200-250 yards using the heavy quarter pounders, depending on draw weight of course but 250 yards would be with a 150+ pound draw weight.
CBR
Printable View
200-250 yards using the heavy quarter pounders, depending on draw weight of course but 250 yards would be with a 150+ pound draw weight.
CBR
Oh, sorry Carl, didn't see your reply to my post for quite a while. I'll do my best to explain my argument. If you're still interested, that is; it's kind of long and doesn't really say anything special. I think part of the problem was that I was trying to answer a general concept rather than specific people and everyone sort of thought I was targetting them specifically.
Firstly, I am quite aware that many people posting in this thread are somewhat more modest and reasonable in their estimation of the weapon's capabilities. My post was primarily directed at the picture of the longbow that has been built up by the 'pro longbow posts' throughout this thread. Much earlier in the thread people were arguing that longbows pierced plate armor better than crossbows and firearms at 300 yards. Later on people started saying that longbows were extremely accurate (they could be, of course, but that was not the way they were used) and that every longbowman was a trained sharpshooter. And of course, people are still claiming 20 arrows per minute was the norm and that even higher rates of fire were common, despite the small amount of ammo carried by individual archers. The end result is a superweapon, superior to even our current weapon systems because it is deadly accurate; assault rifles and submachineguns were developed and are used on the principle that marksmanship is relatively unimportant, and that infantry should lay down curtains of fire that will kill anything that approaches within range, sort of like what musketeers did, but better.
So, my argument runs, such a powerful weapon really ought to have made its presence felt in military circles of the day and spurred a revolution in military tactics. It already does enjoy a formidable reputation, of course. The change from mail to plate armor was in part due to the longbow, and the entire French strategy in the Hundred Years War was greatly affected by their encounters with the longbow-heavy English armies (although the longbow was only part of the reason for their success). But we would expect something a little more from such a deadly weapon, unless of course it wasn't quite as dangerous as people make it out to be, as compared to say firearms, an invention that is sometimes considered one of the most dangerous and revolutionary (in a very literal sense) in military history.
So, what do we expect of such lethal firepower? I would argue that we would see classic responses to immense firepower. We would expect to see skirmish formations and trench warfare. We would also expect to see wholesale adoption of the new weapon. We don't. We do see some adaptations in response to the longbow. For example, increased use of plate armor, which would suggest it could provide at least reasonable protection from arrows. The very fact that the knights could make it into melee range of the English line at Agincourt suggests that the armor did its work most of the time. We see longbows adopted by the French (the famous 'mounted archers' of the Reforms). We see longbowmen as valuable mercenaries throughout Europe. But we don't see much else, and the longbow gradually fades from history with the coming of the new firearm tactics, even though the myth suggests that it was vastly superior to anything up to the modern rifle.
The next part of the argument addresses the usual response to the demise of the longbow; namely the claim that longbowmen were elite and not easily replaced, compared to musketeers who came a dime a dozen, men were REAL men in those days and not so later on, urbanization cut down all the trees, everyone was mesmerized by the shiny new guns. In other words, the 'longbow corps' was a military anomally that required very specific conditions under which to flourish, the removal of which ensured their extinction despite their military effectiveness. This argument is often bizarrely accompanied by the claim that longbowmen would have massacred entire brigades of musketeers easily, with some mention of Napoleon's musings on reinstating the corps thrown in to further complicate the issue.
First of all, I conceded that the longbow corps was diminishing rapidly, in part due to military disasters in France at the end of the HYW that killed off large numbers of trained archers. The urbanization claim is a little harder to swallow without more details, since 'urbanization' in the 16th century is not the same as the massive growth of cities in the 19th, where farmers and peasants flocked to the cities in droves. Societies after the 16th century remained essentially rural despite the reviving city life; it takes the Industrial Revolution to really shift the emphasis away from the country to the city. The claim that yew wood was getting scarcer is a little better, but I fail to see how 'urbanization' is the cause of it. I also fail to see how good quality yew wood can be rarer and more expensive than say good iron, or good horse stock. Countries would go to great lengths to secure such military supplies, through trade or outright conquest of the sources. I am astounded that England failed to secure better sources if it was running out. Perhaps there was an international embargo on yew exports to England due to fear of the longbow corps, a sort of like a ban on nuclear materials today? Conspiracy theorists will have a field day.
