Why were muskets used

This model differed little from the hand cannon but did have a crude wooden stock attached to allow aiming, as well as an increased range of yards. The Arquebus was refined further into what became the Matchlock, which incorporated a trigger and spring-loaded action.

All of these early firearms were made by hand and would have been expensive custom pieces. Muskets were considered too complicated, expensive, and ineffective. Because of this, bows, spears, and pikes remained in use until the early eighteenth century. The Chevalier de Bayard particularly despised firearms, as he considered them unchristian and cowardly weapons that gave an unfair advantage.

He issued an order to his men that enemy musketeers were to be given no quarter if captured. There was a great interest in using guns for hunting and sport, even by those who opposed their use on the battlefield. By the late seventeenth century, muskets had become refined and reliable enough to be accepted as general issue to armies and began to replace older weapons like bows and spears.

The sword also became more of a ceremonial tool rather than an actual weapon on the field. Pikes were still used into the eighteenth century alongside musketeers to protect them while reloading, because this process involved up to 60 steps and left the musketeers vulnerable to attack.

The rise of the musket industry meant the fall of other arms industries, like bowsmithing and armorers, over the course of two hundred years.

These crafts, which were guild run, had the option of losing work or converting their skills to the gunsmithing industry. The gun industry also introduced a new element of production: ammunition. Arrows for bow were made by the bow fletcher, and melee weapons did not require ammunition. With the musket, an entirely new branch was needed for powder, which required miners and chemists, as well as the lead shot that was made in foundries.

A division of labor was applied to the lengthy process of putting a musket into the field with all its ammunition and accessories. With the adoption of the musket as the universal military arm, the European arms industries were reshaped. Missile weapons like bows were slowly out classed by the musket. A recent study found that a longbow arrow possessed Joules J of kinetic energy and a crossbow bolt had J.

For example; it would require 1J of energy to lift an apple grams in weight 1m into the air. If that same apple was then dropped from 1m, it would release 1J of energy when it hit the ground. Furthermore, the bow was more accurate, but it could not defeat high quality armor even at close range. It was clear the musket would soon become dominant. While one industry faded away, a new industry was born. The musket reached perfection and made the greatest impact on the battlefield and in industry in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Armies and factories were reorganized to take full advantage of the changing technology. It is impossible to know the number of muskets that were made throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries because most records have either been destroyed by war and revolution, or were never kept at all.

We can speculate the amount of muskets produced by looking at the size of European armies of this time. For example, in when the War of Austrian Succession broke out, the Austrian Army had 82, troops. Artillery, cavalry, and logistics personnel would have carried swords, pistols, or no personal weapon at all.

These types of troops would not have carried muskets because of the nature of their service. For example, a cavalryman would have had a very difficult time carrying a five-foot-long standard issue infantry musket while riding on horseback.

It also would have been very awkward for an artilleryman to manhandle a cannon into position with a long standard musket slung over his back, and the same would apply to a driver on a wagon. For these reasons, these units were issued different weapons that were more convenient, like a pistol or carbine that was much smaller and easier to carry around while preforming the tasks of their unique service. During this era, the highest percentage of troops would have been infantry, and only a small percent would have had other roles such as cavalry, artillery, or supply.

Therefore, the Austrian government probably possessed around 70, muskets for immediate use and several thousand older models in reserve. It is impossible to know the exact number of muskets available without original documents, but since we know entire armies were not just infantry but also included special units like the ones mentioned above, then we can infer that an army of 82, would not have required a smaller number of muskets.

By comparison, the Prussian Army in had 50, troops, 15 and the Hungarian Army had , troops. A problem with this method is that armies in the eighteenth century would downsize during peace. After all, why would these armies have doubled in size if their governments could not arm them? The process for manufacturing muskets during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries varied little between the major powers.

Explore the BBC. BBC Homepage. Contact Us. Next Previous Soldiers. Formation of Britain's Standing Army. The Soldier's Trade in a Changing World. Activity: Battle of the Somme. Quiz: Soldiers. Go Further. From Musket to Breech Loader. From the Field Gun to the Tank. Activity: Weapons Through Time. Quiz: Weapons. Activity: Tales from the Home Front. Quiz: Home Front. Art from the Frontline in World War One. Activity: Art in War. For this reason, regular American units used smoothbore muskets.

By the time of the Napoleonic Wars , the British created and maintained a rifle regiment. The Crimean War — saw the first widespread use of the rifled musket for the common infantryman and by the time of the American Civil War s most infantry were equipped with the rifled musket. These were far more accurate than smoothbore muskets and had a far longer range, while preserving the musket's comparatively faster reloading rate.

