英國皇家軍械博物館 英國皇家軍械庫 洛可可式遂發決鬥手槍

大家好,我是Jonathan 再次回來 為大家帶來一個神祕武器 雖然我身上有三個神祕武器 但也算是一個神祕 我到底在說什麼呢? 如果你看了我們Facebook和Instagram的帖子 我預期 也希望 我們有幫助你們 如果你們有看英國電視節目 有幫助的話 你會發現 他們總是會提出一個神祕的問題 有人會提出一個明確的答案 任何人都會提出 但結果是 這並不是正確的 這並不完全是正確的 這是更加可爭議的 但是 你應該會說是一枚戰鬥武器 我應該會說是一枚戰鬥武器 如果你看了我們的系列 這幾個都被記錄為戰鬥武器 但是 一枚戰鬥武器到底是什麼呢? 這就是問題 有一篇相當近期的文章 在Arms and Armour Society的日記 非常推薦 還有我們自己的日記 還有我自己的日記 三個非常好的日記 歷史性和博物館性的武器 你應該去看看 但這篇文章 是David Weaver寫的 一位非常有名的博物館 和研究家 他解決了這個很煩人的問題 我們確定 我們知道一枚戰鬥武器是什麼? 現在,來詳細解釋 這個問題 我會告訴你 三個歷史上 最早的軍事歷史 一般來說 我們開始 我們有 一對你可能會叫 我的倫敦的John Twigg 當然是很漂亮的 Walnut Stocks Silver Mounts Lock Plate Lock Mechanism是白色的 Polished So it's lovely and bright Gold Plate In the palm Where the powder sits And the touch hole as well Now that's partly to protect the surface of the metal With the inert metal, gold And make it less prone to corrosion And partly because it looks really cool So that's a sort of high-end feature For a high-end maker They are very, very light And pointable You can definitely say that for them This pair happens to have sights on them Let me show you that Now those of you who know a bit about the tradition of jewelling Probably raise an eyebrow at sights And indeed I wouldn't call these jewelling pistols I think we'd have to call them holster pistols So what do I mean by holster pistol? Well, holsters on a horse Certainly for military purposes A pair of holsters with a pair of pistols And they sit there ready for you to draw and fire As you need them And a similar setup might be carried by A gentleman who's riding across the country Probably not in the same sort of open bucket holsters But nonetheless So these actually have a couple of advanced features That tend toward what people would tend to say Was a jewelling pistol Not the sights Slightly skipping ahead That was very much frowned upon The written codes for jewelling tended to say You shouldn't have sights And the sort of customary behaviour Was such that if someone saw you with sights Or even taking deliberate aim In the course of a jewel That was very much frowned upon The point of a jewel was not to kill That might sound bizarre But it's true It's the idea of killing It's the courage under fire It's the satisfying of honour So these are actually circa 1770 Which is when we start to see What people now call jewelling pistols emerge And it does have a couple of features That are found on those jewelling pistols But in overall form This swollen butt If I can use that expression This butt cap with grotesque face on it This almost framed mirror style of a sculption plate That's asymmetrical you'll notice Highly elaborate open work side plate Beautiful thing And this finial on the trigger guard This is of the Rococo art tradition You'll see it in paintings, furniture All sorts of areas And among other things Guns are applied art So dated about 1770 This is maybe 10 years after The small sword for fighting jewels Gives way to the pistol Now that in itself is fashion driven Gentlemen always used to carry swords Latterly they were small swords So almost very slender thrusting swords Usually like a shell guard Or perhaps a knuckle bow Light, unobtrusive But very deadly in a duel So when gentlemen decided They had to duel for their honour And they fought with small swords It would get really bloody Because you could stab someone Multiple times And they'd still keep fighting They were dead They didn't know it yet And they dropped dead From multiple penetrating injuries So for that reason Pistol jewels were more humane Now because this is sort of early For the dueling period And I wouldn't call these Dueling pistols Regardless of any other stuff I'm going to tell you But this does have a couple of features That are more toward the dueling pistol So the so-called Spanish barrel Where it's reinforced effectively That's partly a fashion thing But the faceting of the rear half of the barrel Does mean you can make it chunkier To bear larger charges if you wish But it does have a It's probably mainly fashion In terms of practical purpose But that's something that Is a feature of the period So there's that classic delay with a flintlock Of click, flash, bang And it's way quicker than people make out You can't dodge the bullet from a flintlock Meaningfully But there is a lag time there So your muzzle has moved Ever so slightly Between you pulling the trigger Not great if you desperately Want to kill the guy in your duel We'll come back to that later Or if you are shooting at a target for example I mean you want your firearm to be accurate You don't want the delay of You don't want the long lock time As we might call it today Appropriately enough for the lock So the roller reduces the friction And so round about 1770 You start to see that on Not dueling pistols Now something I Only spotted quite recently on this one I'm sure some of my predecessors Are well aware of it but If I So you