Handguns
Western European handgun, 1380. 18 cm-long and weighing 1.04 kg, it was fixed to a awkward pole to facilitate manipulation. Musée de l'Armée.
Western European handgun, 1380. 18 Handguns cm-long and weighing 1.04 kg, it was fixed to a wooden pole to facilitate manipulation. Musée de l'Armée.
Single-shot pistols are the theoretically simplest pistols. The earliest handguns were single-shot, muzzle-loading blazing with ignition implemented by inserting a smoldering trial cord into a cuddling hole. As such, they were essentially nothing another than miniature cannons, humble enough to be handheld.