Firearms to be used by hand were far slower in their development, as was natural, owing to their greater complication. The earliest were mere tubes, elevated on a stand, miniature cannon in fact. For a very long while they could not be fired from the shoulder, but required to be supported on iron rests fixed into the ground, which added seriously to the weight to be carried. Musketeers, if one may apply the term to the soldiers who bore the earlier firearms before the musket properly so called was invented, were quite incapable of standing alone. They might fire one volley at charging cavalry, but long before they could be ready for a second, the horsemen would be cutting down their defenceless ranks. Hence pikemen, who should do the defensive part of the work, were a necessary adjunct to musketeers: obviously also the pikemen alone could come to close quarters in attacking. It was not until the invention of the bayonet enabled the musketeer to be, so to speak, his own pikeman, that infantry equipped with firearms could become the real backbone of an army.
It is doubtful whether a musket bullet[48] was ever so deadly a missile as the clothyard arrow, all points taken into account. If a bullet struck armour obliquely, it would penetrate, instead of glancing, at a greater angle than an arrow point.[49] And it would also be likely to make worse wounds, by driving in bits of the metal. On the other hand the arrow was noiseless and smokeless, merits which are reckoned important by modern authorities who are seeking after smokeless powder. It had greater range than the musket bullet, admitted of much greater accuracy of aim, and had probably at least equal direct penetrating power, except at very short distances. England however was the only country in the latter middle ages which used a missile weapon that would bear comparison even with the clumsiest firearms. Naturally musketeers, with their pikemen, were developed rather on the continent than in England, though everywhere the development was slow, and the process of superseding armour and hand-to-hand weapons very gradual.
The ultimate political tendency of the invention of gunpowder was obvious. By rendering discipline more necessary for the efficiency of the soldier, it threw power into the hands of the state, which alone could maintain and organise bodies of trained men, as against individuals. By making infantry the one indispensable arm, it tended to make oppression less easy: the class which furnishes the fighting strength of a nation will in the long run have at least its full share of political power. It may be only a coincidence, but it is at any rate symbolical, that England, the country in which, thanks to the long-bow, infantry became earliest of paramount importance in war, is also the country in which aristocratic privileges in the strict sense of the word, as distinguished from aristocratic influences, were of least extent and soonest reduced to insignificance. It is also the country in which the nation as a whole earliest felt its strength, and taught its kings to respect the national will.