Inside the Crosshairs Page 3
The effectiveness of the crossbow greatly increased the lethality of the battlefield and the opportunities for individual marksmen. Used by infantry and cavalry alike, the crossbow soon earned the reputation as warfare’s first “ultimate weapon,” and some even wondered if it would make combat so deadly that it might end war altogether. Such conjecture, of course, proved invalid, but the crossbow did provoke history’s first recorded example of arms control. A Vatican edict in 1139 outlawed the use of the crossbow in warfare between Christians. Its use, however, against Moslems and other “infidels” remained within reasonable limits.
Despite its advantages over standard bows and arrows of range, power, and accuracy, the crossbow was far from being the perfect weapon. Its weight of up to sixteen pounds was cumbersome, and the levered draw string made it difficult to reload. Challenging the crossbow in range and power by the late thirteenth century was the longbow, introduced by English King Edward I. Archers with these 100-to-150-pound-pull, six-foot bows could nearly match the range of crossbows but could reload and fire six times as fast. In the Battle of Crécy in 1346, English longbowmen achieved a decisive victory over the Genoese, the elite of European crossbowmen. Even though the crossbow remained an integral part of armies across Europe and Asia, it more and more became a defensive device used to protect the parapets of fortresses during siege warfare rather than to support mobile operations.
The debate over bows versus crossbows continued until another advance in military weaponry—based on old technology—made them both obsolete. As early as 500 B.C. armies had been using flaming petroleum-based weapons, known as “Greek fire,” by launching the incendiaries with catapults or pouring them from defensive walls. Not until sixteen centuries later, however, did anyone attempt to record the procedures for manufacturing such armaments. A late-twelfth-century manuscript attributed to Marcus Graecus, and titled Liber Ignium ad Comburendos Hostes (The Book of Fires for Consuming the Enemy), contains recipes for explosive mixtures of various strengths. Graecus even notes that the mixtures might be loaded into “small tubes” that, when fired, would “rise into the air with a great whining noise.”
These early propulsion formulas recorded by Graecus provided little more than entertainment initially. History reveals little about the origins of the chemical mixture of potassium nitrate (saltpeter), wood charcoal, and sulfur that eventually became gunpowder. There is evidence that Roger Bacon, Fellow of Merton College, England, successfully mixed the elements into gunpowder early in the thirteenth century. Spanish inventors must have discovered the correct ingredients at about the same time, for they employed primitive cannons during their defense of Seville in 1247.
Despite this evidence, some historians credit German monk Berthold Schwartz for the invention of gunpowder, citing a drawing in Buchsenmeisterey-Schul (School of the Art of Gunnery) by Joseph Furtenbach published in Augsburg in 1643. The picture shows a monk, surrounded by laboratory instruments, creating a small explosion in a crucible. Above the drawing is an inscription. “Portrait of the Venerable and Ingenious Reverend Father called Berthold Schwartz, of the Franciscan order; Doctor, alchemist, and Inventor of the Noble Art of Gunnery in the year 1380.” More words below the image explain, “See here what time and nature have brought today through ingenious men: the art of shooting in guns has been born, created out of nature of fire and vapors of nature.”
Despite Furtenbach’s claims, there is ample evidence that by 1250 the Europeans and the Chinese already knew about the explosiveness of gunpowder. While its discoverer would remain unknown, the destructive power of gunpowder and its influence on the battlefield would dominate all future history.
Apparently the Chinese were satisfied for another century or so to use gunpowder merely for the manufacture of fireworks for use on ceremonial occasions. Europeans, however, recognized its military capabilities and began developing iron tubes that would fire a projectile with the explosive powder. The English began referring to these weapons as “guns,” a word apparently derived from the Teutonic words of gunhilde and gundeline, both meaning “war.” By 1340 references to “gonne,” “gounne,” and “gunne” appeared in English documents. The expenditure accounts of Edward III for February 1, 1345, list payment for the repair and transport of “13 guns with pellets.”
