PART FIVE: TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY 972 accurate and lethal throwing weapon, as well as being used in close combat. Not until towards the end of the sixth century did the wealthier of the Franks begin to equip themselves with armour, and they really came into prominence with Charles Martel’s victory over the Arabs at Tours in 732. Under his grandson Charlemagne, Frankish military power reached its zenith. By now, like the Byzantine army, the core was the heavy cavalry, armed and protected in much the same way. The weakness lay in their relative indiscipline, and after the death of Charlemagne, Frankish might withered away. During the ninth and tenth centuries western Europe was also ravaged by the Vikings from Scandinavia. The main Viking weapons were the heavy battleaxe and the sword. Their sword blades were formed by twisting together strips of steel and iron and heating the resultant ‘plait’ and beating it flat. The different ways in which the two metals reacted to the process resulted in a distinctive decorative pattern being engrained in the blade. Viking shields were wooden and initially round, but these gradually gave way to a long triangular shape with slightly convex top and sides. THE AGE OF CHIVALRY In western Europe the Normans took over from the Franks as the dominant military power and this marked the beginning of the golden age of the mounted knight. The Norman knight was equipped in much the same way as the Byzantine and Frankish heavy cavalryman, but he was better protected in that he also had chain mail leggings. His helmet was of a distinctive conical shape with a nose piece, and he carried the later Viking style of shield. His lance was normally 2.40–2.75m (8–9ft) long and his two-edged sword was 1 12cm (44in) in length. These would remain as such for 400 years. He also carried on his saddle a battleaxe or a mace. This differed from the primitive club in that, instead of being entirely of wood, it had a stone or metal head, and it was this weapon which was to force the change from mail to plated armour. The secret to the success of the mounted knight was his use in combination with archers. King Harold of England’s defeat by the Normans at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 is a classic example of this tactic, with the archers being used to disrupt the Saxon infantry, armed with spears and axes, and then the knights charging. The conventional bow was still being used at this stage, but it would not be long before it was rivalled by a new version, the crossbow. Its origins lay in the handbow modified for use in an animal trap: it was left loaded and sprung by means of the victim pressing a cord or rod. It was the Chinese who transferred this concept into a hand-held weapon. The essence lay in a lock which held the bowstring back until released by a trigger. In order to tense the bowstring, the archer anchored the WEAPONS AND ARMOUR 973 bow with his feet and then drew the bowstring back, either by hand or with the help of an iron hook attached to his waistbelt, and then hooked it in the lock. Later models employed a windlass to draw the bowstring back. In this way he could obtain a far greater tension than on the conventional bow and hence a longer effective range. The arrow itself was inserted in a groove which was cut into the stock. By the eleventh century the crossbow had reached western Europe, but because of its lethality when compared with other weapons of the time the Church considered it barbarous; the second Lateran Conference of 1139 declared it an unsuitable weapon of war for Christian armies and laid down that it should only be used against infidels. This did not deter elements of Christendom from wholeheartedly adopting it, in spite of the punishment of excommunication threatened by the papacy, and Genoese and Gascon crossbowmen became much in demand as mercenaries in many European armies. The English, however, although they used the crossbow for sporting purposes, had a rival to the crossbow, the longbow. This was reputedly introduced from Wales in the latter part of the thirteenth century and was as tall as a man. It had almost the same penetrative power as the crossbow, but with the added advantage of a much higher rate of fire, because the arrow could be strung more quickly. In mediaeval Britain archery was the major sport and longbowmen soon became very proficient: this was demonstrated at the Battle of Crécy against the French in 1346, where the longbow, because of its rate of fire, dominated the crossbow. By the thirteenth century the penetrative power of the crossbow and long- bow, together with the crushing blows which could be delivered by the mace, meant that chain-mail armour was no longer effective and plate armour began to be introduced. The first item to change was the helmet, which now totally enclosed the knight’s head and face, with two slits so that he could see through it. This gave way to the basnet, which was shaped like a skull cap, with