Events

Battlefields Trust Online Talk: Firearms of the 16th Century

Tuesday 18th February 2025

Over the course of the sixteenth century, handguns became a central technology of European warfare. Yet as commanders competed to deploy firearms to best advantage on the battlefield, rulers found themselves wondering how to address the social consequences of a dangerous new weapon, especially in a militia system that relied on wide access to handguns. Documents show how guns went missing from armouries and were left lying around the guardroom; demobilised soldiers often turned to banditry. Drawing on research in archives and museums across Europe, this lecture asks how early modern states squared the circle of deploying an important new military technology while still preserving social order.

Catherine Fletcher is a historian of Renaissance and early modern Europe. She completed her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2008 and since 2020 has been professor of history at Manchester Metropolitan University. Catherine combines research on early modern history with public-facing work and in 2015 was selected as a BBC New Generation Thinker. She’s the author of several books, including The Black Prince of Florence and The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance. Her next book, The Handgun Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires, will be published by Princeton University Press in 2026.

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