can see the nice gold pan I'll do a bit of a magic trick here The nice gold pan there Close the frizzen Open the frizzen Oh, where did the gold go? There is a built in pan cover In the pan cover And that caught me out for a moment And then I realized This allows you to have your Pistol loaded Powder, bullet, wadding To stop the ball rolling out Your frizzen out of the way And your cock down I.e. fully safe Not at half cock Where it might potentially get snagged To full cock or Maybe your half cock bent Breaks and it goes Ultra safe But ready to go You don't have to fumble For a priming flask To prime the pan So this is about Instant or near Not instant readiness But this is like carrying a Modern pistol Not chambered And then you have to Cock the thing to chamber around Before you use it Advised against today But used for many decades And this is the flintlock version of that So that's slightly off the point But it shows you that Technology is advancing Now that also makes this Definitively not really a Dueling pistol Because dueling pistols are used In a very formalized Ritual form of combat Where the pistols are made Ready to go and you use them So you're not carrying them around Semi ready to go Or even fully ready to go And then when we close it again It latches into place And we open it fully I'm really impressed by that feature As you can probably tell So moving on from Slightly more Into the dueling pistol era But still very much holster pistol The spurred butt caps The old fashioned shaped stocks That a lot of people think Are not ergonomic by modern standards Older style lock plates There are lots of little nerdy details That we could talk about here That are stylistic changes over time Some of which are argued to be Indicative of dueling pistols Or at least taken as a whole They are So moving on but not by much So this pair by Robert Wogden Famous dueling pistol maker And general gun maker I love these These are great We don't normally point these guns Because we like to support them When we hold them But these just absolutely Beg to be pointed And very very lightweight They've taken as much weight Out of this barrel As they possibly can It's what's called swamped Where it flares gracefully Out to the muzzle It's not like a blunderbuss barrel And the bore is straight It's not flaring It's just this is about Taking weight out where you don't need it And then making it heavier again At the muzzle Really does help With pointability for pistols It's also done on Hunting rifles of the day as well And then we see really quite Well firstly So this is where the argument Kind of holds up It's light It comes up quickly You typically Well you might bring it down From up here And you know Back to back Pistols in the air That's a little bit of a myth Typically you wouldn't Be back to back at all And you would probably start With your pistol held down Sort of a very low ready if you like The shape of the grip Part of the stock Is I would argue a bit more Modern in terms of its ergonomics If you can see it has The wood is cut right down Flat on the sides So you have these flat strips That allow it to Sit in the hand and point And if you pick a point And bring the pistol up The sights are aligned And yes this pair also has sights So in this period They may or may not have sights If it has sights I think it's less likely to To be the sort of pistol That would be used in a duel But apart from that These are superb They have a flat face trigger Which is back in fashion again With competition pistols Quite an ergonomic grip Super light They come up brilliantly We've got a full octagonal barrel now The barrels are In the holster pistol era They were pinned in Which meant you had to drift the pin out And wear the wood It's not ideal for Having to take the barrel out to clean it These have these cross keys So you push out From the sides closest to me Pull it out It stays in place And you hook the barrel out From a standing breech That's often how it was done anyway Now we need to return here To the question of Artistic style and fashion Decoration Because these are not just plain Because they're functional Or because they are somehow Dedicated for dueling Or any other function They are in large part As Weaver argues Very convincingly I think Reflecting a broader change in fashion So we're moving from Back in the day it was Baroque style decoration Into Rococo Very theatrical and elaborate With asymmetrical features to it To a much more understated Plain, symmetrical Style of decoration And that's what this is This is what's known as neoclassicism And this is a much Wider movement than just guns But the guns are part of that movement And so we see just quite basic Or simple I should say, not basic Engraving on the butt cap there On the trigger guard The very elaborate finial From the earlier style pistol Is replaced by a simple acorn