Dating Earliest Barrels: the Importance of the Position of the Touch Hole

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Marcus den toom

I just love this thread, there are so many haquebuts and information i didn't find on the internet... and believe me i looked high and low for them

Do you also know (or can you give an estimate) about how many haquebuts have survived? They are not easily found, but if you see how many the museum in Graz has...
And how big was there impact on the battlefield (where there many of them employed)?

The English longbow was in some extend capable of penetrating through armour, so where the haquebuts less common in England? (as far as i remember, and i am no expert so correct me if i am wrong about the long bow, but they where easier to make than haquebuts but required a bit more training to use though).

Just a few questions i came up with

Hi Marcus,
We can read in diverse material that the longbow, appeared in England early fourteenth century, was a formidable weapon. It superceeded firearms in effectiveness and accuracy, although ir needed exhaustive training. You would need to have the practice of a veteran to be a reliable element in battle formation. In the battle of Aljubarrota (August 1385), experienced English mercenaries had a decisive role in the event. On the other hand, firearms could be used equally by the strong and the weak and with far less training.
Contemporary crossbows had an even more powerful effect but their reloading ratio has been always a handicap ... maybe less for hunting than for fighting.
I would put it that, during far more than a century, bows were more effective than firearms ... haquebuts and all.

[Matchlock]

This is in the private collection of a friend of mine.

Octagonal, slightly tapering towards the muzzle, this barrel is remarkable for having an earlier touch hole nailed up and a new one, with a surrounding funnel shaped trough, pierced on what now seems to be the top flat.
Originally, this item, too, would have been fixed by two iron bands to a wooden stock. There is a high probability why there are still so many similar early barrels around. My theory is that most of them were part of multibarrel organs or devices:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...t+iron+barrels

Attached please find an illustration by Konrad Kyeser, Eichstätt, Bavaria, from his work Bellifortis (The Strong One at War), 1405, depicting such a rotating multibarrel device, and two samples of the earliest shape of a rectangularly curved igniting iron:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...igniting+irons


m

[Matchlock]

The barrel of a heavy Tyroean tiller haquebut, ca. 1490, and preserved in poor, excavated condition with yellow spots of salt all over the surface, was just sold at a small Bavarian auction at a hammer price of 5,500 euro, which in my eyes was way too much considering the fact that unless professionally desalted and conserved, the piece will slowly continue to dissolve part for part.

The touch hole was placed on the half right side, and the eight-sided muzzle section showed the characteristic dents of the 'Maximilian' style crown's head.

m

[fernando]

Nvertheless a rather interesting piece

[Matchlock]

Right, at least for as long as it won't crumble to pieces right before your eyes ...


m

[Matchlock]

An interesting tiller gun with octagonal wrought-iron barrel, ca. 1460-80, sold for a hammer price of 7.200 euro in the same auction as the foregoing item.
The barrel was struck with a maker's mark on the underside (!), a segmented circle, and the rear end of the wooden haft retained an old reinforcing wire binding.
Overall length 127 cm, bore 16 mm.

m

[Spiridonov]

Originally Posted by Matchlock

An interesting tiller gun with octagonal wrought-iron barrel, ca. 1460-80, sold for a hammer price of 7.200 euro in the same auction as the foregoing item.
The barrel was struck with a maker's mark on the underside (!), a segmented circle, and the rear end of the wooden haft retained an old reinforcing wire binding.
Overall length 127 cm, bore 16 mm.

m

It's one of the most beautiful barrels, I have ever seen. The shape of it is typical and at the same time unusual. According to my calculation barrel length is about 318 mm and the stock length is 952 mm

[Matchlock]

My friend Alexender Spriridonov found this nice miniature in an illuminated German 15th century composite manuscript now preserved in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, pal. lat. 1632.

Depicted is a a man aiming an arquebus with blackened stock, multisided brass/bronze barrel and characteristically swamped gothic muzzle section at a stag.

In Gothic manuscripts you have to keep an eye out for tiny illuminated details decorating the borders of a page with arabesques - and for people within these.


m