Secondly, I made the claim that even if the longbow corps was much reduced in size, it would have persisted as a specialist unit until the modern age if it was that much better than the new firearms, unless of course the pool of potential longbowmen had suffered complete and utter extinction in the Late Middle Ages. I brought up the example of the mounted knight, historically much more expensive and difficult to maintain than any longbowman, and noted how long the heavy cavalry persisted in the musketeer and then the rifleman army, even though it was no longer the pre-eminent arm (but still very useful and formidable). Armies are not adverse to using weapons that are a little more difficult to obtain or use than standard-issue weapons. Rifles, slower to reload and harder to make than muskets, were assigned to skirmishers, sharpshooters and other specialist troop types in support of the musketeers. Would not a brigade of longbowmen, a 'Queen Victoria's Own Longbows' perhaps, have found an honored place in the British army if it was so marvellously effective? Where were the longbows among the Royal Artillery, if the weapon laid down so deadly a barrage? TBH I'm not sure I get your point either, Carl; you claim that longbowmen and even crossbowmen are far deadlier than the best musketeers. All the more reason to keep them in action. Smaller available numbers just means they take on a supporting role as elites and specialists rather than line infantry. That didn't happen. They stuck around for a bit, while guns were still being perfected, but once the improved matchlock (the one that didn't take literally forever to reload), effective mass-production and standardized loading drill became widespread they faded away into history. Now, if you argue that the longbowman was effectively a superman and that nobody of that caliber existed after the Middle Ages in large enough numbers to form even a single battalion of sharpshooters, then a little more evidence is needed to support that claim.
Finally (whew), my observation about the innate conservativism of armies is a serious one. Armies already heavily committed to a particular weapon or way of warfare will only switch over reluctantly, as it involves extensive retraining and rearming of the troops. It gets even worse with a feudal army, as it is much harder to ensure 'standardized' equipment is adopted throughout such an army than in a state army. Weapon guilds will pull strings to protect their way of life; nobles and generals with vested interests in the old ways will band together to oppose the 'New Turks' proposing change. Armies today are actually much more open to innovation than most, in part because of the rapid technological changes over the last century. In short, any new system of warfare (I am not suggesting that the musket was vastly better than the longbow either, but I am suggesting that the whole tactical system revolving around gunpowder was at least marginally superior) really needed to prove itself in order to be adopted, usually by badly beating up armies that used the older system. In any case, the historical record suggests that, far from being mesmerized by gunpowder, the kings of England actually tried to cling to the old ways by re-issuing requirements for archery practice among the population. I might even turn your argument about longbows persisting as part of the English gunpowder army on its head and suggest that it is an example of conservativism ensuring the (temporary and ultimately doomed) persistance of the outdated longbow corps, rather than over-progressivism killing off the deadliest weapon in history.
Edit: In the interest of fairness, I should probably point out that some armies did retain a few archers as supporting troops, suggesting that they were still deadly, if a little dated, weapons. Some depictions of the 18th century Imperial Qing army (China) show small numbers of archers (composite bows?) alongside the massed ranks of musketeers.
Hell of a post dopp :book:
While I'm not going to address everything, I would like to point out that by addressing the "extremists" longbow fan boys, you rule out most of the points you made because I agree with it. I'd say I am pro-bow :2thumbsup: but in a more rational sense.
Given the effective aimed range of a flintlock musket is 50 yards, and any hit over 100 yards would be less than a knock out blow to people wearing coats, the demise of the longbow is due to "other" factors. These "other" factors are both economic and strategic, and both issues I have stated in my previous posts.
To me that is the only explanation as to why they faded from view because as a weapon it is not until the mid 1800's that percussion muzzle loaders started reaching the same effective range and hitting ability as longbows.
I agree that they are solely based around the English because of inherent characteristics to that place and time. However many nations copied it and/or hired mercenaries due to the advantage you had in medieval warfare because of them.
Anyway, one specific point you raised which I believe was mine and I'll restate it.
Put a thousand Redcoats using flintlock muskets in a 3 deep line 500 metres away. Line up a thousand Longbowmen 3 deep also.
Flat ground. Nice day, the bird are chirping. Your "Superior" unit can now start marching at the Bowmen. At the 300 metre mark up goes the first 1000 arrows. Between that point and the 60 to 75 metre mark I have no idea how many arrows are let loose. Suffice to say "a shed load". As the redcoats get close the trajectory gets flatter the hit's get more leathal. By the time the Redcoats get to 50 yards or so, stop, take aim, and unload their FIRST volley I'm sure there are far fewer than the thousand that began.
At this point "The English" redcoats begin their world class speed and pump out 4 shots a minute. This is better than any other standing army of the Napoleonic period.
To me, the idea of a musket ball at 50 yards or an arrow at 50 yards seems rather academic. Considering after the first volley of musket fire YOU CAN'T see anything anyway, if becomes a "rate of fire" issue.
One of the main reasons the English won the Napoleonic wars was their ability to pump out enough fire power (not aimed) that it stopped the French Columns from punching through the lines.
All I'm saying is that it would seem clear who the winner would be. I'm also say thing that for "other" reasons this never happened and that is a fact. I'm not disputing it. But, you can't deny the characteristics of the weapons we are talking about and the bow is a clear winner.
Wow this thread has gone completely off track. When did it become longbows vs guns? This is silly, the bottom line (and point to this thread, mind you) is that longbows were a powerful force in the English army, and that with the crossbowmen having such a high RoF, the longbows are not at the appropriate power level.
