The Effects of Gunpowder on Medieval Society
O! curs'd device! base implement
of death!
Fram'd in the black Tartarean realms
beneath!
By Beelzebub's malicious art design'd
To ruin all the race of human kind.
Such were the sentiments
of the poet Ariosto on the subject of gunpowder, an invention that would
shatter the foundation of the medieval world. With the shot of the
first cannon in the fourteenth century, gunpowder became the instrument
of chaotic change, tearing down the calculated defenses of princes and
kings and slaughtering the noble knight in his shining armor. Warfare
was the core of political and social revolution in the Middle Ages.
The bigger, better, more accurate weaponry made possible by the mysterious
combination of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal was a deciding factor in
many key battles, including the Battle of Crecy in 1346, the siege of Orleans
in 1428 - 1429, the Battle of Formigny in 1450, the siege of Constantinople
in 1453 and the Battle of Chastillon in 1453 that ended the Hundred Years
War. The superior artillery of France was one of the main reasons
for its victory in the Hundred Years War. Berry Heraldon said of
King Charles VIII of France in 1450, "he had a greater train of artillery,
of great guns, bombards, serpentines, ribaudequins and so on than men could
remember any Christian king to have possessed before him." By suddenly
revolutionizing the standard methods used to wage war, exposed in previous
centuries to only slow refinement, gunpowder affected every facet of the
medieval lifestyle and was eventually responsible for its death.
Gunpowder made the
beautifully crafted armor that had protected knight, king and soldier a
thing of pure decoration by the beginning of the seventeenth century, an
ineffective defense against the new perils of battle. Armorers had
faced the threat of armor-piercing weapons before, but advances in hand
gun construction like a better mix of gunpowder, the Spanish invention
of the arquebus (matchlock) that improved aim and the general popularity
of the hand gun proved triumphant. Like the castle and much of medieval
weaponry, cannons and guns sentenced the suit of steel to a forgotten corner
in a dusty museum.
Though gunpowder
would make armor obsolete, plate armor was originally developed in the
fourteenth century as protection from the longbow and crossbow. Previously,
the ultimate standard for personal defense had been a full mail (made of
little circles of steel riveted together almost like knitted cloth) outfit
consisting of a coif (head covering), coat and leggings topped with a great
helm (see appendix A). The longbow was the national weapon of England
and the main element in military training, consisting of a six-foot staff
of elm that could move five or six yard long arrows a minute over a range
extending a little beyond four hundred yards. Legends of the longbow's
power are told concerning the 1182 siege of Abergavenny, where Welsh arrows
are reputed to have pierced an oak door four inches thick and left as souvenirs
with the points sticking through to the other side. When a knight
of William de Braose was hit by a longbow arrow, it pierced the skirts
of his mail shirt and his mail breeches, went through his thigh, then continued
through a mail layer and his wooden saddle to bury itself in his horses'
flank. Although hand guns were in use as early as 1375, they were
dangerous to fire, expensive, weighed ten pounds and were more effective
as noisemakers than weapons. Crossbows and longbows kept their position
of superiority until 1425, when bullets first began to pierce armor regularly
and were becoming capable of some precision.
Armor in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries was brought to the peak of defensive innovation.
Suits of full plate armor had to be carefully engineered so that the knight
retained his mobility in battle and was still invulnerable to artillery,
arrows and weapons of close combat. Hands and feet were covered by
articulated gauntlets and sabatons; elbows, shoulders, knees and legs were
given extra protection as they were the main vulnerable points on a mounted
man (see appendix B). Tassets of layered plate were extended from
the edge of the breastplate to cover the upper thigh, and helmets evolved
into a myriad of styles and shapes, including the bassinet, the sallet,
and the armet. Mail became a second level of protection, worn beneath
plate armor to protect gaps and chinks in the suit. The great helm
of the past was smoothed and refined as well as body armor, to eliminate
ridges or exposed rivets that could catch a weapon's edge, and therefore
its momentum (see appendix C). Artillery leapt ahead in power, condemning
armor as it changed the way wars were fought, since armor could only be
made so much thicker without compromising the ability of the wearer to
hack, thrust and slice. La Noue said in his Discours Politiques et
Militaires, "For where they had some reason in respect of the violence
of harquebuzes and dagges [muskets and pistols] to make their armor thicker
and of better proofe than before, they have now so farre exceeded, that
most of the [them] have laden themselves with stithies [anvils] in view
of clothing their bodies with armor . . . Neither was their armor
so heavie that they might wel bear it twenty four hours, where those that
are now worne are so waightie that the peiz [weight] of them will benumme
a Gentleman's shoulders of thirty five yeres of age." To make more metal
available for the breastplate in the seventeenth century, the greaves,
sabatons and cuisses that had protected the legs were abandoned in favor
of extended tassets that ended at the knee (see appendix D). Despite
all the innovations of the armorers, the hand gun won the arms race, punching
through the thickest armor. In the seventeenth century, armor was
abandoned in favor of greater mobility, except for occasions of pomp and
show, to remember a time when figures in steel had ruled the battlefield.