Later on you'll see Pineapples and things Reflecting trade and prestige And things that are going on But these are all Symmetrical designs And the general lines of it Fit that neoclassical Approach to things So whereas these have been Described as sort of Proto-dueling pistols Or early dueling pistols If you like And absolutely would be great For fighting a duel with Maybe not with the sides If we then jump to And this is the other aspect Of the dueling pistol People tend to see Cased pistols Especially flintlocks Or early percussion Whatever It's a cased pair What else is it for Other than for Two rounds of firing With dueling Your second loads Your cased set of pistols You fire one round If nobody is Wounded or killed You take the second pistol And you use that That's not strictly the case There are many reasons To order a set of pistols This idea of symmetry perhaps The fact that you only get one shot The classic holster pistols There are two of them Because you need two shots One of your pistols Might fail to fire Flintlock Decent ignition system For the time But not 100% reliable So you would buy A cased set of pistols For all sorts of reasons Target shooting Self-defense Very notably One of the major uses Of any of these pistols On the table So these are a set of Mantons Joseph Manton Very very famous Again for making Dueling pistols Among other things We have You see From the sort of Technological Form follows function argument You'd say Ah well Flat sides to the grips here But also now checkering So this is for a better purchase For fighting duels with Well That makes it very good For shooting targets Or shooting people Foot pads or high women with You know All applies Same for this spur On the trigger guard To steady the aim That doesn't just apply To the duel Yet again We have sights on this thing So probably none of these Three sets Would qualify as Dueling pistols Depending which code Of duel Code duelo That you're Fighting under And we see Another stylistic shift But still quite Understated I think we can say Fully octagonal barrel Very heavy Perhaps Too heavy For quickly Bringing up To quickly Get off a shot And hope to Preserve your life By killing the other guy We've still got Or again We've got gold In the touch hole And in the pan In the vent In the pan And a gold line At the breech Which is starting To become popular Or maybe platinum If you're really fancy By this time Little flourishes Like this The tip of this cock Here curls backward Almost sort of reminiscent Of the way A hammer spur is But it's not functional In that way You grab the screw You don't grab this But still That's the way I remember More advanced The more advanced feature As it were Is that it curls back Not forward As it does On these others here But is that really relevant To whether it's a dueling pistol Or not Not really And people get very hung up on Is it a spear point On the end of the lock plate And really what they're doing I think And that Weaver argues Is they're lumping Stylistic fashion features Into what constitutes A dueling pistol When in reality The term dueling pistol Is not used until 1785 Which is a good 15 years After the first So-called dueling pistols Started to emerge So he's Yes they did Call them dueling pistols At the time But as far as He's been able to tell It's almost more of a It's a colloquialism And it's a sort of Marketing term For a case set of pistols But in reality There are far far more Case sets of pistols Sold than anyone Who would ever get involved In a duel If that makes sense So in terms of numbers It doesn't quite add up either So people might think of them As dueling pistols When they buy them But they might well not So the term dueling pistol Is really very nebulous You might have You might look at all of these And call them dueling pistols But it's a loose term And it's not Terribly helpful either A bit like the term Battle rifle That I sometimes comment on As well Any military rifle is for battle So that's not very helpful It's a bit like that as well But on the other hand It's not going anywhere Everyone knows the term Dueling pistol You can certainly still Make an argument That some of these Some of these Wonderfully light Pointable Workmanlike looking pistols Might well have been selected By somebody In anticipation of a duel I suppose that's the other thing How many people Buy pistols ahead of time Knowing or thinking That they're going to Challenge someone Or be challenged To a duel They're just gentleman's pistols That they had at the time Unless they went out And bought them specially of course You also see stories of Secret rifling So only part of the bore At the back was rifled To try and make sure You kill the other guy I've never seen or heard of Any secret rifling like that If you have Please let me know Scratch rifling Something else That's referred to Where faint grooves