Incendiary quarrels/arrows/crossbow bolts

[Marcus den toom]

Hi Michael,

Amazing that these things survived
Did the barrels shoot some sort of bullets or incendiary mass/arrows? (sort of mortar arrow ?)

[Matchlock]

Hi Marcus,


Sadly we have no records on the load of these short barrels. They are called Mordschläge (murder blasts) in German but could most probably contain literally any sort of load as their primary use was to abhor the defendors of the besieged town from trying to remove the lance from the roof of a house.


Best,
Michael

[Marcus den toom]

Aaa, yes.. those overprotective basterds and their precious roofs, i wouldn't mind if they threw on of those things on my roof (if possible not yet ignited for best preservation of course).

The linstock (?) next to the arrows, was this used to ignite the mass or is this just a exhibition director (from the museum) his interpretation to put it next to the arrows?

Thanks so much

Best,
Marcus

[Matchlock]

This is a follower to post #31-32 and #62, showing more on digging up those grenades from a historic site in May 1983.

Best,
Michael

[Matchlock]

A few more, and a local neswpaper article of May 11, 1983.

m

[Matchlock]

Some 16th c. sources of period artwork on grenades, from top:

- Vannoccio Biringuccio (+1537), De la Pirotechnica, 1534-5, printed posthumously

- Romeyn de Hooghe (+1708), Austrian grenadiers at the Turkish Siege of Vienna, 1683: the Austrian grenadiers are depicted throwing their grenades high above the heads of the defenders against the Turks, thus taking into account losses on their own side

- as before



and some clay and glass grenades from the vast supplies preserved at Schloss Forchtenstein, Austria.



All scanned from:
Franz Felberbauer, "Die Handgranaten der Grenadiere der Fürsten Esterházy aus Gusseisen und Ton im Zeughaus der Burg Forchtenstein" (the cast-iron and clay hand grenades for the grenadiers of the Princes Esterházy, at the Armory of Forchtenstein Castle), in: Waffen und Kostümkunde, 2012, vol. 2, pp. 181-220, and 2014, vol. 1, pp. 1-52.


m

[Matchlock]

Before Felberbauer's comprehensive and topical study on the 17th c. Schloss Forchtenstein hand grenades, published in two vols. of the German Journal of Weaponry (Zeitschrift für historische Waffen- und Kostümkunde) in 2012 and 2014 (see post above), there have sadly only been two tentative aprroaches to the matter, both made by Heinz-Peter Mielke in the same Zeitschrift, in 1980 (vol. 2, pp. 153f.) and 1982 (vol. 1, pp.64-66).
For those to whom German is not just an accumulation of hieroglyphs , I attached scans.

The first essay is on 17th-18th c. glass hand grenades in the Swiss Landesmuseum Zurich, while the second is on clay hand grenades in general (Mielke called them ceramic weapons).


Best,
Michael

[Eric Slyter]

Hi Matchlock

I wanted to run this article by you, regarding those twisted socket arrowheads:

http://www.tameshigiri.ca/2014/03/14...isted-sockets/

I've come across these examples of twisted arrowheads. My organization is considering getting one of these for our traveling display of medieval antiquities, which is why I've been so curious about them.

102 mm long:




75mm long:




80mm long:




88mm long:

[Matchlock]

Hi Eric,


You can of course never tell for sure when confronted with Medieval relics but in my opinion, and in all probability, these arrow shaped heads with the twisted hafts were used together with an incendiary mass.
The latter would probably stick more safely on a twisted haft.

Illustrated at the right-hand side of the attached photos is a crossbow bolt with its incendiary mass now missing.


Best,
Michael