Summary: Gunpowder Revolutionized Medieval Warfare

The introduction of gunpowder revolutionized medieval Europe and hastened the decline of the knight and the end of the medieval style of warfare. Before gunpowder revolutionized medieval Europe, every weapon was dependent on the user’s strength to operate. For example, it took immense strength to operate a traditional war bow with the average draw weight being around 140 pounds.1 Even the siege weapons of the time depended on brute strength to ratchet a pulley that would draw a rope to prime a ballista or ready a mangonel.2

The armies of the era consisted of both aristocratic knights, unskilled peasants and skilled archers.3 It was expected that a knight would provide all of his own armor, training, and horses. This meant that only the

In 1498, he ordered that captured arquebusiers should have their hands cut off and their eyes pierced out because it was unfit for a common lowly foot soldier to be able to wound or kill a knight.4 Interestingly despite his dislike of early firearms, he himself utilized heavy cannons in his army.5 This could be construed as hypocritical or arbitrary but it’s better interpreted as an acknowledgement of the practical military value of cannons in the late fifteenth century. For Vitelli, the military advantage outweighed his personal

Cannons and arquebuses allowed the peasants who were traditionally armed with pitchforks and improvised weapons to be able to kill the best-equipped knights in the finest armor. Firearms advanced quickly and soon became a staple of armies everywhere. This in turn necessitated all of Europe to rewrite military doctrine and retrain their armies. Perhaps their biggest impact though was initiating social change that would begin the decline of the entire knightly class. The main question left standing is: who stepped in to fill the void left by the knightly