It is difficult to know where to start an account of the early history
of shooting. The long-bow was used in deer shooting, as also was the
cross-bow, and if we may believe the early artists—and I do not see why
we should—deer running before hounds and horses were shot from the
saddle with the cross-bow, and the arrow went in behind the neck and out
at the throat. The artists of old were obviously as imaginative as Royal
Academicians when it came to sport. For instance, nearly every picture
of a woodcock or snipe on the wing, including one of J. W. M. Turner’s,
puts the beak of the bird sticking out in front, on the principle of
“follow your nose”; but every woodcock and snipe treats even Turner with
contempt, and hangs its beak in spite of the greatest master of English
landscape. Mr. Thorburn makes no such mistake, but even he has made a
couple of cock partridges court one another; and it is really very
difficult to believe in the accuracy of artists such as the delineators
of the Bayeux Tapestry, where five men may be seen applauding Harold’s
coronation and with only eight legs between them, most of them clearly
disconnected with the men.
When, therefore, we see drawings of the fourteenth and fifteenth century
people engaged in smiting down flying birds with an arrow from a
cross-bow, we may be permitted to believe that an ideal has been drawn,
and that most of those who tried to kill birds in flight in time learnt
to prefer the falcon or the net. Even stricken deer that the Middle Ages
artists show us shot through the neck from behind must have had totally
different habits from their present-day relatives, because it is not the
habit of pursued deer to hold up the neck but to carry it horizontally
at such times, so that the back-to-throat arrow would be possible only
from above.
It is less difficult to believe the writing in the _Master of the Game_
and its French original than to believe the pictures with which the
latter was adorned—probably long afterwards, by someone who had not the
authority of the author.
Artists were not then sportsmen, but in Assyria they obviously were so.
In the British Museum room devoted to that ancient kingdom, in low
relief may be seen much that is looked for in vain in the technically
superior sculpture of the classic periods of Greece and Rome. That is to
say, the actual feelings and characters of the beasts are conveyed in
the outlines. The horses were obviously of precisely the same character
as the arabs and thoroughbreds of to-day. They are not obstinate brutes,
little better than mules, like the ponies of the Parthenon, which all
lay back their ears _at_ their masters, but, on the contrary, the
Assyrians are generous, high-spirited beasts that fight _with_ their
masters, pursue in spirit with them, and fight with ears laid back only
when they are face to face with a lion, and going to meet him. The
artists saw it all, or they would have blundered in the expression of
the horse, which is mostly in his ears, but they never blundered. Surely
this was the first shooting recorded, and whether it was done by bow and
arrow or by hurling the dart matters nothing. It is the most ancient and
the most authentic of all the ancient records of sport. If it were
untrue, it would be the most contemptible, because the most flattering
art. But it bears internal evidence of its own truth, and that the
country of Nimrod produced mighty hunters, for which there is also
Biblical evidence; no race or nation of sportsmen has since been able to
boast similar sportsmanship. For man and horse to face a charging lion
and kill him with a spear, or dart, is to place sportsmanship before
human life; and even David, who killed a lion and a bear, did not do
that, but merely defended his flocks, probably in the only way open to
him. He was a mighty shepherd and a mighty king, but not a “mighty
hunter,” and “no sportsman,” as the story of the one ewe lamb proved.
It is a long jump from Nimrod to the hunting in the New Forest, which
was obviously as much shooting as hunting, when Rufus was killed by an
arrow, meant, or not meant, for a hart. Whether there ever were outlaws
named Robin Hood and Little John does not matter, because fiction is
always based on fact, or it does not live a day. The fiction or fact of
the great shooting of the king’s deer by these outlaws has lived seven
hundred years, and it is more easy to believe that there were many
generations of such poachers and highwaymen than that there were none at
all. The highest office in the land was then one of robbery, and it is a
poor king who has not some subjects who will offer him the sincerest
form of flattery, namely imitation.
