S4 
LAND & WATER 
December 7, 1916 
The Evolution of the Gun 
By H. W, R. T. 
THE object of this article is to deal briefly with 
the evolution of rifles and guns— a subject 
closely interwoven with the history of mankind. 
From tlie earliest ages of . man the science of 
projectile production has necessarily been a profound 
study. For how long man had to rely on his own unaided 
arm for propelling stones and on his teeth and nails for 
close quarter weapons no one . can say. The earliest 
history shows that he soon realised that by lengthening the 
arm lever, projectiles could be hurled with greater force. 
Thus the sling was introduced. Seneca, the Stoic i)hilo- 
sopher and tutor to Nero, records that lead missiles 
were used in his day (about 2,000 years ago) and that 
they were impelled through the air at sucli a great 
velocity that they actually melted. We know sufficient 
now to allow the assertion to be discredited, but pro- 
jectiles were certainly discharged from slings with great 
accuracy and power, as David demonstrated when he 
slew Goliath. Slings were used a.s late as 1572 by the 
Huguenots at the siege of Sancerre, but then only to 
save their powder. 
The antiquity of the bow may also be proved by refer- 
ence to the Bible, wherein we learn that the overthrow 
The Capture of a Fortress 
A forti6cation on being entered by the . besie|(crs, who have made 
■ breach in the outside wall with a batter! nt-ram. A catapult is 
in the left corner of the pictare, and four men are taking a ballista 
up the approach to the gateway. Note the huge lowers of war 
of Saul was due to Philistine arclicrs. It was used in 
various fsrms for many generations and was apparently 
introduced into England by the Normans at the battle 
of Hastings. The long bow, with which the ICnglish 
subsequently greatly excelled, was a development of the 
old Saxon bow, and was preferred by our archers even 
to the mechanical de\icc called the crossbow — a short 
bow sometimes made of steel arranged crosswise on a 
stock, bent by a lever and released by a trigger. Archery 
became the national pastime of England, and the remark- 
able skill acquired by our men won many notable victories 
for England from the time of the introduction of the bow 
to the days of Queen Elizabeth — a period covering 
several centuries. The use of the crossbow, notwith- 
standing its greater accuracy, was actually forbidden 
bv law for a time. The long bow could no doubt be used 
with greater facihty, and we know that arrows could be 
propelled by it a greater distance than could be reached 
by those discharged by the mechanical edition. Cross- 
bows of a magazine type are still used we believe in the 
interior provinces of China. Certainly some of these 
ingenious repeating arrow-shooting machines were used 
in the war between China and Japan twenty odd years ago. 
The congregation of the ancient tribes in camps was 
naturally followed by the erection of walls and fortifica- 
tions which eventually became of great strength. The 
problem of breaking through them led to the use by 
hostile hordes of battering rams, the great dimensions 
and weight of which few people comprehend. One of the 
rams of Vespasian, lunperor of Rome 70-79 a.d., was 
90 feet long, and recpiired the combined effort of 1,500 
men to force it against the walls and a team of 300 pairs 
of horses to draw it. 
The huge catapults, ballista and other machines of a 
similar character used at the same time for bombarding 
besieged camps were no doubt inspired by the bow. The 
catapult had various forms and would throw stones 
weighing 60 lbs. a distance of 450 yards. The ballista 
was really a great cross bow which shot beams of wood, 
heavy arrov/s, javelins and stones. (Cross bowmen were 
called " baliistrarii.") Catapults arc not even yet out 
of date, for adaptations have been made for use in the 
present war for throwing grenades and other bombs. 
The files of patents taken out during the past two years 
prove that the minds of several people have been travers- 
ing the region of invention exploited by the ancients 
800 years B.C. — for it is written " Uzziah made in 
Jerusalem engines invented by cunning men to be on 
towers and upon bulwarks, to shoot arrows and great 
stones withal." The late Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey was 
a great authority on these ancient weapons. He tried 
to reproduce them, but failed to achieve the expected 
results. The illustration here given of the capture of an 
ancient fortress is from Polybius, 1727, but is taken from 
Sir Ralph's book. Projectile Throwing Engines of the 
Ancients (Longman Green and Co.). The author remarks 
that " not only were ponderous balls of stone and heavy 
bolts projected into a town and against its walls and their 
defenders, but with a view to causing pestilence, it was 
the custom to throw in dead. horses, and even the bodies 
of soldiers who had been killed in sorties and raids. 
Varillas- (French historian 1624-1696) writes that " at his 
ineffectual siege of Carolstcin in 1422 Coribut caused the 
bodies of his soldiers whom the beseigers had killed to 
be thrown into the town in addition to 2,000 cartloads 
of manure." Henry HI. used a trcbuchet — an engine 
in which a very heavy weight took the place of the twisted 
cordage of the catapult and ballista — for discharging 
stones 16 inches in diameter into Kenilworth Castle during 
the war of the Barons which ended in 1265. 
These elementary weapons had eventually to make 
way for artillery and small-arins, the introduction of 
which — at any rate in Europe — followed the discovery 
of gunjiowder by the English friar Roger Bacon. Gun- 
powder was known' in the East many centuries before 
this discovery, but to Bacon must be ascribed the merit 
of bringing about an association between gunpowder 
and projectile propulsion. The (ierman monk Schwartz 
is credited in some cpiarters with the discovery in 1320, 
but undoubtedly Bacon was in the field many years before, 
for the latter had set out his secret in cypher in his book, 
De Secrctis, published about 1245. 
Firearms of diverse tyjjes seem to have been used in 
the East for many years prior to Bacon's discovery, but 
cannon were invented — according to the deductions of 
Lt.-Col. Hime {The Origin of Artillery — Longmans) in 
1313 by a German monk. Flanders became the centre 
of the gun trade, and principally in and around Liege re- 
mained one of the greatest centres (latterly of small-arms 
production) until the Germans swept over the country in 
1914. Cannon, no doubt purchased from Flanders, 
were used in lingland soon afterwards. The great victory 
of the English at Crcssy in 1346 was due in part to four 
or five cannon, which were used by Edward HI., but our 
archers also did tremendous execution in that historic 
(ContinHtd on page 36) 