By the end of the fourteenth century most European armies had crude cannons in their inventories, the majority of which were dedicated to defense of fortifications. Early handguns appeared at the same time and consisted of short iron or brass tubes less than one foot long with a bore of less than a quarter inch. Shooters poured powder into the tube’s open end and tamped a metal or stone shot into the closed base. A “touch hole” allowed the firer to ignite the powder with a coal. These “hand cannons” were extremely difficult to aim and became even more so with repeated firing because the barrel became hot.
Innovators added wooden stocks to control the metal barrels and protect the firer from the weapon’s heat. Advances in powder production, particularly the combining of the ingredients into tiny pellets or “corns,” provided a quicker firing, more uniform explosive propellent. Touch holes were replaced by a pan to hold a bit of powder to ease ignition of the main charge. Tightly twisted rags soaked in saltpeter to enable them to smolder for long periods replaced coals as igniters. A serpentine device to hold the smoldering “match” could be lowered by hand, and later by a trigger, to touch the pan and fire the weapon. These “matchlocks” allowed the gunner to look at his target and aim his weapon with some degree of accuracy.
By the beginning of the sixteenth century stocks had been shortened and curved to allow better aiming. These weapons, the early ancestors of modern sniper rifles, became known as “hackbuts” in German-speaking areas but more commonly in other areas as “arquebuses,” from the French word meaning “hookgun.” Arquebuses weighed approximately ten to fifteen pounds and fired a one-ounce ball about three-quarters of an inch in diameter (.75 caliber). With a muzzle velocity of approximately 800 feet per second, these early weapons had a range of 100 to 200 meters. Arquebuses were not without limitations. In rainy, or even damp, weather, the powder would not ignite. Even under perfect conditions a well-trained soldier could manage only two shots every three minutes or so.
Military leaders throughout Europe and Asia Minor began integrating arquebuses into their armies, but the new weapon did not play a major role in a battle until the late fifteenth century. In 1498, Spaniard Fernandez Gonzalo de Cordoba armed some of his men with heavy, shoulder-fired, support-braced arquebuses and integrated them into his ranks of pike-carrying infantry.
In 1503, Cordoba moved his army of 6,000 into Italy to meet an invasion from France. On the afternoon of April 28 the Spanish commander established a defensive position in a hillside vineyard near Cerignola. The Spaniards barely had time to dig shallow trenches before the French force of 10,000 charged their positions. Rank after rank of French infantrymen fell to the arquebuses; the few Frenchmen who reached the trenches died on the points of Spanish pikes. A short time later the French charged for a second time, but again the Spanish held firm. No battlefield would ever be the same again.
On December 29 of the same year, Cordoba crossed the Italian Garigliano River and attacked another French force. The arquebuses and pikes proved as lethal on the offense as they had on the defense and secured victory for the Spanish.
Despite Cordoba’s success, crossbows remained the primary infantry weapon in the French army until 1566. The English did not totally adopt firearms until 1596, and the Turks did not replace their archers for another decade after that. But from the time of Cordoba, armies began to increase the number of firearms they employed, and warfare, long characterized by the arrow, the sword, and the pike, became dominated by gunpowder and shot.
Firearms also began to replace bow- or crossbow-launched arrows as the primary civilian hunting weapons. They became even more dominant in hunting and target competitions with the fifteenth-century discovery, attribute
d to either Gaspard Kollner of Vienna or Augustus Kotter of Nuremberg, that adding grooves to a barrel’s interior made the bullet spin rapidly in flight and stabilized its path. This “rifling” gave its name to the more accurate weapons it produced, and rifle marksmanship that would ultimately lead to modern sniping began.
Shooting contests, both for sport and for the maintenance of marksmanship proficiency, rose in popularity with the advances in firearms. Early in the fifteenth century the Holy Roman Empire encouraged the formation of shooting clubs in order to maintain a reserve of marksmen in the event of an invasion by the Turks.
The earliest known, documented, club dedicated to the shooting of firearms began in Lucerne in 1466. Members used their own weapons but the club provided powder and shot for the weekly Sunday competitions. Targets were set at a maximum range of about 100 meters, and the winner of each match judged the results of the next.
