea was to enable the sentry to fire quickly if a number of enemies suddenly appeared.

  But holding two or three bullets in his mouth probably also helped him keep “a careful and waking eye.”

  Chapter 16

  The Spark of Genius: Flint and Steel

  Flintlock used in Revolutionary War.

  Captain John Smith, the friend of Pocahontas, had a long career as a mercenary soldier before he came to America. Once, commanding a few soldiers, he learned that a much larger force of Turks was about to make a night attack.

  He had his troops spread out and carry a long piece of rope. At regular inter-vals along the rope, he fastened a length of lighted match. Then his troops advanced. The Turks, seeing all those matches glowing in the dark, thought a huge force was about to attack them. They retreated.

  Thus, Smith managed to take advantage of one of the matchlock’s characteristics. Years later, in Virginia, he demonstrated one of its disadvantages. In 1609, he was carrying a lighted match and seemed to have forgotten that he also had a pocketful of loose gunpowder. He put his hand, with the lighted match, into his pocket. It’s hard to believe an experienced soldier like Smith could be so careless, but he was. Fortunately, the powder wasn’t confined, so it didn’t explode, but Smith was severely burned. While he was laid up, his enemies seized him and sent him off to England to stand trial for alleged misconduct.

  Gunpowder does not always have to be confined to explode. A large quantity of gunpowder — nowadays usually called “black powder” — will explode when ignited even when unconfined. Because it can be ignited by the merest spark or even by friction, black powder is a very dangerous substance. Using the matchlock meant manipulating black powder in close proximity to fire. The matchlock priming pan had a cover to minimize exposure, but even so, accidents were frequent.

  The matchlock was also dangerous when the match was not lighted. A party of Spanish soldiers learned that the hard way when they approached an Indian village in what is now South
Carolina. The soldiers planned to force the Indians to give them corn. Outside the village, some Indians met the soldiers and said they’d be glad to give them food, but the glowing matches made the women of the village nervous. Not wishing to alarm the villagers, the soldiers extinguished their matches and went into village. The villagers then massacred them. Only one man escaped.

  Rain was an ever-present danger for troops armed with matchlocks. A down-pour could extinguish their matches and leave them defenseless. The matchlock also made a surprise attack at night impossible, as John Smith proved in his mock attack on the Turks. For all of these reasons, in central and western Europe (the area the Muslim Turks called “the Land of War”), there was a fervent search for some way to fire a gun without carrying fire along with it.

  There was one attempt even before the matchlock was fully developed. An inventor in Dresden developed something called a Monchbuchse. It was a simple tube with a metal handle underneath it. Along the side was a leaf spring terminating in jaws that held a piece of flint. The spring pressed the flint down on a steel rasp equipped with a handle at one end. The gunner held the handle of the gun in one hand and pulled back the rasp with the other. That produced sparks that ignited the primer and fired the gun. Striking a piece of flint on steel to make sparks fall on dry tinder had long been used to start fires in Europe, but the Dresden invention was the first to use the principle to fire a gun. The Monchbuchse, however, was even clumsier than the hand cannon, so it never caught on.

  Somewhere in northern Italy or southern Germany, somebody in the late 15th or early 16th century came up with a more practical gun. This was the wheel lock. It had a jaw that pressed a piece of iron pirates (the “fool’s gold” of gold prospectors) on a roughened steel wheel. The wheel revolved in the priming pan.

  The wheel was connected to a crank, attached to a short chain that was connected to a strong leaf spring. The gunner loaded his weapon, put powder in the pan, and wound up the wheel with a wrench. When he pressed the trigger, a shower of sparks fell in the pan. Ignition, unlike that for the slightly later flintlock, was almost instantaneous. Pyrites were used instead of flints, because pyrites are softer.

  Continued use of flint would wear out the roughened steel wheel quickly.

  The wheel lock had two disadvantages because the mechanism was more complicated than that of any weapon ever seen before. It was expensive, and it was liable to break down. It was expensive because precision machining was unknown in the 16th and 17th centuries. Wheel locks were all handmade by the most skilled of craftsmen, and they were more prone to failure than the simple matchlock.

  Expense was the biggest drawback. Even so, wheel lock pistols were wel-comed by the cavalry. Although matchlock pistols were made in Japan, such weapons were not popular in Europe. Matchlock muskets and arquebuses were dangerous enough when used by slowly walking infantry. A matchlock on a galloping horse was something few European warriors wanted. Loading a wheel lock pistol on a trotting or galloping horse would be a nightmare. European cavalry, largely descendants of Europe’s knightly class, could afford wheel locks.

  They adopted the new weapon and developed a new tactic. It was called the caracole: a column of cavalry, each man carrying two to six pistols, would ride up to a formation of pikemen and, just out of pike range, fire their pistols, and ride to the rear of the column, reloading as they rode.

  At its introduction, the caracole was devastating. Then the infantry learned to move musketeers up in front of the pikemen and fire musket volleys before the cavalry got within pistol range.

  Meanwhile, the infantry were still using the cheap and vulnerable matchlock.

  The idea of producing sparks with a single sharp blow instead of a spinning wheel seemed to occur in many parts of Europe soon after the introduction of the wheel lock.

