7. _Fire-arms._ (For the development of cannon, see ARTILLERY and ORDNANCE.)--Hand-cannons appear almost simultaneously with the larger _bombards_. They were made by the Flemings in the 14th century. An early instance of the use of hand fire-arms in England is the siege of Huntercombe Manor in 1375. These were simply small cannon, provided with a stock of wood, and fired by the application of a match to the touch-hole. During the 15th century the hand-gun was steadily improved, and its use became more general. Edward IV., landing in England in 1471 to reconquer his throne, brought with him a force of Burgundian hand-gun men (mercenaries), and in 1476 the Swiss at Morat had no less than 6000 of their men thus armed. The prototype of the modern military weapon is the _arquebus_ (q.v.), a form of which was afterwards called in England the _caliver_. Various dates are given for the introduction of the arquebus, which owed many of its details to the perfected crossbow which it superseded. The Spanish army in the Italian wars at the beginning of the 16th century was the first to make full and effective use of the new weapon, and thus to make the fire action of infantry a serious factor in the decision of battles. The Spaniards also took the next step in advance. The _musket_ (q.v.) was heavier and more powerful than the arquebus, and, in the hands of the duke of Alva's army in the Netherlands, so conclusively proved its superiority that it at once replaced its rival in the armies of Europe. Both the arquebus and the musket had a touch-hole on the right side of the barrel, with a pan for the priming, with which a lighted quick match was brought in contact by pressing a trigger. The musket, on account of its weight, was provided with a long rest, forked in the upper part and furnished with a spike to stick in the ground. The _matchlock_ (long-barrelled matchlocks are still used by various uncivilized peoples, notably in India) was the typical weapon of the soldier for two centuries. The class of hand fire-arms provided with an arrangement for striking a spark to ignite the powder charge begins with the _wheel-lock_. This lock was invented at Nuremberg in 1515, but was seldom applied to the arquebus and musket on account of the costliness of its mechanism and the uncertainty of its action. The early forms of flint-lock (_snaphance_) were open to the same objections, and the _fire-lock_ (as the flint-lock was usually called) remained for many years after its introduction the armament of special troops only, till about the beginning of the 18th century it finally superseded the old matchlock. Thenceforward the fire-lock (called familiarly in England "Brown Bess") formed with the bayonet (q.v.) the armament of all infantry, and the fire-arms carried by other troops were constructed on the same principle. Flint-lock muskets were supplanted about 1830-1840 by the percussion musket, in which a fulminate cap was used. A Scottish clergyman, Alexander Forsyth,