Arquebus

Arcabuz in a museum.

Archebuz fired from a fork stand. Drawing of 1876.

The arquebus is an ancient muzzle-loading firearm, the predecessor of the musket. Its use was widespread in the European infantry from the 15th to the 17th centuries. Despite its length, the shot was short-range (barely 50 effective meters), but lethal; at that distance it could pierce armor. It was easy to handle and quickly displaced the use of the crossbow, which disappeared in the mid-16th century. It required much less dexterity to wield effectively. Although the use of the arquebus was widespread before the invention of the musket (its evolution), it was contemporary and rival in use of that second weapon, which slowly displaced it, disappearing almost completely in the 18th century.

History

The first documented use of the term arquebus dates back to 1364, when the lord of Milan Bernabò Visconti recruited 70 archibuxoli, although perhaps, in this case, the term arquebus is used here as a synonym for cannon handheld, as the arquebus was developed later. The first large-scale use of the arquebus in a European army took place in Hungary, under the reign of King Matthias Corvinus. After the fall of Constantinople (1453), King Corvino, worried about the pressure that the Ottoman Turks could exert, gathered around him the best that the different troops of European mercenaries could offer, either in reference to both the war tactics as well as new military weapons. Although the use of the arquebus in open field battles was not decisive until the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th, Corvino knew how to recognize, like the Chinese generals of the Ming Dynasty, the importance of the massive use of the arquebus, which which is reflected in the number of arquebusiers recruited (1 out of every 4 soldiers).

It is not known for sure if the first models of arquebus came from Spain or from Germany. However, it is known that in the 1420s, in the Hussite wars (1419-1434), the rebels used portable firearms that apparently were primitive arquebuses.

What is a fact is that already in the 16th century the use of the arquebus had become legal in almost all Eurasian battlefields. This was mainly due to the fact that the arquebusier turned out to be extremely useful against cavalry and foot soldiers, especially when pikemen and arquebusiers were fighting together.

German Arcabuz.

It was in the battle of Ceriñola (1503) the first time in which the result of the confrontation was decided by a group of arquebusiers. Under the command of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba (called, for his excellence in war, the Great Captain), the Spanish infantry defeated the French troops led by the Duke of Nemours himself, even though on the side French were the undefeated Swiss pikemen. It was also in this confrontation where Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba applied new tactics in the battle in the open field that would sow the seed for what would later become the Spanish Tercios.

However, its characteristics also had to be known, such as that the arquebus was sensitive to rain and humid weather. In the battle of Villalar on April 22, 1521, during the War of the Communities of Castile, the rebel troops of the Santa Junta suffered a significant defeat before the royalist troops of Carlos I of Spain, partly because there was a high proportion of arquebusiers on the communal side, during a strong storm, which rendered their weapons useless.

Used in combination with pike protection, the arquebus changed the way warfare was waged in Europe. In 1522 the Spanish, with this weapon, destroyed the famous cadres of Swiss pikemen in Bicoca. Then came the turn of the French medieval armored knights in Naples, during the Battle of Pavia (1525), who were easily defeated by the arquebusiers. It was after this battle where the arquebus showed its effectiveness without a doubt, so its use spread rapidly among European armies. Thanks to its use, the infantry became the "queen of battles" for more than 4 centuries, until the first decades of the 20th century.

The impact of the arquebus on the Western culture of the Renaissance

Military Revolution

Figurines dressed as Spanish archprites of 1521.

In addition to Humanism, the return and recovery of Greek and Roman cultures, the Renaissance was characterized for being the beginning of a Scientific Revolution as well as for being the time in which the development of vernacular languages was possible. But It is also in the Renaissance where an authentic military Revolution takes place, a revolution that is made clear to us thanks to the military treatises of the time. As an example, it is enough to mention On the Art of War by Nicholas Machiavelli, published in Florence in 1521, which is located halfway between De re militari libri (1460) by Roberto Valturio and the Vallo. Libro continente appartinente ad Capitanni by G. B. Della Valle (published in Naples in 1521). In these treatises or practical guides on the art of war, it is possible to see the profound change that took place in the Renaissance thanks to the new weapons, techniques and tactics of war, as well as the new ways of recruiting, organizing and financing the soldiers. armies. The appearance of new military technologies led to a change in the justifications and legal-political regulations of armed conflicts, which in turn had great economic, geopolitical, social and intellectual consequences.

In the wars of the Renaissance the pike replaced the spear and the sword, and thus also the infantryman outmaneuvered the knight tactically. It should be noted that in the Renaissance, when it came to engaging in battle, weapons were no longer "considered for their symbolism, as was customary in medieval treatises on chivalry, but for their technical and tactical effectiveness." Thus, when they were introduced the cannon and the arquebus both in sieges and in battles in the open field, European armies had to abandon a large part of their beliefs regarding the art of war and the symbolism that rested on it if they did not want to put their campaigns at risk military. However, it is thanks to this abandonment of the ancient beliefs about the art of war that European armies managed to perfect their artillery, unlike Muslim armies, where the presence of a feudal organization "prevented the Muslim cavalry from coming down from his horse and handle the new firearms, the use of which was reserved for the lowest social class: the black slaves".

