HOW EFFECTIVE WERE HANDGONNES?
The major question regarding handgonnes is how effective they actually
were. Contemporary sources tend to be vague, and every modern test falls
short of complete authenticity, but there is enough data to create a general
picture of the capabilities of the pre-matchlock handgonne.
The question then raises a counterquestion – effective compared with
what? There is considerable debate in scholarly and re-enactment circles
as to the penetrative power of arrows and crossbow quarrels against
armour. There is general agreement that the longbow and crossbow
led wealthier warriors to discard chain mail in favour of plate in the late
14th and early 15th centuries, but how much more protection did plate
armour give?
Scholars once assumed that longbows were the death of chivalry,
slaughtering the flower of French knighthood at battles such as Agincourt
in 1415. But this idea raises two further questions – why did plate
armour continue to be used throughout the 15th century and well into the
16th century, and why didn’t other countries immediately train up large
numbers of longbowmen like the English did?
Some historians contend that the longbow did not have the penetrative power to punch through
plate most of the time, although it did have a severe hampering effect on
groups of armoured men and encouraged knights to dismount in battle in
order to avoid the loss of their vulnerable and expensive warhorses; even
the best barding(horse armour)left portions of the horse exposed.
Several different experiments using longbows against various thicknesses
of steel at various angles have led to controversial results.
Some tests indicate that arrows could not penetrate steel armour; other tests suggest they could
at least some of the time. Much ink has been spilt debating the veracity of
these different experiments, arguing about the draw and weight of the bows
used, the types of arrowheads, the types of steel used for the targets and
many other factors. What the sum total of these tests shows is that the
penetrative effect of a longbow arrow is a debatable point. In the opinion
of this author, it appears a rain of longbow arrows would be more
distracting and debilitating than deadly, although there would be the
occasional casualty due to lucky shots hitting weak points of the armour or
less protected spots such as eyeslits or joints. With the number of arrows
blackening the air during a classic English archery storm, the number of
lucky shots could have been significant indeed. Eyewitness accounts from
Agincourt explicitly state that many French were killed or injured by arrows,
but how many? What percentage of arrows that hit an armoured man hurt
him by penetrating his defences?
Although unanswerable, an argument can be made through negative
evidence. Medieval soldiers did notdiscard their plate, and English-style
longbowmen did notbecome universal in medieval warfare.
Therefore the longbow was not the revolutionary weapon historians once thought
it was. Fewer tests have been performed on crossbows, and it would
be interesting to understand why some armies, particularly the French,
favoured this weapon.
The important consideration remains of why the handgonne, surely
slower and less accurate than the bow or crossbow, would have been
developed and retained at all, counting for an ever-increasing percentage of
the long-range arsenal of all European armies. The weapon obviously had
some practical use that bows and crossbows did not. While the abilities
of individual commanders may vary, soldiers tend to be practical and
do not retain weapons that prove unreliable in stopping the enemy.
So how powerful were early handgonnes?
In the early 1970s, Alan R. Williams of the University of Manchester
Institute of Science and Technology test-fired three different replica
handgonnes. All had a bore of ¾in (19mm), and varying lengths of
5in (127mm), 10in (254mm)and 15in (381mm). This progression came
from an assumed lengthening of barrels over time based on a small sample
size of handgonnes, with the 5-inch handgonne supposedly common in
the 14th century, the 10-inch in the early 15th century and the 15-inch
in the late 15th century.
Test firings used gunpowder of six parts saltpetre, two parts charcoal,
and one part sulphur, following the recipe given in the late 13th century
text De Mirabilibus Mundi.
Separate firings were conducted with drymixed and wet-mixed powder, firing both lead and steel balls against a 2.54mm mild steel plate at 9.1m.
Results with dry-mixed powder were disappointing. One shot in four
misfired, with the powder burning too slowly and thus sending too much
gas pressure through the touch-hole. This resulted in the ball having little
force, at times simply rolling out of the end of the barrel. It is likely that
medieval handgonners were better at making and loading their weapons,
but misfires may have been a serious problem. Muzzle velocity for lead
balls ranged from 195.1m/s for the short barrel, 152.4m/s for the medium,
and 563.9m/s for the long. The results for steel balls were 103.6m/s for the
short barrel, 219.5m/s for the medium, and 265.2m/s for the long, but
there is no evidence that 15th-century handgonners ever used steel balls.
