Why Firearms Took the Place of Bow and Arrow - The Rise of the Musketeer in Europe
In the late medieval and the early modern period, a new weapon changed the armament of European armies drastically and lastingly. The handgun made its appearance. Although the earliest firearms were rather ineffective, military artisans were fascinated by them. As time passed and technical improvement justified using the handgun on the battlefield, handgunners quickly overhauled and almost completely replaced archers and crossbowmen. This is how historiography explains the rise of the handgunner.
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Bibliography:
Primary Sources:
Garrard, W. The Arte of Warre, London, 1591.
Barret, R. The Theoretike and Practicke of Moderne Warres. London, 1598.
Digges, L. and T. An arithmeticall warlike treatise named Stratioticos. London, 1579, 1590. (Unless otherwise noted, citations are to the 1590 edn.)
Smythe, J. Certain Discourses. London, 1590.
Gheyn J. de. Wapenhandelinghe van roers, musquetten ende spiessen. The Hague, 1607.
Secondary Literature:
Kalaus, P., Schiessversuche mit historischen Feuerwaffen, in: Von alten Handfeuerwaffen, Graz 1989.
Rogers, Clifford J., Tactics and the Face of Battle, in: Tallet, Frank/Trim, D. J. B. (Ed.), European Warfare 1350-1750, Cambridge 2010.
Strickland, M., and R. Hardy. The Great Warbow: From Hastings to the Mary Rose. Stroud, 2005.
Kalaus, P., Schiessversuche mit historischen Feuerwaffen, in: Von alten Handfeuerwaffen, Graz 1989.
#history #education #sandrhoman
We made a little reading list on military history, these are just some books which we generally recommend. (affiliate links!) Duffy, C., Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World 1494-1660, Vol. 1, 1979. amzn.to/32dvvwM Rogers, C.J., The military revolution debate. Readings on the military transformation of early modern Europe, 1995. amzn.to/3geVDMM Rogers, C.J., Soldiers' Lives through History - The Middle Ages, 2006. amzn.to/3j2kQvG Parker, C., The Cambridge History of Warfare, 2005. amzn.to/32ggn1L Van Nimwegen, O., The Dutch Army and the Military Revolutions, 1588-1688, 2010. amzn.to/2E3Fc95
Love your videos. I've noticed a number of history channels are doing the same thing with their videos but yours are different visually. Only other channel that I think I could compare it to is Dovahhatty but his unbiased history of Rome videos are comedy, memes specifically, mix with history.
are we sure that training time is a major detriment to bow weapons? of course for the heaviest bows i could understand, but relatively lightbows and crossbows only take a few days to reach relitive competence. the thing about bows only seems to apply specifically to heavyenglish longbows that would require proper musculature. i mean, we are not talking about compition shooting here, but formation fire, I have a hard time thinking bows and crossbows requiring much more technical expertise then the relatively complex musket.
@Abu Troll al cockroachistan yes, but in war i dont think you usually are meant to be deadly accurate. just shoot into formations of guys. and i dont think poisoned arrows were often used in out and out warfare. in tribal skirmishing maybe, but since poison isnt exactly immediately effective or logistically viable, you dont really see them in battle.
your channel is slowly becoming 16th century personalized and i have an idea for you, can you do the Siege of Rodos and maybe perhaps later the Siege of Malta? i always find it fascinating how knights and crossbow men manage to repeal an army full of Musketeers
@Abu Troll al cockroachistan oh i didnt know that poison was used in large scale in the east. thats pretty interesting.
It's obvious why.... they upgraded their barracks to unlock riflemen recruitment.
Close. They upgraded to unlock Handcannon-men, decided it was crap but upgraded anyway to unlock musketeer, and realized that the cost/kill ratio of a musketeer was higher than the crossbowmen. This led them to upgrade their stables to unlock cavalry... but it wasn't until they upgrade their science labs to unlock rifling that they were able to upgrade their barracks again to unlock riflemen... and that was over 300 turns later. Smh. This is what happens when you don't focus enough on unlocking the tech tree.
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@@firewarrior9776 age of war reference
@@firewarrior9776 age of war forge of empires etc
Total war btw
Firearms also have the advantage that the gun powder and shot can be made in large batches where as with arrows and bolts the heads, shafts and fletching all have to be made individually and assembled individually. So supplying a large army becomes easier.
Arrows may have had to have been made individualy but the medival English kings such as Edward III & Henry V had production down to a fine art and could obtain arrows in the tens of thousands if necsery.
@@vespelian5769 Yeah, but that would still made them harder to produce than bullets ^^
@The_Jaguar_ Knight Yes England had effectly produced a race of skilled super warriors so was loathed to give up an advantage until firearms became the clearly superior weapon in the 16th century. The Mary Rose went down with over 200 long bows in 1545 and the last record of them being used in battle in England was in the first year of the English Civil War in 1642.
@@krankarvolund7771 That's true but with tried and tested methods, skilled craftsmen and a strict division of labour it was done. Bullets were easier to produce but reliable gun barrels were not. Recent arceoligical finds on the Yorkshire battlefield of Towton, from 1461, revealed two burst arquebus barrels from the site of the Lancastrian ranks, that had blown up in their users faces, so a stout longbow was a darn site safer to use.
@@vespelian5769 Yeah, but you make less gun barrels than arrows XD And frankly I'm not sure the idea of some peasants dying because of their guns was a huge concern for the average noble ^^ If their guns were safe, that was the most important ^^
The future is now old man!
Such a great scene!! Lmao!
What movie?
@@antiantifa886 Tv Show Malcom in the Middle season 3 episode 10
@@hankskorpio5857 lol that was a funny show.
Bless Your Perfection
There is an interesting outlier concerning accuracy: according to the Japanese record of the first demonstration of a firearm at Tanegashima, brought by portuguese traders, they immediately went for the smallest archery target at rather long range and marveled the onlookers with accuracy. Similarly, the shooting competitions launched by Dutch guilds required quite respectable accuracy. So I am unsure if the accuracy thing was inherent, or a result of mass training, poorer quality and battlefield conditions
There were accurate guns even back than. They just costed more and required propper sized bullets and more maintaince.
A main factor in low battlefield accuracy was the use of too small bullets for the bore, which would lead to them bouncing around inside the barrel and leaving the muzzle at an odd angle rather than straight ahead, which greatly reduces accuracy. But using a smaller bullet reduces barrel fouling and makes it easier to push the bullet down the barrel especially during a long engagement where you'll be shooting a lot (and each shot leaves some residue inside the barrel, called fouling, which means the barrel gets a little narrower with every shot due to the dirt left inside). Fun fact: muskets actually became less powerful and accurate in the 18th century and Napoleonic times because infantry no longer wore any armor at all and faster reloading was considered more important than accuracy, so the practice of using too small bullets for the bore was common. Of course there were also riflemen later on, but rifles took much longer to reload so they were only used by light skirmisher infantry rather than line troops.
and to be honest, idk if a bow would be more accurate then even an early musket. the very shape/surface area as well as the amount of airtime an arrow had would make it much more susceptible to wind as compared to a musket ball. i would expect a arrow to maybe outrange a musket, but their accuracy would be massively impacted by battlefield conditions.