Their use led to a decline in the use of massed attacking formations, as these formations were too vulnerable to the accurate, long-range fire a rifle could produce. In particular, attacking troops were within range of the defenders for a longer period of time, and the defenders could also fire at them more quickly than before. As a result, while 18th century attackers would only be within range of the defenders' weapons for the time it would take to fire a few shots, late 19th century attackers might suffer dozens of volleys before they drew close to the defenders, with correspondingly high casualty rates.

However, the use of massed attacks on fortified positions did not vanish overnight, and as a result, major wars of the late 19th century and early 20th century tended to produce very high casualty figures. In the late 19th century, the rifle took another major step forward with the introduction of breech-loading rifles. These rifles also used brass cartridges. The brass cartridge had been introduced earlier; however, it was not widely adopted for various reasons.

In the U. Army, generals thought their soldiers would waste ammunition, so they kept muzzle-loading black powder rifles until after the American Civil War. The introduction of breech loaders meant that the rifling of a weapon was no longer damaged when it was loaded, and reloading was a much faster process.

Shortly afterwards, magazine loading rifles were introduced, which further increased the weapons' rate of fire. From this period c. Muskets were the firearms first used by many non-Eurasians. With the introduction of the rifle to European armies, thousands of muskets were sold or traded to less technologically advanced societies in the 19th century. During the Musket war period in New Zealand between and , at least conflicts took place between various Maori groups - often using trade muskets in addition to traditional Maori weapons.

The muskets were initially cheap Birmingham muskets designed for the use of course grain black powder. Maori favoured the shorter barrel versions. Some Maori groups took advantage of runaway sailors and escaped convicts to expand their understanding of muskets.

Early missionaries - one of whom was a trained gunsmith - refused to help Maori repair muskets. 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. Likewise, Maori resorted to thumping the butt of the musket on the ground to settle the ball instead of using a ramrod.

They often resorted to using nails, stones or anything convenient as "shot". From the s Maori were able to obtain superior military style muskets with greater range. One of the authors was a Pakeha European who lived amongst Maori, spoke the language fluently, had a Maori wife and took part in many inter tribal conflicts as a warrior. The phrase "lock, stock, and barrel" which means "the whole thing" refers to the three main parts of a musket. The barrel is the tube where the musket ball or other ammunition accelerates and exits the weapon.

The lock is the mechanism that causes the weapon to fire. Most muskets were designed to be used with a bayonet , which is a triangular spike or blade designed to fit onto the end of the musket's barrel, allowing the musket to be used as a pike or spear. Bayonets in modern fighting are intended as last-ditch weapons which are only used in emergencies, but in muskets, bayonets played a much more significant role, typically accounting for roughly one third of all casualties on the battlefield.

Locks came in many different varieties. Early matchlock and wheel lock mechanisms were replaced by later flintlock mechanisms and finally percussion locks. The lock typically had a hammer of some sort, which was pulled back into position cocked and released by pulling a trigger. The hammer was often referred to as a dogshead or a cock due to the fact that it looked somewhat like a dog or chicken's head when viewed from the side.

Flintlocks and percussion locks typically had a "half cocked" position, which was a "safe" position from which the weapon could be loaded but not fired. Only when the hammer was pulled back into the "full cocked" position could it be fired.

The phrase "don't go off half cocked" has its origins in this type of weapon. The stock was made out of wood. The rear end of the stock was called the butt. The stock of a musket was typically heavy enough and sturdy enough that the butt could be used as a blunt force weapon in hand to hand combat.

Some muskets had small boxes built into the stock called a patch box, since it was used to carry small cotton patches which were used both for cleaning and for wadding when firing the weapon. The barrel of a musket was usually smooth bore. Rifled barrels were more accurate, but the black powder used at the time quickly fouled the barrel, making reloading slower and more difficult. This was not a problem for hunters, who often used weapons with rifled barrels, but musketeers could not afford to stop firing and clean their barrels in the middle of a battle.

The minie ball, which came into use in the s, allowed the use of rifled muskets. The front of the barrel was called the muzzle, and the rear was called the breech. The term "muzzle loading" therefore indicates that muskets were loaded through the front end of the barrel. A ramrod, made out of wood or metal, was used to push the ball or bullet into the barrel. Most muskets had a groove in the stock under the barrel, allowing the ramrod to be slid into place and stored there.

