Late 15th c. Bronze Barrel Tiller Arquebuses in the Radziwill Chronicle
 

The Radziwill Chronicle is remarkable for being a 15th c. copy of a 13th c. original, so older types of arms and armor got mixed up with such of second half 15th c. characteristics. Unfortunately, only very few good resolution images from that chronicle are online.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radziwi...5%82_Chronicle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radziwi%C5%82%C5%82_family


Best,
Michael

After digging up this post from Michl i began to search for the manuscript and found it with alot more interesting illustrations.

After more than a week and over 200 new thread views i am surprised to see not even a single person commenting? :confused:

Hello Marcus!
Sorry - there are some thoughts I should have already posted. I was not able yet to view the complete manuscript in detail.

Some of the bronze objects are depicted more than a trumpet like instrument, some are looking like breath operated fire throwers and some like tiller guns. But most of the images are really allowing a secure interpretation. For me it seems they bear a certain portion of phantasy.

The original Radzivill Chronicals are dating back to the 13th Century and describing the history of the Kiev Rus from the 9th to 13th Century, being a bit early for real firearms / guns. This copy of the Radziwill Chronicles dates to the 15th century and maybe misinterpreting parts of the images of the elder manuscript - in view of the relatively modern fireams in the 15th century? Or may be illustrating some fantastic objects in order to glorify the history of the Rus.
This are only some ideas - but please remind that I do not 100% know the background and content of the Radziwill chronicles.

Hi Andi,

That is what i thought as wel at first, but than i began to see these trumpets in the illustrations...

Does anyone know if the other weapons and armour used in these pictures is that of 15th century Russian design? This would mean they redid the whole manuscript and only based the illustrations setup on those in the 13th century original.

Some other illustrations as well of crossbows and another cannon

According to me the clothing, the armour and arms of the depicted persons and also the style of the images perfectly match into the 13th century. Except the mi-parti clothing of the man with the trumpet in the fist image of post #5 looks really 15th century style. He is not matching to the other images. But it seems that the 15th century illustrator perfectly copied the original manuscript.

True, there is a noticeable difference between the clothing styles.
Another with two types of horns.

I also added page 274 of the manuscript with some sort of torch/firepot?

EDIT: it also seems like those different trumpet blowers are outside of the picture.. not standing on anything?