The main disadvantages of arrows are: they're more expensive to manufacture than small lead balls and a bit of powder, they don't inflict as big wounds, they are larger and therefore harder to store and transport. Logistically musketmen are a lot easier to supply than archers, therefore. Sure, sometimes arrows can be collected from the field after a battle if you're lucky and the shafts didn't break on impact, but you can also easily cast replacement lead balls in camp as long as you have a mold so that's not much of an advantage compared to balls. It's all about logistics and cost. It's not only easier and cheaper to train a musketman vs an archer, it's also easier and cheaper to resupply them with ammo on a campaign. Besides, accuracy didn't matter for archers much either: in large scale field battles, archers would aim for the enemy formation rather than picking out individual targets. It was all about massed volley fire, just like with muskets. And in situations where you have more time to aim and can be more accurate, such as a siege defense where you're picking off individual enemies from behind the crenellations, the musket also has the advantage of not costing strength while you aim. An archer while aiming has to keep the bowstring drawn, which is exhausting, while a musketman merely has to point his musket (and he usually has a stick to rest it on, or in case of a siege defense he can just rest it on the wall) and pull the trigger. A musketman can get off more aimed shots than a bowman without his arms getting tired.
@@JarlFrank and not to mention, from a purely evaluative and results standpoint of battlefeold effectiveness. when musket equipt troops have faced bow equipped troops in history, the musket equiped troops overwhelmingly tend to preform better.
It's important to remember, that the majority of battles of that period was sieges and defending of fortresses. And here firearms were much more effective compared with the open field. Especially in case of wagenburg style of battling.
i think it was also easier to manage as armies needed gunpouder for their artillery anyways, and lead is also rathe reasy and cheap to acquire and to transport, while you would need to additionally get ammunitions for bow men and their specific type of bow , for crossbowmen etc, but gunpouder was there anyways , so it was also simplifieing logistics,
@@patriciusvunkempen102 simpler logistics = instant win
Damn, that and Patricus comment make a lot of more sense than most of the video. Thanks.
Tell that to the French. They were severely defeated in open field battles thanks to the use of the arquebus by the Spaniards, most famously at the Battle of Bicocca, among many others.
@@patriciusvunkempen102 Not the same type of gunpowder! Gunpower used in artillery and the one used in harquebuses differed in quality and size of the granulation.
Hardened arrows would have been a rarity on the battlefield. We have examples from archeology as well as period arrows at the Tower of London which show mild steel arrows were more the norm. Against the best armours of the time they would have had limited effectiveness. A point I think may have been missed is when we talk about these archers and crossbowmen we tend to talk about the cream of the crop-the English yeoman archer, or one of the many excellent mercenary crossbowmen of the period. Most armies did not have these guys. Their missile troops would have been less accurate, less deadly, and less disciplined. The gun was a sea change because suddenly everyone had access to extremely deadly missile fire, and it was just as good as what everyone else had. The playing field was suddenly levelled. High quality bowmen didn't matter because you could always have more gunners, and your guns did more damage than the bows anyway. Elite cavalry didn't matter because horses won't charge pikes and the riders can't outshoot the gunners. Those expensive troops that took ten years to train don't matter because in a month all the dead gunners can be replaced with new men just as good as the ones that were lost. One of my favorite anecdotes from the period was from the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1598. One of the generals wrote a letter home telling his fellow samurai not to bother bringing their swords, because they'll never get used and just be in the way.
Like that quote
Plus lead is way way cheaper than an arrow with a hardened steel head.
Actually archers hasn't been exactly replaced. They just got upgraded. A lot of people doesn't know but missiles origin from archery. There are clear records of it. Around 10th century the Chinse started adding rocket propeller to their archer's arrow to increase range. This design was later improve upon by the Mongols that add granade function to the propeller so it explode when hitting. The design was again taken by the Chinese and the Arabs. The Chinese replaced the bow with a different design and that became the first RPG and multistage rocket launcher in history. The Arabs apply it to the Navy and introduced the first torpedo in history. The design was later improved upon in India with the introduction of Tipu rocket, it was recorded via the Tipu rocket only 2000 India troops wiped out over twenty thousand British. The British later only win by allying with other Indian warlord (at that time India was in civil war with many warlords fighting each other. The British got lucky) The design was later taken by the American in the American civil war. Rifle origin from the idea of spears. At first the issue is that a long spear lack flexibility, but a short spear lack range. For ancient infantry there are three choice long spear, short spear and sword. Sword got the most flexibility but also the shortest range. To resolve this problem they introduced the idea of adding a small cannon the the tip of a short spear, that would be the first pistol. Based on that idea the 3 pole gun was introduced, where spearman using short spear and rifleman cover each other. The standard design had three lines swordsmen with shield on the first line, spearmen on the second line and riflemen on the third line. There are also long range guns, in that instance they also take a 3 line formation, the first line is responsible for firing, the second line adding gun powder, third line adding bullet. When the weapon was passed into Europe, the European use a different formation, similar to what we see today in the movies.
@@peteryang8991 what a load of crap you just wrote.
The cream of the crop out of archers are Welsh who then trained the english who had money and could start to mass train more flooding the english army with them and hiding the original archers who trained them
Most people think early cannons were all the same, but this is not the case. The envelopment and their impact on warfare came gradually. The cannons around 1375-77 shot 200 lb stones at best. Around 1409 they hurled stones weighting 700-950 lb. Faule Mette hurled stones over half a ton. The massive Pumhart von Steyr, forged in 1420, fired a 80 cm stone weighting 1500 lb. That weight made the difference against walls. Earlier engagements, such as Romorantin in 1356 and Berwick in 1333 saw cannons in use against the town itself, not the walls. The change started to get traction around 1425, and by the 1430s, Burgundian artillery could demolish almost any walled city or castle. This had to do with 4 important improvements. 1) Lengthening of gun barrels to create more pressure. Short barrels required wet mud mixed with straws to increase the pressure. The time it took the mud to dry up reduced the numbers of stones the gunner could fire at the enemy to less than 3 per day. Around 1400, barrel length to ball diameter was 1-1.5. By 1430 this had increased to 3. It also increased accuracy. 2) Manufacturing technique and the use of iron staves and hoops instead of spiraling iron bands like the coils of a spring. 3) The addition of limestone to the ore refinement process. This increased the temperature necessary to make the slag free-running, so that it could only be used with developed blast furnaces. It changed the structure of the slag from 2FeOSiO2 to CaOSio2. The two atoms of iron thus removed from each molecule of slag were no longer wasted, increasing the iron output from a given quantity of ore and making iron cheaper. 4) Powder formula and "corning" powder. It didn't separate as sifted powder tended to do. The burning between powder rather than within the powder resulted in a much more rapid evolution of the solid into gas. Bombards blowing up is why they went away from the "ideal" powder mixture. Corned powder was, according to a master gunner, 3 times as powerful as the sifted form. A gun is not just a gun. It's a lot more complicated than that. The field gun development came around 1450. Before this it was handgonnes and smaller, rather inaccurate cannons with relative slow flying projectiles. Read the article: Military revolutions of the hundred years war, and go to: The artillery revolution within that article for more information.
