Musket
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 heavy armour.
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Breechloader
Firearm in which the user loads the ammunition via the rear (breech) end of its barrel, as opposed to a muzzleloader, which loads ammunition via the front (muzzle).
Roughly two hundred of the rifles were manufactured and used in the Battle of Brandywine, during the American Revolutionary War, but shortly after they were retired and replaced with the standard Brown Bess musket.
Arquebus
Form of long gun that appeared in Europe and the Ottoman Empire during the 15th century.
The heavy arquebus, which was then called a musket, was developed to better penetrate plate armor and appeared in Europe around 1521.
Flintlock
General term for any firearm that uses a flint-striking ignition mechanism, the first of which appeared in Western Europe in the early 16th century.
Flintlock muskets were the mainstay of European armies between 1660 and 1840.
Rack and pinion
Type of linear actuator that comprises a circular gear engaging a linear gear (the rack), which operate to translate rotational motion into linear motion.
The Wu Pei Chih (1621) later described Ottoman Turkish muskets that used a rack-and-pinion mechanism.
Skirmisher
Skirmishers are light infantry or light cavalry soldiers deployed as a vanguard, flank guard or rearguard to screen a tactical position or a larger body of friendly troops from enemy advances.
Despite its lower rate of fire, its accuracy at long range offered advantages over the smoothbore musket, then commonly used by regular armies.
Jäger (infantry)
German military term referring to specific light infantry units.
By the early 19th century, because of their civilian occupations, Jäger were usually familiar with the first true rifles, rather than the muskets used by regular infantry.
Rifling
Machining helical grooves into the internal surface of a gun's barrel for the purpose of exerting torque and thus imparting a spin to a projectile around its longitudinal axis during shooting to stabilize the projectile longitudinally by conservation of angular momentum, improving its aerodynamic stability and accuracy over smoothbore designs.
Muskets were smoothbore, large caliber weapons using ball-shaped ammunition fired at relatively low velocity.
Musket Wars
The Musket Wars were a series of as many as 3,000 battles and raids fought throughout New Zealand (including the Chatham Islands) among Māori between 1807 and 1837, after Māori first obtained muskets and then engaged in an intertribal arms race in order to gain territory or seek revenge for past defeats.
Rifled musket
Type of firearm made in the mid-19th century.
Originally the term referred only to muskets that had been produced as a smoothbore weapon and later had their barrels replaced with rifled barrels.
