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For Europe, probably between 1500-1520. The time between 1510-1520 has laws in the HRE limiting concealable self igniting fire arms. There are also two surviving pistols from this period:
https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-40782.html
This one is dated earlier, but the webpage is giving me a hard time:
Radschlosspistole (W2035) | Objektkatalog
An account written by Da Porto in 1522, describes Venetian cavalry using guns that could be pistols in a 1509 cavalry engagement.
https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-40782.html
This one is dated earlier, but the webpage is giving me a hard time:
Radschlosspistole (W2035) | Objektkatalog
An account written by Da Porto in 1522, describes Venetian cavalry using guns that could be pistols in a 1509 cavalry engagement.
What’s a pistol?
Sounds smart but met seriously. Many of the first hand cannons had very short barrels and short stocks ( tillers) while some were long. While some early pistols were carbine length.
It’s a yellow/green question in early guns.
Sounds smart but met seriously. Many of the first hand cannons had very short barrels and short stocks ( tillers) while some were long. While some early pistols were carbine length.
It’s a yellow/green question in early guns.
That is a good point. For a modern person looking back, its probably fair to define it as something along the lines of "self igniting and shot with one hand". It is all vague though because pistols frequently had 20+ inch barrels (which you alluded to) and grips that could be used as cheek stocks.
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I'm reading this book "20 Years After", by Alexandre Dumas. It is his follow up to "The Three Musketeers" and takes place in the 1400's but refers to the musketeers having pistols in holsters over the pommel of their saddle. I was pretty sure such things didn't exist at that time but just wanted to make sure. I think the Flintlock wasn't invented until the early 1600's and without that lock, it seems a pistol would be impossible.
The first pistols were wheellocks. There are matchlock pistols in Japan and India, but no evidence they existed in Europe.
While there is evidence they existed since the second decade of the 1500s, pistol armed cavalry came into prominence in the second half of the 1500s, with cavalry in the middle of the century mostly only having 1 pistol.
There would not have been musketeers in the 1400s either. The matchlock musket was invented in the early/mid 1500s. Arquebuses did exist in the late 1400s, though.
It is hard to find evidence of gun armed cavalry in the 1400s, but something like this probably existed:
I just reread your comment. I thought the Three Musketeers takes place in the 1600s? The real life unit that served as inspiration (Musketeer of the Guard) is from the early 1600s, and the characters are based on veterans from the Franco-Dutch war, which happened in the 1670s.
Recall that Milady goes to England to assassinate Bunkingham. And much revolves around the Hugonought rebellion. This is a seventeenth century story, Queen Anne, Louis the fourteenth, Richlieu
It happens. It was a valid question because it was written 200 years after its subject period and the 1800s weren't exactly a high point for vigorous historical research.
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