The fall of Constantinople and the reaction of the West

The fall of Constantinople represented a great blow to Christianity by Islam, so the European nations, worried that this would mean a new Muslim expansion, dedicated themselves to perfecting their tactics and war technologies with the desire for power deal with any possible attack by the Turks. To get an idea of the earthquake that caused the use of firearms in the consciousness of Europeans, it is enough to mention that the West shuddered with horror when Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, was sacked by the Turks on May 29, 1453. Mehmed II, the Conqueror, who knew and had already appropriated the great invention of the Christians, ordered the construction of the Mahometta, a huge cannon capable of firing projectiles of almost 500 kg of weight that required from 60 to 140 oxen to drag it, as well as a hundred men to handle it and two hours to load it. «The noise of their shots, according to the chroniclers, was the cause of many pregnant women miscarrying. Its failure, however, was absolute: it cracked on the second day of the siege, and after four or five days it was completely useless". However, it was thanks to smaller caliber cannons that the city walls gave way, giving rise to to the massacre.

The reaction from the West, where the importance of firearms was learned early, was not long in coming. Thus, in 1492 the Catholic Monarchs reconquered the territories occupied by the Moors by seizing the city and the Kingdom of Granada.

Censorship of the arquebus: a common theme in Renaissance literature

The appearance of portable firearms changed the way in which battles were fought, which can be verified in the military treatises of the time. In the case of the arquebus, its appearance was accompanied by an imaginary in which most of the time it was considered as the fruit of the devil's ingenuity, as an invention that for the ease with which he took a life could only come from hell itself.

In Quixote, in the chapter «which deals with the curious discourse that Don Quixote made about arms and letters», Cervantes puts Don Quixote's lips on the opinion of the preeminence of arms against letters, arguing that the trade of the soldier, unlike that of the lawyers (jurists and lawyers), is all the more painful and poorly paid because in each battle he is in danger of dying and "climbing to the clouds without wings and go down into the deep without their will”, or, of being “broken in arm or leg”. Thus, Cervantes, in his account of the hardships and inclemencies that the soldier suffers when he is the target of so much musketry, says the following:

Well there are those blessed centuries that lacked the hideous fury of these demonized artillery instruments. To whose inventor I have for me that in hell is being given the award of his diabolical invention, with which he gave cause an infamous and cowardly arm to take away the life of a courageous knight, and that, without knowing how or where, in the middle of the courage and breeze that lights and encourages the brave breasts, comes a dismantled bullet, fired from who might have fled and shot

Don Quixote de la Mancha, cap. XXXVIII, Miguel de Cervantes.

That «diabolical invention», «damned machine» that Cervantes alludes to is the arquebus, which together with the cannons, formed an indispensable part of the artillery used in sieges and in battles in the open field, the latter being in which demonstrated its preeminence over cavalry and the bow by reaping important victories. Its appearance not only meant the decline of chivalry, but also ran parallel to a profound change in the structures of society. The chivalrous qualities that in the Middle Ages had been held in high esteem, such as skill, courage, honor, among others, could not do much against artillery and the new infantry that combined the use of the arquebus and the pike. Soon the nobility was forced to redefine its role in the new society, and did not cease to curse "gunpowder and tin"; the first, for being the one that propelled the projectiles of the firearms, and the second, for being the mineral that made up the bullets that took the life of a nobleman as well as a craftsman.

Displeasure with the new firearms was a common topic in the Renaissance, to such a degree that Sebastián de Covarrubias defines in his Treasure of the Castilian or Spanish Language (1611): «ARCABUZ. Weapon forged in hell, invented by the devil'; a definition that he illustrates with some verses from cantos IX and XI of Orlando furioso (1516, 1532) by Ludovico Ariosto. It is precisely in the work of the Italian Ludovico Ariosto where the use of the arquebus is censored for the first time. In the poem, after King Cimosco tried to kill Orlando with an arquebus, he took the weapon not to use it, but to throw it into the deep sea, for an invention so abominable and fatal that it allowed even the most cowardly to emerge victorious. be within the reach of men, as surely Belzebub, in his plan to destroy the world, would have wanted.

Parts of which an arquebus consists

The barrel and body

The arquebus was made up of an iron cannon with a length of approximately one meter and a variable caliber, between 15 and 20 mm, mounted on a piece of wood approximately one and a half meters long, which was usually made of cherry. or walnut (the former was preferred, as walnut was heavier). The stock (in the 16th century it was called a "mocho") was usually straight, not curved, as it was better in use for soldiers. The barrel had a hole in its rear part through which the lit fuse was applied at the moment of firing. In total, the arquebus weighed between four and five kg.

