The staves, bills, pikes, morris-pikes, holy-water sprinklers, etc., played a very important part in war at this period. The halberds and partisans carried by officers of the harquebusiers, royal guards, and officials were the vehicles for an immense amount of decoration, especially throughout the seventeenth century. Albert Dürer, writing from Venice to Pirkheimer, mentions that the Italian lansquenets "have roncoins with 218 points, and if they pink a man with any of these, the man is dead, as they are all poisoned." This could hardly have been serious, but a sheet of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci shows some very extraordinary forms. Most of the varieties of staves were no doubt originally developments of the peasant scythes, bill-hooks, pitch-forks, and the poll-axe; each country preserving some peculiar form. The cross-bow had long ceased to be a military weapon, but was, owing to its silent fire, still in great repute for sport. It was usually inlaid with ivory, engraved, sometimes stained and heightened with pearl. A fine specimen in the Tower is illustrated (Fig. 38). V FIREARMS AND GUNLOCKS _By_ MAJOR V. A. FARQUHARSON The actual date of the first employment of portable firearms is uncertain, but representations of them are frequently met with in the illustrated MSS. of the early part of the fifteenth century, their form at first being simply a tube fastened to a wooden stock, and, according to the coloured drawings, the tube was either of brass or iron. The manner of firing was to apply a match by hand to a touch-hole situated on the upper part of the barrel. The first improvement was to drill the touch-hole in the side of the barrel, with the priming held in a pan formed in a projection also on the side of the barrel, which had a cover, moving on a pivot, thus protecting the powder from the wet or wind till the moment of firing, when it was pushed back by hand. This was the general kind of firearm used during the first half of the fifteenth century. For some time after their introduction, hand firearms were viewed with disfavour, and it was considered more or less unfair to employ them, seeing that the Gothic armour worn by the knights had power to resist the ordinary weapons of the field, but took no account of the effects of missiles from the clumsy "gonner." That they were in use in 1453 is evident, as the great Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, buried at Whitchurch, came to his end from this cause. "Though at first with manfull courage and sore fighting the Earle wanne the entre of their camp, yet at length they compassed him about, and, _shooting him through the thigh with an hand-gonne_, slew his horse and finally killed him lying on the ground, whom they never durst look in the face, while he stood on his feet" (Hollinshed's _Chronicle_). This was at Chatillon, 20th July 1453. [Illustration: PLATE VIII.--Wheel-lock of bright steel, with engraved and pierced brass. German, 17th Century.