Page:Once a Week Dec 1861 to June 1862.pdf/569

10, 1862.] savage, and by means of which Spaniard and Englishman have carried the flag of their country from Peru to Pekin.

Hewitt, in his “Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe,” gives the figure of a hand-gunner from the Burney MS., who appears to be holding with his right hand and arm a simple iron tube fastened to a pole, whilst he fires the charge by means of a match held in his left hand. This appears to be the earliest form of “hande-gonne” on record, and will probably be of the end of the fourteenth, or beginning of the fifteenth century.

No fastenings to attach the tube to the stock appear in the picture, but we may reasonably conclude that they were held together by rude iron bands, thus—

The touch-hole was placed at the top, the priming exposed to rain and wind, and from the way it was held; viz., the pole or stock under the arm, no correct aim could be taken.

The next appears a decided improvement, as it is regularly stocked, although but rudely; still its general form is not unlike that of its modern descendant. The stock is, however, straight, and therefore difficult to aim with, although the holder appears to be aiming, and he, curiously enough, has both his arms in tolerably correct position, according to the “School of Musketry.”

Still there is no attempt at a lock, and the touchhole is on the top of the barrel.

The step which followed was simply to place the touchhole at the side, as a slight protection to the priming.

It seems that the arm remained in this rude condition about one hundred years, and that then an attempt was made to produce ignition by means of a lock, called the “Serpentine,” at the same time that the stock was bent for the purpose of aiming more easily, and fitted the shoulder better. There were also at this time two kinds of hand-gun, now called “Harquebus,”—one fired from the shoulder, the other from a rest; of the latter Hewitt gives the following drawing—

The sketch gives no trigger, and there is a rudeness about the serpentine lock which seems incompatible with the fact that, at the beginning of the sixteenth century the wheel-lock, a complicated piece of machinery, hereafter described, was invented in Germany. It is therefore probable that this form of harquebus was of rather earlier date than that usually assigned—probably the last quarter of the fifteenth century. At this time the charge was ignited by means of a rope lighted at the end, and called the match, and which was held in the mouth of the serpentine.

The next step is clearly shown by Hewitt in the sketch of “A Muskater,” which he takes from the “Roll of the Funeral Procession of Sir Philip Sydney,” in 1586; but the fire-arms in this case also may probably be antedated to the middle of the sixteenth century.

We here see the first trigger, which is well worth a comparison with the hair-trigger of the present