Gunpowder is said to have been invented in China many years before it
was re-invented in Europe. We are apt to marvel that no explosive was
made use of before, but learning was very much in the hands of the
priests at a time when the latter class was especially sincere, and when
the people were full of superstition or belief. It may be, then, that
the first discoverers of gunpowder for conscience’ sake made no use of
what must have appeared to be an invention of the Devil. Such inventors,
if there were any, might have been the more disposed to this course
because the stuff was clearly as destructive to its users as to an
enemy, until the building of guns had progressed for many years.
It is not quite certain in which battle was first employed gunpowder—a
fact which indicates that it did not do much for its side. It appears to
have been the guns that were weak, not so much the powder, which was
probably very much the same when used by Henry VIII. as black powder is
to-day.
It is, moreover, not certain that guns were any better at Waterloo than
they had been in the time of Elizabeth. The reason for this was the want
of good metal. It is a known fact that thickness of metal becomes
useless after a certain point is reached, so that iron and brass guns
could not be made to take enormous charges of powder and heavy shot
without bursting. This might have been done by making them very long and
using a slow burning powder, but that way out never seems to have been
thought of until recently. The reason modern big guns will take such
enormous pressure as the big charges behind heavy shells give, is,
first, that they are made of steel, and second, because the tension on
the steel internally and externally is equalised by a very clever
method. The guns are built up by being bound in wire in a heated state,
so that when this wire cools it contracts the internal tube as it
contracts itself. This being the case, when an explosion takes place in
the finished gun, it has to overcome the wire contraction on the outside
of the gun before the internal tube can begin to expand beyond its
natural size. That is how a thickness of metal is made serviceable, and
prevents a bursting of the internal surface before the external bigger
surface is strained. In other words, the pressure is resisted equally
all through the thickness of the walls of the barrel. This has entirely
revolutionised big gunnery during the last thirty years, and has enabled
ships of war to hurl 800 lb. shells through the armour of enemies who
are hull down beyond the horizon.
Gunpowder was for centuries used in war before it was much used in
sport. The reason for this was that there was no good method of letting
off a sporting weapon. To apply a match to a touch-hole obviously took a
good deal of time, and besides gave warning to the game, so that,
although shooting flying game had been at least an ambition in the days
of the cross-bow, shooting the game upon the ground with “hail shot” was
practised for many years before anyone attempted to kill flying game
with shot guns. It is curious that when this practice was in vogue dogs
were taught either to point or to circle their game at their masters’
pleasure. This circling had the effect of indicating the exact position
of the crouching covey, and at the same time of preventing the birds
running away from the shooter. A dog that would “circle” was held in
much more esteem than one that would only point, but one that would do
both was far the most highly valued. The shooter had to see the birds on
the ground before he could bring his lumbering weapon to bear, and begin
to let it off. This probably continued long after the wheel-lock was
invented, in 1515 A.D.
The flint and steel method of ignition enabled the shot gun to be used
on flying game, but the flint and steel came in somewhere about the year
1600, and shooting flying game did not become general until after 1700
A.D.
Meantime there had been royal prohibitions in this country, as well as
in France, against the use of hail-shot, and it can well be understood,
at a time when shooting at coveys on the ground was considered no breach
of sporting etiquette, that some restraint became necessary. Before the
use of the flint and steel, the heavier weapons were employed by using
for them a stand to rest the muzzle upon, and this was made necessary,
not so much by reason of the weight as by the uncertainty of the precise
moment of the explosion, and the expediency of keeping the weapon
“trained” on the object until the powder chose to catch fire and
explode.
Before the invention of the flint and steel, the value of rifling had
been discovered. There is a doubt whether the discovery is due to the
late fifteenth or the early sixteenth century, but at any rate it was
well known on the Continent about 1540 A.D. There are rifled barrels at
Zürich arsenal that have been there since 1544. The most ancient in this
country was brought from Hungary in 1848, and bears the date 1547. There
has been an idea that the first grooves in weapons were not spiralled
but straight, but this does not seem to be correct, as all the most
ancient grooved weapons known are spirals of more or less rapid turn.