a collar attached to protect the neck and a hinged visor. Over his chain- mail shirt (the hauberk) the knight began to wear a coat of plates, his leggings were similarly overlaid with plate armour, and he wore gauntlets made of steel plates and scales. During the fourteenth century complete plate armour was developed, built round the breastplate or cuirass, and it was now that the mediaeval craftsman began to demonstrate a high degree of engineering skill. His object was to give the knight complete protection yet without hindering his movements. This meant not only acquiring the ability to perfect the hinge, but also a sculptor’s understanding of human anatomy, and the construction of body armour became as much an art as a science. For the armour to function properly it needed to be made to measure, using a light but strong steel, and a knight was prepared to pay a very high sum for it. By the fifteenth century, Milan and Augsburg had become the two main centres of armour manufacture. PART FIVE: TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY 974 If the knight was now becoming better protected, his horse was not. While he could fight effectively when mounted, once on the ground his armour meant that he was relatively immobile, and to have his horse killed under him made the knight very vulnerable. This led to the development of the bard, or set of horse armour. Initially this consisted of a trapper made of mail or quilted cloth, which protected the body and upper legs of the horse and looked like a horse blanket, but gave way gradually to plate. This included the shaffron, made of articulated plates to protect the head, the peytail to cover the chest, and body plates. The problem was that a complete bard drastically impeded the horse’s mobility and only parts of it were usually worn. As it was, in order to carry the knight, a breed of large horse was gradually introduced, whose descendants are reflected in today’s heavy draught horses. This up-armouring of the knight and his horse meant that the shield progressively became less important and it was gradually reduced in size to a small triangular shape. With the heraldic emblem of its owner painted on it, it became a means more of identifying individuals on the battlefield rather than of protection. The nature of the feudal system which dominated the Middle Ages, in which nobles were granted land in return for their allegiance to the monarch, resulted in a growth of castles so that these lands could be better protected. This in turn meant that sieges became a dominant characteristic of mediaeval warfare. The simple Norman keep gave way to increasingly elaborate designs of castle. In order to prevent the besiegers from sapping up to the walls by excavating trenches, moats were constructed, with drawbridges leading across to the entrances. These themselves had a metal grille, a portcullis, which could be lowered in order to inhibit the use of battering rams on the wooden gates. Out-works were developed, including water defences, with sluices to control the water levels. Towers were built at the outer corners of the walls so that fire from each pair could completely cover the wall between them. Siege artillery did not increase in effectiveness at the same pace. There was, however, one new development, the trebuchet. The drawback of the ballista was that when the fibres used to propel the missile became wet, they lost their resilience and therefore catapults were seldom suitable for siege warfare in more northerly areas. The origins of the trebuchet are to be found in the counterbalanced well sweep used by the Egyptians in the second millennium BC. This worked on the principle of an unequal lever with a heavy weight attached to the shorter arm. The longer arm had a bucket on the end of a rope and the force created by releasing the weight would jerk the bucket upwards and fling its contents in the same way as a sling. It was the Chinese who first adopted it as a weapon, the huo-pa’o; they were certainly using it as such by the eleventh century AD and within a short time it had been introduced into Europe. The trebuchet could provide an effective means of creating a breach in WEAPONS AND ARMOUR 975 a castle’s walls, and a stone of 135kg (300lb) could be thrown with significant force to a range of 275m (900ft). Animal carcasses were also used as projectiles in order to create pestilence. Indeed, the defences of castles were often so formidable that disease or starvation often became the only means through which the besiegers could gain ultimate success. THE INTRODUCTION OF GUNPOWDER Gunpowder is generally considered to be the most significant technological development in the history of warfare, yet its origins are obscure, and have often been confused with those of Greek Fire. It would seem that the Chinese used it in fireworks but never as a weapon of war and, unlike other Chinese inventions, the Europeans discovered gunpowder independently. The first recorded recipe for its use is