A 16 TH-CENTURY WHEEL-LOCK CARBINE OR “PETRON EL”
In his work on the treatment of gunshot wounds, published in 1545, the famous French surgeon Ambroise Paré noted that “those muskets called poitrinals… are of large calibre but short… and shot from the chest”. His words both describe the key characteristics of these weapons and reveal the origin of our term “petronel”, from poitrine, the French for chest.
These guns – a sort of hybrid between a pistol and a carbine but with a short butt, designed to be pressed to the body, and of questionable practicality – were never made in large numbers and then only from the mid-16th to early-17th century; primarily a military weapon, they were also used, as were pistols, in the chase, notably for delivering the coup de grâce to large game from the saddle.
Technically, as is typical of these items, the Royal Armouries’ example is a wheel-lock, in this case with a 90-bore, smooth-bore barrel – and so, in fact, small enough, although of petronel form, to have been fired like a pistol. It is, however, as lavishly and certainly as enigmatically decorated as almost any other historic gun of any type. The most prominent ornament is the bone inlay to the stock and fore-end, featuring heads and animals intertwined with plant stems and leaves of green-stained antler. These are drawn from a standard Renaissance “grotesque” repertoire, as are the figurative elements, although these are surprisingly risqué: on the bone butt-plate Venus and Cupid disport with unusual intimacy, while the vaguely phallic trigger sprouts suggestively from a second naked female.
Grotesque decoration is also applied to the metal parts, the gilded barrel bearing chiselled motifs, including a hound’s head at the muzzle and figures in exotic headdresses, and the lock plate a range of creatures, some half human, half beast. Most remarkable, however, in both material and subject matter, are the four plaques, two of which are effectively tiny mirrors with images painted on the reverse before the reflective foil was applied. These are set into either side of the butt and bear the date 1581 and inscription VER GIS MEIN NIT (in modern German vergiss mein nicht), “Forget me not”; below, sprigs of the flower appear on a cartouche, along with a heart bearing the letters IHS (the Christogram or monograph of Christ).
The other plaques are good-quality, painted portrait miniatures, set below glass, of bearded but clearly different men. Whether the plaques were made for the gun is unclear but seems probable; if so, we have a dated piece and while the inscription and the lock might suggest German manufacture, the decoration points to French origin. Otherwise, the gun poses more questions than answers – in particular, who is pressed not to forget whom? One of the men depicted in miniature, who received this as a present? We can only guess. But we can be pretty sure that this beautiful (if questionably practical) object was much prized by its first owner, as it has been by the Armouries since its purchase in 1961 for £2,100, more than the cost of an E-type, and then the world record for a historic pistol.
The “Forget-me-not” gun is among 630 items on display in the Hunting Gallery at the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds, the national museum of arms and armour. www.royalarmouries.org. The- museum is open daily 10am-5pm. Entry is free.