Always felt that in RTS games they should have a proper tier system with the firearms. Too many people I know think Matchlocks and flintlocks are the same thing and call them all rifles.
I wonder what the energy value for 1500 Lb. ball would be and what was the muzzle velocity?
Thankyou.
It really is quite striking the difference between this comment section and that of history channels like oversimplified or History Matters. Much more informative comments with multiple paragraphs of detailed information. Compare that to wall to wall memes about James Bizonette in every single comment section regardless of the topic of the video. Thank you for your comment!
What's an lb? Is that some kind of weird old weight measurement?
I think the reason gunners used such big targets is so they could see where the bullet went, if they miss a small target it is hard to see if the bullet went to far left and so on.
İts actualy make sense, in end the purpose is see how you can improve yourself but not if you shoot it or not.
Early guns were also unrifled, and unrifled guns are almost never accurate past 100m. Add to that the fact that handmade bullets and gunpowder had lots of variation, which means that you couldn't expect much accuracy when it came to elevation.
@@iotaje1what does unrifled mean?
@@Pepe-pq3om The opposite of rifled. You can also say smooth.
@iotaje1 but there are people shooting smoothbore flintlocks and make a good hit well over 180 meters. its on youtube. everything black powder shoot smoothbore at 180 yards and 11bangbang considers 150 m to be HIS effective range (he uses paper cartridge and undersized ball AND the gun's sight is crooked!)
Early modern goes bang Knights: damn
@Bryan Leonardi bitch it was meant to be a joke.. party pooper stop taking life so seriously.. you bore me to death
Other Knight: Time to become an officer ;-)
Japanese version: Imported firearms to bang Samurai: ban them
@@shmabadu Otomo Clan : You get a boomstick, you get a boomstick, everybody get a boomstick!
@@JuniorJuni070 what happened?
It must have also been a demoralizing sight for any commander or common soldier to see line after line of his pike formations fall down everytime he hears a loud bang from enemy gun fire.
well.. soldiers during the 17th - 19th century had to face the same problem, and they seemed to manage just fine
@@oldrabbit8290 the difference is that guns were just beginning to be adopted by militaries in the 16th century, so such scenes must have been unheard of back then which means that they weren't prepared for the carnage that these new weapons could produce
@@mr.personhumanson6871 i disagree.. when guns were "just beginning to be adopted" to the point that "such scenes must have been unheard", then I doubt that they had that many effective guns to cause such carnage.. only when guns were common enough in the battlefield could they mow down line and line of infantry. also, I wonder how could a newly-recruited prepare himself for a gunfight (whether it's 16 or 18th century)? like, they could have heard about that before, but they couldn't see it in person (or in film, for that matter).. then he saw his comrades practice with guns, and that's pretty much all he knew about this weapon before the big day. i don't know how different is the experience of a normal 16th century's newly-recruited, and a 18th century's one. if anything, I feel that the 18th century's one got a bit harder, since guns are a lot more effective (and common) by that point, and he will see a lot more people falling down, in a shorter period of time.
I think you exagerate the effects of guns ^^ Even in the Napoleonic wars, it was very rare to see lines after line of an infatry killed by guns, and they had much better guns than XVIth century. The guns started to become extremely deadly during American Civil War and Franco-Prussian war, before that they killed soldiers, but not armies.
@CK Lim And until the fire became deadly with big innovations in guns, charging with infantry was possible, and armies did it regulary in napoleonic wars. But with American Civil War and Franco-Prussian war, generals found that the men were just unable to charge, the fire had become too deadly and the charge will therefore be ineffective. Not that it prevent them to try during World War One, but it was really not a good idea ^^'
Imagine a pike attached to a gun
Early sword bayonets xd.
18th Century Arms Manufacturers: " Write that down, write that down!"
Do you hear that? It's very faint, but it's there. That's Luigi Cadorna fanatically nodding yes in the background.
What was that old Russian quote? "The bullet is a mad thing, only the bayonet knows what it's about" Imagine what he would say or think if he was around for the Minie ball and rifle to be introduced.
pretty much unstoppable why nobody already came up with that??
I think one of the big things people overlook is how quickly Archery skills degrade. To be a proficient archer the time you must sink into it not only to get good, but to prevent yourself from loosing that skill is truly taxing. It eats up your life. Not that you retain your marksmanship skills with guns forever, but I feel like there is a clear difference in investment required to reach and maintain an acceptable standard.
I hope the algorithm brings a LOT of traffic your way. you deserve so much more views. i learn so much from your videos, even though this is a period that i have sunken considerable time into to study... really, just give us more of this :P
I couldn't have said it better!
The more educational a video is, the less views it gets. The average Joe hates education. And historical fans are no exception. I'm quite sure a lot of people don't even finish SandRhoman's videos because of their fruit fly level attention span.
@poewhite ...
I found this video through a subreddit. Many people are gonna find it
@poewhite I think you're wasting your attention span on the wrong things. You're like the flash. But instead of fighting crime you decided to become a professional fart smeller because of the high pay.
these are genuinely some of the best narrated and visually entertaining history videos on this site. I don't know how this channel doesn't already have a million subs.
220 yards may be a maximum range of a longbow, but in combat they were usually used close to 100 yards, where difference in accuracy between bow and musket is quite small
Exactly. I hate how the video says that bows could "easily" penetrate armour at 200 yards. Even at point-blank range, it would be unlikely in the extreme... at that kind of distance? Forget it.
@@Aftershock416 He probably meant normal armor, not breastplate, which bows at point blank could penetrate without much difficulty. Altough still unrealistic at 200 yards as stated by others in the comments
I believe that in the historical record it states that English long bows could defeat armor out to about 60 years.
@@donaldsheckler3636 maybe 60 years from 1300 lol
@@tedarcher9120 I meant 60 yards.
Considering the formation tactics at the time when men move tightly packed squared or lines, having skilled gun fire(even with slow reload) would be both devastating to the enemy and to morale. Having a rain of arrows launched at you is quite different from lead balls hitting you. The noise and confusion it causes is drastically different than archers.
At the longer distances (out to about 300 yards) the musket is grazing fire while the bow is plunging fire. So the musket bullet has multiple chances to hit a target, the arrow pretty much just one chance. When you combine that with the devastating effect of the musket ball it presents a good advantage over the arrow.
Faith, steel and gunpowder! Really though a very interesting subject!
By Sigmar yes
In China bows were never completely replaced until the 19th century when rifles became common. To put it simply, Bows became a niche weapon due to the lack of armour in later centuries
In China, bows were only phased out for infantrymen in 1888, with the domestic mass production of the reliable Hanyang Type 88 bolt action rifle, chambered in smokeless 7.92x57. Type-88 rifles would continue to be manufactured by Hanyang, later NORINCO, into the 1950s. Bows were never phased out for cavalry and frontier security forces. Bows and semiautomatic pistols were used side by side until the 1940s. Chinese bowmen on horseback racked up a terrifying amount of kills on Japanese troops on the Mongolian and Manchurian frontier in WWII...
