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Flint's Lock

Written by Grantville Firearms Roundtable

In 1633 Eric Flint and David Weber give us our first glimpse at the type of firearm Grantville introduced to arm its allies. Many fans of the series were surprised that more advanced weaponry was not produced. To better understand why a muzzle loading flintlock rifle was chosen, rather than the pet design of every fan, requires a look at many problems faced by the Grantvillers and their understanding of those problems. What weapons would they face on a 1633 battlefield? What materials were available? What thought might have gone into developing the features that are to be found on the weapon now called the SRG?

To understand the reasoning behind the adoption of a flintlock rifle, when other designs are available, requires starting with a brief discussion of the weaponry arrayed against Grantville when the town was dropped into the middle of the Thirty Years' War.

Most of the European army units had more men armed with pikes, long wooden poles with metal blades on the end, than men armed with firearms. These units were "Pike Heavy." The ratio of pikes to muskets was in flux and some units might have had as few as one pike per musket, but others might have had as many as four pikes to one musket.

The range of the pikes was the length of the pikes. The pikes served to keep mounted troops from riding down troops armed with muskets and to keep skirmishers armed with blades out of the musket ranks. The pikes tended to be organized into large square or rectangular formations and smaller squares of musket-armed men formed to either side. When threatened by a cavalry or dismounted charge, the musketeers retreated within the pike squares.

This is necessary because the musket of this time has a very low rate of fire and a very short effective range.

The matchlock musket is the most common firearm on the battlefield facing the Americans in 1632. A "lock" in firearms terminology was the system that ignited the gunpowder. Locks may actually have been associated with locksmiths. A gun lock had as a major component a flat metal plate with holes bored in it for the passage of small metal parts and bore some vague resemblance to door locks of the time. Locks might be described as the trigger mechanism in modern terms. Other types of ignition systems existed, but the matchlock is far and away the most common. A matchlock system used a piece of smoldering cloth cord to ignite the priming charge of a musket. The cord was soaked in a solution of saltpeter and allowed to dry. This cord then burned when lit, with little danger of going out. In small arms, this burning cord was called "Slow Match." A matchlock musket without slow match or some other source of flame was merely a clumsy club.

The matchlock action held the burning cord on an arm that was lowered into a small cup on the side of the barrel near the closed end called the priming pan of the musket. A hole from the priming pan led inside the barrel to the main propelling charge. This priming pan was filled partially with a fine grain of gunpowder and when the match was applied, a small explosion occurred. Some of the hot gases from the explosion of the "primer" flashed through the hole in the barrel and set off the main charge, which then launched the bullet on its way.

The bullet was usually a round lead ball. In 1632, muskets in the hands of infantry could range from .52 caliber (.52 inches) to over .80 caliber or 13 to 22mm in diameter. The muskets were smooth bore and the balls were undersized so as to drop easily down the barrel. The diameter of the barrel or size of the round lead ball were often expressed as "bore" in the 1600s. This was the number of round lead balls that fit the gun that are necessary to make one pound. Roughly speaking a 28 bore was .58 caliber, a 20 bore was a .62 caliber, a 16 bore was a .68 caliber, and a 12 bore was about .72 caliber. Those measurements tended not to be exact.

Most of the military muskets of 1632 weighed between twelve and sixteen pounds. There was some move to standardization, but guns of different lock type, length, weight, and caliber could be found in the same formation of most armies.

The musketeer wore premeasured charges of gunpowder in twelve or thirteen wooden bottles, often called "cartouches," on a bandoleer worn over one shoulder and across to the other hip. The cartouches hung on cords and swung about as he moved, reportedly clacking together and making a racket. He also carried a powder horn to prime his musket with, and a powder measure he could make more loads of powder with or reload his cartouche with, in the unlikely event that the battle progressed beyond thirteen shots. Although muskets were lighter in 1632 than they were only a few decades earlier, he might very well have carried a stick with something like an oar lock on the end to steady his weapon while he pointed it. This steady was often metal-clad near the ends and might feature a stub blade on the end resting on the ground to act as a short jabbing spear in case the pike men failed at their mission. He might also carry a rapier, or short sword, or large dagger, or some combination of such cutting and stabbing weapons. He also needed a ramrod that was most likely carried on the musket by 1632, but might be carried separately.

To load his musket, he removed the burning match from the holder and placed it someplace handy, like his hatband. Next he placed the butt of the weapon on the ground and held it by its muzzle end in one hand. He then pulled one of the cartouches from his bandoleer and poured this powder down the barrel of his musket. Next he reached into a pouch and pulled out a lead bullet, which he dropped down the barrel on top of the powder. He used a ramrod to force the ball down on the powder to compress the powder and to ensure that there was no airspace between the powder and bullet. When in a big hurry, he might have simply dropped the bullet down the barrel and pounded the butt of the musket on the ground and hoped the ball seated itself via inertia. He risked damaging his musket and himself by doing so, for an airspace between powder and bullet could be trouble, but it might have seemed less of a threat than the approaching enemy. No patch or wadding was generally used. Now the gun was raised and set upon the steady. The powder horn was used to prime the pan of the musket and a small cover was shut over the pan. The burning slow match was recovered, the ash flicked from the end, the coal blown on to be sure it was good and hot and it was placed back in the jaws of the match holder. When ready to fire, the pan cover was opened and the match lowered into the pan.

