During all the time that the use of heavy armor prevailed, the horsemen, who alone were so armed, formed the principal strength of armies; and so much was this the case that infantry were generally regarded as of hardly any account. An exception must, however, be made in the case of England, the archers of which were almost at all times, before the invention of gunpowder, an important and sometimes the chief force in the army. It has been already mentioned that the Bayeux tap estry furnishes us with evidence of the fact that the Normans were provided with archers at the time of the conquest. The bows used by them were small, being little more than a yard in length. The deadly weapon afterward used by the English archers was from five to six feet in length, and the arrow discharged from it was itself a yard long. The bow used in Germany as well as that used in Italy (where steel was the material of which it was usually made) was about a yard and a half long. There is no evidence of the cross-bow having been used before the 11th century. Its use against Christians was forbidden by the Council of the Lateran in 1139. The long-bow con tinued in general use in England till the end of the reign of Elizabeth, and even as late as 1627 there was a body of English archers in the pay of Richelieu at the siege of La Ro chelle. The cross-bow did not go out of use in the French army till the 17th century. Among the other hand-arms in use before the invention of gunpowder were the sling and the fustibale, which was nothing else than a sling with a handle to it. The large engines of war used in the Middle Ages were the same as those that had been employed by the Romans, with only slight modifications. A coat made of leather or quilted stuff, called in French gam boison or gambeson, was almost the only de fensive armor of the foot-soldier during the greater part of the period of which we are now treating.
The use of gunpowder as a means of dis charging projectiles and the gradual improve ment of firearms effected in course of time a complete change in all the methods and acces sories of warfare. Details regarding the con struction and recent improvements of large and small firearms and projectiles will be found un der BOMB, BULLET, CANNON, GUN, MUSKET, RIFLE, SHELL, etc. Gunpowder was not used in Europe to discharge projectiles till the begin ning of the 14th century. Cannon are first mentioned in England in 1338, and there seems no doubt that they were used by the English at the siege of Cambrai in 1339. All early cannon were breech-loaders. In the oldest form the breech consists of wedges of wood or metal and this form was succeeded by cannons with mov able breech-piece. The projectiles first used for cannon were of stone. Field-guns were intro duced in the course of the 15th century. A ri fled cannon of the 15th century is to be seen in the museum of The Hague. Mortars were in troduced into the French army in 1634. Hand firearms date from the 15th century. The Swiss at the battle of Morat in 1476 are said to have been provided with 6,000 arms of this kind. In England the yeomen of the guard were armed with their in 1485. At first they required two men to serve them, and it was necessary to rest the muzzle on a stand in aim ing and firing. Lighter hand-firearms called pe tronels seem to have been first used by cavalry. Hand-firearms were at first fired in the same way as cannon, by means of a slow match car ried in the hand and applied to the powder at the touchhole. The first improvement was the invention of the matchlock about 1476. In the matchlock the slow match was held at the end of one arm of a bent lever attached to the side of the piece in such a manner that by the action of a trigger it could be brought down upon the powder in the pan at the touchhole.
This kind of lock was superseded by two others, the wheel-lock and the snaphance, that seem to have been invented about the same time early in the 16th century, although the match lock continued in use long after that date, and indeed was not altogether abandoned till the beginning of the 18th century. The wheel-lock is generally said to have been invented at Nurnberg, and was largely used in Germany. It consisted of a steel wheel which was made to revolve by a spring, and in revolving struck fire from a flint, and at the same time lifted a cap which kept the powder in the pan from being wet by rain or blown away by the wind. The chief objection to it was that it was slow in its operation, as the spring had to be wound up every time it was used. The snaphance was largely used in the Spanish dominions. It was the immediate predecessor of the flintlock, from which it differed only in making the flint strike against a fixed upright piece of iron in front of the powder-pan, while in the flintlock this upright piece was attached to another piece that covered the pan and which turned on a hinge, so that when the flint descended and struck sparks from the iron it at the same time uncovered the pan. The flintlock was invented in France about 1640, and gradually came into universal use, until it was itself superseded by the percussion-lock This last was patented by a Scotch clergyman named Alexander Forsyth in 1807, been adopted every where by the year 1820. The first model of the needle-gun was made in 1827 by J. N.
se of Erfurt. It was first made breech loading in 1836. The only important weapon not a firearm that has been invented since the introduction of gunpowder is the bayonet, which is believed to have been invented about 1650. The socket-bayonet, fitted round the i muzzle of the gun, was introduced into the French army by Vauban.
The earliest collection of arms and armor was that made by Louis XII, at Amboise in 1502. There is a fine collection at Dresden, be gun in 1553. Among others may be mentioned the collection in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, recently augmented by the acqui sition of the celebrated Riggs collection, which makes the New York collection one of the finest in the world. The Riggs lot contains about 2,500 separate pieces, many of historic interest as well as of artistic importance; the Ambras collection, commenced in 1570, now at Vienna, and those at Turin, Sigmaringen, Tsarsko-selo, Petrograd, Madrid and in the Tower of London. The last mentioned was classified by Dr. Meyrick and catalogued by J. Hewitt. The Antiquarian Museum of Edin burgh is rich in weapons of the stone and bronze periods, but has few specimens of arms and armor of more modern times. Of works specially devoted to the subject of arms and armor the most worthy of mention are Grose, 'Treatise on Ancient Armor and Weapons' (1785-86; Supp. 1789; afterward annexed to the second edition of the same author's 'Military Antiquities,' 1801), and Meyrick, 'Critical In quiry into Ancient Armor as it existed in Eu rope, but particularly in England, from the Norman Conquest to the reign of King Charles II' (1824). An excellent compendium on the subject by Aste Denunin was published in 1869 in French, English and German. The title of the English edition 'Weapons of War); it gives a history of arms and armor from the earliest period to the present time. Consult also Dean Bashford in 'Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum) (Vol. IX, New York 1914); id., 'Arms and Armor' (ib. 1915).