Unique edition, unmatched! The first domestic study of the Great Firearms Revolution of the 15th-17th centuries, which turned not only military affairs, but also the entire history of mankind. As firearms spread, the old shock tactics were replaced (when the infantry peak prevailed on the battlefield, and the pikemen were the main branch of the army), a "fire battle" came, the enemy was remotely defeated by massed fire from musketeers and artillery - so, in blood and powder smoke, the Middle Ages died and New Time was born. The military revolution, fraught with radical social transformations, proceeded at different speeds in Western Europe, Russia, the Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire - these differences largely explain the rise of the West and the decline of Eastern and Southeastern Europe, and the belated refusal of Russia from the "Ottoman" military model in favor of Western European tradition largely predetermined the special path of development of Russian civilization.