A musket is a muzzle-loaded long gun that appeared as a smoothbore weapon in the early 16th century, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus, capable of penetrating plate armour. By the mid-16th century, this type of musket gradually disappeared as the use of heavy armour declined, but musketeers continued as the generic term for smoothbore long guns until the mid-19th century. In turn, this style of musket was retired in the 19th century when rifled muskets (simply called rifles in modern terminology) using the Minié ball (invented by Claude-Étienne Minié in 1849) became common. The development of breech-loading firearms using self-contained cartridges, introduced by Casimir Lefaucheux in 1835, began to make muskets obsolete. The first reliable repeating rifles, the 1860 Henry rifle and its 1866 descendant the Winchester rifle, superseded muskets entirely. Repeating rifles quickly established themselves as the standard for rifle design, ending the era of the musket.
Etymology According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, firearms were often named after animals, and the word musket derived from the French word mousquette, which is a male sparrowhawk. An alternative theory is that derives from the 16th-century French mousquet, -ette, from the Italian moschetti, -etta, meaning the bolt of a crossbow. The Italian moschetti is a diminutive of mosca, a fly.
Terminology The first recorded usage of the term "musket" or moschetti appeared in Europe in the year 1499. Evidence of the musket as a type of firearm does not appear until 1521 when it was used to describe an arquebus that was so heavy that it needed to be rested on a forked stick. Such muskets were used to kill heavily armored targets. This version of the musket fell out of use after the mid-16th century with the decline of heavy armour; however, the term itself stuck around as a general descriptor for "shoulder arms" fire weapons into the 19th century. The differences between the arquebus and musket post-16th century are therefore not entirely clear, and the two have been used interchangeably on several occasions. According to historian David A. Parrot, the concept of the musket as a legitimate innovation is uncertain and may consist of nothing more than a name change.
Parts of a musket
Trigger guards began appearing in 1575. Bayonets were attached to muskets in several parts of the world from the late 16th to 17th centuries. Locks came in many different varieties. Early matchlock and wheel lock mechanisms were replaced by later flintlock mechanisms and finally percussion locks. In some parts of the world, such as China and Japan, the flintlock mechanism never caught on and they continued using matchlocks until the 19th century when percussion locks were introduced. In the latter half of the 18th century, several improvements were added to the musket. In 1750, a detent was added to prevent the sear from catching in the half-cock notch. A roller bearing was introduced in 1770 to reduce friction and increase sparks. In 1780, waterproof pans were added. The phrase "lock, stock, and barrel" refers to the three main parts of a musket.
Ammunition
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century musketeers used bandoliers which held their pre-measured charges and lead balls. The Minié ball, which despite its name was actually bullet-shaped and not ball-shaped, was developed in the 1840s. The Minié ball had an expanding skirt which was intended to be used with rifled barrels, leading to what was called the rifled musket, which came into widespread use in the mid-19th century. The Minié ball was small enough in diameter that it could be loaded as quickly as a round ball, even with a barrel that had been fouled with black powder residue after firing many shots, and the expanding skirt of the Minié ball meant that it would still form a tight fit with the barrel and impart a good spin into the round when fired. This gave the rifled musket an effective range of several hundred yards, which was a significant improvement over the smooth bore musket. For example, combat ranges of 300 yd (270 m) were achievable using the rifled muskets during the American Civil War. Musketeers often used paper cartridges, which served a purpose similar to that of modern metallic cartridges in combining bullet and powder charge. A musket cartridge consisted of a pre-measured amount of black powder and ammunition such as a round ball, Nessler ball or Minié ball all wrapped up in paper. Cartridges would then be placed in a cartridge box, which would typically be worn on the musketeer's belt during a battle. Unlike a modern cartridge, this paper cartridge was not simply loaded into the weapon and fired. Instead, the musketeer would tear open the paper (usually with his teeth), pour some of the powder into the pan and the rest into the barrel, follow it with the ammunition (and the paper as wadding if not using a Minié ball), then use the ramrod as normal to push it all into the barrel. While not as fast as loading a modern cartridge, this method did significantly speed up the loading process since the pre-measured charges meant that the musketeer did not have to carefully measure out the black powder with every shot.
Accessories
Some ramrods were equipped with threaded ends, allowing different attachments to be used. One of the more common attachments was a ball screw or ball puller, which was a screw that could be screwed into the lead ball to remove it if it had become jammed in the barrel, similar to the way that a corkscrew is used to remove a wine cork. Another attachment was called a worm, which was used to clear debris from the barrel, such as paper wadding that had not been expelled. Some worm designs were sturdy enough that they could be used to remove stuck ammunition. The worm could also be used with a small piece of cloth for cleaning. A variation on the worm called the "screw and wiper" combined the typical design of a worm with a ball puller's screw.
History
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