Well excuse us for having fun! :laugh4:Quote:
Originally Posted by Microwavegerbil
i think it is very relevant to get the longbow in perspective to other weapons.
ive read an article that when arquebusiers and musketeers from that time period were told to actually aim at an individual target. a good shot with a smoothbore could hit a man sized target nearly 100 percent of the time at 50 yards and at a horsemen sized target 50 to 60 percent of the time at 100 yards.
in volley they had a 75 percent chance of hitting a formation sized target 75 percent of the time at 100 yds and 87 percent of time against a horse formation at 100 yds.
the only armor that could effectively stop arquebus projectiles would have been high quality armor known as pistol proof.
and smoothbores were actually used to hunt with although i imagine the distances would have been quite short.
and with the stats we have shown in the past posts even if the ball is stopped the trauma would be extensive and would take someone out of the battle and may even lead to an agonizing death later on.
Hi mad cat mech,
Are you talking about marksmen or general characteristics.
The muzzle loading weapons I am talking about is the Brown Bess Musket.
Volley fire was normally optimal at the 50 yard mark. Going out to the 100 yard mark with vastly reduced effectiveness and hitting power at that range. This weapon was in use for about 100 years by the English army from around the early 1700's all the way until the early 1800's.
I'd have a hard time thinking an arquebusiers from a hundred years early would be more effective...if that is what you are saying.
That's not saying marksmen could not achive better results...but they were marksmen not general tactics at the time.
I can't comment about the percentage hits at various ranges but even skimishers (marksmen for the most part, and certainly meant to be better than the average user) using this weapon operated between the 50 and 100 yard mark.
In the end, you have to compensate 4 shot a minute to 10 to 15 shots a minute with the bow. At those ranges I would expect a slight casualty advantage to the musket...but not at 4 to 5 times the fire rate.
Anyway...I'm done :)
I'm still of the opinion that economics and changing non military factors were the background issues that lead to the demise of the Longbow over gunpowder weapons.
This thread has been off-topic for quite a while, actually, because at least two other threads have been started dealing quite strictly with the game mechanics. It does affect the game though, when you start to try and get longbows up to an 'appropriate' power level based on dubious historical claims and unbalance everything else as a result.
Okay, in a nutshell and in a little simpler English, I argued that if longbows were so good and all, why didn't they stay around more? I also made some observations about how the 'ooh but they were getting really rare' argument was rather insufficient to explain the demise of such a supposedly-deadly weapon. So, telling me how they would pwn musketeers and all doesn't really answer the question; in fact it strengthens my argument considerably (thanks). The social and economic argument for the disapperance of the longbowman is totally unconvincing (based on current arguments, at least).
So yes, I am denying the effectiveness of the longbow, actually, compared to gunpowder weapons. It may be good, but not that good. Calculations of how many arrows were fired at Agincourt vs the number of French dead, plus the fact that the arrows actually failed to stop the French charge and most of the killing took place in melee, indicate that longbow lethality and effectiveness might possibly be less than that of musketeers (bold claim, I know), who did manage to stop most attacks with a single devastating volley (or two). It's hard to explain the results otherwise.
Sorry, I could give a better explanation if I could actually *find* the post you're referring to AussieGiant, but I can't seem to locate it.
Anyway, this isn't really aimed at any of you sensible types, just a few thoughts based on military history rather than a technical discussion. I do handle various bows, crossbows and firearms occasionally, but nothing that will exceed the experience of some of the posters here.
Fair enough Dopp.
It has certianly been a good discussion and your style is easy to read and understand. I certainly don't think it was a wonder weapon in any sense of the word.
See in another thread somewhere :2thumbsup:
Cheers
AG
Why did muskets replace longbows? Because training Englishmen to use the longbow was a massive undertaking. Football and other sports were banned for a time because the country needed all able-bodied men trained to use the longbow. It took time, money and organisation - if any of these were missing, the longbowmen sent overseas would be ineffective and England's most potent weapon nullified.
Then firearms came along. Not as effective as the longbow in the hands of an expert. But, and this is crucial, gunmen could be trained in a fraction of the time it took to train a competent longbowman. At short ranges, firearms were as effective as (or even more than) longbows, even in the hands of a novice.
correct me if i'm worng but wasn't the english decree to practice archery restricted to sundays. it wasnt as if the king told all the peasants to drop thie farming and shoot arrows all day. i think the the assumption that all longbowmen were highly trained archeres who could hit a moving target at 300 yeards through a slit in his armour is the first myth that need to be adressed.
The show was trying to compare the accuracy of rifle vs musket. So while I did say civil war era, it was a musket that was produced during that era. After that shot he did produce a rifle and shoot at the same target, hitting the target in the eye or some such.Quote:
Originally Posted by JCoyote
People like new toys. I think gunfire shocked and awed the medieval battleground, not through sheer killing power but just through fear. This is probably one of the reason people dropped the longbow for it. The other reasons could be, guns are easier to use, when it hits it has been shown it has more punch than longbows and I'm sure there are many more reasons that contributes to the demise of the longbow.