Some of them have a variation of twist within themselves. There have
been many straight grooved weapons, but the object of them is lost. It
has been suggested that they were used for shot, but they could have had
no advantage over smooth bores for that purpose, and no advantage over
muskets for ball. Nevertheless, the science of ballistics was not
generally understood when they were made, and probably a rifled shot gun
would have been attractive, as an advertisement, when it was known that
a rifle was accurate with ball, and when the reason of its accuracy was
unknown to most people.
Although it was at once recognised that the rifle was far more accurate
than the smooth-bore musket, nevertheless three hundred years after the
invention of the former it had not come into use for the British Army,
and this in spite of the work done with it by the American
sharp-shooters in the War of Independence. Even long after Waterloo, the
Duke of Wellington was against arming the soldiers with the rifle, and
yet he, and every authority, knew of its infinite superiority as a
weapon of precision. The reason for this was very easy to understand.
The muzzle-loading rifle was no more accurate than the smooth bore
unless its ball fitted close and took the grooving. In order that it
should do this it had to be forced down the muzzle by means of a stiff
ramrod and a wooden mallet. This operation took too much time for war
purposes, and it was generally considered that a musket could be used
five times for once of the rifle. This was the disadvantage that did not
really totally disappear until modern breech-loading was invented,
although many attempts were made to get over the difficulty in various
ways. One of the principal of these was the screwing of the trigger
guard into the barrel, in a hole big enough to take the proper ball for
the bore; then the barrel was charged from the muzzle, and loaded with
the bullet afterwards from the hole in the breech. This was a clumsy
makeshift, which cut away nearly half the barrel at that point, and this
the metal of the day was ill able to stand. The other plan was the
adoption of the principle of the expanding bullet. The best form of this
bullet was that one with a hollowing out behind. This hollow, of course,
admitted either the powder or the powder-gas, which expanded the rear
portion of the bullet, and forced it into the grooves at the same time
as it also forced it forward.
It is extraordinary to consider that the rifle had existed for three
centuries and a half before this plan became effective, and made the
rifle a much superior weapon to the musket. If any country had
discovered it at the time of Marlborough or Wellington, it would have
made that country master of Europe, just as the first use of the
breech-loader as a military arm made Prussia and her needle gun
invincible, until other nations also armed themselves with the
breech-loader.
It has often been said that “vile saltpetre” was the deathblow to
chivalry. That was not so; the long-bow and the cross-bow had before
this made Jack as good as his master, and as a matter of fact the bow
was much more highly valued up to the reign of Elizabeth than the gun
was.
Nevertheless, one French writer attributes the loss of the battle of
Crecy to the English use of guns, and he goes on to show that, although
the French had used cannon in the sieges of castles, they would not
employ them against men. The fact that gunpowder was known in Europe
long before Crecy, and is _said_ to have been used by the followers of
Mahomet, and by the defenders of India against Alexander the Great, goes
to support the French author’s views, that chivalry forbade the use of
such a method of warfare.
This is no unsupported view, for Pope Innocent III. forbade the use even
of the cross-bow against Christian enemies, but permitted it against
Infidels. It was even said that Richard I. was killed by a shot from a
cross-bow because he had disregarded the Pope’s Bull in the use of the
weapon. This common belief well indicates the superstition, or religion,
of the people, and is ample to account for the very slow growth of the
use of gunpowder up to the time of Agincourt, which was obviously won,
like the Black Prince’s victories over France, by the English long-bow;
and, in the winning, destroyed the dying embers of the spirit of
chivalry. That gunpowder did not do this may be gathered from the fact
that Sir John Smyth, a general of Elizabeth’s army, declared he would
take 10,000 bowmen against 20,000 armed with the match-lock of that
period.
More than this, a match was made at Pacton Green, in Cumberland, as
lately as 1792 with the bow against the gun, probably the Brown Bess, to
test the two for warlike purposes at 100 yards range, and the bow won
easily.
General military opinion had then gone against the bow, but obviously
there was not much in it, for the rifle was only supplied to the rifle
brigade, and not to the general army.
The latter was first armed with the rifle at the time of the Crimea,
when the Minie rifle was adopted. A well-tempered sharp arrow could cut
through armour as well as the slow bullets from hand guns, but armour
remained of some use against both, and it only disappeared as big guns
came into general use in the field, which was long after they had been
used in and against Norman castles and town walls.