Armor was doomed
once the hand gun was perfected, and with it, a way of life. This
new weapon forced the knight from his position of supremacy in battle and
put the power of the deadliest weapon into the hands of simple peasants
and craftsmen. By eliminating the armor, gunpowder eliminated the
man. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most of the advances
in armor were specifically for jousting in tournaments and showing off
the wealth of the nobility. War became a profession instead of a
sport, where daring heroics would only result in loss of life. Knights,
with their armor and trappings, were confined to tournaments and parades
and spent their life at court instead of in the army, like dusty relics
of a lost time. Gunpowder killed the knight in shining armor, forever
impacting medieval life.
Unlike the hand
gun's slow defeat of armor, which took nearly three centuries, the damnation
of the castle was swift. Castles had stood tall against previous
weapons like the catapult, and had thwarted the tunneler and the sapper,
but the thundering might of the cannon was the final note in siege after
siege. Cannons prompted defensive and offensive alterations in castle
design, but the damage was done, and another piece of feudalism was reduced
to rubble. Gunpowder made the lord's stronghold a thing of the past.
Before the invention
of the cannon, the castle was a place of safety. A typical castle
consisted of an outer curtain surrounding a keep, with walls ten to twelve
feet thick. Defenses included the familiar moat or deep ditch, a
heavily guarded gatehouse before the actual castle and drawbridges, all
designed to discourage enemies from reaching the castle. In the castle's
walls were arrow loops for archers, narrow openings that widened so that
a person could shoot from many directions, crenellations on the tops of
the walls to give cover for the soldiers and machicolations that gave defenders
the opportunity to drop rubble, boiling oil, coals or refuse down on the
attackers through openings in the floor. If the defenders were caught
off guard, and the attackers managed to penetrate to the gate, they could
be trapped between multiple barricaded doors and portcullises and killed
from the murder holes in the ceiling. In short, conquering a castle
was not an easy thing to do by force, requiring a large number of expendable
men to succeed. It was much easier to simply set up camp outside,
lob things at the walls or inside the walls, and wait for the castle to
run out of food. Many castles had a well within their towers for
just such an occasion. Before the refinement of the cannon, these
sieges could last years before defender or attacker ran out of food or
the castle walls were breached. Cannons could concentrate on a specific
wall, pounding it to rubble from a distance with greater might and accuracy
than siege engines like the catapult. Monster cannons were specifically
developed to frighten defenders, like Basilica, used in the Siege of Constantinople
by Mohammed II. Basilica had a 36 inch bore capable of propelling
a ball of stone 1600 to 800 pounds for over a mile. Another giant
was Mons Meg, named after a smith's noisy wife, which had a bore of 20
inches and could fire a ball weighing 300 pounds. Legend says that
a woman was got with child inside it. If castles were to stand against
these weapons, they had to be designed with artillery in mind.
The castle was the
ultimate defense from one's enemies, a product of a thousand years of evolution
in medieval warfare, rendered impotent by this newest weapon. Still,
the castle lived on. Castles built in the fourteenth century had
gunports and sighting slits to facilitate artillery, as well as thicker
walls. Keeps and towers were arranged to present as little a target
to enemy cannon as possible, like Bonaquil in France and Deal Castle, built
by King Henry VIII of England in the sixteenth century, which was a collection
of low, round towers sunk into a hollow. In the late sixteenth century,
elaborate earthworks were created around the castle to keep attackers at
bay, including wide moats lined with brickwork and large pointed bastions
around towers. The location of a castle became more important, especially
if it could be built out of range of any possible artillery sites, or on
a position that was difficult or impossible to reach with the as many as
six wagons and one hundred horses needed to transport a single large cannon.
