"Europe can wait."
(Abigal Masham)
The history of firearms. And it so happened that this kind and gentle queen (for which the people loved her) became the first monarch of the united kingdom of England, Scotland and Ireland. And she ended up in this position at the age of 37, and … having 17 unsuccessful pregnancies behind her. It was under Queen Anne (1665-1714) that England entered the War of the Spanish Succession, and although she was practically not interested in politics, she managed to rule in such a way that she surrounded herself with a whole galaxy of famous statesmen, military leaders, scientists and writers. In the USSR, it was about this queen based on the play by E. Scribe "A Glass of Water" that the feature film of the same name was shot, which was released in 1979, while filmmakers from Great Britain, Ireland and the United States, in turn, shot their own film on the theme favoritism at the court of Queen Anne, which is called the "Favorite". Well, and the name of this queen was named … a pistol, somewhat different from those that existed in England earlier.
In general, there was nothing special about the Queen Anne pistol. It was a conventional flintlock pistol with a specific trigger position within the frame. Such locks, in contrast to conventional flint weapons, in which the parts of the lock were located on the lock board, had a more compact mechanism located inside the box-shaped case, similar to modern pistols. Because of this, by the way, they were often called "box-lock pistols". In addition, another difference was that the ignition hole for the powder and the powder shelf on many of them were located on the top of the barrel, and not on the side, as before. Another feature of this weapon was the "cannon barrel" with a thickening at the muzzle.
But this feature was not as important as another, associated not so much with the appearance of the barrel as with its device. The typical barrel of a Queen Anne pistol is unscrewed with a barrel wrench right in front of the chamber (you can do it with your hands!) And is loaded not from the barrel, but from the breech end. The chamber is long and narrow to match the caliber of the bullet. Because of this arrangement, the bullet for the Queen Anne pistols was larger in diameter than the bore, whereas usually round bullets of that time were smaller in diameter in order to make them easier to load.
At the moment of firing, behind the bullet in such a pistol, a high gas pressure is created before it enters the barrel, due to which a significantly higher muzzle velocity is achieved than in muzzle loading pistols. Therefore, the barrel was often specially made rifled, which further increased the accuracy of firing from such pistols.
First made in England during the reign of Queen Anne, these pistols became popular and … for some reason they got this name, although it should be borne in mind that the queen died in 1714, and at that time they had just begun to appear. These pistols were of various sizes and calibers, but for some reason they were most often produced as pocket pistols. Hence the many names invented for them: "pocket pistol", "pistol for a waistcoat pocket", and again - "gun for a clutch".
It is interesting that these pistols were produced for more than 100 years, and not only as flint-type pistols, but then also as capsule pistols, into which previously released models were very often altered.
Such a device relieved the owner of the pistol from the need to wrap the bullet in cotton or cloth, or use a ramrod while loading. As a combat weapon, such pistols were not successful, since in the heat of battle, when loading, it was easy to drop a separate barrel. They came up with a swivel joint so that the barrel could be unscrewed, while it would remain attached, but this improvement clearly did not bring success. The most popular "Queen Anne pistols" have gained among civilians as an effective weapon of self-defense. They were often decorated to suit the tastes of wealthy buyers.
Probably the final development of the Queen Anne pistol design took place sometime around 1805, when Mortimer & Co. added a folding trigger and safety catch to it.
For the richest clients, English and French gunsmiths began to produce complete sets, consisting of a hunting rifle, two large dueling pistols and two small "Queen Anne pistols" with rich engraving on the barrels, locks and buttstock.
With the advent of capsules, the production of pistols of this type in England continued, only now they began to be made with capsule locks. In fact, it was these pistols that became the ancestors of the famous derringer created in the USA.
In continental Europe, pistols of this type received their own name "terzerol", which comes from the Italian word Terzuolo (hawk). The simplest and usually the cheapest versions of capsule terzeroles served to scare birds away from gardens and vineyards, or for … hunting. Single and double-barreled versions were produced. Since the 17th century, terzeroli have been manufactured with a flintlock, which in the 19th century was replaced by a more reliable capsule lock.
Due to the high demand for capsule terzeroli, which were produced mainly in Zella-Melis and Liège, many arms companies were engaged in their production, and they produced them from the middle of the 19th century to the end of the 1930s of the last century.
Interestingly, the English gunsmith Harvey Walklate Mortimer, who was the personal gunsmith of George III (1730-1820), took a special interest in the loading mechanism, which is believed to have been invented by the Florentine gunsmith Michele Lorenzoni (d. 1733). Lorenzoni's sophisticated internal system allowed up to ten consecutive shots to be fired using charges (bullets and gunpowder) from a magazine hidden inside the grip. When the lever was turned one hundred and eighty degrees forward and then back, the pistol was reloaded and was already cocked, so the shooter had only to add gunpowder to the shelf. Mortimer's meticulously constructed pistols of the Lorenzoni type reflect his high level of craftsmanship and … the technical excellence of Lorenzoni's own design.
