The other main weakness of the older muzzle-loading rifles, and indeed the muzzle-loading smoothbore muskets too, was the unreliable firing mechanism – the flintlock. The flintlock required a tiny amount of gunpowder to be placed in the pan alongside the breech end of the barrel, where it was ignited by sparks from the flint which then passed through a touch-hole bored in the barrel to ignite the main gunpowder charge inside the barrel. Although the pan had a lid, it was still vulnerable to wind and damp and to misfires if the flint wasn’t adjusted to strike the steel cleanly and generate lots of sparks.

This was solved by the percussion lock and percussion cap.

The cap was a small metal cylinder or can a few millimetres across, open at one end and containing fulminate of mercury, a chemical which ignited and sparked when hit hard. Those of you who used a children’s cap gun as a kid might remember the individual plastic caps that made a bang – just think of the same thing in copper instead of plastic and with a more powerful bang!

The pan of the flintlock was replaced by a nipple (don’t snigger) projecting from the gun onto which the cap was placed. The arm holding the flint of a flintlock was replaced by a simple hammer arm. On pulling the trigger, the hammer came down on the cap, igniting the tiny amount of chemical inside it, sending a flash down the hole in the middle of the nipple to ignite the main charge in the barrel.

This percussion lock system was a lot more reliable than the flintlock and slightly quicker to prepare for firing too. Old flintlocks could even be converted to the new system fairly easily, just by removing and replacing the lock mechanism, making it economic to switch.

The percussion lock was developed around 1830 but not adopted immediately. The British Army tested a percussion lock musket in 1834 but only adopted it in the late 1830s and didn’t really make it the majority weapon until 1841. There was, therefore, a brief period when muzzle-loading smoothbore percussion lock muskets were the main infantry arm (before being replaced with muzzle-loading percussion lock rifles using Minie bullets) and I should really include this as a milestone stage in its own right, but the period these were in use was quite short.

So by the mid 1850s the main infantry weapon of a well-equipped army was the muzzle-loading percussion lock rifle firing Minie bullets. Note, though, that the bullet and main charge of gunpowder still came in paper cartridges and had to be loaded and rammed down in the same way as the flintlock muskets. The metal cartridge that could be loaded as a single item wasn’t yet around.

The muzzle-loading rifle with percussion lock and firing Minie bullets, was the main firearm of the infantry in the American Civil War (though older percussion lock smoothbores and even flintlocks were in use at the start as the states scrambled for weapons to equip the new regiments they were raising). It had an effective range of 300 yards (though a marksman could hit a man out to 500 yards) and a rate of fire of about four shots per minute, making frontal attacks more and more costly. But they were still not costly enough to preclude them completely since the end result of a successful rush – completely sweeping the enemy away – was a valuable outcome. What it meant instead was that commanders started to realise the necessity of softening the enemy up with an extended firefight before launching a charge, or adopting fire and manoeuvre tactics where one group of men laid down covering fire whilst another group advanced.

The next advance would be the adoption of breech-loading rifles, where the gun was loaded from the breech end of the barrel, the end nearest the firer, and I’ll cover that in part seven of this series.

The origin of these plug bayonets is still debated. They may have been invented by hunters of wild boar and other dangerous animals as a last-ditch weapon for if their shot missed and they didn’t have time to reload before the animal charged them. Or they may have been improvised by irregular soldiers who didn’t have proper pikes. Several theories link the name bayonet to the town of Bayonne in France. But wherever they came from, the plug bayonet was being adopted by European armies from the 1660s through to the 1680s. A French fusilier (musketeer) regiment was definitely issued with them in 1671 and an English dragoon regiment in 1672.

The problem of plug bayonets stopping the musket from being fired was solved by the invention of the socket bayonet, which was introduced from the 1690s. Instead of a plug that fitted into the barrel, the new bayonet ended in a ring that slipped over the outside of the barrel, keeping the muzzle clear for firing. The blade was set off to one side, again so as not to impede firing. Many of these bayonets were spikes rather than blades, and a socket spike bayonet is shown in the picture below

Figure 1: socket spike bayonet (courtesy Rama under Creative Commons Attribution licence)

Time and time again there have been debates about the usefulness of the bayonet. By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, we have statistics from surgeons of the numbers and types of wounds and it is clear that only a tiny percentage of casualties were caused by the bayonet. Yet most armies stuck to the belief that the bayonet was essential. Why? Mere tradition? Actually, the bayonet was useful at least as much for what it stopped the enemy from doing, rather than its ability to cause casualties. The bayonet stopped enemy cavalry from simply riding into infantry formations if they could brave the single volley they would receive as they charged. If infantry could stay steady, shoulder to shoulder, bayonets jutting out like a hedge of steel points, then enemy horses would be very reluctant to close with them. And in the attack, the bayonet was often the weapon that chased off a disordered enemy, even if relatively few men actually got stabbed in the process.

