Ca. 1500 to 1650: Bandeliers for Arquebusiers and Musketeers

[Matchlock]

A few bandelier powder measures are known from the Netherlands and are labeled to consist of copper (attachment on top), but they are most probably made of brass; they too can be attributed to the first half of the 16th century.


Important sources of period artwork depicting earliest bandeliers attached are, in order of their appearance:

- Hans Burgkmair the Older, a series of woodcuts for the Triumphal Procession of the Emperor Maximilian I, ca. 1513, depicting arquebusiers with small bandeliers slung around the shoulder, some carrying an additional round priming flask

- a series of tapestries of the Battle of Pavia, 1525, made shortly afterwards in a Brussels workshop

- Sebald Beham, a Nuremberg woodcut, ca. 1530, of an arquebusier loading his snap-tinderlock arquebus and wearing a bandelier with small powder measures matching his small bore gun