Battles & Wars › Gunpowder empires
The gun: arquebus and musket
matchlock arquebus by c. 1475; musket 1520s; flintlock c. 1610· Invention or discovery· Weapons, armor & warships
Mostly agreedGood evidence; some details, dates or numbers uncertain.
The first practical handheld guns, fired by a slow match and later a flint, which made massed infantry the core of armies.
See it on the Battles & Wars map →What happened
The matchlock arquebus, from about 1475, held a slow-burning cord in a clamp; pulling the trigger dipped it into a pan of powder that fired the barrel. The heavier musket of the 1520s threw a bigger ball that could pierce plate armor at close range. Guns were slow, about one shot a minute, and inaccurate past roughly 100 meters, but a peasant could learn them in weeks, while archers trained for years. Spanish arquebusiers won at Cerignola (1503) and Pavia (1525).
Why it matters
The gun made mass infantry decisive, doomed the armored knight and the archer, and pushed states to raise, drill and pay large standing armies, the core of the military revolution.
Think of it like
Like replacing master craftsmen with a trained crew using standard tools: less skill per worker, but far easier to scale up.
How we know
Surviving weapons in arsenals and museums; drill manuals such as Jacob de Gheyn's illustrated guide of 1607; battle accounts; and modern test-firing of period guns measuring velocity and penetration.
Still debated
Why guns beat bows is debated: bows were often faster and more accurate, so cost, training time and armor penetration, not raw firepower, may explain the switch.
Inside this (3)
Connections (10)
▸Battle of Nagashino showed the power of massed The gun: arquebus and musketMostly agreed
The connection
Nobunaga massed perhaps 1,000–3,000 matchlock gunners behind palisades and a stream, protected by spearmen. Repeated Takeda attacks broke under their fire. It became Japan's best-known demonstration that guns, used in mass with field defenses, could beat skilled warriors.
When and how
Nagashino, 1575, three decades after Portuguese traders brought matchlocks to Tanegashima island in 1543.
How sure are we?
Ōta Gyūichi's chronicle gives the number of gunners, and the painted battle screens show gunners behind fences.
Debates and open questions
The famous rotating three-rank volley is not in the earliest sources and is doubted; estimates of gunner numbers range from 1,000 to 3,000.
▸The gun: arquebus and musket gradually replaced the Bow and arrowWell documented
The connection
Guns took about two centuries to push out bows. They were slower and less accurate, but cheaper training, better armor penetration and shock won out. England officially dropped the longbow for its militia in 1595. In East Asia and the Ottoman Empire, bows stayed in use beside guns much longer.
When and how
Europe, about 1450–1650; Japan, China, Korea and the Ottoman Empire kept bows into the 1700s and 1800s.
How we know
Muster rolls show bows falling and guns rising as a share of troops; England's 1595 order replaced bows with firearms in the trained bands.
Debates and open questions
Contemporaries argued it out: in the 1590s Sir John Smythe defended the longbow and Humphrey Barwick answered for guns. Historians still debate how effective late longbowmen were.
▸Japanese sword (tachi and katana) was overtaken on the battlefield by The gun: arquebus and musketMostly agreed
The connection
Even before guns, Japanese battles were fought mainly with bows and spears; the sword was a sidearm. After matchlocks arrived in 1543, Japan made them in large numbers, and by the 1570s massed gunners and spearmen dominated. The katana became more a mark of samurai status than a main weapon.
When and how
Japan, from 1543 (Tanegashima) through Nagashino (1575) and the Imjin War (1592–98).
How sure are we?
Warriors' wound reports, filed to claim rewards, show arrow and later gunshot wounds far outnumbering sword wounds.
Debates and open questions
How far Japan later 'gave up the gun' under the Tokugawa, as Noel Perrin argued, is disputed; guns stayed in use but production fell.
▸Fire lance: the first gun was the distant ancestor of The gun: arquebus and musketMostly agreed
The connection
The fire lance, a bamboo or paper tube of gunpowder tied to a spear, shot flame and sometimes shrapnel. Over centuries makers switched to metal tubes and loaded a projectile that filled the bore: the first guns. Hand cannon spread west, and adding a stock, trigger and lock produced the arquebus.
When and how
China, from about 950 to the 1200s; metal guns by about 1288; hand guns in Europe by the 1300s; arquebus by about 1475.
How sure are we?
Chinese manuals, a painted silk banner from Dunhuang showing a fire lance, the Heilongjiang hand cannon of about 1288, and Europe's earliest surviving guns.