attributed to the English monk and scholar Roger Bacon. He recommended a mixture of six parts of salpetre (potassium nitrate), five of charcoal and five of sulphur, which produced ‘a bright flash and thundering noise’. This, however, was to use it simply as an explosive rather than a propellant, for which different proportions are required. In essence, the saltpetre, having a high oxygen content, is the fuel for the combustion of the charcoal and sulphur. The charcoal produces significant amounts of carbon monoxide and dioxide accompanied by much heat, while sulphur, burning at a lower temperature, promotes the combustion of the mixture and acts as a paste to bind the other two substances together. It also ensures even burning, which is essential for a propellant. When deciding the proportions required to make gunpowder for a particular purpose, it must be remembered that charcoal and sulphur accelerate combustion, while saltpetre retards it. On the other hand, charcoal produces great amounts of heat and gas, while sulphur causes quick burning but gives rise to solid residues. The first recorded use of gunpowder as a propellant in a firearm was at Metz in 1324, and the earliest type of gun was made of iron and cast in the shape of a vase. It was called a pot-de-fer and was placed on a flat board supported by trestles. It had a touchhole on top and the propellant was ignited by a glowing tinder at the end of a rod. Both arrows and stone and iron shot could be fired from it. By the latter half of the fourteenth century hand-guns were also in use. The earliest models had pole-like butts attached to the barrel by iron bands and were designed to be held under the arm or resting on the shoulder, with the other hand being used to apply the match to the powder in the touchhole. Both hand-guns and cannon, or bombards as they were more commonly called at the time, often had hooks on the bottom in order to help control the recoil. Another type of artillery weapon in service by the end of the fourteenth century was the ribauld, which looked like a set of organ pipes and, PART FIVE: TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY 976 mounted on a form of chariot, could fire a number of projectiles sumultaneously—an early form of multi-barrelled rocket launcher. These early guns were of only limited range and were very inaccurate, as well as often being as dangerous to the firer as to his enemy. Their impact on the battlefield was therefore only to be gradually felt. One early development, however, was that they produced a demand for a new type of mercenary. Because nations did not maintain standing armies and the handling of guns required a particular expertise which part-time soldiers could seldom hope to achieve, a breed of professional musketeers and artillerymen came into being. THE RENAISSANCE In spite of the introduction of gunpowder, cavalry remained the dominant arm throughout the Middle Ages, but towards the end of this period there were signs that the scales were beginning to swing back in favour of the foot soldier. The infantryman’s weapons had remained the spear, usually over 2.4m (8ft) long, and the sword. The problem with these was that they did not give him enough stand-off distance when engaging charging cavalry. A solution to this came in the fifteenth century with the pike. It was the Swiss who first developed this as a spear, but lengthened to up to 6.75m (22ft). With this they demonstrated that they could not only keep the cavalryman with his lance at bay, but also use it as an offensive weapon, and other nations soon followed suit. The Swiss, too, along with the Germans, also developed the halberd. The word itself comes from the German Halm, ‘staff’, and Barte ‘axe’, and it developed as a multi-purpose weapon at the end of the thirteenth century. It was, in effect, an axehead mounted on a 2m (6.5ft) pole with a spike on top. In the fifteenth century a second spike was added behind the axe blade in order to break open helmets and armour, and this new weapon took the name of halberd, while its predecessor became known as the vouge. Pikemen and halberdiers now operated together, the latter wielding their weapons with both hands. In view of its shorter length and many uses, the halberd was a very much more flexible weapon in close combat than the pike, although often it was the concentrated force produced by the mass of pikemen in the advance, the so-called ‘push of pikes’, which carried the day. The hand-gun also made a significant advance during the fifteenth century with the invention of the matchlock; for the first time the firer could use both hands to steady the weapon while firing. It consisted of a spring and tumbler system released by a trigger, which would activate the serpentine (‘S’-shaped lever) which held the burning match (cord of twisted flax, hemp or cotton soaked in saltpetre, which smouldered rather than burned) and introduce it into the priming pan, thus firing the charge. An added refinement was the addition