How about an 8-shot Chinese ‘hand cannon’ or hand gonne from the 15th century Ming Dynasty.
No, I’ve NOT shot this one. Each chamber was fired individually.
No, I’ve NOT shot this one. Each chamber was fired individually.
If it’s viewed as a replacement for a crossbow, it has a higher rate of fire and less unwieldy than the heaviest crossbows.The large socket and goes on a tiller, otherwise a staff or a long pike. I bet it was real heavy to wield in use. Each chamber is fired individually, many times by a second person so that the first person could hold and aim, while the second person would ignite it.
I have to believe that this was predominantly a defensive weapon, think like troops storming a fortification or palace and inside you can’t really wield a bow & arrow and you’re trying to rush down a hallway. A 2-person team at the end of the hallway could really stop an attack, never mind the“shock & awe affect” if they had never faced firearms in battle.
When arms like this were fielded in Europe, I think the most I’ve seen offhand has been 4 barrels, but most were individual barrels so that they could be wielded and aimed better. And after being shot, you still had a defensive pike/staff to use, with some type of steel pommel or point on the other end.
Recall that even in the age of musketeers, typically there would be a few pikemen around them to protect those ranks, especially from calvary charges.
Congrats! These guys fired one in a video:
i think they made some wild assumptions on the use of caps, but hey, it worked!Yeah but, Percussion caps on something claiming to be 15th century?
In Europe, they did not use fuses. The fuses are a modern facsimile to the slow burn of serpentine powder in the touch holeOne wonders if in practice they inserted three fuses of varying lengths and lit them all at once before "aiming" before each chamber went off.
Well simple, that's because ... they don't at all. Don't let the curved design fool you, that is more of a strucural component than astestics, done so to join the large chambered 'mug' (containing multiple barrrels) to the one larger socket that's placed on a staff or remnant pike.No way are you getting the charges to loop down a curved "barrel";
Less they made 1,000s ... LOL! Not too many extant examples exist outside of museums or private collections. Sometimes we see 2-shot gonnes added to halberds or battle axes, but those were more so the "one off" examples.... if anything, it's a 'one off' that never 'caught on' ...
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