The use of muskets on a large scale required more complicated and rigor-ous training for infantry. Just to use their slow-loading weapons efficiently, soldiers had to be drilled until they could perform processes like Prince Maurice’s 43 motions almost subconsciously. Masses of musketeers had to be drilled so they could perform the loading and firing motions simultaneously, because generals had found that volleys had a greater shock effect on enemies than individual fire. The drilling of musketeers and arquebusiers had to be done with pikemen because they had to be protected from cavalry by pikemen while they were reloading. The musketeers had to learn how to move into or behind pike formations while loading and how to suddenly reappear and fire volleys when their pieces were loaded.
Warfare had become a lot more complicated. No longer could a country such as England field a highly effective militia whose main training was shooting arrows every Sunday afternoon. Even guard duty had become complex. Here’s what Virginia had to say about sentinels:
…he shall shoulder his piece, both ends of his match being alight, and his piece charged, and primed, and bullets in his mouth, there to stand with a careful and waking eye, untill such time as his Corporall shall relieve him.
To speed reloading, soldiers literally spit bullets into the gun. The idea was to enable the sentry to fire quickly if a number of enemies suddenly appeared.
But holding two or three bullets in his mouth probably also helped him keep “a careful and waking eye.”
Chapter 16
The Spark of Genius: Flint and Steel
Captain John Smith, the friend of Pocahontas, had a long career as a mercenary soldier before he came to America. Once, commanding a few soldiers, he learned that a much larger force of Turks was about to make a night attack.
He had his troops spread out and carry a long piece of rope. At regular inter-vals along the rope, he fastened a length of lighted match. Then his troops advanced. The Turks, seeing all those matches glowing in the dark, thought a huge force was about to attack them. They retreated.
Thus, Smith managed to take advantage of one of the matchlock’s characteristics. Years later, in Virginia, he demonstrated one of its disadvantages. In 1609, he was carrying a lighted match and seemed to have forgotten that he also had a pocketful of loose gunpowder. He put his hand, with the lighted match, into his pocket. It’s hard to believe an experienced soldier like Smith could be so careless, but he was. Fortunately, the powder wasn’t confined, so it didn’t explode, but Smith was severely burned. While he was laid up, his enemies seized him and sent him off to England to stand trial for alleged misconduct.
Gunpowder does not always have to be confined to explode. A large quantity of gunpowder — nowadays usually called “black powder” — will explode when ignited even when unconfined. Because it can be ignited by the merest spark or even by friction, black powder is a very dangerous substance. Using the matchlock meant manipulating black powder in close proximity to fire. The matchlock priming pan had a cover to minimize exposure, but even so, accidents were frequent.
The matchlock was also dangerous when the match was not lighted. A party of Spanish soldiers learned that the hard way when they approached an Indian village in what is now South Carolina. The soldiers planned to force the Indians to give them corn. Outside the village, some Indians met the soldiers and said they’d be glad to give them food, but the glowing matches made the women of the village nervous. Not wishing to alarm the villagers, the soldiers extinguished their matches and went into village. The villagers then massacred them. Only one man escaped.
Rain was an ever-present danger for troops armed with matchlocks. A down-pour could extinguish their matches and leave them defenseless. The matchlock also made a surprise attack at night impossible, as John Smith proved in his mock attack on the Turks. For all of these reasons, in central and western Europe (the area the Muslim Turks called “the Land of War”), there was a fervent search for some way to fire a gun without carrying fire along with it.
There was one attempt even before the matchlock was fully developed. An inventor in Dresden developed something called a Monchbuchse. It was a simple tube with a metal handle underneath it. Along the side was a leaf spring terminating in jaws that held a piece of flint. The spring pressed the flint down on a steel rasp equipped with a handle at one end. The gunner held the handle of the gun in one hand and pulled back the rasp with the other. That produced sparks that ignited the primer and fired the gun. Striking a piece of flint on steel to make sparks fall on dry tinder had long been used to start fires in Europe, but the Dresden invention was the first to use the principle to fire a gun. The Monchbuchse, however, was even clumsier than the hand cannon, so it never caught on.
Somewhere in northern Italy or southern Germany, somebody in the late 15th or early 16th century came up with a more practical gun. This was the wheel lock. It had a jaw that pressed a piece of iron pirates (the “fool’s gold” of gold prospectors) on a roughened steel wheel. The wheel revolved in the priming pan.
The wheel was connected to a crank, attached to a short chain that was connected to a strong leaf spring. The gunner loaded his weapon, put powder in the pan, and wound up the wheel with a wrench. When he pressed the trigger, a shower of sparks fell in the pan. Ignition, unlike that for the slightly later flintlock, was almost instantaneous. Pyrites were used instead of flints, because pyrites are softer.
Continued use of flint would wear out the roughened steel wheel quickly.
The wheel lock had two disadvantages because the mechanism was more complicated than that of any weapon ever seen before. It was expensive, and it was liable to break down. It was expensive because precision machining was unknown in the 16th and 17th centuries. Wheel locks were all handmade by the most skilled of craftsmen, and they were more prone to failure than the simple matchlock.
Expense was the biggest drawback. Even so, wheel lock pistols were wel-comed by the cavalry. Although matchlock pistols were made in Japan, such weapons were not popular in Europe. Matchlock muskets and arquebuses were dangerous enough when used by slowly walking infantry. A matchlock on a galloping horse was something few European warriors wanted. Loading a wheel lock pistol on a trotting or galloping horse would be a nightmare. European cavalry, largely descendants of Europe’s knightly class, could afford wheel locks.
They adopted the new weapon and developed a new tactic. It was called the caracole: a column of cavalry, each man carrying two to six pistols, would ride up to a formation of pikemen and, just out of pike range, fire their pistols, and ride to the rear of the column, reloading as they rode.
At its introduction, the caracole was devastating. Then the infantry learned to move musketeers up in front of the pikemen and fire musket volleys before the cavalry got within pistol range.
Meanwhile, the infantry were still using the cheap and vulnerable matchlock.