Weapons of old

I'd love to have a blackpowder/smoothbore gun one day. Anything, really.

Canadian laws about them are both lean and weird. If I had the time and space I'd look into it more seriously.

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Has anyone ever fired one of these large, high draw-weight crossbows?

Is there much in the way of recoil?

>>32802423
Lots of energy but they're also big and heavy.
The hardest is to train it on target without swaying.

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>>32802351
Gunpowder coexisted with knights in full plate armor for about 300 years before it could reliably pierce a coat of plates.

By the late 1600's early 1700s most militaries were making the switch to musket and bayonet line warfare instead of pike and shotte.

Gunpowder isn't hard to discover/make, guns capable of holding a powerful enough charge to pierce armor and not explode in your hands took a long time to develop.

Gunpowder is kind of like automatic weapons. for a while they existed but just weren't practical enough to make standard issue, then they started being issued in limited numbers due to general weight and unwieldiness and expense of manufacturing and revolutionized warfare, then trickled down from specialized machine-gunners to become standard issue.

the era in which guns were practical and issued but weren't yet good enough to carry an army on their own is often called pike and shotte. An era of warfare often overlooked for the preceding era of knights and men-at-arms, and the later, Napoleonic style musket line warfare.

The basic idea was to issue your standard infantry long sarissa like pikes to keep the enemy away from your muskets, as charging into guns with a good horse and good armor was still a viable tactic if the guns had no protection.

the pikemen would form squares (called tercios by the spanish who are credited along with the italians and swiss for inventing this method) and musketeers would either form two wings out to each side or two-four groups who rotate around the pike block, falling behind friendly infantry to reload and rotating back in front to shoot.

The idea was for commanders in battle to move these blocks of (around 100-500) pikemen and their attached musketeers to hold the front line, outmaneuver, and envelop enemy pike squares with your own so you can shoot the shit out of them. Cavalry, knights, and heavy infantry existed to exploit opportunities maneuvering opened up to break an enemy pike square.

>>32802390
Don't do a smoothbore. Get a civil war gun if you want.

The cheapest option is cap and ball revolvers. No idea what legality is in Canada, but you can get them by mail in the states for about $200 and shoot them pretty cheaply too.

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>>32802454
Eventually, muskets improved and the ratio of muskets to pikes in armies got larger and larger. Pikes became secondary weapons only for use in charges, to keep cavalry away from your musketeers, and to discourage enemy charges, as melee combat became a riskier and riskier option. The swedes were some of the last to get any real use out of the pike, (though there was a last ditch effort in place in the Confederacy to issue pikes in lieu of rifles, some 150 years after it would even be remotely practical that never really came to fruition)

Eventually pikemen were phased out for making muskets and bayonets standard issue. The death of the heavily armored and mounted knight was brought about by professional state armies making their joint military-political station antiquated, and the end of having the specialized training and money to fight in full plate being a considerable advantage.

Cavalry still existed for hundreds of years, but head to head against a line of muskets would be dead fast. They were a tactical weapon that could hit flanks and deny maneuvers to the enemy. With the advent of accurate repeating rifles cavalry became more like modern motorized infantry, using their horses more for maneuvering than as a weapon in charges.

Now go read about military campaigns during the Renaissance. The focus on the renaissance in public education is always on the arts and culture, the shift away from the feudal system and a rediscovery of ancient knowledge. The renaissance was not peaceful however, and guns were just starting to pick up speed.

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>>32802456
Why not both?

Looking it up, I get this much.
>"Their ownership may be restricted and require a license but that doesn't mean that they're not legal.
>Marstar in Canada sells many Pietta cap & ball models."

Weirdly enough, getting the restricted license for them is about as difficult as punching the Queen. Kinda. Bit of a flecked-mane unicorn deal. Because they are restricted and 'handguns' (very scary), you can't transport them around as you want, you can't store them safely without the RCMP fingering your assshole every three days and you'll only be able to shoot them at ranges which allow for restricted firearms and such. In short, a huge fucking hassle.

Long black-powder gun in Canada are treated very differently.
>"All matchlock, flintlock and wheel lock long guns are considered antiques no matter when they were made.
>Like older firearms of these types, they are exempt from the licence and registration requirements set out in the Firearms Act."

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>>32802501
>>32802454
Thanks anon, this is pretty informative.

Are there any good documentaries about the kind of military training that used to happen back in those times?

>Now go read about military campaigns during the Renaissance
Shall do.

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>>32802454
>guns capable of holding a powerful enough charge to pierce armor and not explode in your hands took a long time to develop
handgonnes have existed for a long ass time and they could definitely pierce plate. pic related is an arquebus from 1473

>>32802709
And they were expensive as fuck, really hard to aim and hit something, took ages to reload, no standardization so you cannot share ammo with your buddy. They made XBOX HUEG amount of smoke (partial burn etc) so you realistically couldn't fire a lot. They were more akin to a tiny cannon on a stick than anything else. They were heavy as fuck, they couldn't really fire from the hip or shoulder unless they had a bipod/stick. All that for very marginal gains over a crossbow.

>guns capable of holding a powerful enough charge to pierce armor and not explode in your hands took a long time to develop
it was hard to have a gun that worked AND that was transportable.
You need very high quality pure steel to make barrels that can withstand pressure like that while still being not too massive.

Gunners were like bazookas in WW2, roughly 4 for a company for very specialized personnel. Plus they were used a lot for shock value over pure damage.

>>32802351
The first battle report to mention cannons is from the early 1400s, as I recall. They saw use as siege weapons for a very long time and were gradually miniaturized, but guns really caught on during the next century. There's German 8 shot repeating matchlocks, breech loading cartridge guns and all kinds of neat shit that I don't have pictures of on my phone from that era.

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>>32802351
1453
The muzzies were pretty advanced back then

>>32805410
Dardenelles Gun.

Currently at Fort Nelson. Saw it a few weeks back, took some photos and started a thread with them but it was immediately archived.

It's a big gun for sure.

>>32803928
They were actually a lot cheaper than the crossbows that they largely replaced, and the ammo was much cheaper than arrows. They also required very little training, allowing kings to raise effective peasant armis. Read about their impact in the Hussite Wars of the 1420's.

Op look up tales of the gun on youtube. It was an old documentary sdries about gun history. Look up the episodes about early guns, shotguns and rifles

>>32808574
>and the ammo was much cheaper than arrows
not iff you include the cost of powder in the "cost of ammo". sure, just lead balls cost less than bolts/arrows.

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>>32802351
This is a historical weapon in that it is so old that people believe it has magical powers instead of being an outdated piece of crap.

One neat thing I know about ye olde firearms is that large caliber rifles sometimes had shaped projectiles, which went into similarly shaped barrels.

The rifling on the barrel rotated around which caused the bullet to spin without having to have it deform.

The biggest thing holding back firearms from taking over warfare entirely was the expense and complexity of producing black powder in large enough quantities to be sure your guys will have enough when they need it.

For a long time saltpetre was expensive as hell.

Also the methods and ratio of materials used to make the powder changed. The earliest mixes recorded in many old books don't work well at all. Lots of smoke, very little bang.

Probably the biggest thing to change was, rather than mixing it together and leaving it in literal powder form, you wet it all down and compact it. When it dries it's sorta like slate. Then you break it up and use the individual kernals of powder. More moisture resistant, and it makes a bigger boom.


Artillery remained more or less the same from the 1500s all the way to first half of the 19th century. Production methods became more refined, but the finished product didn't change much on the outside.