of a cover over the pan to protect the charge from damp. The WEAPONS AND ARMOUR 977 matchlock handgun was called an arquebus, and it was the Spanish arqebusiers who first proved its advantages during a series of campaigns in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, culminating in the Battle of Pavia against the French in 1525. The arquebus, which marked the knell of the bow, was also able to keep both cavalry and pikemen at bay, provided the fire of the arquebusiers was strictly controlled by the use of volleys. Nevertheless, it suffered a number of disadvantages. For a start it was cumbersome and heavy, and therefore had to be rested on a stand in order to fire it. The rate of fire was also very low, about one round every two minutes, and the arquebus was clearly of little use when it came to hand-to-hand fighting, in which the firer needed the protection of the pikemen and halberdiers. By the mid-sixteenth century the cavalryman was able to regain some of the power that he had lost to the arquebus through the pistol. The word originally pertained to any short-barrelled hand-gun which could be fired with one hand. Matchlock pistols existed, but these did need two hands to operate, if only in order to adjust the position of the lighted match, and hence were of little use to the cavalryman, who needed one hand to control his horse. The problem was solved with the invention of the wheel-lock in c.1500. The principle is much the same as that of the cigarette lighter. When the trigger was pulled it enabled a spring loaded wheel to revolve. This in turn caused a cam to open the pan cover, while the wheel itself made contact with a piece of iron pyrite held in a cock which was lowered into position before firing. This contact produced the spark which ignited the primer in the pan. Armed with this weapon, German cavalry developed a new tactic, the caracole, whereby each line of cavalrymen rode up to the opposing infantry, discharged their pistols and then retired to the rear to reprime and reload. Fifty years later came a further development, that of the snaphance lock or snap-lock. Here the lock, when released forwards by the trigger, came into contact with a slightly convex steel plate mounted on an external arm above the pan, and it was this which produced the spark. Its main advantage over the wheel-lock was improved reliability. During the latter half of the fifteenth century there were also significant improvements to artillery guns. By the end of the century they could be divided into two categories, heavy ordnance, which was held in reserve until required in siege operations, and light or field artillery which gave direct support to infantry and cavalry on the battlefield. Barrels were now cast in bronze and by the 1450s heavy guns weighing as much as 35 tonnes were in existence. These had the capability of successfully engaging the thickest castle walls, as the Sultan Mohammed II demonstrated at the siege of Constantinople in 1453. Employing no less than 62 heavy guns firing 91 kg (200lb) cannonballs, he demolished the triple walls of the city in many places within six weeks. Field artillery began to be made in standardized calibres, firing projectiles ranging from 0.9kg (2lb) to 29kg (64lb) in weight. Carriages were constructed so that the guns could be moved and set up for firing quickly. The PART FIVE: TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY 978 earliest type consisted of a solid wooden beam with the front end mounted on an axle fitted with two wheels and the rear end resting on the ground in such a way that the gun, which was mounted on the front end by the means of iron hoops, was in a horizontal position. In order to adjust elevation, and hence range, the lower part of the beam, which later became known as the trail, had either to be dug in or raised by the means of stones or sods of earth. To obtain any accuracy was clearly a time-consuming business, but this was radically speeded up by the beginning of the sixteenth century with the introduction of gun trunnions. These were lugs projecting from either side of the barrel and slotting into iron-clad grooves cut into twin parallel beams, which replaced the pre-trunnion single beam. Transoms and crossbeams held the gun in place and alterations in elevation were achieved by wedges inserted between the breech and one of the transoms. Formulas had by now been worked out for the correct mix of gunpowder ingredients to give the best performance to each type of gun. These improvements meant that, after almost two centuries, artillery had joined cavalry and infantry as a vital element in any army. It was during this period that the origins of today’s armoured fighting vehicle can be discerned. While the concept of the ‘war car’ originated with the chariot, especially when crewed by archers or javelin throwers, the first to harness the concept to gunpowder was John Zizka, leader of the Hussite movement in Bohemia in the early 1420s. He mounted guns on peasant