Debates and open questions
Whether Europe's guns came directly from Chinese designs or were partly reinvented once gunpowder arrived is still debated.
▸Gunpowder and cannon was put in soldiers' hands as The gun: arquebus and musketWell documented
The connection
Early cannon were scaled down into hand guns: simple tubes fired by touching a hot wire or burning match to a hole. In the 1400s gunsmiths added a shoulder stock and a lock that brought the match to the powder when a trigger was pulled, creating the arquebus.
When and how
Europe and the Ottoman Empire, 1300s–1400s; Hussite hand guns in the 1420s; arquebus by about 1475.
How we know
Surviving hand guns and arquebuses, an Austrian manuscript of 1411 showing an early matchlock, and arsenal inventories.
Debates and open questions
Who first added the matchlock, and where, whether in Germany, Italy or the Ottoman lands, is unclear.
▸The gun: arquebus and musket armed the pike-and-shot armies of The military revolution (pike, shot and star forts)Well documented
The connection
Pike-and-shot armies paired blocks of pikemen, who kept cavalry away, with arquebusiers and musketeers who did most of the killing. Spain's tercios perfected the mix. In the 1590s the Dutch drilled musketeers to fire by ranks in rotation, and Sweden's Gustavus Adolphus later used lighter guns and thinner lines.
When and how
Italy and Spain from about 1500; the Dutch Republic in the 1590s; Sweden in the Thirty Years' War, 1630s.
How we know
A 1594 letter by William Louis of Nassau describes volley fire by ranks; drill manuals and muster rolls show the rising share of guns.
Debates and open questions
Whether this was a 'revolution' or slow evolution, and whether Europe was unique, given volley fire in China and Japan, is debated.
▸The gun: arquebus and musket evolved, with the bayonet, into Line infantry, flintlock and bayonetWell documented
The connection
Around 1700 the flintlock replaced the matchlock, and the socket bayonet let a musket also serve as a short pike. Pikemen disappeared. Armies stretched into lines two to four ranks deep to bring every musket to bear, starting the age of line infantry.
When and how
France, England and the Dutch Republic, about 1680–1710; standard by the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714).
How we know
Army regulations record pikes being dropped; the French army, for example, abolished them in 1703.
Debates and open questions
Who invented the socket bayonet is unclear; the French engineer Vauban is often credited, but the evidence is thin.
▸The gun: arquebus and musket armed the conquistadors in the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empiresWell documented
The connection
Cortés landed in 1519 with about 13 arquebusiers among some 500 men; Pizarro's 168 men at Cajamarca had about a dozen guns. They were few and slow, but their noise and smoke caused shock. Steel swords, horses, Native allies and epidemics mattered more.
When and how
Mexico, 1519–1521; Cajamarca, Peru, November 16, 1532.
How we know
Conquistador accounts, such as Bernal Díaz del Castillo's and those of Pizarro's secretaries, list men and weapons.
Debates and open questions
How big a role guns played is debated; many historians stress Native allies, like the Tlaxcalans, and disease as more decisive.
▸Armorers of Milan and Nuremberg tested their plate against, and lost to, The gun: arquebus and musketMostly agreed
The connection
As guns improved, armorers 'proofed' breastplates by shooting them with a pistol or arquebus, leaving the dent as a mark of quality. To stop musket balls, plates had to get thicker and heavier, until armor was too costly and tiring to wear. By the mid-1600s most soldiers had given it up.
When and how
Europe, about 1500–1650; workshops in Milan, Nuremberg, Augsburg and England's Greenwich.
How sure are we?
Surviving breastplates with proof dents, and modern test-firing of period guns at armor, as at Austria's Graz arsenal, show the escalation.
Debates and open questions
How often proof marks were genuine is unclear; some may have been punched in rather than shot.
▸Interchangeable parts and the American armory system began with the locks of The gun: arquebus and musketMostly agreed
The connection
The lock, the trigger and firing mechanism, was the most intricate part of a flintlock musket and the hardest to repair. So the first serious attempts at interchangeability, by Honoré Blanc in France in the 1780s, focused on musket locks. American armories later extended the method to barrels, stocks and whole guns.
When and how
France, 1777–1790s, under the artillery reformer Gribeauval's program; Blanc's 1785 demonstration, seen by Thomas Jefferson.
How sure are we?
Jefferson's 1785 letter home describing Blanc's mixed parts, and French army records studied by historian Ken Alder.
Debates and open questions
Alder argues that politics, not technical failure, ended the French effort; how interchangeable Blanc's locks truly were is also debated.