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A Chinese military manual published in compared Ottoman and European firearms in the following manner: [19]. Firearms have been in use since the beginning of the dynasty, and field armies in battle formation have found them convenient and useful to carry along Since muskets have been transmitted to China, these weapons have lost their effectiveness In battle formation, aside from various cannon such as the "three generals", the breech-loading swivel gun, and the "hundred-league thunder", nothing has more range or power than the Ottoman musket.

The next best is the European one. The fact that Ottoman firearms were considered by 17th-century Chinese writers to be superior to European firearms demonstrates that the Ottoman Empire was at least a second tier producer of muskets during this period. However, some claim that the 'European' firearms the Chinese researcher tested were actually Japanese arquebuses based on fifty-year-old Portuguese models.

The design of the Ottoman matchlock is substantially different from that of the European variety and it in turn influenced the matchlocks produced in both Safavid Persia and Mughal India. The Ottoman Empire by the middle of the fifteenth century had developed strategic infantry groups along with the ascension of weaponry. Early modern warfare has many important factors alongside weapons and artillery, and strategy is one of them. Developing a strong core for the sultan was key to understanding the way the Ottoman Empire could expand and take over vast territories to maintain them under their rule.

One of the most important creations for their early modern warfare was a group called the Janissaries. They were considered to be an elite group of infantryman that were highly skilled and sociable. With their placement in use for the sultan, they were an unmatched military power that no European power could compete with during the fifteenth century. The Ottoman Empire was brought up in a different way from most militaristic powers, and that was from the bottom up. They were developed in peaceful upbringings. When they conquered Constantinople in , they had created a transcontinental government that would see them to continue to expand militarily and politically.

They used the Janissary units to advance their stronghold on the will of the people they conquered. One of their techniques was to capture boys from the territories they had defeated and forced them to become Muslim in order to control their easily molded minds. It was a similar tactic to many growing empires, because it is understood that children are easily manipulated, and in order to maintain new territories guarded by the Janissary, they needed to have an easier population to mold.

The Janissaries also had other roles outside of military conflict. They were one of the main protectors of the sultan in order to prevent coups from happening, or paramilitary units from gaining control of the empire. The problem with this is that the Ottoman Empire made the Janissaries too powerful and because of their socialization, career advancement options, and recruitment procedures, the men in the units were very cohesive and respected each other more than the sultan.

This would prove to be an issue later on, but during the fifteenth century it was not an issue yet because their numbers were still growing and would continue to grow in order to boost their elite power.

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A man by the name of Konstantin Mihalovic was captured by the Turks in and would eventually write a memoir about his time with the Ottoman Empire Janissary units. His account would be considered flawed because of the translations from Serbian to Czech and Polish. There is no original text from his memoir and only translations are left to work from, and those have far fetched ideas of what the Janissaries were doing during the time.


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He was recaptured in by Hungarian troops and eventually wrote the memoir after he became a Christian again. His memoir is an important piece of history, but scholars and historians have widely debated the authentic nature of his stories and doubt the consistency of his tales.

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The Ottoman Empire was one of the first states to put gunpowder weapons into widespread use. The barrage of Ottoman cannon fire lasted forty days, and they are estimated to have fired 19, times. The 16th century saw the first widespread use of the matchlock musket as a decisive weapon on the battlefield with the Turks becoming leaders in this regard.

The first of these campaigns was the campaign against the Persians in under Yavuz Sultan Selim, or Selim the Grim. Armed with gunpowder weapons, his army defeated the Persians at the Battle of Chaldiran. The decisive battle of his campaign against the Mamluks, and the battle which highlighted the importance of the musket in the Ottoman military, was the Battle of Raydaniyah , fought in There, Selim outflanked the entrenched Mamluk artillery, and attacked the Mamluk forces with his Janissaries. The Janissaries, armed with firearms, destroyed the Mamluk army, armed mostly with traditional swords and javelins.

The Muslim force under Salman Reis had "three or four basilisks firing balls of thirty palms in circumference". After the death of Selim, he was succeeded by his son Suleiman the Magnificent. During his reign, gunpowder weapons continued to be used effectively. During this battle, Ottoman artillery, and Janissaries armed with muskets, were able to cut down charging Hungarian cavalry.

Although the cannon and musket were employed by the Ottomans long beforehand, by the 17th century they witnessed how ineffective the traditional cavalry charges were in the face of concentrated musket-fire volleys. By the middle of the 17th century, the continued reliance of the Ottomans on over-heavy ordnance had been made out by European officers as a liability.