Gustavus Adolphus had recently improved this system when Grantville arrived in the seventeenth century. Many of his musketeers on his campaign in Germany had adopted paper-wrapped cartridges. Both the Dutch and the Poles claim to have originated this system, but it was not yet common in other armies. The powder, and in some cases the ball, are wrapped in a sheet of paper rolled into a tube. The soldier could carry twenty or even thirty of those paper cartridges in a pouch rather than the cumbersome and noisy wooden cartouches on a bandoleer. To use the paper cartridges, the end without the bullet was bitten open and the powder poured down the barrel. The bullet was then taken from the pouch or, if it was packaged in the paper cartridge, was squeezed from the cartridge and dropped down the barrel by itself or with the paper, and was then forced down into contact with the powder by the ramrod. Some of Gustavus' men figured out that one could prime the pan by pouring a bit of the powder from the paper cartridge into it and closing the cover before loading the main charge and bullet, slightly increasing their rate of fire.

All those activities involved in loading took a good bit of time. Around one minute between shots would have been considered fast shooting. Each musket produced a huge cloud of smoke when it fired. Musketeers were arrayed in ranks and each rank fired all together on order in a volley. This allowed the entire rank to see what they were shooting at. Most military muskets had only a simple front sight, much like is common on a modern shotgun. The musket was merely pointed at its intended victim rather than carefully aimed.

There are variations in the locks. Many were a simple S-shaped lever that, depending on the design, one either pulled or pushed away to lower that burning cord into the priming pan. Some were spring-loaded with a mechanical release, a trigger, to allow the spring-driven match holder to snap into the priming pan. The triggers might have been designed to be pulled by a finger or pushed by a thumb and could have been on the bottom, side or top of the stock depending on who made it, where it was made and when.

Armies of the day considered any firing of the common musket from beyond seventy-five meters to be pretty much a waste of powder and shot.

Some of the skirmishers to be faced would have had specially selected smoothbore guns of lighter construction that used a greased cloth or leather patch to make the bullets a tighter fit in the barrels. These generally were of relatively small bore, around .50 caliber or 12.6 mm. That tight fit generally gave them a higher velocity and greater accuracy than could be had with the common musket. It might well also have had sights and a more advanced form of lock, up to the snaphaunce, an early form of snapping flintlock, or a wheel lock, a system much like the spark wheel on a modern cigarette lighter. The improved locks, sights, and the patched bullets made it possible for the skirmisher so armed to reach out as far as one hundred meters or even occasionally to one hundred fifty meters with some expectation of hitting an individual standing man. These weapons were slower to reload when used in that accurate manner, but were faster than a matchlock when a bare ball was dropped down the barrel and musket accuracy and range were expected.

A few people on the battlefield were armed with rifles. A rifle had grooves in its barrel called rifling. The rifling imparts a spin on the bullet when fired and made rifles much more accurate weapons. Rifles of 1632 might have had matchlocks, but were more likely to have a mechanical lock such as the snaphaunce or wheel lock. Some used an oversized ball that was hammered into the barrel and down on top of the powder and might take several minutes to load. Other rifles used a greased patch of cloth or leather and were not as slow to reload, but still far slower than smoothbore muskets. Even those often required a mallet or an iron ramrod to seat the bullet after a few shots because of the fouling left by black powder when a shot is fired. Reload times on 1632 rifles were frequently three minutes or more. The rifles were also more expensive than a matchlock musket. There were rifles and riflemen capable of reliably hitting a man standing at three hundred meters, though they were rare on the ground.

Cavalry in 1632 was armed mostly with handguns or light carbines of smaller caliber in addition to a sword. Some were still using matchlocks, but mechanical locks like the wheel lock and snapping locks like the snaphaunce were becoming common. There were even attempts at making multi-shot guns, such as double (or more) barreled pistols and even primitive revolvers, though neither was common at this point.

For Grantville, the threatening infantry look like two kinds of soldiers that work together, one with basically medieval blades and a long pike and the other with a sixteen-pound matchlock musket. Besides his main weapon, the musketeer carried a bandoleer of thirteen loads of powder, a bag of lead balls, a powder horn and powder measure, a sword and dagger, a steady and a ramrod, plus his personal gear. They had to get within seventy-five meters to be a real threat.

The opposing infantry had some support. There was cavalry with advanced for the time handguns and horses. On the 1632 battlefield before Grantville's arrival, cavalry could close ...