Читать книгу The Complete English Wing Shot - George Teasdale Teasdale-Buckell - Страница 7

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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.