ANCIENT AND MIDDLE AGE SHOOTING 19 



country had discovered it at the time of Marlborough or 

 Wellington, it would have made that country master of Europe, 

 just as the first use of the breech-loader as a military arm made 

 Prussia and her needle gun invincible, until other nations also 

 armed themselves with the breech-loader. 



It has often been said that "vile saltpetre" was the 

 deathblow to chivalry. That was not so; the long-bow 

 and the cross-bow had before this made Jack as good 

 as his master, and as a matter of fact the bow was much 

 more highly valued up to the reign of Elizabeth than the 

 gun was. 



Nevertheless, one French writer attributes the loss of the 

 battle of Crecy to the English use of guns, and he goes on to 

 show that, although the French had used cannon in the sieges 

 of castles, they would not employ them against men. The fact 

 that gunpowder was known in Europe long before Crecy, and is 

 said to have been used by the followers of Mahomet, and by 

 the defenders of India against Alexander the Great, goes to 

 support the French author's views, that chivalry forbade the 

 use of such a method of warfare. 



This is no unsupported view, for Pope Innocent III. forbade 

 the use even of the cross-bow against Christian enemies, but 

 permitted it against Infidels. It was even said that Richard I. 

 was killed by a shot from a cross-bow because he had disre- 

 garded the Pope's Bull in the use of the weapon. This 

 common belief well indicates the superstition, or religion, 

 of the people, and is ample to account for the very slow 

 growth of the use of gunpowder up to the time of Agincourt, 

 which was obviously won, like the Black Prince's victories 

 over France, by the English long-bow; and, in the winning, 

 destroyed the dying embers of the spirit of chivalry. That 

 gunpowder did not do this may be gathered from the fact that 

 Sir John Smyth, a general of Elizabeth's army, declared he 

 would take 10,000 bowmen against 20,000 armed with the 

 match-lock of that period. 



More than this, a match was made at Pacton Green, in 

 Cumberland, as lately as 1792 with the bow against the gun, 