@@BlueSkyCountry agreed
they can't supply 1million++ soldier, just like red army some use shovel and melee to kill german
@@cat3784 don’t forget well trained eastern archers were comparable to early guns. Some can shoot faster than bolt action rifles. I can do that with a heavy bow and so can others in history
@@HistoricalWeapons Lifelong bowhunter here... Shooting 65lb ILF wood/laminate out of a Tradtech. I put a red dot on a segment of rail and attached it to the ATA accessory platform. 285 FPS with a 560 grain broadhead arrow. The thing is scary accurate out to 80 yards. Can take any species of big game in the world. Bows in the hands of people with even minimal training are fearsome weapons even to this day. I know of some international cargo ship crews that keep folding survival bows, crossbows, and ILF bows as weapons to repel potential pirates since many international ports frown upon firearms carried aboard ships. A well placed broadhead arrow is absolutely fatal to the target. Sure, unlike a high velocity rifle bullet, the arrow may not be fatal immediately, but the chances of survival after a center mass hit with a broadhead is nearly 0%, and a potential attacker knows this. That is why arrow wounds are extremely demoralizing. I love shooting the bow just as much as I love my .45 ACP handguns. They are tools that have been proven by history and works.
As a physics and math student with a history hobby. This, this video, touched me in all the good spots.
Same as me dude.
How do you manage to make that sound rapey
Ayo?
6:15 im glad he mentioned this, this might be one of the main factors firearms became the norm, the pure damage of it, it doesnt matter if you can shoot 12 arrows a minute If they arent as lethal as one bullet. Same goes for melee weapons, I imagine its quite hard to kill someone in melee without getting killed yourself and men would probably sustain quite a few hits or stabs before going down, especially the armored knights who had to be usually taken down then killed with a knife or pummeled to the head. The gun made the fighting simpler. You shoot you kill, the sheer damage was overwhelming, you didnt have to stab someone three times or shoot 3 arrows into him, one shot was all it took to kill or disable an enemy.
I really adore your content. Haven't missed a single upload since you started covering staggering sieges. Your animation style suits the period so well. I believe it would fit 18th, 19th and 20th century warfare very well too. Much love!
Shooting rate of 9-10 arrows per minute for the bow is kinda unrealistic too due to exceptionally high amount of muscle energy needed. Taking videos of Joe Gibbs as example, he can actually deliver four to five arrows from his 200-pound bow maybe in 25 to 30 seconds, but there is no way he could've maintain the same rate for a whole minute or even further. So maybe slow yet relatively easier sequence of actions that was required to reload a firearm had another advantage - it exhausted shooter far less than shooting a bow would've done.
they would decrease the poundage of their bow until it reached a level at which they retained battlefield effectiveness the effort needed to do work with muscles scales logarithmically, (i.e., going from 190 pounds to 200 pounds is much more exhausting than going from 180 to 190) so you don't have to downscale huge amounts to go from "I can only loose 4-5 shots and then I need to go sit down" to "I can keep shooting the whole battle and then join the melee later when I'm out of arrows"
less training needed than a bowman also.
The thing people dont consider as well is logistics, even if you could shoot 12 arrows a minute, the amount of arrows needed to sustain that rof for the whole army for just 10 minutes is insane and highly unlikely to be available
@@eazy2195 Majority of Guns have wery low accuracy(see Line infatry who fight like this becouse if they shooting to single target they miss,If they schoot to group they can hit)Bows can be wery deadly even in 17 centhury ,low ammo so aim in enemy officers. Polish Cavalry using Bows and they were effective against Russians ,Swedes and any enemy they encountered.
@@alicjacaban2226 actually guns are insanely precise, even early muskets and arquebuses, the real problem is that the vast mayority of people don't shot to kill and it took until the 20 century for us to realize this
This video is incredibly entertaining and informative! Your explanation of the lethality between arrows and bullets at different ranges was great. It’s something I hadn’t considered.
1. Arrows/bows take skill and years to train. 2. Give a gun to a newbie or conscript, they can beat skilled people. 3. Gun penetrate knight's armor, something arrow can't. 4. Battles are fought in formation, guns scare off formations. *Perhaps the most important* is how most line battles are determined later in history by discipline. Like British redcoats holding their ground until to unleash a volley up close.
That lone halberdier on the wall in the first scene: I'M HELPING :P
Peis Jesu Domine Dona Ellis Requiem.
Thank you, this is perfectly covers material I've been trying to figure out.
One advantage of being an archer: it’s not deafening to shoot an arrow.
I dunno. If your on a battle field, your surroundings may already be defining loud. Metal cashing with metal. Thousands upon thousands of men screaming. Artillery from cannons. Gunshots from other soldiers with guns... You get the picture
I think you'd be surprised just how loud heavy weight bows and crossbows are.
@@SooSneeky Compared to guns though? Bows are loud, guns are much much louder.
@@Thisisahandle701 I was highlighting that they are surprisingly loud, not saying they are equivalent to firearms in loudness.
What about a blunderbuss those thing where probably louder than a pistol
Always great to find a good military history channel, subscribed.
Very educational! As an engineer, I appreciate the technical analysis that was injected into the discussion.
I'm not an engineer but same. Truly enjoyed watching this.
Another reason why I want a 30 years war total war game. Pike and shot.
Just wanted to say that I love this channel. Great work!!
amazing, I‘ve seen dozens of these videos but I have to say I am more than impressed by the level of research and scientific rigour that went into this one. Thid is THE video on medieval ballistics!
I just love this channel, it's priceless.
Matchlock guns were a big deal in Africa, the Moroccans used them to conquer & colonize (rather unsuccessfully) the Empire of the Songhay and the Sahel region. There's still an ethnic group called the "Arma" descended from Andalusian renegades, Spaniards and Sous-born Arabs there.
Great video and interesting topic! Always learning something new with this channel.
This was an actually very well done video my friend it was both good it's good for its animation and historical facts and even your storytelling so all 3 of those excellent job please continue doing stuff like this
I wonder, too, at the economic effects of paid professional soldiers vs parttime soldier/tradesmen. I mean, a professional soldier costs money to employ, and doesn't directly contribute to the economy. A tradesman, on the other hand, contributes both goods/services and taxes to the economy. When called upon to be a parttime soldier, the tradesman doesn't have a much martial training, but may have a GREATER motivation to succeed in his fight. So, maybe the more expensive but easier to learn firearms had a secondary benefit as well. Being able to make parttime soldiers more effective meant that you're fighting force was probably defending the land and goods that they lived with. This would make the cost of invasion much higher, and the cost of defense (relatively speaking) much lower. Fewer invasions is good for the economy, and so there becomes this positive feedback cycle of empowering locals to defend effectively against invasion. I think this played some role, even if small, because a similar phenomenon can be seen in many cases where settlers or explorers are forced into defender roles. Prior to firearms, they'd always get wiped out. After firearms, a couple farmers with rifles were a dangerous target.
