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Technology
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|  Metallurgy and Armaments |
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| Though David Hume, writing in the 1750's, claimed the cast-iron cannon, along with shipbuilding, as the great specialty of English manufacturers, the weapons of war taken as a whole provide a good illustration of the uses to which Europe put its metallurgical skill. Up to about 1700 the main infantry weapon was the pike, a steel head mounted on a shaft which might be as much as 18 ft long, an effective protection against cavalry. It was superseded by the bayonet, first employed by the musketeers in the armies of Louis XIV. The sword, which the pikemen carried for hand-to-hand fighting, could then be dispensed with by the rank and file, though it continued as the thrusting (and dueling) weapon of their officers. The standard cavalry weapon was now the saber, designed for a slashing downward stroke, and there was also a lighter and shorter version of the medieval knight's lance. It is perhaps evidence of the minor part now played by all these weapons, at least in warfare between civilized nations, that the steel of which they were made was apparently inferior in average quality to the best products of the earlier age, when immense care had been taken because faulty metal might spell disaster. |
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