  From Scandinavia came the Baltic or Swedish snap lock. The flint in this gun fitted on a long curved device that corresponds to the cock of the better-known flintlock. A leaf spring pushing up on the heel of the cock drove it into the pivoted steel and struck sparks. Sometimes the steel was attached to the pan cover, so that it opened just as sparks appeared. More often, it had to be opened separately.

  From the Netherlands came the snaphaunce, its name derived from the Dutch words for snapping hen. This looked much like the standard flintlock. It had a mainspring inside the lock plate and flint-holding cock that looked like the flintlock’s. The priming pan cover, however, was not attached to the steel.

  In crude specimens, it was opened manually before firing; in most, levers connected to the cock pushed it open as the flint fell.

  Spain contributed the miquelet. This had a huge cock powered by an external mainspring. It drove the flint against a short, straight steel that was connected to the pan cover, like the fully developed flintlock. The miquelet looked clumsy, but it was extremely reliable — the most reliable of any of the flintlock variations.

  The individualistic Scots developed their own version of a flint-fired gun. It had a lateral-moving sear like the snaphaunce, and in early versions the steel is not connected to the pan cover. Later guns had the steel and pan cover in one piece like the flintlock but retained the lateral sear. One peculiarity of the Scottish weapon was its lack of a trigger guard.

  The weapon that Americans think of when they hear flintlock was developed in France, probably by Marin le Bourgeoys, a gunsmith of Lisieux, sometime between 1610 and 1615. It combined the best features of the snaphaunce and the miquelet and rapidly spread all over Europe and the Americas. Instead of the lateral seal of all the other “firelocks” (including the wheel lock), le Bourgeoys invented a vertical sear. This made a half-cock position — a great safety feature — possible and made the action more durable. After le Bourgeoys, improvements on the flintlock were mostly details, such as making the pan cover fit the pan so closely the gun could fire in a driving rain. The flintlock was used on smoothbore muskets, rifles, pistols, and shotguns, practically unchanged from le Bourgeoys’s invention for two centuries. Its simplicity, durability, and utility in all kinds of environments made possible, among other things, the settlement of America and the independence of the American colonies.

  Chapter 17

  A Knife Doubles Firepower: The Bayonet

  An assortment of bayonets. From top, left to right, bayonets fit U.S. M 1 rifle; U.S. M 1917 rifle, U.S. M 1 or M 2 carbine; U.S. Springfield rifle, model 1873; British bayonet for rifle number 4; German dress bayonet for Mauser 1898 carbine.

  Directly below the bayonet for the British rifle number 4 is another bayonet, the so-called spike bayonet for the same rifle.

  At bottom is a Russian bayonet that can be fitted to its scabbard to make a wire cutter.

  The flintlock, which eliminated the need to worry about a burning match, greatly speeded up the infantry’s rate of fire, but the musketeer was still practically defenseless for too long a time between shots. Musketeers carried swords, but having a sword is not much comfort when faced with a phalanx of pikes or a swarm of charging horsemen. At times, musketeers arranged themselves in successive lines. The first line would fire and move to the rear, reloading as they went, while the second line would fire and do the same. This system allowed quickly repeated volleys, and, at times, it was quite successful.

  At the battle of Bunker Hill, John Stark’s New Hampshire militiamen were holding the flank of the American position that terminated at the Mystic River.

  Stark hid his men behind a stone-and-rail fence and arranged them in three lines. British General William Howe had planned to make a demonstration in front of the American lines while the elite light infantry companies of his force would run along the river bank, hidden from the sight of both those in the American fort and the members of the main British force. They would sweep around the apparently unguarded left flank of the Americans and hit them from the rear as the main body advanced on the rebel front.

  The light companies double-timed along the river in columns of four, one company b
ehind the other. When the lead company, the light company of the Welch Fusiliers, got to about 80 feet of the fence, there was an ear-splitting blast, and the company ceased to exist. The light troops of the King’s Own Regiment dashed forward, knowing that, however fast the rebels could reload, they couldn’t resist a bayonet charge now. There was another blast and another cloud of smoke and another company annihilated. The third light company hesitated, then they leveled their muskets and charged. For the third time, a British light infantry company was blown away. It would not happen again. The rest of the light infantrymen turned around and dashed to the rear. If they had continued on, the Battle of Bunker Hill would have been all over. Stark’s first line had not had time to reload.

  The trouble with firing in successive lines was that it was only practical on a narrow front. In open country, the musketeers could easily be flanked, especially by cavalry. In most battles, the musketeers relied on pikemen to protect them while reloading. Infantry practiced various formations and drills that allowed musketeers to hide behind the pikes while reloading and to take up firing positions as soon as their weapons were ready to use. This system worked pretty well, but it obviously cut down the army’s firepower — sometimes by more than half.

  The solution to the problem was to turn the musket into a spear. According to some sources, this was the idea of Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban, the great French military engineer in the armies of Louis XIV. It was a solution at least for soldiers. Hunters in France and Spain had for some time been jamming knives into the muzzles of their muskets for protection against dangerous game. It seems that Bayonne, a French city noted for its cutlery, made a type of hunting knife that was favored for this use. When the French army adopted this weapon, it was called a “bayonet.” The earliest reference to the use of the bayonet is in the memoirs of a French officer who wrote that on one campaign, his men did not carry swords, but knives with handles one foot long and blades of the same length. When needed, the knives could be placed in the muzzles of the guns to turn them into spears. The bayonet proved to be a much more effective defense against cavalry than the sword.