Are scratched into the bore So that when the second Inspected the pistols They would not see the rifling And then the duelist Would kill their opponent Again I've not really seen Any evidence for that You have things like Rainproof pans These guys in fact Have semi-rainproof pans So that's just a shape of pan Where it's like a scoop Almost like a Roman ear scoop Disgusting I hate the fact that I keep thinking of that When I look at these But my archaeological background Comes through Shaped like a scoop Or like a little tiny spoon Medicine spoon Is what I probably should have said And the shape of the pan cover Makes up with that And the idea is So this doesn't overhang This just matches up very neatly And the idea is Water that drips onto this Doesn't go into the pan And stop you firing Again that's not dueling specific And so it's logical enough To think that you would want to You're either very bloodthirsty And you definitely want to kill The guy that's stolen your woman Or slighted your honour Or whatever ridiculous Macho reason You're ostensibly trying To kill each other for But in reality Dueling was relatively bloodless Something like One in five sword duelists Would die from a sword duel Because of this Your blood is up You're stabbing away You don't know how badly You've been hurt When a gun goes off It's dramatic You've stared down The barrel of the gun Literally you've faced death You've survived hopefully Relatively hard to hit Someone with a pistol Especially when you're You're amped up You're stressed Difficult to hit If you do hit It might only be a flesh wound And if you're very lucky You won't get infected And you won't die So rather than One in five people dying Suddenly with pistol duels Being the standard 1770s, 1780s Only 6.5% of all the people That Shoemaker who did this study Looked at Only 6.5% of pistol duelists died One in five of sword duelists died So people weren't really They weren't really out to kill It was easier to get into A frame of mind Where you were going to kill With a sword With a pistol You have to stand there Face death Fire a shot Even if you tried to kill You might well miss So all the This idea that the features It's all about a killing shot That is at odds With the dueling codes that we know With the history that we know It was They were nominally Notionally, sorry Out there to kill each other But if you did You'd probably go to jail Dueling was always illegal And so if you were If you were caught Plenty of MPs fought pistol duels And politicians in the States as well If you were caught You'd probably have to flee the country You're going to go to jail If you kill someone If you wound them They might not press charges You'd probably be okay But if you kill them You're in serious trouble Part of that's wrapped up in Societal norms changing And people being less tolerant about Illegal violence and killing And honor killing and all that Some of it's down to the technology But if it was all about Producing a definable type of pistol That was technologically The best for killing quickly Bringing it up from down here Or however it's done We'd see more evidence for it And it's something I've always wondered about And David Weaver's article I think nails it quite nicely It's just the style of pistol That happened to be in fashion At the time Okay, that's the guns out of the way Thank you very much for watching as always We have our usual social media channels To check out our three museum sites Hopefully you know all that by now What's in front of me here Is a little bit of a moonlight for me I suppose But I have in my time Been an edge weapons person as well Edge weapons people amongst you Will recognize this as Probably as an oak shot type 14 It's a 13th century design Very broad but quite thin blade I've always liked them And this is actually from our new range Of reproduction swords From our own collection Which is really exciting So we've worked with Windlass The sword company And with Matt Easton Over at Scholar Gladiatoria To produce a range of I believe half a dozen Really nice replicas Or reproductions if you will From our collection So this is a reproduction of Class 9 2141 Found in a peat bog And it's really very good I think And I hope you think too So quite a broad range Over at the sort of medieval period In this range of swords Go and check them out on our shop website One little detail on this You might like to see So on the blade Is the sort of motto or inscription TOTO It's on both sides twice And on the original That's a little bit indistinct So we're not quite sure If it's IOTO or TOTO And I'm not enough of an expert on swords To tell you what that might mean Answers in the comments Or from my colleagues When they see this And roll their eyes at me So check out that range I'm quite excited about it And I'll have to try very hard to resist To not get one for myself