Inside the Crosshairs Read Online Free PDF

the beginning of the sixteenth century stocks had been shortened and curved to allow better aiming. These weapons, the early ancestors of modern sniper rifles, became known as “hackbuts” in German-speaking areas but more commonly in other areas as “arquebuses,” from the French word meaning “hookgun.” Arquebuses weighed approximately ten to fifteen pounds and fired a one-ounce ball about three-quarters of an inch in diameter (.75 caliber). With a muzzle velocity of approximately 800 feet per second, these early weapons had a range of 100 to 200 meters. Arquebuses were not without limitations. In rainy, or even damp, weather, the powder wouldnot ignite. Even under perfect conditions a well-trained soldier could manage only two shots every three minutes or so.
    Military leaders throughout Europe and Asia Minor began integrating arquebuses into their armies, but the new weapon did not play a major role in a battle until the late fifteenth century. In 1498, Spaniard Fernandez Gonzalo de Cordoba armed some of his men with heavy, shoulder-fired, support-braced arquebuses and integrated them into his ranks of pike-carrying infantry.
    In 1503, Cordoba moved his army of 6,000 into Italy to meet an invasion from France. On the afternoon of April 28 the Spanish commander established a defensive position in a hillside vineyard near Cerignola. The Spaniards barely had time to dig shallow trenches before the French force of 10,000 charged their positions. Rank after rank of French infantrymen fell to the arquebuses; the few Frenchmen who reached the trenches died on the points of Spanish pikes. A short time later the French charged for a second time, but again the Spanish held firm. No battlefield would ever be the same again.
    On December 29 of the same year, Cordoba crossed the Italian Garigliano River and attacked another French force. The arquebuses and pikes proved as lethal on the offense as they had on the defense and secured victory for the Spanish.
    Despite Cordoba’s success, crossbows remained the primary infantry weapon in the French army until 1566. The English did not totally adopt firearms until 1596, and the Turks did not replace their archers for another decade after that. But from the time of Cordoba, armies began to increase the number of firearms they employed, and warfare, long characterized by the arrow, the sword, and the pike, became dominated by gunpowder and shot.
    Firearms also began to replace bow- or crossbow-launched arrows as the primary civilian hunting weapons. They became even more dominant in hunting and target competitions with the fifteenth-century discovery, attributed to either Gaspard Kollner of Vienna or Augustus Kotter of Nuremberg, that adding grooves to a barrel’s interior made the bullet spin rapidly in flight and stabilized its path. This “rifling” gave itsname to the more accurate weapons it produced, and rifle marksmanship that would ultimately lead to modern sniping began.
    Shooting contests, both for sport and for the maintenance of marksmanship proficiency, rose in popularity with the advances in firearms. Early in the fifteenth century the Holy Roman Empire encouraged the formation of shooting clubs in order to maintain a reserve of marksmen in the event of an invasion by the Turks.
    The earliest known, documented, club dedicated to the shooting of firearms began in Lucerne in 1466. Members used their own weapons but the club provided powder and shot for the weekly Sunday competitions. Targets were set at a maximum range of about 100 meters, and the winner of each match judged the results of the next.
    Shooting guilds spread rapidly in central Europe during the first decades of the sixteenth century, and soon cities and towns sponsored competitions with their neighbors. More than 200 shooters from as far away as Frankfurt am Main and Innsbruck competed at Zurich in 1504. As shooting skills and weapon manufacturing techniques improved, competition ranges increased to 200