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Firearms and Tactics of the Thirty Year's War and the 16th Century Japanese Invasions of Korea

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2021

Abstract

Three decades before the Estates' Uprising in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown and the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, a conflict called Imjin War has taken place in the Far East. Significant feature of this seven-year-long conflict became a mass employment of tanegashima weapons - matchlock configured arquebus firearms with smooth-drilled barrel.

The employment of these weapons by Japanese forces first shocked the Korean-Chinese coalition but the adaptation to a new type and dynamics of combat was then very fast. Similarly as in Europe, this change of mechanism of the fighting dynamics eventually resulted in a sort of military revolution, which was determined by the specifics of the East Asian region.

The aim of this contribution is to introduce in a parallel two seemingly different military conflicts and to show how the adaptation of a new technology can determine and very quickly change the tactic concept and creation of training manuals, and in a broader sense of the word also the military thought.