[Garrett Hazen]

From what I know, this firearm seems to be the prototype of any such rifle. And to my knowledge these firearms were extremely inaccurate but were highly regarded as they had a greater firing rate compared to any such crossbow or bow. But, being such an antique it seems to be of interest- does anyone know where one can be found for purchase, like from a reliable source. I wouldn't want one blowing up in my face to say the least!
And another question- where did they originate? I have a knowledge of explosives coming from Asia, and Francis Bacon picked up on the subject in the 1200's I believe, but I have seen pictures of arquebus from Japan to western europe.

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Lin Robinson]

[Randall Moffett]

Something to consider with the Arquebus is the dissemination of them in the 15th. The first appearance of the firing mechanism is in the 1st decade but it is mounted onto a simple pole gun. It is a while before literary and artwork shows them again though. Most hand guns in the 15th even during the 2nd half in art are simple pole guns without firing mechanism, so the acquebus that everyone has in mind likely was not the most common firearm throughout the 15th perhaps only becoming more common than the pole gun at the very end. You really only see them in art or read them in accounts in the last 15-20 years of the century and it seems the simple pole guns were still being used.

The other is that it seems 2 or perhaps a little more shots per minute seems to be a good rate of fire for an acquebus. That’s about the same as one could get off for a large powerful crossbow. We have a crew using a ballista who can loose two a minute, though their are two of them. There are lower powered draw crossbows that can loose between 6-8 a minute at 300-400 pounds draw or so. Some guys in our group use 120 plus pound longbows and can loose 14-15 in a minute. My guess is if we practiced more on speed, which we do not, only really distance, they could get to 16 or maybe more no problem. One issue to consider is that people really did not time discharge of their weapons in the medieval period to the minute as it was such a hard increment to gauge. Most clock rang to the hour. The hourglass measures the same length of time. So keep in mind that from the historic account we really do not know exactly the rate of fire per minute of five minutes or any minutes only what we find from modern reconstructions and that one is usually faster than the other from historic accounts.

As far as where handguns come from. There are lots of arguements both ways. Most early chinese 'guns' seems to be different than what oen thinks of as handguns shooting. I'd look up D. Nicolle's Arms and Armour companion. A good few sections on fireamrs and their development. There are more indepth studied, Bert Halls weapons and warfare in the Rennss. that I think is probbaly the best though.

RPM

[Lafayette C Curtis]

I've written a blog post summarizing the things I've learned about the accuracy (or lack thereof ) of arquebuses and muskets--most of which I got from the discussions here in myArmoury:

http://l-clausewitz.livejournal.com/395313.html

as usual, it's mostly written as a reference for fiction writers, but it might still be useful for other audiences as well. And then, here's an excellent page about the history and development of early European firearms:

http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~dispater/handgonnes.htm