But in the development of infantry firearms, the main achievement of the bayonet is that it allowed the pike to be discarded and infantry to become a 100% firearm-equipped force, with no men held back equipped just for close combat. The bayonet actually confirmed the place of the musket as the dominant infantry weapon.

If you enjoyed this, why not keep reading with Part 5: The Muzzle-Loading Flintlock Rifle?

By now, some guns had a cover over the priming pan to keep out damp and stop the wind blowing away the priming powder. Another key innovation in the flintlock mechanism was to have use part of the pan cover as the steel against which the flint struck, opening the pan at the very instant of firing and generating firing sparks at the same time. This was achieved by having an L-shaped pan lid. On pulling the trigger, the sprung arm holding the flint would come crashing down, striking the upright leg of the pan lid at a slant and throwing the lid open whilst showering sparks inside it.

The picture below (courtesy Wikimedia commons) clearly shows the L-shaped pan lid (hinged here in the open position) and the hammer arm with the clamp holding a piece of flint. The shallow indentation revealed by the lid is the pan where the tiny amount of priming powder would sit. The lock mechanism would be fitted to the gun so that this pan sat alongside the small touch-hole bored in the gun barrel.

Figure 1: mechanism of a flintlock musket

The flintlock smoothbore musket started coming into military use in the 1660s and was pretty much universal in European armies by 1700. This was the weapon of the infantry of Frederick the Great of Prussia, of the American War of Independence and of the wars against Napoleon. With the invention of factory mass-production it became a relatively cheap way to equip the mass armies of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, though the lock mechanisms always needed final assembly and adjustment by hand.

It should be remembered that this was a smoothbore muzzle-loading weapon. With no rifling spirals cut into the inside of the barrel (smoothbore) the musket ball tumbled out the barrel without a consistent spin shot-to-shot, making it not a particularly accurate weapon. Being muzzle-loading meant that it was loaded by inserting the main gunpowder charge and the musket ball at the muzzle end of the barrel. With the gun held vertically during loading, gravity would bring the powder and ball down to the breech end of the barrel, though they had to be rammed down hard with a ram-rod to make the charge compact for consistent firing. And since the weapon had to be held vertically for this stage of loading there was no way it could be done lying down (or even kneeling, given the length of most muskets), making it less than ideal for firing from concealed positions.

What was the range and accuracy of a flintlock musket? Well the weapon was physically capable of firing a lead musket ball out to well beyond 250 yards but one didn’t have any real chance of hitting even a large group of men at that distance. Effective range for a volley wasn’t much over 100 yards as beyond that too many of the musket balls would either fly over the target or plough into the ground. As the Napoleonic Wars progressed, the British in particular developed the tactic of waiting until the enemy was within 50 yards then firing one or at most two volleys before charging their now-disordered enemy.

Another factor against accuracy in long-range fire fights was the dense cloud of gunpowder smoke than soon built up in front of units after several shots. In an extended fire fight, opposing lines of infantry might be reduced to firing blind into the banks of smoke between them.

It was the rifle that revolutionised long range accuracy, but before I cover that (in part 5) I want to step back to the time the flintlock was introduced and discuss the importance of another weapon that came along at the same time: the bayonet (Matchlocks to Assault Rifles Part 4).

The photo below shows a re-enactor dressed as a musketeer from the English Civil War, in the 1640s, armed with a matchlock musket. It still looks crude, but it is a lot lighter and more effective than the medieval handguns of a century or two before. The barrel is considerably longer, allowing the relatively weak gunpowder (at least compared to modern propellants) more time to impart push to the musket ball, increasing the muzzle velocity and improving the range.

