D&D 3.5

Firearms


The power of aristocracies fell throughout Western Europe during this period in relation to the state. Their 200-400 year old ancestral castles were no longer useful defences against artillery. The nobility's role in warfare was also eroded as the Medieval heavy cavalry lost its central role in battle. The heavy cavalry made up of armored knights had been fading in importance in the Late Middle Ages. The English longbow and the Swiss pike had both proven their ability to devastate larger armed forces of mounted knights. However, the proper use of the longbow required a lifetime of training, making it impossible to amass very large forces. The proper use of the pike required complex operations in formation and a great deal of fortitude and cohesion by the pikemen, again making amassing large forces difficult. Starting in the early 1300s, plate armour pieces were added to the traditional protective linked mail armour of knights and men-at-arms to guard against the arrows of the longbow and crossbow. By 1415 the first "hand cannons" were deployed by some infantrymen, and the earliest small bore arquebuses, with burning "match locks" appeared on the battlefield in the later fifteenth century.

Role of Plate Armour

During an interval that lasted for 250 years (1400 to 1650), extensive plate armour was worn in virtually all major European battles, by both some infantrymen(usually pikemen) and almost all mounted troops. Plate armour was expected to deflect edged weapons and to stop an arquebus or pistol ball fired from a distance, and it usually did. The threat (firearms) and remedy (plate armour)for it tended to work as long as the velocity and weight of the ball was quite low, but over time more effective firearms, like flintlock muskets (entering use after 1650) could kill an armoured man at a distance of even 100 yards (though without accuracy). The flintlock musket, carried by most infantrymen other than pikemen after 1650, fired a heavier charge and ball than the matchlock arquebus. A recruit could be trained to use a musket in a matter of weeks. Since the muskets themselves were extremely inaccurate, training in marksmanship was of little benefit. A musket did not require the great physical strength of a pikeman, or the fairly rare skills of a horseman. Unlike their arquebus predecessors, flintlock muskets could neutralize even the most heavily armoured cavalry forces. Since a firearm requires little training to operate, the order and respect maintained by mounted cavalry in Europe and their Eastern equivalents could now be undermined by a peasant with a gun. Though well-smithed plate armour could still prevent the penetration of gunpowder-weapons, by 1690 it had become no match for massed firearms in a frontal attack and its use ended, even among the cavalry. By the end of the seventeenth century, soldiers in the infantry and most cavalry units alike preferred the higher mobility to be had from a completely unarmoured state to the slight protection but greatly lessened mobility offered by wearing plate armour.

Transition to flintlock muskets

The arquebus, in use from 1410, was one of the first hand-held firearms that were relatively light (they still required a stand to balance them) and could be operated by one person. One of these weapons was first recorded as being used in the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, although this was still very much a medieval battle. The term musket originally applied to a heavier form of the arquebus, which fired a shot that could pierce plate armour, though only at close range. In the 1500s, it still had to be mounted on a support stick to keep it steady. The caliver was the lighter form of the arquebus. By 1600 these firearms were phased out in favour of a new lighter matchlock musket. Throughout the sixteenth century and up until 1690, muskets were of the matchlock design.

However, the matchlock design was superseded in the 1690s by the flintlock musket, which was less prone to misfires and had a faster reloading rate. By this time, only light cavalry scouting units, "the eyes of the army" continued to wear front and back armor plates to protect themselves from distant or undisciplined musket-equipped troops.

While soldiers armed with firearms could inflict great damage on cavalry at a moderate distance, at close quarters the cavalry could slaughter the musket-armed infantry if they could break their formation and close to engage in melee combat. For many years infantry formations included a mix of troops armed with both firearms to provide striking power and pikes to allow for the defence of the arqubusiers or musketeers from a cavalry charge. The invention of the bayonet allowed these two weapons to be combined into one in the 1690s, which transformed the infantry into the most important branch of the early modern military--one that uniformly made use of flintlock muskets tipped with bayonets.