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THE MUSKET AS A SOCIAL FORCE. 491 



various forms of " harkebus " and " arquebuse " in the different lan- 

 guages. Presently the tube, growing still lighter as the improvement 

 in the manufacture of powder enabled the w^eight of the ball to be con- 

 tinually reduced, was laid in a stock similar to that of the famous 

 Genoese cross-bow, and a priming-pan was placed at the vent. A lit- 

 tle later a still more valuable improvement w^as made by attaching to 

 the rear end of the barrel a piece of iron shaped like the letter S, and 

 celled a " serpent." The upper end of this carried the tip of a lighted 

 rope-match into the priming-pan when the lower end was moved by 

 the finger. AVhen a trigger and springs were subsequently added, the 

 Man on Foot had the historic " matchlockj" with which he fought for 

 two and a half centuries. 



Thenceforward the march of improvement was steady and at an 

 accelerating pace. The " hand-gonne " gained continual access of 

 power over the Man on Horseback, and as continually its use became 

 more familiar to the people at large. By singular concatenations, 

 which some people arc fond of terming " providential dispensations," 

 the men advocating the best ideas got hold of the best improved guns 

 and had the most of them. 



In 1477 the Swiss, who had grown so self-confident that they did 

 not hesitate to descend from their mountains to attack the Men on 

 Horseback on the plains, came down from the passes of the Vosges 

 Mountains carrying from six thousand to ten thousand of these fire- 

 locks, and at Granson, Morat, and Nancy, literally destroyed off the 

 face of the earth the arrogant Charles the Bold and his rapacious Bur- 

 gundian chivalry. Guns which combined the improvements of another 

 half-century enabled the Spanish footmen to smite the French cheva- 

 liers hip and thigh at Pavia in 1525, where Francis I "lost everything 

 but honor," and the Spanish infantry became the first in Europe, a 

 position it held for nearly a century, until, as the instrument of eccle- 

 siastical tyranny in the Netherlands, it was defeated by the superior 

 guns and tactics of the Dutch infantry under Maurice of Nassau. 



A few decades later the use of paper cartridges by the Swedish 

 musketeers gave them an advantage which greatly aided Gustavus 

 Adolphus to widen the horizon of Liberty by his successful warfare 

 against the hordes of civil and religious despotism. Nearly simulta- 

 neously firelocks in the hands of Cromwell's superb foot-soldiery were 

 preaching irresistible arguments on the Rights of Man to Charles I's 

 cavaliers. 



The mediaBval Man on Horseback may now be said to have perma- 

 nently disappeared from the field of battle. Granson, Morat, and Pa- 

 via had showed him of how little avail it was for him to cover every 

 inch of his own body and that of his hoi'se with the best steel, and he 

 began stripping it off, to gain celerity of movement under the dread- 

 ful fire. By the end of the seventeenth century it was all gone but 

 the helmet and breastplate, and these were not worn by him, but by 



