The First Guns
This week, we’re going to go hop in the Wayback Machine and proceed way, way, way back in firearms history. So, light the match, get ready to pour some black powder into a pipe, and we’ll take a look at some of the very first firearms. This, folks, is where it all started.
First, let’s take just a moment to look at the invention of gunpowder, because without that, none of the rest would have happened.
First: Gunpowder
The earliest appearance of gunpowder (black powder) seems to be in China, in or around the late Tang Dynasty, in the 9th century. The earliest known written formula appeared in the 11th century, again in China. The Mongols, rather surprisingly, may have played a significant role in spreading the invention to other places, most notably Europe, along with disseminating Genghis Khan’s genetic legacy and introducing a range of other innovations, including gunpowder.
The explosive was first used in hand-thrown bombs (think an 11th-century hand grenade) and “fire arrows,” which may or may not have inspired the all-American redneck practice of attaching dynamite to an arrow. The Chinese also dabbled in rockets propelled by gunpowder, in both fireworks and military applications.
Then came what we might call the first actual, man-portable gun.
China: The Fire-Lance
The fire lance or fire spear was a simple device: A spear, just a good old honest spear of the type common on battlefields in the 12th century. But this spear had a metal tube attached that could be filled with gunpowder and ignited by hand with a slow match. At first, they were used simply for the smoke, flame, and concussive effect, to frighten and disorient the enemy before attempting to use the spears to produce a serving of Bad Guy Shish-Kabob.
Around the end of the 12th century, though, some brilliant Chinese warrior got the notion to stick some debris, pebbles, scrap metal, whatever – into the tube of the fire-lance before touching it off. This no doubt yielded satisfying results, at least, if you were behind the weapon instead of in front of it.
By the late 13th century, metallurgy had improved to the point where the fire-lance’s gunpowder tube could withstand more powerful charges and a greater load of scrap metal and rocks. At this point, the spearhead was no longer very useful, and so the gunpowder tube was just stuck on the end of the lance.
This was the next iteration: The hand cannon. And that was an intimidating prospect indeed, for people on both ends of the weapon.
We might note an interesting aside: The hand cannon had its origins in a device that began with adding a gunpowder weapon onto a spear. It would be sometime later, and the martial firearms would have improved quite a bit, before the advent of the bayonet took this full circle in adding a spear onto a gunpowder weapon.
Europe: The Hand Cannon
This device was the first effective (well, sort of) firearm. The “gonne” or “handgonne” was only a short step up from the Chinese fire-lance, as it was just a short miniature cannon barrel stuck on the end of a pole, and one would think that a pretty good setup, as in the 13th and 14th-century metallurgy was still uncertain, and in the event one of these things blew up, one wouldn’t want one’s face too close to the detonation.
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Ballistics on a device like this are uncertain, but at least one modern gun enthusiast has done some experimenting with a sort of combination of the hand cannon and the later matchlock, with a piece called “Ye Olde Boomstick” firing a 900-grain lead ball in an 8-bore barrel. The experiment proved that the hand cannon could pierce the plate armor in use at the time. Science! (An old Genetics professor of mine once said that “science is just people screwing around while keeping notes.”)
Hand cannons, like their predecessors, first saw use in China, but had spread into Europe by the 14th century. The first recorded use of one of these was in 1331, when German knights attacked the Italian town of Cividale del Friuli with some kind of gunpowder weapon, presumably hand cannons. By the 14th century, the hand cannon had also spread into the Islamic world, an event which the civilized world has regretted ever since.Imagine yourself as a traditional 14th-century soldier, accustomed to the use of a spear and maybe a mace or other one-handed weapon. Now, some guy comes along, passing out what looks like a metal tube on the end of a spear shaft, and showing you how you basically hold the thing out in front of you and set off a deafening charge. Now imagine you’re on the opposite side, and you and your fellows have been ordered to advance – only to encounter a series of loud booms, a huge cloud of blue-white smoke, and your comrades being dropped by a high-speed hail of rocks and scrap metal.
It's small wonder this invention is roundly considered to have changed the face of warfare.
Eventually, people messing around with the design – it’s unclear who and when did this – found that lengthening the barrel improved the weapon’s ballistics, that a shoulder stock made aiming more effective, and a slow match mounted on a pivoting arm controlled by a crude trigger made ignition easier. This gave rise to the arquebus, which set the pattern for shoulder arms that is still in use today.
The Obsoleting of Armor by Firepower
Before the advent of gunpowder, your typical soldier wore some kind of armor. Leather, chain mail, and later plate armor were effective against early bows, lances, spears, and so forth.
Gunpowder, along with the powerful English longbow, changed all that. Armored knights suddenly found themselves at a disadvantage; the edge armor gave a knight or a common soldier was largely negated by gunpowder, and even the hand-cannon was a tad easier to develop proficiency in, at least at short ranges, than the longbow. Once hit, wounded, and possibly disarmed, a mounted knight could be dragged from his horse, pinned down by a few peasant soldiers, and his armor cracked open like cracking open a lobster.
That would sure ruin the whole day of the most dedicated knight. Sir Lancelot, please pick up the white courtesy phone; your coffin is ready!
And now?
Other than a few inspired tinkerers, it seems nobody much is making replicas of these things. That’s probably for the best. I like old guns as much as anyone, including old black powder guns. I’ve fired replica Brown Bess muskets, and once had the chance to examine (but not fire) a wheellock musket and a matchlock arquebus. But that’s about where I’d draw the line on any shooting experiments.
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Picking up a pole with a cannon barrel mounted on the end, holding it under one arm, and touching it off with a slow match? With the detonation taking place within arm’s length of my belly and… other vital mechanics of nature that are in that general area?
No thanks.