Perhaps, with the exception of the Assyrians and the ancient Egyptians,
the most ancient warriors were a boasting, cowardly lot, like the
leading gentlemen of Homer, and the still more cowardly understudies who
stood still to watch while their chiefs were engaged in combat. Even
Goliath advanced to single combat, and his side never fought at all when
David’s shooting instrument went true. It is not, however, on record
that Goliath had a shooting instrument, and it may fairly be urged that
this early knight intended to bar shooting, and was a true forerunner of
the knights of the Middle Ages, who also attempted to bar shooting by
the aid of Pope Innocent III. Passing over those ancient Greek and
Israelitish times to the classic period of Greece and Rome, when battles
were fought by the whole of the armies engaging, we find that then
shooting in any form had very little to do with results. That is to say,
the bow and arrow, which became so deadly in the Plantagenet and
Lancastrian wars in France, were not relied upon. The reason seems to
have been that the classic Greek soldier with armour and target was
pretty secure against the arrow, but the knight’s horse in the Middle
Ages was not, and could not be made so. Incidentally, therefore, it is
fair to assume that war had again degenerated, by means of chivalry, to
the single combat championship stage, and that the first side to make
the whole army fight won the day, as the British archers won it for the
Black Prince, much to the disgust, as well as the defeat, of the French
knights.
Until 1515, or thereabouts, when the wheel-lock was invented, the gun
could only be used with a match-lock of kinds, and the circling pointer
was very much in demand to indicate the exact position of the covey. The
sportsman trained his hail-shot loaded gun on the spot and let it off.
This form of sport became possible almost as soon as gunpowder was
invented, but there is no record of it until much later, when it had
become so destructive to game as to be forbidden by edict. Then the
flint and steel lock was introduced, so that no sooner had the circling
dog come to perfection than he found his business gone, for he was not
wanted for the shooter of flying game, at a time when the latter sat
well enough not only for the bad marksman, but also for the net as well.
There is a picture of a deer drive, dated 1644, in De Espinar’s book,
where the sportsman has a heavy gun in a movable rest, but what kind of
boring and ignition were employed is not to be discovered. It is
possible, however, that both rifling and the flint and steel were
employed, for they must have been very tame deer that would have
remained in one position long enough, in a drive, to have been done to
death by means of any device for quickening up the match-lock. Indeed,
the long-bow would have been much the more deadly shooting instrument.
In modern times the long-bow has become a toy, but, even as such, shows
itself capable of more accuracy than the musket had. That flying shots
were not impossible with either the long-bow or cross-bow has often been
proved, and there is one well-known instance where a swallow on the wing
was pierced by an arrow, and remained upon it about half-way down the
shaft. But when the arrow was a weapon of war the minimum distance for
practice for a man was 220 yards, and the flight of an arrow then was
very far beyond the powers of the toy bow now used in the pretty game of
archery.
The author has practised with both cross-bow and long-bow. As a boy he
has had many a shot at a flying pheasant with the former, and although
he never hit one, that was probably only because the art of building
cross-bows died with those who had need of them.
It is known as a matter of fact that gun metal was very poor stuff when
the early cannons were made, and it can be gathered that powder was not
of the best, as the proportions by weight of shot to powder were for the
biggest cannon as two of shot is to one of powder, and for the smallest
bores as ½ lb. of shot is to ¾ lb. of powder, and to shoot this 8 oz. of
shot the weight of gun required was 300 lbs., and the bore 1 inch, or
about five times as much weight as we should require now for that weight
of shot, for which we should not use ¾ lb. of powder, but a couple of
ounces would be ample. The only proportions of powder and shot at all
like these that have been used in modern days are in some of the
gun-proving charges and loads, where there was a good deal of windage
between the ball and the walls of the barrel, and this is a fault in
economy that the Middle Age gunners were compelled to adopt, and it
probably accounts to some extent for their amazing charges of powder for
the weights of shot employed, so that the powder was probably a good
deal better than these proportions suggest, and the metal of the guns a
good deal worse.