But if they were to meet face to face, a unit of gun slingers of those days would probably be slaughtered by longbowmen just by the fact that the gunmen were unarmored and outdistanced.
@crpcarrot: "A" longbowman can't do that, but there must be one of those hits when you have 70,000 shots fired, by 7000 longbowmen. The SCA here at the range sometimes put up a moving target with a bullseye on it. Have 10 archers shoot at it at once from 20m. Sometimes one of the arrow would land in the bullseye. But it's just that, a lucky shot. When you shoot that many arrows you're bound to land quite a few lucky shots, that's sometimes enough to change the tide of battle.
Just some historic background:
A large bow of yew is stone-age technology. It is a fine device and was used all over Europe to shoot game and occasionally people. Dear Ötzi or the Iceman was under 1.60 but had a 1.85 bowstaff with him, and working to make a bow out of it as he had lost his. Seemed a smart move by him but he got an arrow into his back before he could finish it.
Before organized warfare and massed formations became to dominate european warfare a large hunting bow was perhaps the main weapon. Raiding, skirmishing, ambushing was quite successful if done by competent shooters. But once men fight in larger formations with shields and spears and are determined to charge and kill it becomes impossible to stop them just with arrows. The bow was used less and less and got replaced by some javelines, which better suited the european shockwarfare.
After the rise of the Celts" you have big trouble to find arrowheads, and not just because they were now made of iron. Older Fürstengräber or burials of nobles in the east are full of Scythian arrowheads, the ones in the west have decent amounts of western arrowheads but after 500BC you won't hardly find arrowheads...
After 200AD the various Germanic tribes increasingly use increasingly stonger bows, perhaps to counter Roman shootingpower and eastern steppetribes. The imperial roman army used archers and slingers often in large numbers, creating hails of bullets and arrows and the Germanic tribes may have wanted to counter it. The Allemanns bury their dead with bows.
The Franks around 700 think it is a smart move to equip every footsoldier with a yew bow and 12 arrows - at least that's the way the want it. The nobility uses often composite bows, especially on horseback. The Vikings use heavy bows on land and foot, both of yew and horn preferring the latter as it is far more efficient.
So far so good.
Bur here's the catch Sextus: those era of muskets were not as accurate as many matchlock era weapons. The earlier weapons, with the bullet literally hammered into the bore to fit (a reason for using soft lead), had much tighter groupings.
A lot of people are basing this on the performance of the Brown Bess musket, which while later was NOT the pinnacle of smoothbore accuracy. There is a flawed implicit assumption that "if it was later, it must have been more accurate". That's wrong.
Earlier, tight fitting matchlocks were known to be capable of hitting man sized targets as far as 200 yards.
I did not mistype that. 200 yards. At individual people. With a smoothbore and a hammered in ball. At that point, even with marginal superiority it gets easy to see why economics could easily push longbows out of favor. BTW dopp, there are records England was importing very large amounts of yew at tremendous expense towards the end of scale use of longbows. Somewhere between deforestation and/or bad environmental policy, they just didn't have enough yew in England. Your argument for them being maintained as a small force is problematic because... well.. they DID. For a long time, almost 100 years, both weapons were side by side. It wasn't some "Hey this is better in all ways lets junk the old stuff" move. So they obviously had some reason to want to keep them around in England long after they were making plenty of matchlocks.
However, the later Brown Bess was made to a higher degree of standardization. This also went hand-in-hand with a looser fitting ball, to speed loading. It both made troops faster in firing and made it easier to make large amounts of ammunition and weapons that all work together; if something was made just off by a little it didn't matter because they weren't supposed to fit tight with the ammo. Civil War era muskets also followed this pattern. The Brown Bess had many technical advantages over matchlocks in usage and manufacturing, but accuracy was not its advantage.
Also, madcat, the statement about if it didn't go through the armor it still hurt them? That's just silly. Somewhere in there is lack of understanding of how rigid armor works. The projectile either breaks the armor and goes through, or it doesn't. This isn't like contemporary soft kevlar body armor where if I shoot it with my 10mm it will flex so far into the body it will cause blunt tissue trauma. When rigid armor stops something, it does so completely. When it doesn't, it fails and the projectile penetrates the wearer. There isn't really a halfway on this. If the projectile doesn't penetrate, the energy from it gets spread out across the plate and through the plate's mass and transfers into the wearer across its surface. Current rigid trauma plates stop much more energy than the weapons of those days, and the weaers might get knocked over, but usually are not. Only is their footing was bad. If the bullet had enough energy to knock you over, the same would have happened to the shooter. So no, hitting bulletproof armor of the era wouldn't have done damage anyway, especially considering how many people of the age wore padded garments under the armor.
