how to load an ECW matchlock ?

[Karl Helweg]

Hey, wait a minute you Raconteur you, those guys are French. Get them outta the ENGLISH Civil War! Unless, wait a minute, did the Frogs start it as part of The Old Alliance!?

The first part of the ECW was just an extension of the Continental 30 Years War (actually a World War). The Royalists were intermarried across Europe and France came closer to sitting the chaos out than most major countries so had plenty of cousins to recruit.
Nazis? Sherman? Other webforums?
http://www.landsknechts.com/gallery/var/albums/Erhard-Schoen/10.jpg?m=1328534801

 

[robinghewitt]

The first part of the ECW was just an extension of the Continental 30 Years War...

Interesting idea, do you have anything to support that? :hmm:

 

[Karl Helweg]

Just my view of the ECW. They happened at the same time with basically the same weapons and tactics. Superficially the reasons look different until you try and unravel the convoluted "reasons" for the TYW then the English excuses to fight look like they belong on the same list to me. I doubt that the ECW would have happened if the rest of the Continent had not been killing each other. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years'_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Rupert_of_the_Rhine

 

[Alden]

:slap:

Careful Karl, the English, if not the British, like to trace its lineage more to Magna Carta and attribute vox populi.

Personally I too find that an interesting observation and I mean that literally. However, I cannot take a position as my town was founded in 1654, named with an honor towards the 1st Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, and we're still afraid of him. I think we have one of his toes...

Oh, and yes, you popped up on another forum I was on -- small world.

 

[Karl Helweg]

I could not decide where to repost this question so since we are already talking about ECW here:

"I'm listening to the Revolutions Podcast/url] a history podcast covering revolutions in history. The episode I just listened to covered the armies of the first English civil war and right at the end it made a note that the field artillery was pretty much useless but it failed to explain why it was useless. I was hoping some one here could shed some light. Please and thanks."

This was posted on[url] ArmourArchive.org. Any thoughts?

 

[robinghewitt]

the field artillery was pretty much useless but it failed to explain why it was useless.

The field artillery had a problem keeping up with the army. Only the smaller pieces arrived in time for a lot of the battles. There was an agreement that the Rabonets would not be used to pick off officers. A town might hold out under siege until the mortars arrived.

 

[cynthialee]

Logistics failure.

 

[Alden]

That high mobility understood and employed properly, for light art'y Cynthia Lee, was another of Gustavus The Great's innovations. He had few such issues he couldn't manage strategically and tactically...

 

[Wes/Tex]

Logistics failure.

Partially, but you have to remember that cannon/artillery science and technology still had a way to go before they got to the efficiency of 100 years later in time. They did have light cannons, in fact the Swedish army had worked out a really light version wrapped in leather but it never worked as well as later iron & steel technology would allow. It was sort of in-between period in the effective use vs. mobility aspects in artillery history.

 

[Alden]

I don't think it was the art'y technology in and of itself as much as it was the evolution and advancement of core military doctine in the early-mid 17th C. that Gustavus Adolphus developed and employed. In fact I know it wasn't.

He married the functions of a changed infantry, shock and awe cavalry, supporting tactical artillery, and supply. He created the flying battery for all intent and purpose -- a foundation of light field art'y was a key element of his doing that others were still trying to wrap their little heads around and learn in Europe a century, and again in two, and again three later...

 

[Wes/Tex]

There certainly is a lot of learning and forgetting in the military, as well as civilian, world. I've told people that history is like a big time-based carrousel but we don't usually recognize the brass ring as we go by!

 

[Alden]

Quite true if you can look at much from a high level and aren't too close to it.

The Nazis thought they invented "Blitzkrieg." Well, the technology changed but maybe Harold Godwinson did though he wasn't successful in the end. Or was it Genghis and Kublai Khans? Gustavus The Great did for sure! Washington? Perhaps Napolean too. Can we say Stonewall and Sherman? Billy Mitchell, Rommel (who was never a Nazi Party member), Patton, Schwarzkopf...

