page_title: Arquebus
section_title: Terminology
hierarchical_section_title: Arquebus / Terminology
caption_attribution_description: English: Page showing musketeer (Plate 4) from Jacob van Gheyn's Wapenhandelingen van Roers, Musquetten ende Spiesen, (1608)
context_page_description: The arquebus, derived from the German word Hakenbüchse, was a form of long gun that appeared in Europe and the Ottoman Empire during the 15th century. Although the term arquebus was applied to many different forms of firearms from the 15th to 17th centuries, it originally referred to "a hand-gun with a hook-like projection or lug on its under surface, useful for steadying it against battlements or other objects when firing". These "hook guns" were in their earliest forms defensive weapons mounted on German city walls in the early 15th century. The addition of a shoulder stock, priming pan, and matchlock mechanism in the late 15th century turned the arquebus into a handheld firearm and also the first firearm equipped with a trigger. The exact dating of the matchlock's appearance is disputed. It could have appeared in the Ottoman Empire as early as 1465 and in Europe a little before 1475. The heavy arquebus, which was then called a musket, was developed to better penetrate plate armor and appeared in Europe around 1521. Heavy arquebuses mounted on wagons were called arquebus à croc. These carried a lead ball of about 3.5 ounces.
context_section_description: The arquebus has at times been known as the harquebus, harkbus, hackbut, hagbut, archibugio, haakbus, schiopo, sclopus, tüfenk, tofak, matchlock, and firelock. 
  In the early 16th century, the term "arquebus" was used to describe an assortment of guns, but by the late 16th century the arquebus, caliver, and musket had settled down into size categories for firearms. Continental European powers such as the Spanish, Germans, and French differentiated muskets from arquebuses by size and if they required a fork rest or not. However, the musket—essentially a large arquebus—which had been introduced around 1521, fell out of favor in the mid-16th century due to the decline of armor, but the term stuck around and musket became a generic descriptor for all 'shoulder arms' fireweapons into the 1800s. At least on one occasion the musket and arquebus have been used interchangeably to refer to the same weapon, and even referred to as an "arquebus musket". A Habsburg commander in the mid-1560s once referred to muskets as "double arquebuses". The matchlock firing mechanism also became a common term for the arquebus after it was added to the firearm. Later flintlock firearms were sometimes called fusils or fuzees.
caption: Musketeer from Jacob van Gheyn's Wapenhandelingen van Roers, Musquetten ende Spiesen (1608)
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