if the ball does not penetrate plate armor it dents it thus doing the same damage as flexible body armor.
i know this was some time later but the colonists fighting the british at lexington and concorde were using more primitive weapons then what the british had yet scored more hits and casualties because they aimed.
however it is true that more freebore from a small musket ball versus barrel diameter eases loading but decreases accuracy and im sure that british using mass production use the same sized ball for their muskets so they would have the extra freebore for rapid rate of fire but decreased accuracy where the colonists probably cast their own balls to fit their bores tighter for better aimed shots for hunting. most militia and colonists did not have rifles as would be assumed and in the war of 1812 we still see smoothbores being used and this only changed near the beginning of the american civil war. but units like the green mountian boys and other special militia units used kentucky rifles(pennsylvania rifles blah blah blah) to great effect.
and rifling can even be traced all the way back to leonardo da vinci who it is claimed had developed a wheellock rifle that was used by a sharpshooter to kill an enemy general at several hundred paces.
i know this is later era stuff but it does lend credence to well aimed smoothbore fire versus unaimed. arqubuses were used in shooting contest against crossbows and actually took home the trophy half the time.
i firmly believe the longbow is more accurate in skilled hands but to dismiss an early smoothbore as being something that couldnt hit a formation 50 yds away only 10 percent of the time is inaccurate.
from what i could tell regardless of the stats i have taken a lot casualties coming under longbow fire in the game especially from sherwood foresters so even though the numbers suggest that missile power is weak im seeing pretty devestating missile fire and im pretty sure they are cranking out 10 shots a minute but i have never timed it.
muskets and arquebuses i think are reloading to quickly in the game.crossbowmen are pretty accurate though.
It's funny in my current Spanish campaign I had turtled hoping the AI would build up like crazy. The English had destroyed the French and attacked me. I've destroyed their French territories now and moving up to the island. Funny thing is I have not encountered a single longbow unit. There was that one peasant archer unit back in Angers but that was all, the rest had been DEKs and swordsmen.
"Acceptable" deformation under soft body armor is about 1 3/4 inches by US standards. (That's also to an underlying medium somewhat more resistant than flesh.) This is the level of flex of soft armor that is considered to not cause significant injury. Metal would have to be left with a dent of similar depth to do similar blunt trauma, and deeper to do serious injury. 1.73 inches is a pretty deep dent... most rigid armor would simply be pierced instead of bending that far. As for all the energy, as I mentioned before it gets spread over the area wearing the armor... much greater than the area shouldering the firing weapon. Also, some of it goes into warping the metal... which is to a certain level desirable, it's a great way to soak up energy. The better helicopter crash seats force a die over a metal tube of different shape... soaks up energy in a crash. (Of course, there's so much then it's still often not enough if it fell too far.)Quote:
Originally Posted by mad cat mech
Actually my experience is that they stick with archer militia for the most part, then switch over to arquebusiers. Longbows are limited to one or two per army. So they do use bows, just not longbows in sufficient quantities.Quote:
Originally Posted by SextusTheLewd
@Sextus: He was probably demonstrating one of the few smoothbore muskets still in use during the Civil War.
Effective musket range was limited to 200 yards, beyond which the ball is usually no longer lethal, but might still knock a man over or otherwise wound him (called 'spent' balls). Of course, the main body of a unit usually held fire until 50 yards for maximum effect, while skirmishers could keep up sniping fire from the flanks at longer ranges. This was why generals could still gallop around pretty safely as long as they stood outside 200 yards. At close range, however, you get consistent reports of multiple men being killed or wounded by a single musketball. Would you like to see M2TW arquebusiers with the body piercing property?
Yes, they did, but the problem is, they still disappeared as combat units eventually, which should not have happened if they had a decisive advantage over the newer weapons. So, we might conclude that they remained fairly competitive for a while, but at an ever-increasing disadvantage as the new technology developed, until at last it became better to simply do away with them altogether (even if they remained slightly better weapons). Its persistance might have had something to do with the fact that firearm manufacture for military use is and was very tightly controlled by the state due to its potential for sparking revolution (which is why the musket is the hero of the later 'Atlantic Revolutions', when the system of control finally failed). At the time of the English Civil War in mid 1600s, muskets were in short supply and many soldiers either had to shoulder pikes or use older weapons like longbows until the shortage could be corrected. So much for the mass production of muskets.Quote:
Originally Posted by JCoyote
As I mentioned, large amounts of yew being imported at very large expense. On the books. It might not seem like much to support an army, but when you have to support the people from training in childhood? To maybe produce a handful of elite archers? It's not easy. And the smaller the number practicing, the less elite the best became, simply because the best were being picked from a smaller pool.
