MEDIEVAL WARFARE

Gunpowder Weapons
 

The gun:  one of the most influencial technological contributions of the late medieval/Renaissance period.  (Another was the printing press.)
In the closing centuries of the Middle Ages, the west built a lead in gunpowder weaponry which was almost unrivalled by any other society.
Closest competitors to the west in developing guns:
1.  Ottoman Turks
2.  Mughals of India
The Ottomans used their artillery to punch through the famous walls of Constantinople in 1453 and created as part of their central army a Janissary Corps whose major weapon was a firearm.  The Mughals cast some of  the largest cannon of the early modern period.
Gunpowder:  an incendiary compound composed of sulphur, saltpeter, and charcoal first developed in China. 
Originally, the Chinese used it for firecrackers and relatively harmless if frightening rockets.  (Effective rockets would not appear on the scene until developed by the Mughals in the 18th century.)  The Chinese never arrived at its full potential for destruction for although they invented the gun in advance of the west, they move forward with its development  in the same way.
Roger Bacon:  Thirteenth century Franciscan friar who possessed the most forward-looking scientific mind of the Middle Ages.  The first westerner to describe gunpowder in his secret journals (around 1250), Bacon regarded it as so terrible a discovery that it should not become public knowledge.  However, by the end of his lifetime, it was already becoming widely-known.
Within a generation after Bacon's death, somebody had taken the next step by producing the gun.  According to legend, his name was Berthold Schwartz or Black Bart.
First two undoubted descriptions of firearms (1326); one from London, one from Florence.
Two paths of firearm development:
1. Large weapons (what is normally called artillery)
a.  Cannon/Bombards: for low trajectory firing on walls and enemy troop formations
b.  Mortars: for high trajectory firing enabling the gunner to drop a shell on an enemy position. Not well adapted to battlefield use until the modern period
2. Hand-held weapons
a.  Long gun (called an Arquebus or Musket; usually referred to today as a rifle, due to the universal adoption of the rifled barrel over the course of the 19th century)
b.  Short-barreled gun (called a pistol from the Italian word)
Almost from the appearance of guns, the evolution went  in both directions—toward large weapons and hand-held ones. However, the larger weapons came to play a significant military role much earlier, first in sieges, then on battlefields.
Villalon’s Law: A general pattern of technological development in which the first effective machines using a new tech tend to be large ones.  What is now called miniaturization occurs only later, as the new tech becomes increasing developed.
The gun
The steam engine
The computer
Problems with early cannons:
(1)  unreliable and dangerous to fire (often fired prematurely or even exploded killing the gunners rather than the enemy; origin of our expression "hoist with one's own petard")
(2)  difficult to transport before the development of effective gun carriages
(3)  slow firing (in some cases, perhaps only several shots per day)
Early guns were welded together out of curved sections after which bands of iron were wrapped around them to increase their strength.  The fact that this resembled the construction of wooden barrels led to our term "gun barrel."
James II:  king of Scotland; highest born victim of an exploding cannon.
Given the fact that they were bulky and slow-firing, early cannons were used primarily in sieges, rather than on the battlefield.  Their first real success on the battlefield did not come until the 15th century.
Crecy (1346):  in this first great battle in the Hundred Years War between England and France, the English brought guns to the battlefield.  Their victory, however, was due to another weapon, the longbow.  Historians are not even certain that the guns were fired. 
Earliest instances of effective use of firearms:
(1)  Hussite armies in Bohemia (1420s)
Jan Zizka:  Hussite general who assumed military control over the movement after the death of Jan Hus at the Council of Constance.  Zizka became the first man to make highly effective use of guns on the battlefield, using them to drive back the large crusading armies unleashed by on Bohemia by the papacy and European rulers.
(2)  French armies during the closing phase of the Hundred Years War (mid-15th century)
Formigny (1450) and Castillon (1453):  last battles of the Hundred Years War fought in Normandy and Gascony, they were decisively won by the French through their use of artillery.
(3)  Turkish use during the siege of Constantinople (1453)
Mehmet II "the Conqueror":  the Ottoman sultan who finally took the city and renamed it Istanbul.
(4)  War for Granada (1481-92):  The Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile, concluded the Spanish Reconquista by reducing the last Islamic stronghold, the kingdom of Granada, in the far south of the Peninsula.  They did so largely through the use of the artillery, a branch of the Spanish military pioneered by Ferdinand.
Important late medieval technological advances: 
1.  Development of effective gun carriages for transportation
2.  Discovery of how to cast cannon from a single piece of metal rather than welding it together in sections.  This made the barrels stronger and much more reliable.
Original handgun resembled a small cannon­ consisting of a barrel with a touchhole for setting off the charge, perhaps mounted on a short pole. The person firing the weapon touched a live coal or match to the powder at the touchhole, while steadying the gun with his other hand.
Problems affecting accuracy and safety of the shooter:
1.  Difficulty in applying the fire at the same time one was aiming
2.  Dangers of “blowback” from the powder at the touchhole, endangering the shooter’s face and eyes
3.  Timelag between touching the match to the touchhole and the actual ignition of the powder
Added improvements:
Stock:  a better means of grasping the weapon in order to facilitate firing; it was made of wood shaped to fit the barrel.
Lock:  a better firing mechanism involving the use of a trigger that was added to improve aiming and protect against “blowback”
Expression that dates to the early development of guns:  “lock, stock, and barrel” meaning the whole thing.
Matchlock: the original type of lock used in hand-held guns; the shooter pulled an S-shaped  trigger that pushed a burning cord, known as the match down onto the powder.
Flintlock:  based on flint striking steel and providing a spark to ignite the powder, this firing mechanism constituted a considerable improvement over the matchlock.  Nevertheless, it took decades to replace the older lock, especially in military weapons which continued to be matchlock throughout most of the 17th century.   
Despite some relatively unsuccessful experimentation with breech-loading, almost all early muskets and pistols were muzzle-loading with the charge and the bullet being rammed down the barrel.
Hitting individual targets with these early weapons, especially if they were moving, was an enormous challenge.  However, since massed formations characterized late medieval and early modern warfare, an arquebusier or musketeer was usually fired into a formation rather than at an individual target, easing the problem of accuracy.
Even after the triumph of the flintlock in the 18th century problems remained:
1.  Slowness of loading
2.  Slight gap between pulling the trigger and the ignition of the powder..
3.  Inaccuracy to to smooth bore of the barrel
Final steps in achieving accuracy and speed of firing date to the 19th century:
1.  Rifled barrel
2.  Metal cartridges
3.  Breech-loading
Despite any and all drawbacks, by 1500, the west had achieved a lead in the production of gunpowder weaponry which would never be surpassed by non-western nations, a lead that helps explain western success in the Age of European expansion.