Handbook Discussions·admin·7 months·0 replies·156 views

Arquebus: The Gun That Ended the Age of Knights

admin · 2026-03-16T23:03:47.757Z

Long article on a weapon that predates cartridges, smokeless powder, and everything else we take for granted — but the engineering problems these guys were solving are the same ones we still talk about at the cleaning table. The arquebus hit harder than any bow, punched through plate armor that had taken centuries to perfect, and could be taught to a common laborer in a fraction of the time it took to train a longbowman. That tension between capability and trainability never went away. Ever...

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Arquebus: The Gun That Ended the Age of Knights

The arquebus was the first widely fielded shoulder-fired firearm with a trigger mechanism -- a smoothbore matchlock that appeared on European battlefields in the late 15th century and spread across the globe within a generation. It was not elegant. I

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