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Wall Piece
The wall gun or wall piece was a type of smoothbore firearm used in the 16th through 18th centuries by defending forces to break the advance of enemy troops. Essentially, it was a scaled-up version of the army's standard infantry musket, operating under the same principles, but with a bore of up to one-inch (25.4 mm) calibre. These weapons filled a gap in firepower between the musket and the lightest artillery pieces, such as the swivel gun. This sort of weapon may also be found described as a rampart gun, hackbut or amusette, a name originally given to early medieval hand cannon. Use Wall pieces were so named because they were designed to be used along the walls of fortifications. They were equipped with a yoke at the point of balance, which tapered into a pivot, which could be inserted into several sockets along the walls, which would absorb the recoil of the piece and also provide a stable gun platform. (In this respect they were much like a scaled-down version of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blunderbuss
The blunderbuss is a firearm with a short, large caliber barrel which is flared at the muzzle and frequently throughout the entire bore, and used with shot and other projectiles of relevant quantity or caliber. The blunderbuss is commonly considered to be an early predecessor of the modern shotgun, with similar military and defensive use. It was effective only at short range, lacking accuracy at long distances. A blunderbuss in handgun form was called a ''dragon'', and it is from this that the term ''dragoon'' evolved. Etymology The term "blunderbuss" is of Dutch origin, from the Dutch word ''donderbuis'', which is a combination of ''donder'', meaning "thunder", and ''buis'', meaning "pipe" (Middle Dutch: ''busse'', box, tube, from Late Latin, ''buxis'', box, from Ancient Greek ''pyxίs'' (πυξίς), box: esp. from boxwood). The transition from ''donder'' to ''blunder'' is thought by some to be deliberate; the term ''blunder'' was originally used in a transitive sense, syno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taiping Rebellion
The Taiping Rebellion, also known as the Taiping Civil War or the Taiping Revolution, was a massive rebellion and civil war that was waged in China between the Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Han, Hakka-led Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. It lasted from 1850 to 1864, although following the fall of Tianjing (now Nanjing) the last rebel army was not wiped out until August 1871. After fighting the bloodiest civil war in world history, with over 20 million dead, the established Qing government won decisively, although at a great price to its fiscal and political structure. The uprising was commanded by Hong Xiuquan, an ethnic Hakka (a Han subgroup) and the self-proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ. Its goals were religious, nationalist, and political in nature; Hong sought the conversion of the Han people to the Taiping's syncretic version of Christianity, to overthrow the Qing dynasty, and a state transformation. Rather than supplanting the ruling class, the Taipings sought to upend the m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qing
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaking ethnic group who unified other Jurchen tribes to form a new "Manchu" ethnic identity. The dynasty was officially proclaimed in 1636 in Manchuria (modern-day Northeast China and Outer Manchuria). It seized control of Beijing in 1644, then later expanded its rule over the whole of China proper and Taiwan, and finally expanded into Inner Asia. The dynasty lasted until 1912 when it was overthrown in the Xinhai Revolution. In orthodox Chinese historiography, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The multiethnic Qing dynasty lasted for almost three centuries and assembled the territorial base for modern China. It was the largest imperial dynasty in the history of China and in 1790 the fou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been described as a standardised and Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language, which itself is based primarily on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi and neighbouring areas of North India. Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, is one of the two official languages of the Government of India, along with English. It is an official language in nine states and three union territories and an additional official language in three other states. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India. Hindi is the '' lingua franca'' of the Hindi Belt. It is also spoken, to a lesser extent, in other parts of India (usually in a simplified or pidginised variety such as Bazaar Hindustani or Haflong Hindi). Outside India, several ot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Far East
The ''Far East'' was a European term to refer to the geographical regions that includes East and Southeast Asia as well as the Russian Far East to a lesser extent. South Asia is sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons. The term first came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 15th century, particularly the British, denoting the Far East as the "farthest" of the three "Easts", beyond the Near East and the Middle East. Likewise, during the Qing dynasty of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the term "Far West (Taixi), Tàixī ()" – i.e., anything further west than the Arab world – was used to refer to the Western countries. Since the mid-20th century, the term has mostly gone out of use for the region in international mass media outlets due to its eurocentric connotations.Reischauer, Edwin and John K Fairbank, ''East Asia: The Great Tradition,'' 1960. The Russian Far East is often excluded due to cultural and ethnic differences, and is often cons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cartridge (firearms)
