Musket

A musket is a muzzle-loaded long gun that appeared as a smoothbore weapon in the early 16th century, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus, capable of penetrating plate armour.

[10][11] According to historian David A. Parrot, the concept of the musket as a legitimate innovation is uncertain and may consist of nothing more than a name change.

In some parts of the world, such as China and Japan, the flintlock mechanism never caught on and they continued using matchlocks until the 19th century when percussion locks were introduced.

[7][page needed] The phrase "lock, stock, and barrel" refers to the three main parts of a musket.

[16][page needed] Sixteenth- and 17th-century musketeers used bandoliers which held their pre-measured charges and lead balls.

[35] According to a Burmese source from the late 15th century, King Minkhaung II would not dare attack the besieged town of Prome due to the defenders' use of cannon and small arms that were described as muskets, although these were probably early matchlock arquebuses or wall guns.

[36] The Portuguese may have introduced muskets to Sri Lanka during their conquest of the coastline and lowlands in 1505, as they regularly used short barrelled matchlocks during combat.

These were mastered by the Sri Lankan soldiers to the point where, according to the Portuguese chronicler, Queirós, they could "fire at night to put out a match" and "by day at 60 paces would sever a knife with four or five bullets" and "send as many on the same spot in the target.

[2]During the Sengoku period of Japan, arquebuses were introduced by Portuguese merchantmen from the region of Alentejo in 1543 and by the 1560s were being mass-produced locally.

Although it was [partly] due to there having been a century of peace and the people not being familiar with warfare that this happened, it was really because the Japanese had the use of muskets that could reach beyond several hundred paces, that always pierced what they struck, that came like the wind and the hail, and with which bows and arrows could not compare.

[13] The Wu Pei Chih (1621) later described Turkish muskets that used a rack and pinion mechanism, which was not known to have been used in any European or Chinese firearms at the time.

Qi Jiguang trained troops in their use for several years until they [muskets] became one of the skills of the Chinese, who subsequently used them to defeat the Japanese.

"[44] By 1607 Korean musketeers had been trained in the fashion which Qi Jiguang prescribed, and a drill manual had been produced based on the Chinese leader's Jixiao Xinshu.

"[44] Another Korean manual produced in 1649 describes a similar process: "When the enemy approaches to within a hundred paces, a signal gun is fired and a conch is blown, at which the soldiers stand.

"[44] This training method proved to be quite formidable in the 1619 Battle of Sarhu, in which 10,000 Korean musketeers managed to kill many Manchus before their allies surrendered.

It was the first Qing emperor Hong Taiji who wrote: "The Koreans are incapable on horseback but do not transgress the principles of the military arts.

[47] Under the Three Branch System, similar to the Spanish Tercio, Joseon organized their army under firearm troops (artillery and musketeers), archers, and pikemen or swordsmen.

[48] Under the reign of King Yeongjo, Yoon Pil-Un, Commander of the Sua-chung, improved on firearms with the Chunbochong (천보총), which had a greater range of fire than the existing ones.

Later, common practice was to enlarge the percussion hole and to hold progressively smaller lead balls between the fingers so that muskets could fire several shots without having to remove fouling.

[51][52] The musket was a smoothbore firearm and lacked rifling grooves that would have spun the bullet in such a way as to increase its accuracy.

The last contact with the musket barrel gives the ball a spin around an axis at right angles to the direction of flight.

The practice of rifling, putting grooves in the barrel of a weapon, causing the projectile to spin on the same axis as the line of flight, prevented this veering off from the aiming point.

[3] Rifled muskets of the mid-19th century, like the Springfield Model 1861 which dealt heavy casualties at the Battle of Four Lakes,[54] were significantly more accurate, with the ability to hit a man-sized target at a distance of 500 yards (460 m) or more.

This statement is from Thomas Anburey who served as a lieutenant in Burgoyne's army: "Here I cannot help observing to you, whether it proceeded from an idea of self-preservation, or natural instinct, but the soldiers greatly improved the mode they were taught in, as to expedition.

To keep the ball in place once the weapon was loaded, it would be partially wrapped in a small piece of cloth.

[66]Frederick Lewis Taylor claims that a kneeling volley fire may have been employed by Prospero Colonna's arquebusiers as early as the Battle of Bicocca (1522).

[69] European gunners might have implemented countermarch to some extent since at least 1579 when the Englishman Thomas Digges suggested that musketeers should, "after the old Romane manner make three or four several fronts, with convenient spaces for the first to retire and unite himselfe with the second, and both these if occasion so require, with the third; the shot [musketeers] having their convenient lanes continually during the fight to discharge their peces.

Martín de Eguiluz described it in the military manual, Milicia, Discurso y Regla Militar, dating to 1586: "Start with three files of five soldiers each, separated one from the other by fifteen paces, and they should comport themselves not with fury but with calm skillfulness [con reposo diestramente] such that when the first file has finished shooting they make space for the next (which is coming up to shoot) without turning face, countermarching [contrapassando] to the left but showing the enemy only the side of their bodies, which is the narrowest of the body, and [taking their place at the rear] about one to three steps behind, with five or six pellets in their mouths, and two lighted matchlock fuses ... and they load [their pieces] promptly ... and return to shoot when it's their turn again.

The key to this development was William Louis, Count of Nassau-Dillenburg who in 1594 described the technique in a letter to his cousin: I have discovered ... a method of getting the musketeers and soldiers armed with arquebuses not only to keep firing very well but to do it effectively in battle order ... in the following manner: as soon as the first rank has fired together, then by the drill [they have learned] they will march to the back.

While some British historians, such as Sir Charles Oman, have postulated that it was the standard French tactic to charge enemy lines of infantry head on with their columns, relying on the morale effect of the huge column, and hence were often beaten off by the devastating firepower of the redcoats, more current research into the subject has revealed that such occasions were far from the norm, and that the French normally tried deploying into lines before combat as well.