"Correct way to hold and fire a caliver?" Topic

What is the considered wisdom on firing the caliver – was the firearm held into the shoulder and aimed, or was it merely pointed at the target?

Looking at the Elizabethan range images on Sgt Major Miniatures it is not clear, which got me a thinking. Was it fired more in hope than expectation!

sgmm.biz/elizabethans.html

Thanks in advance

It depended on the shape of the stock, those with curved stocks were designed to be fired braced against the chest rather than the shoulder. It is still possible to aim but it requires skill and experience to do so. This gave experienced troops even more of an edge in combat, particularly in skirmishing and small scale actions where there were few mass targets to be found.

With a straight stock such as was used by some German fire arms and on early arquebuses you could brace the gun against the shoulder. Easier to aim that way which is probably why hunting rifles retained the straight stock.

In the end both the straight stock and the curved stock was replaced by the classic "fish tail" design which could also be fired braced against the shoulder.

Tell him to take his musket and clear off, you won't tolerate shuch shoddy behaviour in your regiment.

Why are all those guys in that picture left-handed?

With your eyes shut tight!.

Margard, they're left handed purely to show the musket in the painting. The muskets were all right handed (from what I understand, I guess there might have been specially made left handed ones, but not as a general rule). We've had to tell people not to try and fire a match-lock left handed unless they want to set fire to themselves.

a lot of art historians think that period painters used mirrors and pinhole lenses especially in the Renn period, have a look at a lot of Renn paintings you will see a lot of left handed people and curved items on the edges of paintings, a lot of the masters painted portraits this way including Rembrandt.
Even some landscapes may of been done this way………it has busted my whole image of the great artists of the Renn period when our art lecturer showed us all how to do it this way, in their defense they still do need a lot of skill to finish off the painting though

cheers
Matt

Et voila – Right handed calivermen. I don't know which is the original way round but not everything is always as it seems:
link

I suspect that the image I provided is part of the painting which was used as a template by the weavers to create the tapestry shown in the blog.

Daniel, possibly – not having seen either original I wasn't sure whether photographic reproduction hadn't reversed the image somewhere along the line – its a common enough occurrence.

I've handled a repro matchlock musket, with a very curved stock. I found it easier to hold it at the shoulder than against the chest.

Some pictures of Landsknecht with circa 1500 arquebuses are shown holding them either against the shoulder, or against the chest -- well not really the chest, more like the abdomen. I think this may have been an attempt to control the recoil (possibly they overcharged them, and the heavy recoil could be uncomfortable against the shoulder).

Pictures of earlier handgonnes, often show them being used by resting the "pole" over the shoulder to facilitate aiming. Other times it's tucked under the arm. I'm not convinced that it was ever "standard" practice to brace an arquebus against the chest.

Some late 16th century commentators encouraged the English to adopt "Spanish style" stocks because they were straighter, and made it easier to handle recoil, as opposed to move curved French stocks -- but it implied they were both fired from the shoulder.

Sir Roger Williams clearly states that the French style stocks were made to be fire from the chest.

"(…); true it is , were they stocked crooked after the French manner to be discharged on the breast,(…)"

In contrast he writes that Spanish style stocks were fired from the shoulder.

It should be noted that you brace the firearm on the side of the chest, not on the middle of it which in prints and paintings can look very much like using a shoulder aim. But the crooked stock will deliver the recoil force to the chest and not the shoulder. It's a position that feels very odd to a modern shooter but once one fires the weapon the need to do so becomes obvious or so the Graz curators told me.

@Daniel_S

That makes a bit more sense to me. Some of the repro weapons I've handled, seem to be comfortable when tucked under the arm, with the butt resting high against the pectoral muscle, rather than on the shoulder itself. The crooked stock would allow one to still aim from that position.