Musketeers were trained to always replace their ramrods after loading so that they would not leave their ramrods on the field if they were forced to hastily retreat. Barrel bands held the barrel to the stock. These were removable, so that the barrel could be taken off and cleaned.

Barrel bands were typically held in place either with springs or screws. A large screw attached to the breech called the tang screw also held the barrel in place. Most smooth bore muskets did not have sights. Rifled muskets, due to their longer range, were usually equipped with sights. The design and placement of these sights varied. For example, the U. Springfield Model musket used two flip up leaf sights, set for and yards, while the British Pattern Enfield used a flip up ladder sight, which was graduated from to yards in yard increments although realistically, hitting anything beyond yards was mostly a matter of luck.

Matchlock musket balls, alleged to have been discovered at Naseby battlefield. From the collection of Northampton Museum and Art Gallery. The simplicity of the musket design allowed it to fire a variety of ammunition. The simplest ammunition for musket was the round ball, which was literally just a round ball of lead.

Round balls were intentionally loose fitting in the barrel so that they could quickly be loaded even after the barrel had been fouled by numerous previous shots. This loose fit, combined with the poor aerodynamics of the round ball led to the musket's inaccuracy beyond 50 to 75 yd 46 to 69 m or so. Muskets could also fire smaller lead pellets called lead shot or buckshot, which struck a wider area but with less force than a single lead ball.

Round balls could be combined with buckshot to produce buck and ball ammunition, which combined the wider area of attack of shot with the large mass of the round ball. Musket balls were of a diameter considerably larger than today's modern rifles—the Brown Bess fielded a caliber of more than.

With its soft, all-lead composition, the ball would easily flatten or burst on contact, much like a modern soft-point bullet. Together with its large size, this meant it could cause large wounds. The smooth bore muskets of the Brown Bess period had considerable hitting power and were able to penetrate the armor of the day, but had limited accuracy due to the lack of rifling in the barrel.

This gave the rifled musket an effective range of several hundred yards, which was a significant improvement over the smooth bore musket. For example, combat ranges of yards were achievable using the rifled muskets of the American Civil War.

A rifled musket can also technically fire lead shot, but it does not pattern well due to the rifled bore. Musketeers often used paper cartridges , which served a purpose similar to that of modern metallic cartridges in combining bullet and powder charge.. Cartridges would then be placed in a cartridge box, which would typically be worn on the musketeer's belt during a battle.

Unlike a modern cartridge, this paper cartridge was not simply loaded into the weapon and fired. While not as fast as loading a modern cartridge, this method did significantly speed up the loading process since the pre-measured charges meant that the musketeer did not have to carefully measure out the black powder with every shot. The later development of the bullet cartridge accelerated the demise of the older technology. Despite this, musket balls continued to be used until well into the late 19th century, as regular armies and militias had accumulated vast stores of them over time.

Musketeers carried numerous special tools and accessories, many of which have no modern equivalent. Most musketeers carried some sort of specialized combination tool, usually consisting of one or two screwdriver blades and a small pick.

The screwdriver blades were used to change the flint, remove the barrel bands, and otherwise disassemble the musket for cleaning. Later versions of the tool included a small wrench used to remove the percussion lock's nipple. These tools often came in a "private" version and a "sergeant" version, the difference usually being that only the sergeant version contained the necessary parts like a spring vise needed to disassemble the lock mechanism.

Typically, the entire musket, with the possible exception of the lock mechanism, could be disassembled using only this one combination tool. A cartridge box holding several pre-made paper cartridges was often worn on a belt. When percussion locks became popular, musketeers also carried another small box on their belt which held the percussion caps. Some ramrods were equipped with threaded ends, allowing different attachments to be used. One of the more common attachments was a ball screw or ball puller, which was literally just a screw that could be screwed into the lead ball to remove it if it had become jammed in the barrel, similar to the way that a corkscrew is used to remove a wine cork.

Another attachment was called a worm, which was used to clear debris from the barrel, such as paper wadding that had not been expelled. Some worm designs were sturdy enough that they could be used to remove stuck ammunition. The worm could also be used with a small piece of cloth for cleaning. A variation on the worm called the "screw and wiper" combined the typical design of a worm with a ball puller's screw. A fouling scraper was another attachment that could go onto the end of a ramrod.

Made out of brass to prevent possible problems with sparks, it was used to scrape powder fouling out of the barrel. A cleaning jag was another attachment that could go onto the end of a ramrod.