The wet-mixed powder proved more reliable, with misfires happening
less than ten per cent of the time. The powder burned much faster and
muzzle velocity increased. The short barrel had a muzzle velocity of
179.8m/s, the medium 158.5m/s, and the long 469.4m/s for lead balls.
The results for steel balls were 182.9m/s for the short barrel, 268.2m/s for
the medium, and 283.5m/s for the long. In all cases the muzzle velocity of
lead balls varied widely, possibly due to irregularities in their shape.
Williams found that the handgonnes were generally accurate at 9.1m, but
their accuracy became uncertain at longer ranges.
This study, although flawed in many ways and making many
assumptions, suggests that handgonne power increased over time. The
15-inch ‘late 15th-century’ handgonne had more than 50 per cent greater
muzzle velocity than the 5-inch ‘14th-century’ handgonne.
Furthermore, the 5-inch handgonne failed to penetrate the steel in all of its five hits. The
10-inch handgonne (supposedly representing an early 15th-century model)
penetrated six times out of 14 hits, while the 15-inch handgonne
penetrated five times out of eight. Penetration with approximately half the
hits is better than even the most optimistic estimates of the effectiveness of
the longbow.
An incidental observation was that ramming the wadding and powder
proved very difficult unless the gonner set the stock rigidly on the ground,
suggesting one reason for the long stocks found in most handgonnes.
There has been only one experiment using actual period handgonnes,
but the weapons dated from the matchlock period.
In 1988 and 1989 the staff at the Landeszeughaus (provincial armoury)in Graz, Austria, fired 14
weapons dating from 1571 to the late 1700s, with roughly equal numbers
of weapons from the 16th, 17th and 18th century. Three were rifles and
the rest smoothbore muskets. A total of 325 shots were fired using modern
hunter’s black powder of 0.3–0.6mm grain. The size of the charge equalled
one-third of the ball weight.
The team tested only four firearms from the 16th century, the period
most relevant to this book: a heavy or ‘Spanish’ musket called a
Doppelhakendating from 1571 (rifled wheel-lock, calibre 19.8mm),
another Doppelhaken from the 1580s (wheel-lock and matchlock, calibre
20.6mm), a wheel-lock musket from c.1595 (cal. 17.2mm), and a wheellock musket from 1593 (cal. 12.3mm).
These had respective average muzzle velocities of 482, 533, 456, and 427m/s.
Velocity tapered off quickly, however, as air resistance was heightened by imperfections in the
lead balls.
At 100m their velocities had gone down to 305, 349, 287, and
238m/s. Spheres have poor aerodynamics, and the slight irregularities of
a lead ball exacerbates this.
The firearms showed impressive penetrative ability. The calibre
19.8mm Doppelhaken pierced 2mm mild steel at 100m. The calibre 20.6
Doppelhaken pierced 4mm steel, the larger wheel-lock pierced 2mm steel,
while the smaller wheel-lock pierced only 1mm of steel at the same range.
Considering that a suit of armour would rarely be more than 3mm thick
at its strongest point, and often half that thickness, the tests suggest
that by the late 16th century, black powder weapons could kill a knight at
short range.
One shot raised some questions, however. The experimenters fired a
wheel-lock pistol from c.1620 with a calibre of 12.3mm and a muzzle
velocity of 438m/s, at a piece of barding – a breastplate from a horse –
made c.1575. This was made of 2.8–3mm cold-worked mild steel, and
mounted on a sandbag covered with two layers of linen to simulate a clothed man.
When the pistol was fired at 8.5m, the ball pierced the armour but failed to pierce even the linen underneath. It had been so
deformed by passing through the armour that it had lost virtually all its
kinetic energy. The person (or horse)underneath the armour would have
suffered only a serious bruise and a nervous moment.
It appears that even in the 16th century, black powder weapons could
hope to kill an armoured target only at relatively close range. Considering
their poor accuracy, it makes sense that handgonners would assemble in
large groups, so an increased number of shots would help ensure enemy
casualties.
In 1998, Thom Richardson of the Royal Armouries and his team
conducted ballistic tests on a variety of weapons, measuring the velocity
of shot from everything from slings to arquebuses. The least effective
longbow, with a 72lb draw at 28in (711mm), drawn to 27in (686mm),
and firing swallowtail arrows, had an average velocity of 37.4m/s. The
most effective longbow, a replica of a specimen found in the Mary Rose
with a 90lb draw at 28in, drawn to 27in, and firing an arrow also
reconstructed from a Mary Rosefind, had an average velocity of 44.5m/s.