Well, soldiers do contribute towards the economy, but indirectly and it’s hard to quantify how much exactly do they save. Good army means you’re not going to be attacked, hence your economy won’t be hit, so it’s a sort of security insurance that will quantifiably cost you only when you fail to pay for it
@@ivandankob7112 I can tell you did well in school, as you conflate "lose less money" with "produces value." No, soldiers do not CONTRIBUTE to the economy. It may well be true that soldiers are needed to protect an economy, but that is a separate thing. The value of that protection is a continual negotiation, based on the potential value of loss versus the cost of protection. Historically, geography is a better defense than an army. Unironically, defensive geography tends to ALSO stifle economic growth. So a region with good geographic defenses would benefit little from paying soldiers. ...and the opposite is largely true as well.
Man, Crossbows , javelins and especially slings are the underdogs or ranged combat in popular culture. Guns and bow are the majority's top pick in many role plays, games, and stories.
@Hoàng Nguyên Đậu I remember the Hùng kings if I am not mistaken have a multi-shot crossbow/ballista of their own
then you should check me out
@Hoàng Nguyên Đậu crossbows are extremely expensive, when a longbow is just a piece of wood with a rope.
@Hoàng Nguyên Đậu and they would be useless against any kind of sophisticated armor or even a thick gambeson. Remember, that crossbows are about 4-5 times less powerful than a bow with the same draw.
@Hoàng Nguyên Đậu it's not like GI joes had any kind of protective gear.
You've managed to make a question with a seemingly obvious answer much more interesting than many of us would assume. Thanks!
been waiting for a video bout this for a while. pretty cool to see how it slowly grew out to a functional tool of war from a boom scare stick.
*When some weird and loud metal tubes called "Handgonnes" become the dominant weapon.* Crossbowman: Never thought I'd die fighting side by side with an Englishman. Longbowman: How about fighting side by side with a friend? Crossbowman: Aye, I could do that.
Assuming that the crossbowman is a foreign mercenary. Then, yeah. Makes sense.
LOTR Reference
🥱
Where were the Handgonnes when Gondor fell...
BRILLIANT..learnt so much
Bruh nice channel you deserve more subs. The animations are excellent! Love the science.
Great video. It was really informative. I enjoyed it.
My fantasy world is at this stage. They’ve begun widely using guns instead of bows, but are still using melee infantry as their main body.
This really is one of the best history channels alongside Mark Felton Productions, History House Productions, Ushanka Show, Linfamy, Scholagladiatoria, Skallagrim, Metatron, Lindybeige, Voice of the Past, Biography, Tod's Workshop, Kings and Generals, and some others I forgot to mention. In my opinion, SandRhoman History really deserves more subscribers, not to mention the attention to detail he puts into his videos.
Drachinifel!
@@leozschokke8856 Thanks, you are right! I haven't remembered Drachinifel, despite he actually deserves it too.
Just wanted to say I love your channel do you like my favorite because of the topics you cover and also I really enjoy your animations always have love that you exist thank you for existing
Well-taught lesson on this subject.
The German public broadcasting service once made a similar video, but they mentioned records that in late medieval times there were occasions where women equiped with hand guns were used as auxiliary fire support, because they weren't strong enough to use war bows but could handle the loading of a gun. And seeing how "even" women could be trained on this weapon system could have been a catalysator for militaries to switch the backbone of their armies to the quickly trained gunners.
the answer: is a gun and if that don't work: use more gun you should have brought more gun son
engineer tf2 quote
@Bryan Leonardi Zee healing isint as fun as the hurting medic from tf2
@Bryan Leonardi NO that would be your mother spy tf2
This is a very good piece of work. Thanks.
Sunday and Sandrhoman! It's like toast and Nutella! Perfect start to the day!
Another Sunday - Another Video - Another Upvote!
Thank you for your very interesting and informative video. Beeing a keen archer myself since many years, I must confess that hitting a target at an unknown distance over 60 meters is extremely difficult even though a bow itself is more accurate than a musquet. Here´s the reason for it: A musquetball with a speed of 500 m/s has a much flatter flight parabola then an arrow with only 50 m/s, which makes it extremely difficult to estimate the right shooting hight at unknown distances for an archer. The high muzzle velocities of musquets allow shooting at distances of around 200 meters at a very flat angles, thus minimising the dispersion of shot altitude.
then there's always that unexpected gust of wind...
Wrote my Ba treatise (medieval archeology) about early firearms... This video is a good coverage of the topic.
Excellent video. Thank you.
It was probably the sheer amount of energy that the arquebuses compared to the archers could throw at the foe that decided the issue,the effective range of bows is overstated in this video and archers tired making them less effective.The gunners could have more than one weapon and loaders and a one ounce ball could easily kill or disable two people or more.Basically it was no contest and as far as I'm aware there isn't a single case of archers defeating arquebusiers.
This chanel is amazing! They cover miltary history a topic that have always been facinated by. They explain everything in detail and with good sources. They make history feel alive
Can't believe I haven't seen a video on this topic thus far! Always wondered this.
oh i am just admire your artist who draw all these soldiers its fantastic
Something about this art style is just fun to watch.
Battle at Bicoca (1522) is a perfect example of this evolution. Swiss pikemen suffered 3000 casualties, not being able to close the distance to the imperial army. Shortly after came Pavía, where the French King was captured and his elite knights decimated by Spanish soldiers wielding this new technology. Salud!
Always enjoy your videos
Great video! Keep it up!
Yessss, a new one!
IIRC there isn’t a single recorded moment in history where a longbow penetrated plate to begin with, not even Agincourt
Really?
You have to consider The deffense gave by The rodeleros and alabarderos to the whole formation while The arcabuceros reloaded, the Tercios Conquered The World with this exclusive formation of offense and deffense. Great video.
Thank you for giving the English quotes in their original forms. Another excellent video.
One aspect which often gets overlooked in the comparison between blackpowder weapons vs (cross-) bows is the logistics of of supplying thousands of people with properly crafted arrows vs suppling those with blackpowder and bullets. You need good quality arrowheads only a professional can craft while making bullets is dead simple and blackpowder can be easily transported. No doubt in my mind that it's easier and cheaper to keep musketeers supplied ammo, then (cross) bowmen.
What if one man firing was supported by 4 loader's and 5 weapons? His skill, their organisation of effort would be considerably more deadly than that described. Just a thought :-)
@Edwin Horan True of a Sniper in the modern army but not of those days past when, just like in all wars in the last 200 years the average soldier couldn't hit a dead duck at 20 yards ...
Ineffective . for that to have say 100 shot you would need 500 men , with the same amount of men with one gun pet soldier you would have 500 shot . With 4/5 of Your army Not fighting ,it would be inefficient
@@mikeoxsmal8022 Only ineffective because you apply the same level of effectiveness to each man on the field. Not even a corporal would make that mistake.
make no sense because still 1 gunner out of 5 men, with 5 gunners instead you can deal a much more concentrated fire within few seconds and usualy was enought to drive enemy away, and if you train someone to load a musket, will be equivalent to train to shot as well
Beautiful graphics in this video
This is a question that has always boggled me. I have studied history but never found a quite satisfying answer. This gives me that. Although I'd like to add one part. Logistics, the amount of space and artisanry it took to maintain the great number of bolts and arrows required on campaign, compared to the compact gunpowder and the small volume that the ammunition used. While in itself it is not enough, but in relation to the lower importance of rate of fire and the larger armies fielded it fits well. So thank you for scratching a 20 year itch.
