An r)ipublisJicd Manuscript of Frank Foresters. 



369 



Europe by Friar Bacon, if it were 

 really a discovery by him, and not the 

 production of a secret preserved in the 

 convent since the days of the early 

 Christians, who are believed by many 

 writers to have been familiar with its 

 properties, and to have applied it in 

 the shape of subterranean explosion 

 for the purpose of deterring Julian, 

 named the Apostate, from rebuilding 

 the temple of Jerusalem. 



Be this, however as it may, it was 

 first used for military purposes early 

 in the fourteenth century by the 

 English, who employed four guns — 

 heavy cannons composed of bars of 

 longitudinal iron, hooped together, at 

 the Battle of Cressy, in 1346. 



So early as the battle of Bos worth, 

 1458, the rudest form of hand-gun or 

 hand-cannon, as it was called, w^hich is 

 well-described in Mr. G. P. R. James' 

 clever novel of The Woodman as an 

 engine so ponderous and unwieldy as 

 to be used by two men, one resting it 

 on the shoulder of the other, taking 

 aim along its barrel and discharging it 

 by a match applied to an open touch- 

 hole. 



The next improvement was the 

 hackbut, or most ancient form of the 

 stocked musket, still fired with a hand 

 match, the butt being placed against 

 the man firing it, and little accuracy of 

 aim could be obtained. Of its range 

 little is known, except that it was 

 vastly exceeded by that of the long 

 bow, as indeed is that of the ordinary 

 modern soldiers' musket — since the 

 clothyard arrow was undoubtedly fatal, 

 even to steel-clad men, at a distance of 

 four hundred yards, and it was rather 

 to the advantage obtained in the port- 

 ability of gun ammunition than to 

 superiority in celerity of fire that the 

 musket at length won the preference. 



It has been stated that the Italians 

 were the first inventors of what we 

 should now call small arms, but it 

 appears to me that the weight of 

 evidence lies in favor of the Germans, 

 in whose language most, if not all, the 

 earliest invention and improvements 

 have their nomenclature; as, for in- 

 .stance, hackbut, however originally 

 spelt, and subsequently snap hannce, 

 the name of earliest form of the flint- 

 lock. 



The hackbut was superseded by -the 

 harguebus, with a crooked stock and a 

 spring lock, by which the match, on the 

 pull of a trigger, was brought into con- 

 tact with the powder in the pan, and the 

 piece discharged nearly as at present; 

 though neither so speedily nor so cer- 

 tainly as now, and with the obvious 

 disadvantage of the powder being- ex- 

 posed without any protection to the 

 weather. 



Still these weapons were effective, 

 and I have seen and even practiced 

 with some of the Italian and Spanish, 

 when fitted with modern flint-locks, 

 which did their work very accurately at 

 a long range. Those I have seen, in 

 the great length and thickness of the 

 barrel, the smallness of the bore, the 

 thinness of the stock considerable re- 

 semble the old-fashioned American rifle 

 of the French and Revolutionary wars. 

 They are mentioned first as used at 

 Morat, in 1475. 



In this form the gun continued, 

 gradually improving in lightness, hand- 

 iness and shapeliness only, without 

 alteration in the principal or method of 

 ignition, until the pyrites' wheel-lock 

 was introduced by the Italians, during 

 the Popedom of Leo X. By this con- 

 trivance a wheel of steel sharply cogged 

 was made to revolve with great rapidity 

 against a piece of sulphuret of iron. 