wagons and, when threatened by the enemy, formed them into a circular laager in much the same way as the American settlers and the Boers in South Africa would do some 450 years later. There are, however, few concrete examples of other armies taking this idea up, although Leonardo da Vinci designed an armoured war car and similar ideas appeared in other military treatises during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES The improved effectiveness of guns during the sixteenth century caused the designers of armour to look for means of giving protection against bullets. At the same time, full armour was becoming increasingly unpopular because of its discomfort and restrictions on mobility, especially with foot soldiers who often refused to march in it. Consequently, it gave way to ‘half armour’, which was little more than a cuirass, while full armour was only worn on ceremonial occasions. Armour was still seen as primarily a defence against cutting and thrusting weapons and, as such, was to be retained by cavalry for some time to come. For the infantry, apart from the problem of discomfort, its final demise was brought about by the disappearance of the pike from the battlefield. The reason for this was the gradual introduction of the bayonet from the second WEAPONS AND ARMOUR 979 quarter of the seventeenth century. The word itself has two derivations, both French. In the city of Bayonne, in south-west France, a larger dagger called the bayonnette was introduced, while the verb bayoner means to put a spigot in a cask. The French were the first to adopt it and the initial model was called the ‘plug bayonet’ because it was literally plugged into the muzzle of the musket (see below). This had the obvious disadvantage that the soldier could not fire his weapon with the bayonet fixed, but it nevertheless made the pike superfluous, thus greatly simplifying the handling of infantry on the battlefield. By the end of the seventeenth century this problem had been overcome with the introduction of the ring bayonet, which had a sleeve that slid on to the barrel. In order to clear the line of fire from the muzzle the blade was offset. While the pike quickly disappeared, the halberd was retained for many years to come by some armies, being carried by senior non-commissioned officers and used to adjust the soldier’s aim during volley firing. Much attention was also paid to making the infantryman’s firearm easier to handle and more efficient. By the second half of the seventeenth century, the matchlock had given way to the wheel-lock and snap-lock and these were brought together into the flintlock, which combined the steel and pan cover as one element. It also had an intermediate position for the cock, ‘half-cock’, which could be used as a safety mechanism when the weapon was loaded. In order to simplify loading, the paper cartridge was developed. Initially, this was nothing more than a screw of paper which contained a measured amount of propellant charge, but soon the ball projectile was also included. Finally, the weapon was considerably lightened, which meant that the rest was no longer required. By the end of the seventeenth century the military smoothbore flint- lock had become generally known as the musket (although the term itself was originally derived from the Italian moschetto, meaning a sparrow hawk, which was used to describe a small artillery piece in the culverin class). The musket would undergo little change during the eighteenth century, and in the hands of an experienced infantryman it had a rate of fire of two rounds per minute and an effective range of 230m (750ft). The firepower of the mounted soldier was also enhanced during the seventeenth century by the introduction of the carbine. This was, in effect, a shortened musket with a sliding ring fixed to a bar so that it could be carried on a shoulder sling. By the end of the century, as a result of this innovation, cavalry was divided into two types: the horse, which was armed with sword and pistols and fought mounted, and dragoons, with sword and carbine, who were mounted infantry and did not wear armour. The increasing effectiveness of firearms meant that, apart from cavalry, the sword’s importance as a weapon of war declined. During the sixteenth century priority had begun to be given to thrusting rather than cutting and the art of fencing was developed. This led to lighter and slimmer blades and the introduction of the rapier and smallsword, which became a standard article of PART FIVE: TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY 980 civilian dress for any eighteenth century gentleman. While the foot soldier now had the bayonet to take the place of the sword, the early part of the eighteenth century saw the sabre begin to be used by cavalrymen. They still required a cutting weapon, and the long, curved, single-edged blade of the sabre, which came to Europe from Asia, effectively satisfied this need. Another new infantry weapon which appeared during the seventeenth century was the hand grenade. Originally the term grenade applied also to explosive balls fired from artillery, since both worked on the same principle of a hollow ball filled with black powder (another name for gunpowder) and fitted with a short fuse. By the end of the century European armies had companies of grenadiers within their infantry battalions, easily recognizable by their tall conical caps, since it was found that the standard brimmed or tricorn hat was too easily knocked off in the act of throwing the grenade. