So, recently I've been playing "Kingdom Come: Deliverance. This game takes place in the Kingdom of Bohemia, in 1403 AD. The game paints a fairly standard Late Middle ages Atmosphere, with it's fair Share of Historical Inaccuracies, and some factual liberty taken for story-telling purposes.
According the the "Gunpowder artillery in the Middle Ages Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_artillery_in_the_Middle_Ages#cite_note-13), the earliest known mentioning of gunpowder in Europe is written in Roger Bacon's "Opus Majus" in 1267. He states:
"We can, with saltpeter and other substances, compose artificially a fire that can be launched over long distances ... By only using a very small quantity of this material much light can be created accompanied by a horrible fracas. It is possible with it to destroy a town or an army ... In order to produce this artificial lightning and thunder it is necessary to take saltpeter, sulfur, and Luru Vopo Vir Can Utriet."
Furthermore, the Wiki Page "History of the Firearm", states the following:
"The first mention of firearms in Russia is found in the Sofiiskii vremennik chronicle, where it is stated that during the 1382 defense of Moscow from Tokhtamysh's Golden Horde, Muscovites used firearms called tyufyaki..."
Finally, the snippet that has confused me the most is from the PBS.org "Gun Timeline" Article, which I'm skeptical of because it seems to be vague and has a few inaccuracies. It claims that " 1380 - Hand guns are known across Europe." (Link:http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/technique/gun-timeline/)
This is 23 years before the events of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but i don't recall any characters Referring to Firearms or cannons, or even Gunpowder for that matter. So, my question is, at what point were Firearms, cannons, Handguns, Etc. Widely known (Among Nobility and/or Peasants) and when were firearms first Implemented into warfare. I understand that the Ottoman empire used firearms among it's regular Infantry not too long after the events of this game. I have not finished the game yet, so there may be such a point that I just haven't seen Yet. I do ask that spoilers are avoided, if possible. Thanks a Ton!
Firearms would have been known in Western Europe at the dawn of the 15th century, but their early iterations were both inefficient and very costly to manufacture. Given that still in the late 1400s bows and crossbows were being used alongside arquebuses by the Spaniards in the New World, hand held firearms needed up to the second half of the 16th century to start becoming relevant to the point of replacing more safe and tested weapons.
I want to stress the "safe" part since these early blackpowder devices were very keen on straight blowing up and taking some bits of your limbs with them, other than being quite inaccurate. Not too much though, since the fullest development of plate armor during the 1500s and 1600s has been driven by the improvement of handguns and small caliber artilleries.
Before this period though, gunpowder ruled the artilleries of European armies. Not as much in the Late Middle Ages as in the Early Renaissance, with bombards and mortars becoming ever more present in siege warfare to the point of prompting an evolution of static defences in castles and cities. From the 1440s-1460s walls and towers started to become shorter and thicker to better withstand cannon balls and shots, and cavarly tactics being used to perform raids against artillery positions in order to "spike the guns", driving an iron spike in the small hole were the gun's fuse would be, making it useless.
I can't give you an exact date as far as Bohemia is concerned, but in the second quarter of the 1400s, numerous cities of the Aragonese kingdom of Naples had bombards in their supply to defend against sieges. In the same period, the Center and Northen Italian states like Venice or the Duchy of Milan had cannons in their supply but in laughably small numbers if compared to the French army which invaded Italy in 1494.