Inside the Hand Mortar: The 17th Century Grenade Launcher That Created the Grenadier (Full Process)

Step inside a French infantry company drawn up on the parade ground of the Île de la Cité in Paris in the year 1670 and discover how a specially selected soldier — tall, strong, and personally chosen by his captain from among the best men of every regiment on the order of King Louis XIV — shouldered a short wide-bored bronze weapon barely two feet long, dropped a hollow iron sphere the size of a small pomegranate down its muzzle, lit the sphere's five-second fuse with a slow match, closed the frizzen of the flintlock, and, on the drum-signal of his sergeant, lobbed the burning sphere in a high arc over the head of the enemy line to detonate three seconds later at ground level: the hand mortar, the weapon that had just created a new kind of soldier the French would call a grenadier. This full-process historical documentary explores the engineering, the military reorganization of the age of Louis XIV, and the strange first century of a weapon that would give its name to the elite infantry of every European army — the Hand Mortar as it was carried by the first generation of grenadiers between roughly 1660 and 1750, formalized by Louis XIV's royal ordinance of 1667, and imitated within a decade by every professional army in Europe. Built with a cast bronze or wrought iron barrel between forty and seventy centimeters long, a wide muzzle bore between fifty and seventy-five millimeters — nearly as wide as a man's fist — a heavy wooden stock shaped like a musket's for shoulder firing, and a matchlock or flintlock ignition to touch off the powder charge behind the grenade, the classical hand mortar weighed between three and five kilograms and could throw a fused iron grenade in an arc between eighty and two hundred meters. Explore every major stage of Hand Mortar construction and its role in the birth of the grenadier, including: Casting the short bronze barrel with the wide 50-75mm muzzle bore Boring and turning the interior to a smooth cylindrical grenade chamber Fitting the barrel to a musket-pattern wooden stock and butt Installing the matchlock or flintlock ignition behind the powder chamber Manufacturing hollow iron grenades filled with fine black powder Cutting and inserting the powder-and-tow fuse into the grenade Loading, lighting the fuse, firing the mortar, and lobbing the grenade Blending late 17th-century French bronze casting, the military reforms of Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban and King Louis XIV, and the naval and land battles of the Grand Alliance wars that carried the grenadier from a Paris parade ground to every fortress and warship in Europe, this video reveals how one short wide-bored weapon named an entire military tradition. In 1667, on the recommendation of his war minister the Marquis de Louvois and his engineer Vauban, Louis XIV added to each of his royal regiments a compagnie de grenadiers — a company of grenadiers — soldiers detailed to fire the newly introduced hand mortar and throw hand grenades before the assault. Their name came directly from the projectile: grenade, from the French for pomegranate, which the small spherical bomb resembled. Within a decade, every serious European army had followed suit. King Charles II of England created the Grenadier Guards in 1678. Emperor Leopold I added grenadier companies in Austria. Frederick I of Prussia did the same. At the Battle of Blenheim on 13 August 1704, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and Prince Eugene of Savoy commanded roughly fifty-two thousand Allied troops against a slightly larger French and Bavarian army under Marshal Tallard. Marlborough's grenadier companies, still using hand mortars alongside hand-thrown grenades, played a decisive role in the assault columns. Tallard was captured, twenty-seven French battalions surrendered, and three thousand French soldiers drowned attempting to retreat across the Danube. The hand mortar itself faded from service around the 1780s. Its descendants returned in 1915 as trench weapons and evolved by the 1960s into modern shoulder-fired and underbarrel grenade launchers. The Grenadier Guards still parade at Buckingham Palace. If you enjoy Baroque military history documentaries, the wars of Louis XIV, John Churchill of Marlborough, or full-process explorations of the ancestors of modern infantry weapons, this cinematic walkthrough reveals how one wide-bored bronze weapon named an entire kind of soldier. 🔔 Subscribe to The Archaic Method for more Inside documentaries exploring ancient workshops, weapon engineering, and the full processes behind the weapons that changed history.