Figure 1: a re-enactor dressed as a musketeer of the English Civil War (in the 1640s)

These matchlock muskets were still slow to load and fire. You had to put a little bit of powder in the pan, then bring the gun to the vertical so you could pour more gunpowder down the barrel and drop the ball after it. Then you had to put some wadding (paper or fabric rag) in after the bullet and ram it all down tight with a ramrod (the wadding stopped the ball rolling out of the barrel when you levelled the weapon to fire it). Finally you levelled the musket and pulled the lock arm to the cocked position before aiming and firing. Two shots a minute would be good going, more likely three shots every two minutes.

Because of the low rate of fire, musketeers fought in deep formations of four to six ranks deep, the men at the front firing and then walking round to the back to reload whilst the next rank fired, and so on.

The effective range was pretty poor too. The musket ball had to be made too small for the barrel so that it would drop down it easily when loading, and so it bounced about as it was shot back out and the propellant gases leaked round the sides reducing the power imparted to the ball. Furthermore, the barrel was smooth inside so the ball didn’t spin in flight (which would have increased accuracy and range). There wasn’t much point firing at even a large group of men more than 100 yards away. And because the range and accuracy was so poor, it didn’t matter that most muskets were made without sights. Simply looking along the barrel to aim was good enough given the inaccuracies of the gun itself.

Another thing you might have spotted was missing from the weapon in the photo is any way of attaching a bayonet (that projection at the front is the end of the wooden ramrod, not a lug for a bayonet). If rushed by the enemy a musketeer had to either set down his gun and draw his short sword or reverse the gun ready to club the enemy with the shoulder stock!

Two inventions would soon come along to take the military handgun to the next level: the bayonet, which would allow the infantryman to use his gun in close combat, and a more reliable firing mechanism called the flintlock.

Series continues with part 3, the flintlock smoothbore musket.

From the Napoleonic Wars to the early 1850s the British Army was equipped mostly with smoothbore muzzle-loading flintlock muskets, with a few specialist skirmisher units having muzzle-loading rifles. As explained in the previous part, these rifles were slow to load because the bullet had to be a tight fit with the rifling grooves and had to be forced down the barrel when loading.

Then in 1849 came an invention that partly solved the reloading problems of the muzzle-loading rifle: the Minie bullet. Although various inventors had been experimenting since the 1820s with bullets that deformed on firing to make them easier to load but still a tight fit when shot, the Frenchman Minie developed the version that was tested and adopted by the British Army for their 1851 Enfield Rifled Musket, the first time a major army adopted a rifle as their main infantry weapon, and so his name has become synonymous with this type of bullet.

The concept was fairly simple, if odd at first glance. If a soft lead bullet had a dish-shaped indentation in the base with a face of harder metal then when the gun was fired that hard metal would push into the lead, expanding the back end of the bullet, making it fatter. This way bullets could be made slightly too small – and therefore easier to push down the rifled barrel – but then deform on firing to grip the rifling for true rifle accuracy.

Figure 1: Minie bullets showing concave dent in base (picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The British Army adopted the 1851 and 1853 Enfield Rifled Muskets just in time for the Crimean War against Russia (the war in which Florence Nightingale became famous for outspoken criticism of appalling British military hospitals), and it replaced smoothbore muskets during the course of the conflict. The United States also adopted the weapon, making it and similar designs the most common infantry weapon of the American Civil War (both sides buying shipments of the improved 1853 Enfield Rifled Musket from private gun factories in Britain, with an estimated 900,000 Enfields shipped to America).

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This limitation was overcome when the lockwas invented, a mechanism by which a trigger lowered a metal arm holding the match, bringing it down to the touchhole and firing the weapon. Suddenly it was possible for one man to both hold and fire the weapon much more easily. An added sophistication was the addition of a pan, a small external bowl beside the touchhole into which a tiny amount of gunpowder was placed. Now pulling the trigger lowered the match into the pan causing a tiny explosion in the pan and a flash from that first explosion would pass through the touchhole to ignite the main charge of gunpowder in the barrel, shooting the metal ball projectile (they’d given up on firing metal arrows by this time) out the barrel at the enemy.

This mechanism, or lock, holding the match gave the weapon its name: the matchlock.

