snaphances

Updated: June 23, 2025

The forest settler who swung an axe all day for his livelihood could have felled the ordinary fine gentleman with one blow of his fist. And they could shoot too, with their rusty matchlocks or clumsy snaphances. In some few the motive was fear, for they had seen or heard of the tender mercies of the savages.

John Buchan - Salute to Adventurers

The ex-clergyman's house was also the arsenal of the conspiracy, and here were stored away a stock of pistols, snaphances, and sledge-hammers together with that other death-dealing machinery, the whole edition of the 'Clearshining Torch', an inflammatory, pamphlet by Slatius all to be used on the fatal day fast approaching. On the 1st February van Dyk visited Slatius at Rotterdam.

John Lothrop Motley - Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War — Complete (1614-23)

Cannon were planted at intervals along the works, and a company or two of the Waartgelders, armed from head to foot, with snaphances on their shoulders, stood ever ready to issue forth to quell any disturbances. Occasionally a life or two was lost of citizen or soldier, and many doughty blows were interchanged. It was a melancholy spectacle.

John Lothrop Motley - Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War, 1617

There were four pieces of ordnance, supplies of powder, shot and lead, and, for individual use, "fixt peeces," snaphances, pistols, seventy swords, coats of mail, quilted coats, and thirty-five suits of armor. The bulk of the Colony's livestock seems to have been localized in the Jamestown area, about half of the cattle, a little more than half of the hogs, and well over half of the goats.

Charles E. Hatch - The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624

The ex-clergyman's house was also the arsenal of the conspiracy, and here were stored away a stock of pistols, snaphances, and sledge-hammers together with that other death-dealing machinery, the whole edition of the 'Clearshining Torch', an inflammatory, pamphlet by Slatius all to be used on the fatal day fast approaching. On the 1st February van Dyk visited Slatius at Rotterdam.

John Lothrop Motley - Life and Death of John of Barneveld — Complete (1609-1623)

'Make a note of Smithson's order, he said, as I entered. 'A hundred pots and as many fronts and backs to be ready by Tuesday; also six score snaphances for the musqueteers, and two hundred extra spades for the workers. Mark that the order be declared null and void unless fulfilled within the time appointed. 'It is so marked, your Grace.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Micah Clarke: His Statement as made to his three grandchildren Joseph,: Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734

Cannon were planted at intervals along the works, and a company or two of the Waartgelders, armed from head to foot, with snaphances on their shoulders, stood ever ready to issue forth to quell any disturbances. Occasionally a life or two was lost of citizen or soldier, and many doughty blows were interchanged. It was a melancholy spectacle.

John Lothrop Motley - Life and Death of John of Barneveld — Complete (1609-1623)

The snaphances and halberds being then neatly stacked in the square, the Stadholder went home to his early breakfast. There was an end to those mercenaries thenceforth and for ever. The faint and sickly resistance to the authority of Maurice offered at Utrecht was attempted nowhere else.

John Lothrop Motley - Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War — Complete (1614-23)

Besides the common weapons of the peasants there was a puncheon half full of pistols and petronels, together with a good number of muskets, screw-guns, snaphances, birding-pieces, and carbines, with a dozen bell-mouthed brass blunderbusses, and a few old-fashioned wall-pieces, such as sakers and culverins taken from the manor-houses of the county.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Micah Clarke: His Statement as made to his three grandchildren Joseph,: Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734

Cannon were planted at intervals along the works, and a company or two of the Waartgelders, armed from head to foot, with snaphances on their shoulders, stood ever ready to issue forth to quell any disturbances. Occasionally a life or two was lost of citizen or soldier, and many doughty blows were interchanged. It was a melancholy spectacle.

John Lothrop Motley - Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War — Complete (1614-23)