Trigger mechanism

The most common was the match key, most used in the 16th century, and flint, which appeared in the mid-17th century. The matchlock used a slow burning match placed on a piece of iron as a lever, called a serpentine, which, when activated by the trigger, introduced the match into the bowl full of fine gunpowder (which was located next to the ear), where the flare was produced that ignited the propellant charge in the barrel and fired the bullet.

In the middle of the 16th century, the cubrecazoleta was introduced into the arquebus, a lid that covered the bowl on marches or on rainy days, because if the gunpowder got wet the explosion would not occur.

The flint mechanism was not introduced into the arquebus until around 1670. By then, the arquebus was not an infantry firearm, but a cavalry one, since the arquebus had been replaced by the musket. The flint mechanism was more expensive, although safer and more efficient for the soldier. The flint key consisted of a flint stone mounted on the hammer, which struck the cab foot of the bowl, opening it and producing a spark. This ignited the fine powder and its flame passed through the ear, firing the weapon.

Ammo

The ammunition of the arquebus consisted of gunpowder and the ball, the bullet itself. The spherical bullet was made of lead and used to weigh about 10 g. The bullets had to be made in such a way that they fit easily into the barrel of the arquebus. The fact that there was a distance between the wall of the body and the bullet (Cristóbal Lechuga, field master, tells us that it is called wind) helped so that the gases that were produced in the explosion to expel the bullet did not hinder and slow down the shot, slowing down the bullet. The bullet was inserted through the barrel, as a muzzleloader. It was inserted using an iron ramrod that was used as a scraper (to clean the internal wall of the arquebus) and attacker (so that the bullet could reach the chamber). The bullets were made, sometimes, by the soldiers themselves, who acquired lead and a tong with which the bullets were made, since they had the right shape.

The soldier carried two types of containers for the ammunition: a bottle where the balls were taken and a small bottle where the gunpowder was taken to prime the bowl. In some cases, containers with the bullet and the exact amount of gunpowder were taken; These little bottles in the Spanish tercios were twelve and the soldiers commonly called them "the twelve apostles".

To activate the wick mechanism, a rope made of flax or hemp was carried, coated with water and saltpeter, so that, when it caught fire, it gave more force in the explosion. But this caused the rope to be wasted, as it burned quickly.

To power the flint mechanism, several flint stones were carried, which used to be quite durable.

The useful range of the arquebus did not exceed 50 m and usually it was preferred to shoot less than 25 meters away from the enemy, but the evolution and improvement of the arquebus gave it a greater effective range (it is believed that at the end of the 17th century, they could reach about 200 meters).

In armies as important as the Spanish tercios, the caliber of the arquebus had to be the same for all the soldiers, with the sole objective that their companions could exchange ammunition.

Varieties

• Arkbuz hook. Perfected hand cannon specie with two bolts in the tube, which supported on a hook in the shape of a fork on a tripod could move inside the fork to vary the angle of lifting the shot. Its length was 129 to 171 cm and its weight was 24 to 28 kg: it was handled by two men. A foreign author says that in 1411 he was first employed by the French on the site of Arrás.
• Mecha arkbuz. The first appeared at the end of the 15th century and looked like a prodigy. But later it was seen that it was very difficult to shoot them by putting the lit fudge on the ear with the hand and it was designed to do so through a spring-driven arm. Despite the acceptance he had, he had very serious inconveniences, as the rain turned off the fuse that the soldier had to keep constantly on fire and, in addition, it was impossible to attempt a night attack with arks because the light of the fuse was distinguishing from a long distance. The mecha ark took between 30 and 60 seconds to recharge properly. The arkbuz, however, had a speed of shooting faster than the most push balls.
• Arkbuz wheel. In Nuremberg and in the early 16th century, after several trials, this weapon was invented. She was admitted with enthusiasm and the soldiers adopted her at the moment, disposing with joy the annoying wick that was so pregnant. What we call today wheel key It consisted of a very well tempered steel slice, which moved by a spring turned against a piece of pirita, secured between the jaws of a kind of hammer, and the friction produced sparks that lit the powder. This was thrown into a concave plate, which improved later took the name of Cazot. The heaviness of this weapon, the slowness with which it was loaded, the ease with which the shot was fired and how embarrassing it was the use of the fork in which it was supported to shoot it and other notable defects, made the soldiers leave it for some time. Since then, after lightening its weight, the light cavalry admitted it as its favorite weapon, being less annoying than the shell ark.
• Wind arkbuz. Same as the of fireBut it loads by compressing the air through a dock and throws the bullet away, making much less noise when it shoots than with the gunpowder.