Daily Vocabulary for Better Conversation

Muskets and bayonets
aboard the frigate Grand Turk

A musket is a muzzle-loaded, smoothbore long gun, which a user generally fires from the shoulder. The date of the origin of muskets remains unknown, but they are mentioned as early as the late 15th century, and they were primarily designed for use by infantry. Muskets became obsolete by the middle of the 19th century, as rifles superseded them. Typical musket calibers ranged from .50 to .80 caliber. and depending on the type and caliber could hit a man's torso out to 200 yards, though it was only accurate to about 100 yards. A soldier primarily armed with a musket had the designation of a musketman or of a musketeer.

According to the online Etymology Dictionary, firearms were often named after animals, and the word musket derived from the French word mousquette, which is a sparrowhawk. [1]

By the late 15th century, a minority of foot soldiers were already equipped with hand cannons, however these were extremely inaccurate and difficult to load and fire. In the 16th century, the hand held firearm became commonplace and by the 17th century it superseded the pike as the main infantry weapon. In the 16th century, the most common musket was the arquebus. In this period, the musket proper (the word derives from the French mousquette) referred to a heavier weapon, firing a heavier shot, which had to balance on a rest. A lighter alternative to either the arquebus or the musket was the caliver, which was often used at sea, or by irregular troops. Almost all muskets in this period were fired by the matchlock mechanism, where a length of smouldering rope ignited the gunpowder in the weapon's pan, causing the ball to be fired out of the barrel. An alternative to the matchlock in the earlier period was the wheellock mechanism. The matchlock had several disadvantages - it was inaccurate at over 100 metres, slow to reload and often caused accidents by igniting gunpowder stores accidentally. Nevertheless, the widespread use of muskets changed the face of warfare. (See Gunpowder warfare).

In the 17th century, the arquebus and caliver were phased out as the musket became lighter and more portable. Thereafter, musket became the generic name for long barrelled hand held firearms. The musket went through further evolution in the 1600s. The most important of these changes was the introduction of the flintlock firing mechanism, where the gunpowder in a musket's pan was ignited by a flint suspended on hammer, which struck the pan on pulling the trigger. The flintlock (also called the snaphance) was a major advance on the matchlock in terms of safety, accuracy and loading time. It became standard issue for European infantrymen by 1700.

The 18th century musket, as typified by the Brown Bess, was loaded and fired in the following way:

As bullets, muskets used spherical lead balls packed in a paper cartridge which also held the Gunpowder propellant. The balls came wrapped in a loosely-fitting paper patch which formed the upper part of the cartridge.

The lower part of the cartridge contained the gunpowder: musketmen separated the two sections with their teeth. They loaded the gunpowder first, followed by the paper from the lower section of cartridge used as wadding. Then they loaded the ball and the upper piece of cartridge. Finally, a ramrod served to compact the ball and wadding down onto the gunpowder.

When muskets were fired by the flintlocks mechanism, they either filled the pan from a powder flask after loading the ball, or from the paper cartridge before pouring the bulk of the gunpowder down the barrel. Following the invention of a fulminating powder in 1807, muskets started to use percussion caps which offered much more reliability than flintlocks and worked in the rain without special design or care.

Muskets took time to reload, so army tacticians typically deployed musket-men in formations to maximise firepower.

This tactic was pioneered by Maurice of Nassau, who taught it to Dutch troops in the Eighty Years' War. Originally, it was known as the countermarch, where troops were arranged in lines up to twelve, but more usually eight or six deep. When the front rank fired, they would file away to the rear to reload. Gustavus Adolphus pioneered the use of the volley or salvo as an offensive tactic for Swedish infantry in the Thirty Years War. Because of the musket's slow reloading time, it was necessary until 1700 or so to use pikemen to protect them from cavalry. After the invention of the bayonet and flintlock musket, infantry were no longer equipped with the pike and their firing formations were reduced to two or three lines deep. One line would fire in unison, then drop to their knees to reload, while the next line behind them fired. Other innovations of the eighteenth century included, platoon volleys - where platoons could direct their collective fire at a single target.

The main tactic for infantry attacks from 1700 or so was a slow measured advance, with pauses to fire volleys at enemy infantry. The aim was to break the enemy by firepower and leave the pursuit of them to the cavalry. The French Army was somewhat exceptional in this regard, as many of their officers prefferred the a prest attack - a rapid charge using swords or bayonets rather than firepower.

By the 18th century, a very experienced soldier could load and fire at a maximum rate of around 4 shots per minute, but the average infantryman fired 3 rounds per minute.Soldiers expecting to face musket fire learned disciplined drills to move in precise formations and to obey orders unquestioningly. British soldiers in particular acquired a reputation for drilling until they could perform coolly and automatically in the heat of combat. Use of musket infantry tactics was manipulated to the fullest by King Frederick William I of Prussia in the early 18th century. Prussian troops under his leadership could fire in some cases five rounds per minute with unrivaled discipline.

By today's standards, muskets are not very accurate due to the windage (gap) between the projectile and the barrel. A modern rifle bullet will spin towards the target, ensuring greater accuracy. Owing to this inaccuracy, officers did not expect musketmen to aim at particular targets. Rather, they had the objective of delivering a mass of musket balls into the enemy line.

At the time of the American Revolution, many British soldiers were outraged by the American colonist's use of rifles, They believed that since the Brown Bess musket had no sights, they were not responsible for the deaths of enemy soldiers. But rifleman, who selected a target and fixed the enemy soldier or officer in their sights were no better than murderers. The disadvantage of the early rifle for military use was its long reloading time and the tendency of rifling to get damaged when reloaded hurriedly. For this reason, regular American units used smoothbore muskets. However, from the Napoleonic Wars onwards, the British created a specialised Rifle Brigade.

By the Crimean War (1850s) and American Civil War (1860s), most infantry were equipped with muzzle loading rifles. These were far more accurate than smoothbore muskets and had a far longer range. Their use led to a decline in the use of massed attacking formations, which became too vulnerable to accurate, long range fire.

In the late 19th century, the rifle took another major step forward, with the invention of breach loading rifles. These meant that the rifling of a weapon was no longer damaged when it was loaded. Shortly afterwards, magazine loading rifles were introduced, which hugely increased the weapon's rate of fire. From this period (c. 1870), the musket was obsolete in modern warfare.

Muskets were the firearms first used by many non-Europeans. 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. Inequality in adoption of access to muskets could lead to large changes in political and social structure, for example amongst the Maori of New Zealand due to the Musket Wars.

A rare exception to this was Japan, where the muskets were introduced much earlier in 1543 by Portuguese Merchantman. Japan then was in a middle of their age of civil war, and were produced locally en masse by 1560s. Oda Nobunaga revolutionized tactics in Japan by splitting loaders and shooters and assigning 3 guns to a shooter (Popular records stating he used a Maurits-style 3 layered musketeer formation is incorrect according to onsite evidence) at the Battle of Nagashino in 1578. The total victory he won at this battle led other Daimyos to acquire muskets in large quantities, and they proved highly effective during the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1590s ordered by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. At the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, nearly 20,000 muskets were used, which was comparable if not greater than the numbers employed on contemporary European battlefields.

• gun
• weapon
• Charleville musket
• Brown Bess
• The Three Musketeers
• Musket Wars
• Muzzleloader
• The Military Revolution

• http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/lodge/616/
• http://www.militaryheritage.com/muskets.htm
• http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Campground/8551/

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