"Men and Hunting Guns in Eighteenth-Century France"

Reformation, 2008

It is well known, to all who are interested on the history of firearms in Europe, that information on the earliest employment of guns and gun powder is scarce, of uncertain interpretation and sometimes contradictory. The studies on the subject, up to this moment relatively few, do not seems to be able to furnish completely unequivocal indications. The problems related to this domain of investigation are enormous: an accurate idea is given by Bert S. Hall 1 in the paragraph devoted to Problems with the History of Firearms. 'Anyone approaching the early history of explosives and firearms should do so with a sense of caution verging on outright trepidation. Few subjects have lent themselves to such misunderstanding as the early history of gunpowder, and few have tempted historians into such flights of fancy in the search for answers.'

1990

This study is the outgrowth of a project which I began in 1987 for Colonial National Historical Park to catalog the artifactual material excavated on Jamestown Island between the early 1930's and late 1950's. Established in 1607, Jamestown is the site of the earliest permanent English settlement in North America, and the objects recovered from these grounds reflect the range of materials produced and traded throughout Europe in the seventeenth century. A substantial number of early gunlock parts are contained in the Jamestown Collection, including all of the major ignition systems in use in the seventeenth century: wheellocks, miquelet locks, snaphaunces, matchlocks, English-locks, and flintlocks. Once I started cataloging the firearms assemblage I noticed that many parts previously had been misinterpreted providing a false picture of the type of weaponry in use. This is especially true of snaphaunces, most of which are represented by nothing more than lockplates which had formerly been recorded as wheel-locks. The classification errors of the Jamestown locks led Harold Peterson to state in his much read and cited Arms and Armor of Colonial America ". .. there are (at Jamestown) fewer remnants of snaphaunces than any other firearm used in colonial America" (Peterson 1965:27). To the contrary, my cataloging project revealed that there are more fragments of snaphaunce firearms at Jamestown than any other type. (These artifacts are enumerated in Appendix A .) The role of the snaphaunce in the seventeenth century has been understated and misrepresented as a result of this type of misinformation finding its way into the literature. These inaccurate data are used repeatedly by scholars in the field of English firearms as evidence to build the history and development of ignition systems during the seventeenth century. Not only are these researchers working on assumptions about the archaeological record that are incorrect, but they often substantiate their evidence using extant museum examples which, in many cases have lost historical context. This has resulted in as many typologies as there are researchers and a confusing dating sequence for the appearance of these early arms. My insights during this study of firearms have been aided by the fact that I started by analyzing archaeological examples which, by their nature, are unconsciously-preserved links to the past. While they may reflect the "repairs, v renewals, or conversions naturally found on weapons that have been in continual service over a long period during which various systems of lock have been introduced1 1 (Jackson and Whitelaw:77), the archaeologically-retrieved gun parts have not been deliberately altered to deceive the collector or to enhance their worth. Firearms that have survived in museum collections usually owe that survival to the fact that they are atypical in some way. Uncommon arms can be exquisite works of art constructed for a king or "state of the art" fowling pieces designed for wealthy recreational huntsmen. Or they can be just the opposite-groups of weapons stored away on dusty shelves, considered unworthy of refurbishing or modernization and enduring from their perceived insignificance; but, usually, these "worn-out and obsolete guns were like old shoes thrown away" (Mayer: 5). The value of archaeology as a source to an unbiased view to the past has been largely overlooked by firearms historians and collectors. It is hoped that this study may reawaken an appreciation of the untapped information residing in the rows of shelves and cabinets full of artifacts which are being maintained by federal and state agencies, historical societies, and preservation groups. Use of these resources helps justify the costs of their storage and curation and thereby guarantees their survival. A result all who are interested in material culture of the past should applaud. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to the following persons who assisted me in my research and helped make this thesis possible: to James Haskett, Assistant Superintendent, Historical Interpretation and Preservation, Colonial National Historical Park for his interest and enthusiasm for the subject that enabled many beneficial things to happen; to the following museum curators who permitted me to study and photograph guns and gunlocks in their collections:

Bulletin of the American Society of Arms Collectors , 2019

The fully-armoured knight is often cast as the fundamental adversary of emergent gunpowder weaponry in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The respective users of the two opposed technologies are viewed as bitter adversaries locked in a class war- the aristocratic knight with his horse and armour vs. the common man with his gun. The advent of the latter has been viewed as the cause of the immediate decline and rapid obsolescence of the former. In reality, it was the knights and men-at-arms themselves who were among the first fighting men to adopt firearms in a meaningful way. Moreover, many of the key developments in early firearms technology were driven by the needs of armoured cavalry, not infantry. The actual history of the relationship between armour and gunpowder weapons is a fascinating way of exploring deeper principles- how fiction can easily become intertwined with or mistaken for reality, how views of morality and justice can be read into technological development, and how, when asked to choose between the truth and a good story, we usually print the story.

Studies in Philology, 2017

Journal of World History, 2004

French History, 2007

Studies in Philology, 2018

This second part of a two-part essay continues to place the chivalric romance, both as a print and performance genre, more firmly in the context of Renaissance England's contemporaneous gunpowder revolution. Where part I (see vol. 114.3 [2017]) focused on the romance tradition's overarching attempts in the sixteenth century to evade gunpowder technology, part II attends to the ways in which, in the seventeenth century, that tradition came increasingly to make space for it. Beginning with the infamous Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which resulted in an outpouring of narratives that conveyed and capitalized on the language of artillery, the essay then traces powder's textual presence in-and, on occasion, its shrewd elision from-the romance tradition as composed for the popular stage, the domestic arena, and the royal court. It ends with an examination of how that tradition infused the news coverage of the artillery-laden civil wars, while likewise driving the genre into satirized retreat. [W]e vainly accuse the fury of Gunnes, and the new inventions of death; 'tis in the power of every hand to destroy us, and wee are beholding unto every one we meete he doth not kill us.-Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1643) Why should we not laugh and be jolly? / Since all the World now is grown mad.-Alexander Brome, "The Merry goodfellow" (1662)1

Art History, 2019

Historical Social Research, 2004

Abstract: The article analyzes game hunting in eighteenth century Europe as an activity that connected the elite's culture, agrarian society, and the natural environment. Early modern hunting was a highly regulated form of using landscapes and other natural resources. ...