Chapter 529: The Rifled Musket
TL: Rui88
“Lord Grayman, what handy weapon have you prepared?”
Captain of the Guard Victor asked with great curiosity.
“Haha, let me show you. This is the latest product from our military industrial department.”
Paul took a long-barrelled musket from his horse and tossed it to Victor with a proud look on his face.
Victor took the gun and looked it over from front to back. He asked with great confusion, “It doesn’t seem any different from the ones I usually handle. Can you tell me what the difference is?”
Paul wagged his finger and said with a smile, “No different? No, no, the difference in this gun is not on the outside, but on the inside.”
“The inside?”
“Inside the barrel. Take a close look.”
“Is that so?” At Paul’s suggestion, Victor held the musket upside down, brought his eye close to the muzzle, and, with the help of the sunlight shining in, he finally saw the secret within.On the inner wall of the barrel, there were spiral grooves. Looking more closely, these grooves were actually channels carved into the inner wall of the barrel.
He asked, “Lord Grayman, are these spiral grooves what you call the difference?”
Paul nodded. “Yes. To be precise, those grooves are called rifling…or rather, the raised parts are the lands, and the recessed parts are the grooves. So this gun should be called a rifled musket. As for the previous muskets, whether they were the early matchlocks or the later flintlocks, the inner walls of their barrels were smooth, so they should be called smoothbore muskets.”
“Smoothbore musket? Rifled musket? The names you’ve come up with are very fitting.”
Victor said admiringly. “But, what’s the use of just adding a few lines of rifling? What advantage does it have over the so-called smoothbore muskets of the past?”
“The advantage is huge.”
Paul said gleefully, “When the gunpowder burns, it squeezes the bullet, causing it to deform and embed into the rifling. The spiral rifling then forces the bullet to rotate in the barrel, and it maintains this posture as it is fired from the barrel, spinning all the way to the target. According to the artisans’ tests, when the bullet moves in this rotating manner, its trajectory…that is, its path through the air…is more stable than a bullet fired from a smoothbore musket. It flies farther and is much more likely to hit the target. Oh, Victor, you must know how terrible the accuracy of a smoothbore musket is beyond 100 yards?”
“Hmm, is it very terrible? I don’t think so.”
Hearing Paul complain about smoothbore muskets like this, Victor scratched his head, somewhat bewildered.
Paul was speechless for a moment. He then remembered that Victor and the others didn’t know about rifled muskets before this. Their point of comparison was the bows and arrows used even earlier, and the accuracy of ordinary bows and arrows was even worse than that of smoothbore muskets. After all, the smoothbore musket design Paul had initially drawn was already a relatively mature one. He couldn’t very well have drawn a primitive musket inferior to a bow and arrow and just thrown it to the artisans to let them improve it slowly, could he?
“Ahem! In short, this rifled musket you’re holding can maintain high accuracy at 200 yards. If the weather is good, it can even be used at a distance of 300 yards. If you were using a smoothbore musket, hitting an enemy at 200 yards would be nothing short of a miracle from the Heavenly Father.”
In fact, with rifled muskets, sniping could be carried out on the battlefield. During the American Revolutionary War, the Americans, relying on Kentucky rifles with rifling drawn using simple tools, could accurately blow off the heads of British commanders from 200 yards away. During the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, an American rifleman named Murphy even killed the British commander Simon Fraser from a distance of 300 yards with a rifled musket, forcing the disordered British army to surrender.
“That powerful?”
Victor incredulously felt the musket in his hands all over, as if it possessed some incredible magic.
Even Ladi Sertia, who had not said a word since they set out, could not contain her curiosity and stared at the rifled musket.
“Lord Grayman, if our Alda army were to be equipped with this type of rifled musket, wouldn’t we be invincible?”
Victor was very excited, his mind filled with images of the Alda army using rifled muskets to thrash the enemy…the other side wouldn’t even have a clear look at his soldiers’ faces before they fell to the ground, row by row.
“It’s not that simple,” Paul said, pouring cold water on his enthusiasm. “Drawing the rifling is quite a troublesome job…at least for now. The rifling in this gun was drawn by the artisans with great effort. It’s the first usable rifled musket. They hadn’t even warmed it up before I snatched it to have some fun at the hunting grounds.”
“Moreover, a rifled musket is more troublesome to operate than a smoothbore. Although this thing is very accurate, it’s very slow to load. The projectile for a smoothbore is slightly smaller than the barrel, so it’s easy to stuff in from the front. But a rifled musket can’t do that. Its projectile must be slightly larger than the diameter of the lands of the rifling, and then the projectile has to be forced in. It takes a lot of effort to load, so you can imagine the loading efficiency.”
Hearing Paul’s explanation, Victor looked at the musket in his hands with some regret and said with emotion, “It’s true that for every gain, there is a loss.”
“But I believe that sooner or later, the day will come for large-scale equipment.”
Paul said with full confidence, “The work of drawing rifling will eventually be replaced by machines. As for loading bullets, what do you think about loading from the back of the barrel?”
“Load from the back?” Paul’s novel idea greatly surprised Victor, who then had a sudden realisation. “Yes, loading from the muzzle requires using a rod to push it all the way to the bottom. Can’t we just load it directly from the back of the barrel? Oh, my Lord Grayman, your great wisdom, as always, makes me feel so insignificant.”
Victor’s flattery failed to make Paul blush; he was already used to it.
“Haha, it’s also not that simple. If you load from the back, the back of the barrel has to be openable. The gas from the burning gunpowder would leak out from the gaps. There would be much less gas to push the projectile forward, and the bullet wouldn’t travel far.”
Besides the gas leak, it seemed a percussion cap was also needed. In short, there was still a long way to go.
“Lord Grayman, the thoroughness of your consideration once again makes me feel ashamed.”
Victor’s second compliment was delivered promptly. Then he said, somewhat hesitantly, “Lord Grayman, after we arrive at Knight Ferguson’s hunting grounds, do you think you could… could… also let me test this so-called rifled musket for you?”
Paul waved his hand magnanimously and said, “Of course! Who are you? You’re my Captain of the Guard. Since you’ve asked, how could I not let you use it?”
Victor was very happy and thanked him repeatedly.
Paul took the rifled musket back from Victor and hung it on his horse again.
He couldn’t help but start to imagine a scene in his mind…using this gun to hit target after target at the hunting grounds, drawing continuous cheers from the crowd.