[Matchlock]

On it goes - Old School knowlegde against the bare facts ...

I think the differences between Dolleczek's drawings and the details of the actually existing MONTECUCCOLI musket in The Michael Trömner Collection are as striking as can be.

As stated above Dolleczek's drawings are generally done quite inexactly, and in some cases they seem to be nothing but wishful thinking and mere fantasy.
The author is convinced of the fact that Anton Dolleczek never even saw let alone handled any gun that would possibly come next to any existing, and recorded, Suhl manufactured combined flintlock and matchlock musket - be it of the Austrian type represented in both the Graz armory and the Vienna HGM or any other known - and most probably Prussia employed - 'military' arsenal type musket of that sort.
And even those are far from coming close to the MONTECUCCOLI piece.

Dolleczek's gun is missing all the special and early 1660's features that define a MONTECUCCOLI musket (cf. the author's definition above).
Moreover, he illustrated a gun showing stylistic features that actually turned up in Austria and Germany only by the late 1680's, and on private arms ordered in the latest French fashion of the 1670's by the Austrian and German nobility.
They have never been found on any Austrian or German 'military' type arsenal piece before the turn of the century, which is about 1700-30, and of course only relates to guns that have not undergone any later modifications carried out in arsenals.
One of these features is represented by the beveled and multi-staged baluster form of the ramrod pipes illustrated on Dolleczek's gun.
Therefore the existing sample he knew, provided that he actually did, could not be dateed any earlier than ca. 1730-50!

Actually, Dolleczek mentions such an unbelievable late Austrian combined flintlock and matchlock 'military' arsenal type of infantry musket - and the author found, and photo documented a really existing specimen in a Munich private collection in the late 1980's!
It was already by then that I realized that that had to be a very late piece that could not have been made before ca. 1740-50.

Alas, that collector, Fritz A. Kerbl, passed away a few years ago and his collection was literally torn asunder, with most pieces sold by the North Bavarian military oriented auction house Kube in 2013. All the Kerbl pieces were described extremely incompetently and consequently fetched ridiculously low prices.
Had he not been hospitalized at that time the author would have selected threeor four very fine and important pieces mostly preserved in literally 'untouched' original and patinated condition, and integrated them with The Michael Trömner Collection.
The haquebut with the profusely painted stock portrayed in the author's thread

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...nted+nuremberg

would have been among them.



Anyway, in time I will scan and post many more good photos that I took of all recorded variants of both the Italian ca. 1660 prototype (only a handful of actually existing Italian manuufactured instances have ever come to my knowledge), and of the Suhl marked German style follower type of quite late combined flintlock and matchlock muskets - dating from the 1680's.

The author's thesis is that Raimondo Montecuccoli, being of Italian descent, well knew the Italian combined flintlock and matchlock archetypes, and ordered a "high-tech" German style variant from Suhl comprising some exclusively custom made special features for the men of his bodyguard.


I hardly have words to describe the tremendous amount of preparatory toil it takes to both competently and comprehensively document and present this musket that has been both a myth and, seemingly, a phantom to weaponry - up to when my piece turned up.

After all, nobody has ever tried to show what I set out to do decades ago.
It soon was to turn out that it would be a magnum opus, and of the most special kind ...



Best as ever,
Michael/Michl
Michael Trömner