1481 - the world's earliest dated handgun

[Matchlock]

Hi Alexander,

The overall length of the octagonal barrel is 93.8 cm, the caliber at the heavily swamped muzzle is 2.7 cm, and the weight is 5.6 kg.

It is known from the Passau city archives that a number of these haquebuts were ordered in 1481 to be employed in a famous feud between two rivaling candidates for the archbishopship of Passau, Georg Kardinal von Hasler and Friedrich I. Mauerkircher, which took place from 2nd to 29th June 1482. This fact, too, makes this barrel a highly important historical object.

I attach some further images, the last three showing our piece in discussion together with two other haquebut barrels, ca. 1460 and 1490 respectively, all from the Passau Oberhaus Castle.

Please see my earlier posts for more details of these pieces.

Best,
Michael

[Spiridonov]

Thank you very much, Michael! But the calibre seems to much smaller than 2.7 cm. It is not mistake? I hesitate many questions but what is the width of the this barrel ?

[Spiridonov]

I have counted on scale the width seems about 56 mm

[Matchlock]

Hi Alexander,

Sorry for answering so late.

You are perfectly right and on remeasuring I can testify both your and my measurements:

The outer diameter (width) at the muzzle is 5.6 to 5.7 cm somewhat irregularly and the inner diameter (caliber) is, as I gave it, 2.7-2.8 cm.

Best, my friend,
Michaael

[Matchlock]

As some of you may have observed, the barrel - underneath a ca. 18th/19th coat of black conserving lacquer - retains its original red lead (minium) painted 500 year old surface. You can see traces of it in places where the black paint has been scratched off.

I am presently pondering over taking the later black paint off, either partially or completely, to let the piece shine in its pristine colorful Gothic glory after hundreds of years again ... Anyway, it has been with me in this condition for 30 years.

Michael

[Spiridonov]

Originally Posted by Matchlock

As some of you may have observed, the barrel - underneath a ca. 18th/19th coat of black conserving lacquer - retains its original red lead (minium) painted 500 year old surface. You can see traces of it in places where the black paint has been scratched off.

I am presently pondering over taking the later black paint off, either partially or completely, to let the piece shine in its pristine colorful Gothic glory after hundreds of years again ... Anyway, it has been with me in this condition for 30 years.

Michael

Impressively! was it red? I have understood correctly? Is the patina(black scale (Fe3O4)) or cleared Metal under a red paint? Whether the first coat before painting has been put?

[Matchlock]

It is red beneath the black lacquer!

There seem to be only a few places of cleaned white iron.

With the black taken off it should look more or less like a barrel in the Germanisches National Museum Nuremberg; images attached (posted here before).

The barrel in Nuremberg is the remaining part of a tiller/stick haquebut, wrought iron, hexagonal (not octagonal), with changing sides at the middle and a punched decorative lozenge pattern on the heavily swamped and reinforced muzzle head; made in Nuremberg, ca. 1460's.

Its provenance is the famos Hohenaschau Castle in Upper Bavaria; I am proud to say that there is a matchlock musket dated 1633 in my collection that also came from Schloss Hohenaschau. In the 1880's it was in the collection of Heinrich von Hefner-Alteneck, the first director of the then newly founded Bavarian National Museum.

I do not have the exact measurements of this haquebut barrel but I should assume it is about 75-80 cm long and quite a heavy piece.

Best,
Michael