It wasn’t exactly a reliable firing mechanism. It was very prone to misfiring in the damp. Wind could blow out the match or blow the gunpowder out of the pan (even when a lid was fitted to cover it until the moment of firing). But it was still a lot more reliable than the earlier guns.

As an aside, sometimes the powder in the pan would ignite but the main charge in the barrel would fail to fire. This is where the expression “a flash in the pan” comes from, for an initial success that doesn’t achieve the desired end result.

As well as the revolutionary development of the matchlock mechanism there was a gradual improvement in the process of making barrels, changing from iron to steel and improving the quality of the steel so that barrels could be made thinner and lighter without being weaker. This lead, by the early 1600s, to a matchlock musket that was practical to hold and fire in two hands without a pole rest to take the weight.

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At the end of the last article I’d taken the story as far as the Napoleonic Wars, the heyday of the smoothbore flintlock musket. Now I want to back-peddle to the late 17th century to look at another weapon that was introduced about the same time as the flintlock and which helped its rise to dominance: the bayonet.

During the era of the matchlock musket (the predecessor of the flintlock), musketeers were still very vulnerable to being rushed by enemy infantry or cavalry. They lacked the rate of fire and accuracy to halt an enemy charge by firepower alone. When charged, they’d be lucky to get off more than one shot before the enemy closed to contact, and then the musketeers would either have to drop their guns and draw their swords or reverse their muskets and use them as clubs!

Instead, to provide close combat effectiveness, somewhere from one third to one half of the men in a regiment were armed with pikes – long spears of about 18 feet length – rather than with muskets. The pikemen formed in a solid block in the centre of the regiment, with musketeers on the two wings, and when the enemy got too close, especially enemy cavalry, the musketeers would seek shelter behind the pikemen, or even in front of them but underneath the long shafts of the pikes. This combination of pikemen and musketeers is sometimes known as ‘pike and shot’ and was the dominant style of infantry fighting in the Thirty Years War which raged in Germany from 1618 to 1648 and the English Civil War of the 1640s.

But having about one third of all infantrymen armed with pikes rather than muskets severely reduced the firepower of an army. The ideal would be if a musket could be converted into a sort of spear quickly, when the enemy threatened to close, and converted back into a firearm when the close combat was over. The bayonet did exactly this.

The first bayonets were plug bayonets: blades or spearheads with a cylindrical handle of exactly the right diameter to be jammed into the muzzle of a musket, though of course that meant the musket couldn’t be fired when the bayonet was in place.

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The problem with the matchlock was that it depended on a match, a length of thin rope impregnated with flammable chemicals. This had to stay alight but with a gentle red glow rather than a flame (holding a flaming rope being a bad idea when you were loading your gun with loose gunpowder!). The match could easily be put out by a gust of wind and it also had to be adjusted in the jaws of the lock arm as it burned down.

Better lock mechanisms were available even before the English Civil War, but because they needed more intricate parts they were custom made and expensive. These better mechanisms were the wheel-lock and the first flintlocks. Both of these used a chunk of mineral hammered against a steel part to generate sparks on demand rather than needing a constantly burning match. The wheel-lock mechanism brought a chunk of iron pyrites against a small spinning steel wheel and was the favoured firing mechanism for pistols for the cavalry in the English Civil War, it being almost impossible to keep a burning match cord alight when charging about on the back of a horse! But they were too expensive to equip everyone.

The flintlock came along when it was realised that a piece of flint striking steel at an oblique angle generated enough sparks to fire a gun without having to have a spinning wheel. This was similar to the way that fire lighting kits worked, except that in a fire lighting kit the flint and the steel were held by hand, so it wasn’t much of a leap of innovation to apply it to firing guns, yet the impact on the effectiveness of firearms was profound.

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                Before noon time on May 10th, the French vanguard had reached the city of Lodi. Here, they found the Austrian rearguard on the other bank, defending the bridge. To the left of the Austrian position was stationed some cavalry at Cadella Fontana, so as to prevent a passage and to protect the rearguard in its retreat, which was expected to take place the next day. To the right of the Austrian position at Corte del Palasio was the main Austrian force, to block any French attempt to cross the fordable stream.