Great video! If you’re focusing more on early firearms, could you maybe talk about why musketeers stopped steadying their weapons on a stake? I almost always see it exclusively during the mid-16th to late 17th century that musketeers will do so, and it seems quite advantageous. Was it the evolution of formation drilling that made those stakes fall out of favor?
Short answer: it's controversial. It was due to weight. Alan williams lists up to 15kg for a c16 arquebus. Around 1630 a swedish musket was around 6kg. Some historians say the swedes did not use the fork anymore but again this is very much disputed. Actually, I've even seen people getting angry about this :P
@@SandRhomanHistory quite a unique thing to get angry about 😂 I can get behind the weight argument. I just find it hilarious that most militaries around the world have gone from thinking about the weight their soldiers carry impacting tactical outcomes to now packing as much tech and crap as is humanly possible into their packs, regardless of weight.
@@SandRhomanHistory Also curious, why did arquebusiers in Eastern Europe tend to use Bardiche (polaexe) instead of fork for steadying their weapon?
@@boytulussinaga293 that’s pretty ingenious! I never knew that. Honestly, I think the close range nature of this warfare kind of answers your question.
You make some dang good videos, bro
This is a very important video for my Medieval research! Thank you!
10-40 shots an hour? Well, around the time of the Revolutionary War, muskets fired at a rate of 3-4 rounds per minute, and the Kentucky Rifle, which was far more accurate and could be effectively used by sharpshooters at well over 200 yards, fired at 2 or more rounds per minute at the start of battle but would quickly become unusable as the barrel got fouled. This just shows you how technology improved over these 200 years: by the 1800s, guns outperformed crossbows on practically all metrics.
8:05 Them sweet pants are the real reason everybody wanted to be handgunner.
Love your videos :D
Great educational Video.
Appreciate the video. When will the video on Gustav Adolphus arrive?
I appreciate your name. Maybe november, probably december. We want to do something on vikings / alfred the great's military reforms when ac valhalla drops, that might delay gustavus. However, the script is finished and much of the video art work already done. It's looks gooood :)
@@SandRhomanHistory Aye thanks man. I truly can't wait for the video on Gustavus Adolphus. I really like your channel the videos are well made. Best history channel imo keep it up!
@@biggusdickus819 ah yes, one of the Chads that use combined firearms with cavalry and artillery...LIBERA ET IMPERA!
@@biggusdickus819 ah yes, one of the Chads that use combined firearms with cavalry and artillery...LIBERA ET IMPERA!
@@SandRhomanHistory Alfred's reforms would be very interesting looking forward to that.
The audio makes a big difference to the video quality. A lot of military history channels unfortunately omit this aspect.
Honestly I started watching the video just to give me ideas on how to paint some Warhammer handgunners, and stayed because it was so interesting.
Great video! Can you do more videos on this topic?
Based on the test performed by Tod's Workshop here: kzhead.info/sun/d6axlLijm5Z-lH0/bejne.html even a heavy warbow from close distance probably could not penetrate frontal plate armor, in their recreation the arrow could not even dent the 2.5mm metal.
I was immediately saying the same thing. Where is the source claiming a bow could penetrate plate?
@@dimesonhiseyes9134 I thought The same and if The person making this video knew this it would even put more in favor of The Guns. Would actualy change The whole video
@@peternystrom921 , would have saved him from saying something as stupid as that a bow arrow would penetrate plate armor at 200 yards 🤭
personally think it was the shape of the armour as much as the material.
In Battle of Lepanto, Turk archers pierce Spanih armours from high distance.
The Vicker Pyramid Hardness of air-cooled medium carbon steel was around 263-284. The fracture toughness was around 240-260 kJ/m2. Wrought iron have a VPH of around 164 and a fracture toughness of 150 kJ/m2. English longbow archers didn't shoot 9-10 arrows per minute. They could have do that the first min if they wanted to, as demonstrated by Mark Stretton, but this will leave them knackered after a few minutes. A more realistic number is 6 per minute with around 5 after about 5-10 mins with shooting. We have to remember that archers were supplied with around 2 sheaves of arrows from the Crown and brought 1 themselves. That's 72 arrows. The decline of the longbow came predominately because yew resources dried up. The second factor was the production and export of cloths and import of cheap wheat from eastern Europe. Yeomen started to change from small scale pastoral dairy farming and crops to sheep farming. By doing so the yeoman no longer had to do as much hard manual labor as he used to. This along with less access to a steady high-protein dairy diet changed everything. Hard work and a high-protein diet was key ingredients to becoming a strong and well-built archer able to draw a 150 lb+ bow. For more info on this you could read my article on this. www.quora.com/What-impact-did-plate-armor-have-in-the-decline-of-the-English-Longbow/answer/Eirik-Ronald-Fossheim?
That's a good point but even 1-2 minutes of such a sustained rate of fire by a concentrated groupe of well drilled archers could be more than enough to force a enemy formation to route
@@Me-cw7wu unless they are heavily armored
@@bluemobster0023 Scots disagree
That doesn't matter at all, when plate armor was almost completely impenetrable to bows, and it was becoming more and more widespread as even mercenaries could afford a lower quality, but still steel harness
That's relevant only in England's case. Most of Europe did not used longbow, and the guns started to become popular in Italy and Spain (and Turkey, outside of Europe ^^).
What a fantastic video.
Your videos like Oasis in youtube. I started to binge watching your videos. Are you Swiss ? You pronounciation of French and German words are really good. Are you plannin to cover Turkish/Ottoman military history and tactics in your channel ?
Best infantry in Age of Empire ! I always use mass hand-cannoneer in late game to maw down ennemies.
When Yuan trying to invade Java, their naval already use Pao. Later, Majapahit use cetbang. Those are types of early cannon usage (around 1300 ad)
ah yes, cetbang! When those weird looking dagger users made breech loaded guns with powder cartridge before it was cool! XD
Yeah gunpowder weaponry weren't particularly new when they started to replace bows in Europe but rather they were developed to a state that they were cheap to make and didn't kill the gunner.
actually the really early type of Cannon is Archimedes Steam Cannon
This was a very well informed and presented answer to what on the face of sounds like a stupid question, I love that stuff, so thank you for keeping the curious interested 😃👍🏴☠️ Ps it's worth remembering the real point of the exercise is not armor penetration and at what range or feet per second, it's the squishy thing contained within, and it can always be got at, strike where the armor is not ⚔️
I love your inclusion of Gustav Vasa of Swedens armour in this video :D
A key element in the development of firearms, is siege warfare.Gunpowder is your friend here, enabling you to demolish walls, or clear areas with grenades. Later, cannons became king (long before the handheld gun became practical. So you allready have an industry centred around gunpowder. A logical step is to simplify, and replace bows and crossbows with muskets.
*Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba* has entered the chat.
@Yaminabototal "We spaniards developed the tercios" "*We* spaniards" You did shit mate. Don't include yourself on the victories and succes of "your" ancestors. Show some respect to them and say "My ancestors developed"
@Yaminabototal You might be from Spain. But that does mean you helped in the creation of the tercios. You, as individual, have done nothing for the history of your country.
@Yaminabototal Before i swnt my previous message i was about to type "You are not doing nothing for your country except if you are involved with something militant" But it appears it wasnt necessary. I mean, my main point stills there but now i found you more understandable since you were involved somehow with military stuff. Its logical you feel part of spain history. Hey, maybe you have Tercio's blood on you after all. My bad Greetings from Mexico. Im eager to know more about spain history, i respect "La madre de america" a lot.
@Yaminabototal Okay look. Im not hurt nor anything about the relationship between Spain and Mexico and im not hurt for something that happened 500 years ago(We both know that "We did nothin wrong" its meant for the Conquest of America) I apologize for... well, how rude i sounded on my first comment. It wasnt the right way to start a discussion. And, if it helps, i can ensure you that a lot of Latinos have respect and genuine appreciation for our "cousins" of Spain. The latinos tend to see the Spaniards like some kind of monster that was thirsty for gold, but me as many others know that is simply not true. With nothing else to say, i wish you a nice day.
@Yaminabototal xD
Interesting - thank you. ☝️😎
Immagine training your entire life to become a fearsome knight only to die to a musket volley by men who only traimed 60 days.
Very good content. Anyway, how would have early non armored hand cannoneers faired against longbowmen? In fact, if the rise of gunpowder leaded to less armor in the battlefields, how come did there was no more use of bows and arrows (more acurate and better firing rate) until there were more practical guns? Besidess of an economic purpose that was very well explained, I believe good longbows would still have been efective against gunpowder units (not armored) for a couple of centuries more after the early renisance. I dont claim to be an expert, but this needs to be addressed.
Anyway, how would have early non armored hand cannoneers faired against longbowmen? There are three parts to that answer & #3 has the most longterm impact: A1): They didn't go against each other 1-on-1 Pike units would be in between the two. So if your archers are focused on the enemy musketeers, then the enemy pikemen will close in & destroy your archers. A2): *IF* the musketeers are non-armored, they would take heavier casualties. However, they often had just as much armor as the bowmen. A3): It takes 15-20 years to train a longbowman. He needs to develop muscles to a degree where it warps his skeleton. It takes 6 months to train musketeers. So in your question of Bow vs musket formations, if during a long war you loose 2,000 musketeers & they loose 200 bowmen per battle, then after 10 years of war you will have as many musketeers as you want but the enemy will not have been able to replace a single bowman.
You hit on a good point when it comes to tactics; I make it in a longer comment cribbing from what I remember about my 20 page paper on the subject, but really they could have continued to be effective if used properly almost to the Napoleonic period (Napoleonic cavalry and riflemen would be the final blow after faster firing muskets). Effectively used as a small or supporting unit against lightly armored enemies, or in ambushes, or like the giardoni air rifle. They just needed to get over the hump where armor became ubiquitous for a time (and frankly the points about armor here are overblown as I describe more in that comment; he's flat out got some misconceptions as to the technical aspects, and few of these good armors are getting penetrated by musketballs either; the worse ones are still more vulnerable to arrows), but after that it became rarer and rarer and they could have done exceedingly well. The real downfall of the English longbow simply wasn't tactical, or even the amount of casual, intermittent training that was needed (though that didn't help) when the entire adult male population of England all practiced as a recruitable population. It was just socioeconomic factors that caused everyone except those really out in the sticks who kept at it as a traditional hobby for an extra generation or two, to not practice anymore. The rise of different things to do, increasing economic movement and growth, the rise of the cities, the increasing size of armies, etc etc. We want it to be a tactical answer because that's simple and exciting and easy to understand, but it's just society and the way it wages war changing. By the time the English switched away fully, there simply were hardly any good ones to be found due to lack of real practice, and they'd already been supplementing their ailing forces with muskets for decades despite attempts to encourage archery. Because when you crunch the numbers/ capabilities and ignore training, longbowmen look very favorable in everything but close range penetration; I rather suspect even the high level Elizabethan courtiers who were crunching these numbers, the numbers of longbowmen available, and lamenting the passing of the tradition into memory, would have shared your sentiments, because they actually were doing so at the time; if muskets were just better, they presumably wouldn't have cared much. And previously, archery was a itself a method for economic movement via a decent wage and battlefield loot; come back home after a campaign and have a nice nest egg, or reinvest in equipment and get an even higher wage (if you were a longbowman with a horse and more equipment you got paid like double a footman) in the next campaign. But because of that, it was also cheaper (and interesting from the perspective of an early modern state who's centralizing power and trying to prevent rebellions; ie arms control) to just buy the weapons themselves, issue them, and pay a replaceable recruit a pittance. Moreover, from modern small arms we know that outranging (to a given standard of accuracy) and a greater volume of fire (to a given standard of accuracy) is far more important than power. Heck, volume of fire trumps range past a certain point even today, because even with modern firearms there's rarely anyone engaging (with standard rifles) out past 400-500m. Most engagements happen inside 200m, and this is with modern accurate firearms; just because it's actually difficult to see and perceive an individual/ small group or see them as a threat and decide to shoot past a certain point. Compare if you will a WW1 bolt action rifle to a modern semi-auto small caliber high velocity rifle. The former is powerful enough to use to hunt large game (or even African big game for some), and in theory could be used out to like 1000m. Some had ridiculous overambitious iron sights out to 2000m, and lets ignore volley sights for now. The modern rifle is easier to hit something with because it fires "flatter" (the projectile gets further before gravity affects it) for a smaller amount of recoil, can shoot faster more easily, but has a power level more on par to hunting coyotes (or small deer if you want to push it) with a great amount of lethality. Lethality or penetration is not the be all end all. Frankly you could argue that the longbow was already having the problem with not being able to penetrate the elite core of an army's armor at the time of its greatest victories, and yet it still performed admirably because it was used right; in the right terrain, and primarily to harass those units or do damage to the less protected supporting units. By comparison to other weapons from the period, the longbow strikes an interesting balance with these in mind; not only does it have a much higher rate of fire and a longer accurate range, but could be used to harass close units and blind fire out past 500 yards. They would have made for an excellent supporting or skirmishing unit rather than the backbone of the army, even dragoons. Adding the logistics of bows and arrows would have probably made it not worthwhile, but we can dream.