And civil wars are HARDLY an indicator of weapons availability. Study a few. Look at Bosnia-Herzagovina. There was obviously no particular shortage of AK's in the region, at very reasonable prices, and even still... PPSh submachine guns, turn of the century revolvers, WW1 bolt actions, all saw service. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan saw rebels going so far as using wheel locks... along with AK's, old bolt actions, and US supplied Stinger missiles. In Yemen, some of their better military units had recently acquired AUG assault rifles. After being pinned down at 800+ yards by obsolete WW1 era bolt actions, they traded in the AUGs for "outdated" G3's.
Those are civil and insurgent warfare that I can think of off the top of my head. None of them existed in a particular "absence" of weapons in the region. It has more to do with how civil and guerilla actions draw in so many people... so many MORE than the usual army of the particular nation when you add up the two sides... that existing stocks of weapons inherently become spread too thin.
And you miss the issue that if they were just pulling out any old thing during that civil war, longbows wouldn't have been one of them, the users take too much time to train. They are inherently not "surge friendly" for militaries.
Yeomen from the countryside being forced to use longbows due to shortage of muskets, also on the books (admittedly, this is an extreme case, since most of them were given pikes if muskets were not available). The recruiting officers were furious. Mind you, these are men showing up to be inducted into the 'regular' army (ie, one raised by officers of the crown or Parliament, as England didn't have much of a standing army at the time), not some guerrilla fighters from the mountains joining up as auxiliaries. The English Civil War is also known for the huge difficulties in recruitment, as it was essentially a power struggle between rival court factions (one of which was admittedly more 'progressive' than the other), rather than a popular uprising. Recruiters were constantly coming up short as it seems people really didn't want to get involved.
No, I think lumping civil wars into a single category is a fallacy. England was an established power, with arsenals, gun factories and so on. It had just finished a military campaign against the Scots (which was part of the reason for the Civil War), so it was at least partly mobilized already. If it's short of muskets (they were also badly short of cannon, especially the heavier siege pieces), then muskets were probably not as widespread as you claim. Which is understandable, as I have pointed out, when you consider the state control over the manufacture of the weapons. Civil War armies were kind of small by our standards, but they fought pitched battles in the 'proper' fashion. Bosnians and Afghans were using weapons that were often not even produced locally, fighting 'low-intensity' insurgent actions for the most part, where choice of weaponry is less important. Just because they're all 'civil wars' doesn't mean they are then automatically fit subjects for military comparison.
Now, yew becoming scarce would mean that longbows can no longer form the bulk of armies, just like trained archers becoming scarce. I understand that. But, unless you would like to argue that yew is now extinct in Northern Europe, and that the archer was a figure of such stature that none today can hope to match him, it does not explain the complete disappearance of the weapon adequately. The concept of the musket, as the embodiment of crude, industrialized, faceless killing, triumphing over the 'noble' weapons of the past, which were wielded by REAL MEN, is a beautiful fantasy, akin to the fantasy of bulletproof monks. But a fantasy it remains.
And anyway, longbowmen training from childhood is all well and good, but it pales in comparison with true elites like the Janissaries, the Mamluks, or the Mongols, or even the average European knight, all of which survived in some form or other until the 19th century. Longbowmen may not have been as elite (gasp, blasphemy) as they are made out to be.
im seeing a pattern here.ok expert longbowmen trained all their lives to build up strength, skill blah blah blah. but there are huge numbers of archers in the armies of the hundred years war.
at the first of the war it was pretty expensive for edward iii to send over a few hundred men at arms and a thousand bowmen i guess maybe because he wasnt making a proffit from pillaging that early in the war. maybe these smaller groups of longbowmen who were very skilled in their trade and seemed just as valuable as the men at arms accompanying them are representative of the reknowned longbowmen while the thousands represented at crecy contained a front rank or core of elite longbowmen supported by a larger group of welsh bowmen or conscript bowmen.
its just a theory though.
"Recruitment was a problem" is a very relative concept in an internal struggle. Recruitment is a problem in ALL internal struggles, in point of fact it's often through recruitment they are won. All sides in nearly all internal conflicts feel frustrated by shortage of troops or unwillingness to enlist. It's part of such warfare; recruiter frustration is part and parcel of the fact that they feel like everyone should automatically agree with them. A better reasoning would be the total numbers of soldiers the nation held available before and a generation after the conflict. Recruiters were frustrated that ANYONE would turn them down when obviously every good englishman should support the cause. :laugh4: But numerical comparisons of total soldiers during compared to other eras, and as a percentage of population, is better.
Writing off recent conflicts as "low intensity" doesn't change the fact that all examples happened in regions of the world where there are literally hundreds of thousands of AK variants available. "Low intensity" doesn't mean it's a handful of people fighting, it can easily exceed the total numbers of fighters on old battlefields. The numbers aren't inherently lower, they are just decentralized. The Bosnia situation saw their own arms made in country as well, everything from SMG's to AMR's. Still, you'd see fighters with everything from 7mm Mausers to AK's to M16's to Steyr precision rifles worth US$1800+.