This enormous artillery produces great damage when it hits, but it is awkward to move and it requires too much time to reload and site. Furthermore, it consumes a great amount of powder, besides cracking and breaking the wheels and the carriages and even the ramparts on which it is placed They both began in the early 16th century but later collapsed in the 18th century. The refusal of their Qizilbash forces to use firearms contributed to the Safavid rout at Chaldiran in Despite this initial reluctance, the Persians very rapidly acquired the art of making and using handguns. A Venetian envoy, Vincenzo di Alessandri, in a report presented to the Council of Ten on 24 September , observes:.

They used for arms, swords, lances, arquebuses, which all the soldiers carry and use; their arms are also superior and better tempered than those of any other nation. The barrels of the arquebuses are generally six spans long, and carry a ball little less than three ounces in weight. They use them with such facility that it does not hinder them drawing their bows nor handling their swords, keeping the latter hung at their saddle bows till occasion requires them.

The arquebus is then put away behind the back so that one weapon does not impede the use of the other. Babur , the founder of the Mughal Empire on the Indian subcontinent , employed firearms , gun carts and movable artillery in battle. In particular, he used them at the first Battle of Panipat to defeat the much larger forces of Ibrahim Lodhi , the last ruler of the Delhi Sultanate.

Other battles he fought using gunpowder weapons include the Battle of Khanwa in against Rana Sanga , and the Battle of Ghaghra in In , Fathullah Shirazi , a Persian - Indian developed a seventeen-barrelled cannon, fired with a matchlock.

Mughal Army artillerymen during the reign of Akbar. After Tipu's eventual defeat in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War and the capture of the Mysore iron rockets, they were influential in British rocket development and were soon put into use in the Napoleonic Wars.

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The Ethiopian—Adal war was a military conflict between the Ethiopian Empire and the Adal Sultanate from until Many historians trace the origins of hostility between Somalia and Ethiopia to this war. Some historians also argue that this conflict proved, through their use on both sides, the value of firearms such as the matchlock musket, cannons, and the arquebus over traditional weapons. The Japanese were introduced to early firearms by Portuguese traders arriving with European-style arquebuses onto the island of Tanegashima , near the island of Kyushu in September The impact of this event would revolutionize Japanese strategy throughout the Sengoku-jidai , revolving around tactics that centered on usage of firearms.

Portuguese traders visiting Japan several years later found that the Japanese had successfully reproduced hundreds of arquebuses, and by , a rough estimate of over , of the early firearms were in circulation throughout Japan.

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Different schools started to emerge from this migration. Japanese military strategy, upon receiving the new weapon, began to gradually shift towards infantry -based tactics, rather than those that favored horseback cavalry. However, certain studies have disputed the claim that Nobunaga was the first to utilize this tactic, though Japanese forces were utilizing it far earlier that other world contemporaries.

As with their small arms counterparts, many warlords wished to quickly adopt the weapon in order to gain an advantage over their contemporaries, but difficulties in producing suitable reproductions led to limited early usage in comparison.

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As with personal firearms, Oda Nobunaga was early to adopt the new weapon, and later, after his death, one of his retainers Toyotomi Hideyoshi would use cannons to destructive effect to lay siege to Kanki Castle in These changes and adoptions into Sengoku-era Japanese warfare made themselves present during the Japanese invasions of Korea of after Toyotomi Hideyoshi had unified Japan. Early success in the first incursion during May into Korea was attributed to the varied small arms and tactics of the Japanese forces, allowing them to make and defend early footholds into the Korean peninsula.

However, after the Koreans had allied themselves with Ming China , they gained access to better artillery with greater range and destructive power than their Japanese equivalents. Finally, the Korean navy under the command of Yi Sun-sin had utilized the superior, cannon-armed navy of the Korean-Ming alliance against the Japanese maritime supply lines, eventually leading to a shortage of supplies and Japanese losses on the mainland.

Japan was driven off their last stronghold in Seoul in May , and subsequent ventures would not come close to the success of the first, as the Korean-Ming alliance had developed countermeasures and equivalent small arms to Japanese equivalents. Western arquebuses and matchlocks were imported into Vietnam during the 16th century.

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The raging and lengthy wars between Le and Mac dynasties, and later Trinh and Nguyen clans invoked an arm race between the opposing factions. Gunnery and marksmanship rapidly spread across the country and soon Vietnamese musketeers became famous within Asia as masters of firearms. The discovery of gunpowder during the was a result of Chinese Alchemy as they were seeking immortality.


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Thus, the earliest record of gunpowder was during the 11th century. As their knowledge of gunpowder spread through the early modern world, the development of warfare weapons emerged.