Shooting guilds spread rapidly in central Europe during the first decades of the sixteenth century, and soon cities and towns sponsored competitions with their neighbors. More than 200 shooters from as far away as Frankfurt am Main and Innsbruck competed at Zurich in 1504. As shooting skills and weapon manufacturing techniques improved, competition ranges increased to 200 and 300 meters.
Despite continuing technical improvements, firearms remained dependent on dry weather conditions, causing battlefield commanders to continue to rely on pikes, bows, and crossbows in combat. When weather permitted, commanders still used arquebuses to fire in volley and placed little emphasis on marksmanship.
Rifled weapons were expensive to manufacture but their primary limitation in military use was the slow process of having to tamp a leaden bullet down the barrel to ensure it would “take” to the rifling when fired. A few well-armed marksmen, however, began to display the merits of single, well-aimed shots from firearms. Leonardo da Vinci included marksmanship among his many talents. During the defense of Florence in 1520, Da Vinci fired a rifle of his own design from the city’s walls to kill enemy soldiers at ranges up to 300 meters.
Another Italian artist, metalsmith, inventor, and marksman, Benvenuto Cellini, also displayed the merits of accurate gunfire and the spirit of future snipers. During the siege of Rome in 1527, Cellini fired the shot that killed the opposing commander and ended the battle. In his autobiography, Cellini outlined mental characteristics of a good shooter and commented on the “relaxation” produced by engaging a target at long range. Cellini stated, “I will give but one particular, which will astonish good shots of every degree; that is, when I charged my gun with powder weighing one-fifth of the ball, it carried two-hundred paces point-blank. My natural temperament was melancholy, and while I was taking these amusements, my heart leaped with joy, and I found I could work better and with far greater mastery than when I spent my whole time in study and manual labor.”
Cellini would not be the last man to experience the satisfaction of skilled marksmanship. As the development of weapons continued, so did individual mastery of their use.
CHAPTER 3
Marksmanship in the New World
AT the same time that the advancements in the uses and delivery systems of gunpowder were expanding the capabilities of expert marksmen, European explorers were adding to the potential territories where lone shooters would impact history. Hernando Cortés, with a force of fewer than 600 men—supported by twenty horses and ten cannonlike arquebuses—conquered more than five million people by defeating the Aztecs of Central America in 1519. In 1533, another Spaniard, Francisco Pizarro, defeated the Incas in South America with an army of 200 and less than half a dozen firearms.
Both Cortés and Pizarro depended on crossbows as their primary weapons, but the surprise and firepower of their few arquebuses directly influenced their victories over far larger forces. In less than two decades, with only a few hundred men and less than two dozen firearms, they had delivered Central and South America to the Spanish Empire. The culture, language, and religion of the entire region remains today mostly Spanish—a direct result of the introduction of firearms into the New World.
North American explorers and settlers also used firearms to occupy land where native inhabitants, initially armed only with bows and arrows, vastly outnumbered them. French explorer Samuel de Champlain used matchlocks against the Iroquois in July 1609. This account appears in Champlain’s diary: “We took, each of us, an arquebus and went ashore. I saw the enemy come out of their barricade to the number of 200, in appearance strong and robust men. I marched on until I was within 30 yards of the enemy. When I saw them make a move to draw their bows upon us, I took aim with my arquebus and shot straight at one of the three chiefs, and with the shot two fell to the ground and one of their companions was wounded. I had put four bullets into my arquebus. The Iroquois were much astonished that two men could have been killed so quickly. As I was reloading my arquebus one of my companions fired a shot which astonished them again, so much that, seeing their chiefs dead, they lost courage and took flight.”
While the use of firearms in the New World expanded during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the major improvements in weapons design continued to take place in Europe. In the early 1600s, gunmakers experimented with mechanical devices, first designing wheel locks that rubbed steel and flint together to create sparks that, in turn, ignited the priming powder in the pan. The rotating parts quickly gave way to the “snaphance,” an improved mechanism in which flint and steel were propelled together by a heavy V-shaped spring. Even though these were significant developments, both devices were too complex and expensive for general military use. As a result they remained mostly in the hands of wealthy sportsmen and hunters instead of soldiers.