There are still extant longbowmen today holding that old tradition, even in Scotland. Their use as military has disappeared, but they were maintained at a small level to the present. (Though granted, for the last 150 years at least it is certainly for cultural reasons.) So there is a hole there; they were maintained for a LONG time as small elite units. I don't see many records of their usage, but then again, with the transportation of the age, unless facing invasion Britain was unlikely to use them. Also, an "elite" unit, created from a shrinking pool of potential recruits, will continually lose capability compared to the past.
There is a similar issue with shotguns in US service. Shot loadings were used in the Revolutionary War. Shotguns were widely used during the Civil War among cavalry units. They were then abandoned because of short range. After seeing trench warfare, Pershing had his soldiers issued shotguns. After, they were abandoned in favor of longer range field/maneuver warfare. The Supreme Court even declared that the 2nd Amendment didn't apply to shotguns because they "weren't military weapons". And in WW2, the Marines ended up acquiring them for use in the Pacific islands. They were abandoned again... and brought back into service in Vietnam for narrow tunnels and general jungle warfare. They were predictably abandoned again... and now we see the US standardizing and acquiring various shotguns once more for current conflicts. See a trend? Conservative and practical though soldiers themselves may be, they don't decide policy. Someone else does that. Useful weapons get abandoned, only to be "rediscovered". In the case of shotguns, so repeatedly it's a running gag. In peacetime, armament is decided based on a "theory" of warfare, and it's quite common on the battlefield to see the theory fail and weapons returned to service or new versions created. When a weapon is abandoned based on that, in many cases it can be picked up again. Tomahawks are seeing something similar happen; present in all US wars before WW1, then rediscovered in Vietnam and used presently. But, when longbows A) require long training and B) decent numbers of users, once dropped for more than a generation they just weren't that easy to pick up again for use at scale.
What I've been saying is, the longbow had unique qualities not directly matched by firearms and that is why they were maintained so long. It wasn't a matter of a single dimensional issue. The British maintained longbows alongside firearms for quite a long time. And while people want to think they were both ranged weapons so one "beat" the other, this is an apples and oranges comparison. In service they found use for them beside firearms, until it finally became to cost prohibitive for the extra ability they brought. The longbow though had nothing that quite took its place in warfare until the mortar was improved. You'll even see commanders of later armies wishing they had a bunch of longbows on the field... usually in special cases, to do things like rain arrows into fortifications and trenchworks. But after mortars developed into their more modern incarnation, a lot of that disappears.
The mortar was the replacement for the longbow in the end... it just wasn't worth much until almost the 20th century, when both fuses and firing rate improved... and a dozen men could accomplish things that would have taken hundredsd of longbowmen in the past.
i checked out the orighinal post never had before. so it was saying two longbow units couldnt take down a pavise crossbow unit.
the pavise crossbow unit in this game uses the arbalest because if you play much mp you learn quick which weapons shoot further than others. the arbalest is an extremely powerful weapon for the time. i dont know how common they actually were or how often they were used but they probably had the highest penetration capability of any weapon we have discussed.
the crossbowman has the large wooden shield to protect him while he is reloading.
the reason they lost at crecy was because phillip rushed them to the front without giving them time to get there pavises. without the pavises they didnt have much of chance at engaging a foe with an uphill advantage with a higher rate of fire.we dont even know if they used arbalest it seems things are greyed out as to when arbalest were involved at one time or another.
but in the game the pavise xbowmen are using arbalest so if a unit of them beats two units of longbowmen i dont see the problem. sure they cant match the rate of fire but unless the longbowmen charge down the hill and attack there is not much they can do about that shield. i would say accuracy between a longbow and arbalest are comparable one might be more accurate then the other. we have people using longbows but i dont recall hearing of anyone shooting arbalest these days but people do shoot crossbows and when the proper bolts are used not just shortened arrows the accuracy can be impressive because i used to own one and i had to shoot 20 yds or above or i would ruin my bolts by landing my shots on top of each other and costing me money.
what the guy should have done if wanted to win with two longbowmen would have been to engage the crossbowmen at two different angles that would have neutralized the shield. its basically a comparison to a guy out in the open top of a humvee blasting away with a 50 cal versus a man with a single shot 50 cal hiding behind some rubble it could go either way but one man is going to run out of ammo before the other.
i guess the musket stuff got off track from the op. but if you arnt satisfied with longbowmen in the game and think they should have devestating missile damage , tough as nails with 9 lives well maybe 2 will be enough with a lot of melee capablility there are the sherwood foresters.maybe someone can mod them into 60man units.
there is just no way i can see to get around that pavise shield unless you take them out of the game. as far as arqs versus longbowmen in the game i would give the nod to the longbowmen but the musketeers are a little to much like civil war era muskets than primitive matchlocks. but in the game musketeers right now are doing the most damage but i understand that ca is supposed to tone them down a little.
give the longbows more ap and damage? ok but it still wont have an effect on that pavise shield. even muskets arent going through the pavise which is why they are the only units you can use in mp that can counter musketeers.