I actually wrote what was effectively (but unofficially) my bachelors paper (20 pages, history major) on the transition from longbow to musket. If you just look at the "numbers," the musket of the period is effectively worse in every possible way except the most close range penetration; even if arrows didn't penetrate, they would still disorient and hurt the person inside except at the most extreme range. And of course armor quickly developed so that in this period of change, most good armor was 'bulletproofed,' so the penetration is almost a nonstarter (especially given the use of lead ball that is going to be prone to fragment on period armor rather than penetrate without hilarious amounts of energy behind it). However given that the proliferation of muskets led to the rise of having less armor coverage among the lower rank and file (that rank and file increasing and being less affluent) and often just armor enough to protect against hand weapons rather than muskets, the longbow actually was in an environment where it could have surprisingly continued to eek out a niche through volume of fire. We know from modern warfare that volume of fire is much more important than power; compare ww1 bolt action rifles which could be used to hunt big game, to modern military semi-autos that have cartridges more tuned for hunting coyotes; and most of those more rapidly fired shots are 'wasted' in gaining tactical advantage or harassing enemies, or unable to outright immediately kill a person due to armor or the weaker cartridge causing a survivable wound due to chance. And the longbows had a range advantage as well, because the likelihood of hitting anything with a musket or arquebus of this period (this would later drastically increase, of course, but interestingly be sacrificed by most major armies for greater rate of fire) past 100 yards was small due to the nature of their ballistics, while the longbows were tailored and extensively practiced with. Just no longer able to cut down french knights or the hard core of the army. But that had arguably already been true in the greatest victories of the english longbow in France. Of course not having that tradition of practice on the continent to give bows an advantage, the continent made the transition even more eagerly. However given that the longbow requires such a longer training period (which allowed the draw strength to be increased to the point it was so comparatively good) was also a double edged sword; it was mostly the economic and cultural changes going on at the time that sounded the death knell of the longbow, because people just stopped practicing except in a few places and good longbowmen could no longer be found in any quantity. Otherwise you could argue (tactically) for the inclusion of a small longbow corps in the English army up to almost Napoleon (Napoleonic cavalry of various sorts, or riflemen, would truly be the end of any tactical usefulness). This was compounded by the increasing size of armies; it takes a generation to raise quality longbowmen, it takes weeks to arm conscripts or patriotic volunteers. I'm sure that it also appealed to the rising early modern states from an arms control perspective; unruly yeomen could just decide to revolt and had their military weapons already in hand. In the big states (or even in many of the walled cities) centralized armories controlled by those in power held the weapons until needed. They also had a very long shelf life by comparison. Having read (incompletely, so forgive any potential lack of knowledge) the martial ethic of early modern germany more recently, the lack of knowledge of best practices and the sheer number of accidents with firearms early on is insane. It helps that a number of social classes rising in affluence could now reasonably purchase what once was more a status symbol (goes for swords as well; the martial culture in that time period is wild and fascinating). The urbanization and nature of militias defending walled cities or other small fortifications also aided in the supremacy of the musket; what does your reload time matter behind ramparts, or the range matter behind a wall? Also, are you sure you just mean quenched, wrt armor, rather than something like also case hardened or using a different and better quality steel? Quantity of steel production rather than iron in the period was just starting to ramp up. Also the comparison of hardness is very wrong; high carbon steel at its hardest is very brittle, whereas for armor something like the medium carbon steel you cited as the softer would probably be more ideal if quenched (it's much tougher, which is more important here) and should have been compared more to a low carbon steel or iron of the period which would have comprised lower quality armor. But yeah, it really comes down to the ever boring "socioeconomic factors." We _want_ it to be a military arms revolution because that's far more interesting and definite, but it was just the way of war changing with society.
What do you think about English military authors during the period in question such as Sir Roger Williams and Humfrey Barwick who considered firearms superior in range, power and accuracy in comparison to bows?
@@lukatomas9465 I was unfamiliar (I didn't look into it much after 2015 when I wrote this comparatively surface level essay from existing work on the topic which could be found in nearby university libraries and JSTOR, and have forgotten a lot), so I quickly looked at their dates of birth to confirm some suspicions. They only ever experienced the longbow after its heyday; that is once quality yew was expensive and only able to be imported from far away (a national security problem in and of itself), and the practice had much diminished in England. By the mid 1500's when they were born, bowmen who could be compared in quality to the earlier period could scarcely be found except in pockets of small numbers; it was already rather too late for the longbow in universal use. Given they wrote in like the 1590's when people were crying at the final death of the practice, that their arguments had some legitimacy to them is both incredibly unsurprising and not very helpful to us today. And as could be expected from pragmatists who fight in continental wars, they would be very aware of how lacking things were by comparison, and doubly careful of any supply problems that needing specialty weapons would cause them. So it's not that they seem to be wrong, per say. Of course what I know about what they said is coming from a reddit post summarizing Barwicks' arguments with a link to the nearly unreadable original, and there it seems like he's in equal parts responding to other people's bs, contriving his own to balance the scales, making solid points, and addressing the current situation rather than possibilities (or is ignorant of what those were in the past). For instance, most of the arguments I see him making in favor of the musket assume and argue for exceptionally well trained and equipped professionals while failing to acknowledge the opposite, so the point is both moot and in bad faith. Also rather irrelevant, given that the crown had to the best of my knowledge been increasingly using muskets for some time at that point; it seems more of a response to the last wistful yearnings and attempts at revival of the old traditions and arguments in their favor. Barwick does seem to be... rather exaggerating the qualities of period muskets from what I know, but it may also be a case of taking the absolute best of the best and presenting it. If what he said was unexaggerated, then how did any battles involve melee at all at that point, or how did pike and shot (or even blocks of muskets!) exist on the battlefield when you could have musketmen so easily skirmish them to death from 400 yards away while laying behind a ridge? No, some of these claims make no sense on the face of it and are more similar to firearms of significantly later, regardless of the legitimacy of their points. The comparisons lack historical perspective, both in that Barwick seems unknowing or unbelieving of what the longbow was once capable of, and in that they could not know like we can that the armor which so frustrated the use of the longbow was going to start decreasing rather than continue forever. I might look into what they're saying in more detail later, but that's first impressions.
"even if arrows didn't penetrate, they would still disorient and hurt the person inside" with about 120 J of energy? nope. "If you just look at the "numbers," the musket of the period is effectively worse in every possible way except the most close range penetration" - musket ball energy 1500-2000 J vs 120 J of arrow, musket ball speed - 400-500 m/s vs 50-55 m/s of arrow. Penetration power and lethality of even early musket is many times that of bow. Likehood to hit something with bow over 100 yards is pure luck - you have over two seconds of flight so moving target could be quite in different place, great fall and curved ballistics lowering accurancy and so on. Thats allways stories of mythical bow accuracy over 100 yards, but as far as i know, nobody can recreate it nowadays. That is standard mythology of bows but truth is that european troops armed with firearms outshot every met army of bowmen - Middle East, India, China, Americas and so on. And every local army/tribe/natives try to replace they bows with firearms. Osman Turks had many, many sources of literally thousands of skilled bowmen and still they elite troops were quickly rearmed to firearms. So, nope - it is narrow cherrypicking to say that bows were better than muskets and people of the world - from Europe, trough nomadic tribes, Turkey, Japan and America - were not stupid morons to put bows away and start using firearms.
Interesting. Thank you. ☝️😎
The gradual decrease in armour, and the numerous reasons for it, would also be an interesting topic to cover.