Essay On Gunpowder Weapons

The current field of research into the cause of the downfall of the knightly class generally agrees that it was primarily a result of the introduction of gunpowder weaponry, but some recent scholarship suggests otherwise.
Up through the present, historians have believed that the gunpowder revolution in military technology predominantly caused the knightly class in Europe to disappear, because unlike previous ranged weapons developments, firearms took no skill to operate and had the power to punch through the armor of knights. Without the protection afforded by armor, knights had no reason to continue using it. Afterall, it was heavy, cumbersome, and expensive. It became more economical and effective for kings to create standing armies supplemented …show more content…
In 1992, they wrote an epitome of their research field with “Medieval Military Technology” and in 2012 they updated it with the second edition. It is generally regarded as the definitive source on medieval weaponry garnering praise and large readership. In the book Devries and Smith argue that firearms didn’t have an immediate impact on the battlefield, rather it took time for engineers to design effective firearms and it took time for them to be culturally acceptable. Unlike traditional medieval warfare which respected social status, “...gunpowder weapons had no such respect for class, and nobles risked death as much from gunshot as did non-noble soldiers.” Nobles feared firearms. Their armor could protect them from swords, axes, arrows and crossbows, but it couldn’t stop a long gun like an arquebus or a cannon. It wasn’t just nobles that were at odds with firearms, common soldiers were also reluctant to accept these weapons. They reasoned that “such weapons could not have come from God,” since “their sounds were thunderous, and the ground shook when they fired”. Devries and Smith go on to note that despite the initial resistance to firearms, once they became accepted, they became a military