A cartridge or a round is a type of pre-assembled firearm ammunition packaging a projectile (bullet, shot, or slug), a propellant substance (usually either smokeless powder or black powder) and an ignition device (primer) within a metallic, paper, or plastic case that is precisely made to fit within the barrel chamber of a breechloading gun, for the practical purpose of convenient transportation and handling during shooting. Although in popular usage the term "bullet" is often informally used to refer to a complete cartridge, it is correctly used only to refer to the projectile. Cartridges can be categorized by the type of their primers – a small charge of an impact- or electric-sensitive chemical mixture that is located: at the center of the case head (centerfire); inside the rim ( rimfire); inside the walls on the fold of the case base that is shaped like a cup (cupfire, now obsolete); in a sideways projection that is shaped like a pin (pinfire, now obsolete); or a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bolt Action
Bolt-action is a type of manual firearm action that is operated by ''directly'' manipulating the bolt via a bolt handle, which is most commonly placed on the right-hand side of the weapon (as most users are right-handed). Most bolt-action firearms use a rotating bolt design, where the handle must first be rotated upward to unlock the bolt from the receiver, then pulled back to open the breech and allowing any spent cartridge case to be extracted and ejected. This also cocks the striker within the bolt (either on opening or closing of the bolt depending on the gun design) and engages it against the sear. When the bolt is returned to the forward position, a new cartridge (if available) is pushed out of the magazine and into the barrel chamber, and finally the breech is closed tight by rotating the handle down so the bolt head relocks on the receiver. Bolt-action firearms are generally repeating firearms, but some single-shot breechloaders also use bolt-action design as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muzzleloader
A muzzleloader is any firearm into which the projectile and the propellant charge is loaded from the muzzle of the gun (i.e., from the forward, open end of the gun's barrel). This is distinct from the modern (higher tech and harder to make) designs of breech-loading firearms. The term "muzzleloader" applies to both rifled and smoothbore type muzzleloaders, and may also refer to the marksman who specializes in the shooting of such firearms. The firing methods, paraphernalia and mechanism further divide both categories as do caliber (from cannons to small-caliber palm guns). Modern muzzleloading firearms range from reproductions of sidelock, flintlock and percussion long guns, to in-line rifles that use modern inventions such as a closed breech, sealed primer and fast rifling to allow for considerable accuracy at long ranges. Modern mortars use a shell with the propelling charge and primer attached at the base. Unlike older muzzleloading mortars, which were loaded the same way as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caplock
The percussion cap or percussion primer, introduced in the early 1820s, is a type of single-use percussion ignition device for muzzle loader firearm locks enabling them to fire reliably in any weather condition. This crucial invention gave rise to the cap lock mechanism or percussion lock system using percussion caps struck by the hammer to set off the gunpowder charge in percussion guns including percussion rifles and cap and ball firearms. Any firearm using a caplock mechanism is a percussion gun. Any long gun with a cap-lock mechanism and rifled barrel is a percussion rifle. Cap and ball describes cap-lock firearms discharging a single bore-diameter spherical bullet with each shot. Description The percussion cap is a small cylinder of copper or brass with one closed end. Inside the closed end is a small amount of a explosive material#Primary explosive, shock-sensitive explosive material such as mercury(II) fulminate, mercuric fulminate (discovered in 1800; it was the only prac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Breech-loading
A breechloader is a firearm in which the user loads the ammunition (cartridge or shell) via the rear (breech) end of its barrel, as opposed to a muzzleloader, which loads ammunition via the front ( muzzle). Modern firearms are generally breech-loading – except for replicas of vintage weapons. Early firearms before the mid-19th century were almost entirely muzzle-loading. Mortars and the Russian GP-25 grenade launcher are the only muzzleloaders remaining in frequent modern usage. However, referring to a weapon specifically as breech loading is mostly limited to single-shot or otherwise non-repeating firearms, such as double-barreled shotguns. Breech-loading provides the advantage of reduced reloading time, because it is far quicker to load the projectile and propellant into the chamber of a gun/cannon than to reach all the way over to the front end to load ammunition and then push them back down a long tube – especially when the projectile fits tightly and the tub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