New castles could
be designed with artillery in mind, but older castles were at the mercy
of the cannon. As their defensive value plummeted, many castles became
abandoned and fell into ruin by simple neglect, rather than the brutal
pounding of cannons. People no longer wanted to live in a cold, drafty
stone fortress isolated from society, especially if they weren't safe from
their enemies. Many left their castle for a fashionable home in town,
or built a comfortable manor home fortified with gunports to live in.
People no longer needed or wanted gigantic stone fortresses for homes.
"By the end of the fourteenth century, the building of military structures
had practically ceased in England."
Cannons eliminated
the need for castles, changing the way people waged wars. Sieges
were no longer the long, drawn out affairs of the past, since a castle
could be brought to its knees quickly with a few cannons. Like armor,
castles became the tangible remains of the Middle Ages, put on the shelf
of history by the invention of gunpowder.
The weapons used
in warfare were also affected by gunpowder. Hand guns and cannons
made many weapons obsolete, especially those used in close combat, since
warfare was no longer the domain of the knight. By giving a person
the ability to kill from a distance, gunpowder eliminated much of the popular
medieval weaponry, including siege engines.
Until the refinement
of the handgun, the projectile weapons of choice were the crossbow and
the longbow. The Welsh longbow struck fear in French knights and
caused much loss of life at the Battle of Crecy and Agincourt. The
English clung stubbornly to this powerful weapon, but it was eventually
replaced by the handgun in the seventeenth century. The crossbow
was five times slower to load and fire than the longbow, with a shorter
range, but the soldiers who used it did not need the training or frequent
practice of a longbow archer. It, too, was replaced by the handgun,
since it was more powerful and combined the crossbows' talent for turning
ordinary footsoldiers into marksmen without the rigorous practice needed
by the longbow. Weapons like swords, maces, axes and pikes were still
used, but weren't nearly as relied upon in battle with the introduction
of companies of artillery and the elimination of the knight, for which
they had been designed. Cavalry units were still important to the
modern army, but they were no longer made up of noble knights. Most
did not wish to risk life and limb when they might be shot out of the saddle
by anyone. As the knight declined in importance, so did the sword.
Pikes, staff weapons and lances were still in use by the infantry, but
the killing power of the gun and the cannon were beginning to take precedence.
The weaponry used
to combat castles had also changed. Catapults, ballistas, trebuchets,
and battering rams that had terrorized castles for centuries were swapped
for cannons, which could throw heavier missiles with greater force at a
castle wall, and made a terrific noise as well. Still, the cannon
lacked the imagination of catapults and trebuchets, which could hurl dead
cows, heads of the enemy, and other offal as well as rocks in a kind of
primitive germ warfare. Catapults had a range of 500 yards and could
throw 60 pounds, and trebuchets could hurl rocks of 100 to 200 pounds up
to 980 feet. They were also easier to transport from site to site
than cannons, since they could be constructed from natural materials wherever
they were needed. Cannons made for a slow army, especially on the
poor medieval roads, and they had a nasty habit of blowing up in one's
face. King James II of Scotland was killed in 1460 by his interest
in large cannons when a bombard called The Lion exploded. They required
supplies of gunpowder and cannon balls and many horses to drag them wherever
they were needed. Still, when the smoke of the middle ages parted,
cannons were the favored weapons for a siege.
Guns and cannons
eliminated many medieval weapons because they were more powerful and
more impressive than traditional weaponry that had been used for centuries.
As the importance of cavalry declined in the new army, so did the use of
those weapons developed to combat the mounted knight. Siege engines
were replaced by cannon, which made the medieval castle a thing of the
past. Gunpowder was the instrument of change in the revolutionization
of weaponry.
Gunpowder was responsible
for the elimination of a way of life. By punching through the knight's
armor and demolishing the lord's castle, gunpowder brought an end to the
Middle Ages and paved the way for the Renaissance. Cannons and hand
guns weren't just weapons, they were the voices of change echoing over
Europe. Since the social and political structure of the Middle Ages
was linked so closely to warfare, gunpowder changed the social structure
of entire countries, simply by making war a profession, instead of a sport
for nobles. By redistributing wealth and serving as inspiration for
creative minds, guns and cannons smashed a way of life forever and created
the base for the world people know now.