                On the Austrian position was some fourteen guns trained on the bridge, supported by nine battalions of infantry. Interestingly enough, Napoleon mistook the rearguard for the main Austrian army – a similar mistake which would take place 10 years later, at Jena. Determining to show his men that there were no obstacles for the Armee d’Italie and since he ran no risk for failure, Napoleon took the grenadiers of Dallemagne and threw them into Lodi, which was quickly taken. Meanwhile, Massena was coming up with his six thousand men in the rear from Pusterlengo, and Augereau was coming with an equal number from Borghetto. Thus, the Austrians stationed in Lodi retired across the bridge.

                Now, Bonaparte occupied the front of the town and placed his artillery on the bank opposite of the Austrians. A cannonade by the French opened up; this had the effect of driving the Austrian batteries from their posts and buying more time for Napoleon to bring up his other divisions. Beaumont was then sent upstream to cross at a ford near Montaroso with 2,000 cavalrymen, to ride down the Austrian right flank. Napoleon, in order to encourage the troops of the Army of Italy, assembled the grenadiers in a deep column at 7PM, and threw them upon the bridge with a battalion of carabineers at the head. They took off at the double-quick across the 300 foot bridge, to the shout of “Vive la Republique!”

                A terrific fire of grapeshot and canister now came from the Austrian guns, which had been brought up again and well posted so as to command the bridge. With this fire, the entire head of the French column was swept away and the brave grenadiers wavered, but were instantly rallied by their officers: Dallemagne at the head and Massena close at hand. Making their way through the piles of dead and wounded, the battalions of grenadiers fell upon the Austrian guns, bayoneted the crews and captured every piece. This assault was aided by the fact that a portion of their comrades had dropped from the bridge onto islands in the Po; finding that they could wade to the other bank, these grenadiers acted as skirmishers and opened a lively fire.

                With the first Austrian line being broken, Massena crossed and deployed the grenadiers on the Austrian’s left and right. The French gave the second Austrian line cold steel, and routed them. The Austrian position was taken, and in addition to fourteen guns, thirty ammunition carts were taken. After uselessly throwing in his cavalry, Sebottendorf, the commander of the Austrian rearguard, retired with a loss of 2,000 men.

The King has denied the passing of important laws. He does not allow his governors to pass laws of the utmost importance. Unless people act directly under the King’s command, he will not pass laws for their well-being. He holds governmental meetings in the most inconvenient of places in hopes that the government officials do not attend. The King has repeatedly disbanded the group of representatives just because they would not follow his orders. Because of this, vigilantes emerge, people rebel, and enemies invade. The King does not allow the citizens of Great Britain to go to the Colonies, the Colonists to expand their land, or foreign people to join England. He appoints judges that do not understand the Colonists and are more familiar with the laws in other places. The judges in the Colonies are fired unless they follow the commands of the King. The Colonists are required to do whatever it takes to tend to the needs of the British soldiers. The King bestowed diplomatic immunity to the military. The King holds trials in places that are not part of the Colonies so that the judges of that area are not murdered by the guilty party. The military are declared as innocent for their crimes, regardless of the severity of their actions. The King made it so that only England would be able to trade with the Colonies. He charged taxes without the permission of the Colonists. He stopped trials from being run by the jury. He sent offenders of the law to England to be unfairly judged. The King destroyed the government in Canada so that he can create a new, larger government in its place. Those who were under the previous government must act under the commands of the King. He destroyed our government agreements, abolished our most important laws, and changed the basic format of our government by putting an end to our Legislatures and stating that only he and his representatives have absolute power. He took away our protection and called us his enemies. He denied our ability to trade with other countries, destroyed our homes, and slaughtered our people. The King hired foreign soldiers to fight against us. He is uncivilized and is not worthy of being a king. He captures the Colonists and forces them to choose between fighting against the Colonies and murdering their friends and family or being killed. The King hired the Native Americans to fight us.

We, the Colonists, have repeatedly requested that there be an end to all of our suffering, and we have been responded with more oppression and tyranny. A tyrant like the King of Great Britain is not worthy of ruling free, civilized people. When we asked Parliament to hear our plea, they denied us, regardless of the effort we have put in to understand their sense of justice and goodness. Should England continue to separate themselves from us, we shall declare them as our enemies, yet if they try to compromise with us, we will be friends. Because of our grievances, we claim that we are no longer part of England. The United Colonies are free, and also possess a right to be free. We now swear with our lives, wealth, and honor to acknowledge this Declaration of Independence.