Jezail

This is coolbert:

"A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail." - - Rudyard Kipling

[presumably that thousand pounds of education refers to a young Englishman, an officer, of the noble class, having received an education at the exclusive public schools of Eton or Harrow!!]

Here is the weapon used by the Afghan tribesmen to annihilate the British troops and camp followers, 17,000 of them, attempting to march that ninety miles from Kabul to the Khyber Pass, Christmas Day, 1842.

The jezail musket.



To western eyes, looks ungainly, weird, strange! Very long barrel, firing a large .75 caliber [about 20 mm] round!

But to the Afghan tribesman, ideally suited for the terrain and the type of tribal warfare endemic to the region!

"The Jezail . . . is an Afghan matchlock or flintlock musket fired from a forked rest."

"he jezail is a simple, cost-efficient and often hand-made musket common to Central Asian and some Middle Eastern Muslim lands of the time . . . Jezails usually have what seem to be unusually long barrels and of a higher calibre than other frontier guns - as a result of their purely military use. Some jezails are rifled. The jezail was fired using a horn bipod, and it has been speculated that the highly curved stock was tucked under the arm and cradled tightly against the body, as opposed to being held to the shoulder like a standard musket or rifle. Typical jezails were effective at 500 yards."

"British Brown Bess smoothbore muskets were effective at only 150 yards and accurate at 50 yards. Because of their advantage in range, Afghan rebels typically used the jezail from the tops of cliffs along valleys and defiles during ambushes. This tactic repeatedly devastated the British during their doomed retreat from Kabul to Jalalabad."

THOSE JEZAILS, WIELDED BY THE AFGHANI, WERE EFFECTIVE AT THREE TIMES THE RANGE OF THE WEAPONRY CARRIED BY THE COMMON BRITISH SOLDIER!!
To reiterate, the jezail was:

* Hand-made
* long barrel and [large bore] .75 caliber.
* Some rifled.
* NOT held against the shoulder [used a bipod]
* Effective up to 500 yards.

"The inferiority of our musket is hero made apparent; yet we are not to suppose that an unwieldy weapon like a jezail, which can scarcely be fired without a ..."

"The rifle barrelled jezail, so absurdly eulogised, is a long cumbrous weapon, nearly harmless in war; it can only be used from the summit of high rocks, ..."

"ABSURDLY EULOGISED", "CAN ONLY BE USED FROM FROM THE SUMMIT OF HIGH ROCKS"!
GUESS WHAT COLONEL BLIMP, THAT IS ALL THAT WAS NEEDED!! Afghan tribesmen, firing at the columns of British fleeing Kabul from dominant terrain, used their jezails with great effectiveness.

17,000 started out, ONLY ONE MADE IT!! In large measure due to the jezail!!

coolbert.