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the hand grenade had begun to fall out of favour and it would not reappear for another 150 years (see p. 991). A variation on the hand grenade was the grenade projector or launcher. This came in two types, either a firearm with a specially designed barrel or a discharge cup which could be fitted in the muzzle of a musket. Because the fuse had to be lit before the grenade was fired, there was the inherent danger of a premature explosion caused by a misfire and this weapon was never widely adopted. Like the hand grenade, it would have to wait until the twentieth century before being perfected. The grenade fired from artillery weapons, later called a bomb, was used with the mortar, its name coming from the Latin mortarium on account of its early shape, which was like that of the mortar which, with a pestle, was used to grind substances. Short and squat, the mortar could fire very large projectiles at a very high trajectory over walls and earthworks and hence, from the fifteenth century onwards, it became a valuable member of the siege train. It was not until the beginning of the seventeenth century that it began to fire explosive projectiles, and indeed was the only type of artillery which could, because of the time lag in a conventional gun between lighting the fuse, ramming it down the barrel and firing. These early large mortars did have one drawback in that the force of recoil was almost entirely vertical and the base of the mounting therefore had to be wide and static in order to spread the shock. Hence it was not fitted with wheels and lacked the mobility to be a battlefield weapon, being used merely in long sieges and as part of the fixed armament of fortresses. Naval vessels, called bomb ketches, were also introduced in the eighteenth century. Equipped with mortars, they were used for bombarding forts and fleets in harbour. A new type of gun, as opposed to mortar, made its appearance towards the end of the seventeenth century. This was the howitzer, derived from the WEAPONS AND ARMOUR 981 German Haubitze (=catapult). This came in between a mortar and a field gun and had a comparatively short barrel and a marked parabolic trajectory. Like the mortar it fired bombs and also suffered from the problems of requiring two ‘fires’, one to light the fuse and the other to detonate the propellant charge, with the inherent danger of premature explosion. Because of the problem of co- ordinating the burning time of the fuse with the desired range, air-bursts were common (and largely ineffectual, since this was before the invention of shrapnel: see p. 986). Nevertheless, the howitzer, because it was mounted on a gun carriage, did have advantages over the mortar in longer range and greater mobility. It also became more reliable once the double-linstock had been introduced and perfected. The linstock was a pole with slow match attached to fire the charge, and the double-linstock enabled the two ‘fires’ to be carried out simultaneously. By 1700 field artillery had become further standardized by type in that there were generally common sizes used by all European armies. Table 22.1 gives an idea of these and their ranges. Smaller calibres did exist, being known as ‘regimental guns’, implying that they were an infantry rather than artillery weapon, but these were disappearing. Navies had larger calibres, usually the 36-pdr, but with some 40– , 42–, 48– and even 64-pdrs. The most common type of ammunition was the solid shot, now usually of cast iron and known as roundshot. To ensure that it was of the right size for a particular calibre of gun it was passed through a ring gauge before loading. Heated shot was sometimes used, normally by shore batteries against ships, Table 21.1: European field artillery c. 1700. * Point blank range in those days meant the range achieved with the barrel at the horizontal. . change during the eighteenth century, and in the hands of an experienced infantryman it had a rate of fire of two rounds per minute and an effective range of 230m (750ft). The firepower of the. Normans took over from the Franks as the dominant military power and this marked the beginning of the golden age of the mounted knight. The Norman knight was equipped in much the same way as the. often it was the concentrated force produced by the mass of pikemen in the advance, the so-called ‘push of pikes’, which carried the day. The hand-gun also made a significant advance during the