content_output-045_8 (Q6154)

The earliest arms were small; usually they were of iron forged, and shot arrows weighing about half a pound, and were charged with about a third of an ounce of powder. The fire-arm at Rouen in 1388 was of this description. With it were forty-eight bolts—feathered iron arrows: these were put in from the muzzle. The charge of gunpowder was usually put in a separate movable breech-block or