The best crossbow tested, a replica of a 15th-century crossbow with a steel
bow and a draw weight of 440lb, spanned by a windlass, had an average
velocity of 44.7m/s.
Next the team tested a replica 15th-century hackbut firing a 15.75mm
lead ball and using a 50-grain charge of modern gunpowder. This had the
astonishing average velocity of 180.5m/s, more than four times that of the
best crossbow or longbow. Replicas of early 16th-century matchlock
arquebuses proved to be even better, with the best having an average
velocity of 521.2m/s, firing a 12.7mm lead ball with a 90-grain charge of
modern black powder. These results appear to bear out Williams’ earlier
experiments.
While there are some flaws to these tests, the most glaring being the use
of modern powder, the massive superiority of the hackbut and arquebus
suggests why these weapons grew in favour – even if medieval powder
was only half as good as modern powder, the weapons would have still
been more than twice as effective at short ranges as longbows and
crossbows.
The point about range is a significant one. Longbows and crossbows
had much greater effective ranges than a lead ball, both in terms of
accuracy and maintained velocity, and this suggests why they remained in
use for such a long time. The mixtures of bowmen and handgonners seen
so often in medieval art and chronicles had a purpose; the strengths of one
weapon compensated for the weaknesses of the other. After being battered
by a hail of arrows, the enemy would draw close enough to receive a salvo
of deadly handgonne shot. The knowledge of what they could expect may
very well have dissuaded some of the less hearty in the ranks from closing
with the archers and handgonners at all. In a later period there is explicit
evidence that commanders saw the advantage of mixing weapons. The
Captain’s Handbook, written by Henry Barrett in 1562, recommends
using archers and arquebusiers together to keep up a constant fire.
Lack of accuracy seems to have been the handgonne’s main weakness
besides slow rate of fire. All of the weapons in the Graz tests had poor
accuracy, but re-enactors using replica handgonnes have shown that these
disadvantages may not have been as great as generally assumed. Hitting
man-sized targets at 10m or even 45m with a pre-matchlock handgonne
is not impossible, although it does require considerable practice. Hitting
a horseman or a group of men would be significantly easier.
During the campaign to relieve the English siege of Orleans in 1429,
the French had in their ranks a famous gonner named Master Jean le
Cannonier who used a couleuvrine to great effect. A couleuvrine could be
either a small cannon or large handgonne. Despite Master Jean’s name
this couleuvrine was most likely a handgonne because he specialized in
picking off individual Englishmen. In one instance he was ordered to shoot
down a particularly large and well-armed Englishman who was causing
trouble in a fight and did so with no apparent trouble. When he went with
Joan of Arc’s army to retake the castles on the Loire, Master Jean shot
several of the best English defenders off the walls. It is difficult to imagine
that Master Jean used an artillery piece, as there is no evidence in this
period of any carriage or mounting that would have been sufficiently
manoeuvrable to aim at an individual.
Shooting at individuals is possible with a handgonne, but no
handgonne could achieve the accuracy of a bow or crossbow at anything
other than close range. It must be remembered, however, that accuracy
was not as essential in medieval warfare as it is in modern warfare. The
handgonner did not generally fire at individuals, but rather at slow-moving
masses of men. As long as he did not fire too high or low, he was almost
certain to hit somebody. And with his shot more likely than not to cause
a casualty, he made an important addition to the ranks of archers and
crossbowmen.
So it appears the handgonne was a viable weapon from the beginning,
and one that became all the more effective as gunpowder and the weapon’s
design improved in quality. Only the earliest pieces would have resembled
the stereotypically dangerous hand cannon, and even these had a distinct
use in the field – that of psychological advantage. In the first half of the
14th century handgonnes, indeed all black powder weapons, were still
relatively rare, and setting one off would scare horses and intimidate men.
This effect wore off quickly as the technology spread and armies became
more accustomed to the smoke, smell, and noise of black powder
weapons. By this time, however, handgonnes had become accurate enough
to inflict real damage to the enemy.
This must have had a depressing effect on morale, especially for those
of the knightly class who realized their armour was vulnerable to some
commoner’s handgonne. It would be interesting to test the blunt trauma
damage caused to a man in armour hit by a handgonne shot that did not
penetrate the armour. He would almost certainly have been knocked down,
perhaps severely bruised or even have suffered internal haemorrhaging.
The knowledge that, unlike an arrow, any sort of hit was going to hurt,
must certainly have played upon the mind of anyone facing a handgonner.
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