It was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that manufacturers perfected the flintlock mechanism, which would dominate weaponry for more than two centuries.[6] The flintlock consisted of a spring-loaded hammer that held a flint. When released by the trigger, the hammer-held flint struck a steel edge to produce a spark that ignited the primer powder.
The advantages of the flintlock was that, without the need for lighted matches—which required several yards’ separation between soldiers to prevent pre-ignition of each other’s weapons—formations could be tighter and produce a heavier volume of fire. However, even though it was a great improvement, the flintlock still had limitations. Despite having a cover for the primer pan that offered some protection against rain and damp, moisture continued to cause ignition problems.
Reliability and safety had increased, but because of the cost and time-consuming reloading procedure inherent to rifles, smooth-bore muskets remained the primary military weapon. In 1645, Englishman Oliver Cromwell’s two infantry companies armed with smooth-bore flintlocks directly contributed to the defeat of the Royalists. Other countries quickly adopted the weapons for their armies. By 1670 France had an entire regiment carrying flintlocks.
But soldiers, steeped in tradition and familiar with simple, basic weapons like pikes, did not necessarily trust the new inventions, especially in unfavorable battle conditions. When a rainstorm threatened or a fast advancing enemy did not allow time to reload, infantrymen found their flintlock muskets of use only as clubs. At such times, many infantrymen rammed broken pikes into the musket barrels to form crude bayonets. This did make the weapons into pikes, albeit short ones, but, of course, it also prevented their use as firearms.
About 1680 the Frenchman Marshall Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban invented the socket bayonet, which mounted outside the barrel and did not interfere with firing the weapon. With that each infantryman could fight as a musketeer and a pikeman. By the end of the century all major armies in Europe were armed with socket-bayonet flintlocks.
The development of paper cartridges further enhanced the flintlock’s capabilities. First suggested by Leonardo da Vinci, paper cartridges became common by the end of the sixteenth century and were standard by the end of the seventeenth. With paper cartridges, which contained premeasured amoun
ts of powder, soldiers could reload quickly by biting open the end of the cartridge, pouring the powder down the barrel, tamping the charge with the remaining paper, and then adding the shot.
By the end of the seventeenth century, smooth-bore flintlock muskets dominated civilian and military weaponry in the New World. The first American contribution to firearms manufacture occurred in the Pennsylvania Colony early in the eighteenth century. Immigrants from Germany and Switzerland brought with them skills in crafting weapons and an appreciation for marksmanship and shooting competitions.
Because of the expense of shot and powder, those early American gunsmiths modified European designs to be more economical. They reduced calibers from .69–.75 to .40–.50 and lengthened the 42-inch barrels to as long as 48 inches, which increased velocity by ensuring that all the powder burned before the shot left the barrel. They also greased patches of cloth with pork or bear fat to wrap the shot, which helped seal the charges and prevented gases from escaping. These modifications also improved accuracy by flattening the firing trajectory. As a result, Pennsylvania long rifle flintlocks became the weapons of choice for hunters and frontiersmen. However, the costs of the long rifles, which could not be mass-produced, prevented their issue to local militias or to the English troops overseeing the colonies’ security.
Instead the British army used the relatively inexpensive, mass-produced English Long Land Service Musket, better known as the Brown Bess. Ten pounds in weight with a forty-six-inch-long, .75-caliber barrel, the sturdily built Brown Bess could sustain the rigors of military field action. Its one-ounce lead ball measured only .71 caliber, so it loaded quickly and easily down the slightly larger barrel.
While the smaller-diameter ball positively affected speed of reloading of the Brown Bess, it had a negative impact on accuracy. The lead balls bounced from side to side in their passage out of the barrel. Consequently, the path of the shot varied widely in elevation and windage from its intended mark.