Arquebus gun or arquebus gun is a firearm that is ignited by a fire rope ignition device. The fire rope ignition device is a mechanism in which the slow-burning rope first ignites the ignition powder (bottom fire), and then ignites the propellant after the ignition powder is ignited. The fire rope ignition device was invented in Austria around the mid-15th century and was widely used in European countries in the 16th century.
In 1521, the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés also equipped his troops with arquebusiers during his conquest of the Aztecs. In 1522, the Ming Dynasty captured arquebusiers after the Battle of Xicao Bay. In 1543, the rope was introduced to Japan and had an important impact on the unification of Japan and the invasion of Korea.
Arquebusiers were introduced to China during the Jiajing dynasty. Compared with the original various reaming tools of the Ming Dynasty, the accuracy of the arquebus gun was improved to be able to hit the bird, so this ream was called the bird ream, and the reed wheel gun and flintlock gun that were later introduced to China were also Chinese called bird reams or shotguns.
According to the fourteen-volume Ji Xiao New Book written by Qi Jiguang of the Ming Dynasty, most of the Ming bird reams used the specifications of three-dollar charge per single shot and one round of three-dollar lead bullets; however, according to Zhao Shizhen's "Divine Artifact Spectrum" and some other Ming Dynasty military books, the Ming army also had heavy arquebus guns equipped with a large amount of charge and a large ammunition weight, such as the Spotted Dove and the Eagle Yang. In addition, Qi Jiguang's "Record of Military Training" also records that each bird ream needs to be equipped with 300 lead bullets, which shows that the ming bird ream has the ability to withstand long-term repeated multiple shots, and the production process has reached a certain level. In the Wanli Korean War, the Korean "Xuanzu Shilu" once recorded that "the Pill only reaches more than 100 steps, and the Pill of the Central Plains can reach 200 steps", which shows that the Ming bird gun at this time has a certain performance advantage over the Japanese arquebus gun with similar charge specifications.
The rope gun used by individual soldiers is called "iron cannon" in Japanese. In 1543, a smuggling trade ship from Macau to Zhejiang drifted to Tanegashima on the south side of Kyushu, Japan, due to a typhoon, carrying several Portuguese arquebusiers. Tanegashima's owner, Tanegashima Shigeshima, bought two shots and had the island's famous forger, Yapō Kanebei, imitate them. Since then, the manufacturing process of arquebusiers has gradually spread in Japan, and has been used in the major armies in just thirty years, which has a huge impact on japan's wars and tactics at that time. Notable examples of the use of iron cannons include the Battle of Nagashina in which Oda Nobunaga defeated the takeda army cavalry charge with 3,000 iron artillerymen.
When the arquebus gun is reloaded, the gunpowder bottle is first poured into the muzzle for propulsion, and then the projectile wrapped in paper or cloth is stuffed from the muzzle (the paper or cloth is to prevent the projectile from falling out of the muzzle when tilted), and the projectile is pushed in with a long thin stick, and then the fuse is poured on the fire dish in the bolt, and the fire cap is covered (the purpose of the fire cap is to avoid misfire), when it is time to shoot, the fire cap is lifted, and after aiming, the trigger rope will touch the dish and detonate the fuse. The detonator explosion immediately detonates the propellant and shoots the projectile. Some large arquebusiers will be propelled into gunpowder packs in advance because of their own weight, and the amount of gunpowder in the gunpowder pack is the amount of one shot.