 

[Darto]

A battle fought over claim of first discovery...?

 

[Darto]

De Gehyn's book has been republished under more than one name, each by different publishers. Usually a good hardback copy on Amazon for under $5, if you search around to find all versions...


Exercise of Armes
Renaissance Drill Book

40 illustrated steps for loading musket, 40 different ones for caliver, 30 more for the pike.

It is worth the price to see the pike handled by the numbers...

 

[RAEDWALD]

I'm sure an email to one of the ECW reenactment groups in the UK (eg Sealed Knot) will give their loading methods.

The ECW began as amateurs guided by a few professionals with continental war experience but ended with Parliaments professional disciplined and experienced New Modelled Army. It was a serious business. The ECW killed more of the English population, proportionately, than any other war.

I compare it with WW1 where my grandfather began in 1914 with the BEF seeing French curassiers charging with swords wearing shiny breastplates and helmets through to 1918 when he saw all arms assaults with tanks, radios, artillery FACs and air support.

The military ECW practice was to load the ball loose (ie straight on top of the powder with no wadding) and keep the muzzle up until firing; and yes balls did roll down the barrel. Civilian, or slower firing often used tow or dry grass but no wadding ever appears in any period drills. The wide brimmed hat became a musketeers fashion to keep the pan and match dry. When flintlocks became the norm the brims began to be folded up out of the way. Hence the tricorn and bicorn hats of the 18th century.

Personally I would not copy the period drills with ball. Especially priming and then loading with a live glowing match in one hand. Civilian hunting use was with tow wadding above and below (or some substitute) the ball and the match should be in a safe container away from the gun until the piece is loaded and primed. The period drills were for peasants unused to mechanical mechanisms to use when terrified and the inevitable accidents accepted as part of war.

 

[Alden]

Well, to be brief I'll only say that turned rim hats were a fashion that had nothing to do with flintlocks. A "rifleman's cock" may have been, meaning you wear the point of a fold in your tricorn over your left eye to put a flat on that side so you can shoulder your gun without knocking the hat off, but that's about it.

Now the wristwatch was a military-started fad and personally I don't think it's gonna last...

 

[RAEDWALD]

We will have to disagree on military hat fashion history though I will agree that it was a mark of the pilgrim returning from Compostela to turn up the front brim to display the scallop shell of St. James from medieval times.

 

[RAEDWALD]

Just as an addendum: cartridge boxes (commonly called 'patrons') were often used from the 16th century for perhaps 7 or 9 paper cartridges and were similar to the old crossbow bolt quivers.

ECW siege records show payments for paper for making cartridges so it would not be inappropriate to use paper cartridges which form a wadding securing the ball. I am not aware of cartridge boxes being routinely issued to ECW musketeers in the field so it may have been easier for the logistics to issue powder and ball from dry barrels before battle than trust the untrained peasants to keep paper cartridges dry.

 

[Alden]

Yulzari;
The flintlock, in one form or another, has basically been the longest-mainly-used firing mechanism for a gun. What does the lock have to do with the shape of a hat? Not just being contemporaries at some point, or fashion following military pomp, but the flintlock itself INFLUENCING the shape of the tricorner hat? Sorry -- not buying it. Any objective cites for that!?

Interestingly, soldiers' brims generally became larger and larger to protect matchcord from rain back in the day...

 

[RAEDWALD]

As you say, the soldiers hat brim grew to protect the match. When the flintlock became common the brim remained on their hats but no longer needed to protect a match. Fashions to put the brim out of the way could be tolerated. Later we see the brim pretty well disappearing.

Military fashions persist despite technology changes. The Household Cavalry even now wear the Mongol horse tail decorations which probably tells you all you need to know about donkey wallopers (I speak as an ex Yeomanry Sergeant and brother of a Lancer).

However, returning to the thread, I hope Land Pattern feels he has had some guidance on loading an ECW matchlock. Safety is more important than authenticity.