Don't take the OP as gospel. Reapz's tests shows a longbow and pavise crossbow to be pretty evenly matched:Quote:
Originally Posted by mad cat mech
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=74553
Based on this, I would say the longbows are too good. The pavise should count for more, IMO.
Using fire arrows to fry the pavise may be even more unbalancing (from a historical point of view).
I agree, a pavise should be worth more in a fight.
I just think it's silly having the thing tied to their backs. I'd rather go the other direction, and have the pavises be larger and rolled up on wheels. They could be treated like siege equipment... the crossbowmen would be stuck to slow speeds with them, but could "drop" them and move out as regular crossbows.
heres something to try out
in custom battles, get yourself ONE unit of musketeers, and get the enemy a unit of th ebest longbowman you can get, sherwood or retinue, i dont care.
line up your musketeers in LOOSE formation, with formation 2 man deep.
and watch the longbowman get absoulty slaughtered....
In loose formation, bowmans will loose whatever accruracy they have while the gunmens do not.
whhat i do complain through is that after the 1.1 patch, where were no skirmishing left, ther enermy just march right up and charge at you.... that doesnt make sense because the enemy crossbowmens done even have time to finish 2 volleys before they were shooting at their own men.
and that makes no sense if you are gonna use musketeers because you'll just get stacked by enemy infantry (how a unit of peasants have the valor to charge at my musketeer who are shoooting them at point blank is anyone's guess:furious3: :furious3: )
All right to answer Dopp, (thanks for the comeback):
First I'll say where I think the longbow really stood in history:
Poundage of draw was probably higher than the 80LB most modern reconstructions are, but lower than the 150-200LB the nuclear Longbows fan Group claims:smash:. My guess would be the 110-120LB range. Draw length and draw weight consistency are probably similar for modern reconstructions. Orda is probably a better man to ask regarding arrow weights, so i won't touch that. Accuracy would be the same as any other bow under the same circumstances. Unarmed area denial at parabolic arc range and aimed fire at direct fire range. But I wouldn't expect them to be putting arrows through Visor slits just by aiming at them. They aren't elves you know :laugh4:. Killing power was also likely low. Whilst most contemporary things I've read indicate that a Parabolic Arrow COULD go through plate Armour, the arrows didn't necessarily kill, and the King I mentioned actually was ready for battle again a Month later if I remember correctly. What the wounds would do is force many enemy soldiers to simply withdraw, unable to continue fighting due to wounds. Fire rate would probably have been 10-12 a minute for rapid firing, with 6-8 a minute being the more normal fire rate IMHO. Elite regiments might have bettered these figures by 2-4 volleys a minute more.
Now Why did the Longbow go out of common usage:
A number of things IMHO:
1. The early Musket users would have been armored. This means that the Longbows ability to disable/kill large numbers of them would be much less than if they where shooting at Napoleonic Musket wielders. It would also have prevented the use of lightweight long distance arrows as they would have been unable to penetrate the Armour of the early Muskets. Later Napoleonic Troops would have suffered terribly under such bombardment, and would have been unprotected against lighter flight arrows.
2. Lethality would have played another big part. Longbows could clearly disable a LOT of men thanks to better range and fire rate and their ability to still go through plate. However many of the men hit by Longbows would be back a few months down the line. Someone who was hit by a musket would probably be dead or so disabled he would be unable to flee. Even if he avoided capture and survived the injuries, they would probably be of such a nature that they would hamper his fighting ability and it would take longer to recover from. In effect the Longbow made it easier to win a individual battle, (because fewer enemies made it to melee), but the muskets would make it easier to win the war (because although more men reached melee, those that didn't wouldn't be back to trouble you again though so you have to fight less battles. On the other hand, because more men reached melee you would lose more men per battle yourself and find it harder to win when outnumbered.
3. It's quite clear from what others have said that early Muskets where longer ranged than later ones whilst probably being less than Longbows. This reduces the effectiveness disparity enormously.
Here's my theory on Musket development: The initial Muskets come out, the only difference between them and Longbowmen is the missile weapon. Same Armour and melee. They partially replace Longbows. Armour then gets a notch up and muskets get cut down to about 100 yards effective range due to being unable to penetrate it at longer ranges. Longbows would take a hit too, although their use of steel rather than soft lead would help lower the impact. So they now decide to develop an easier to produce musket with a higher rate of fire and a max range of no more than the effective 100 yards. This is the Napoleonic Musket. Suddenly their are a lot more muskets around and everyone has them if possible so the advantage of the Longbow is starting to slip. It's now outnumbered and the effective range disparity is smaller, giving them fewer extra volleys, fire rate is also much closer. The Longbow simply fades away at this point. Once thats gone their no need for Armour ass it has no effect at the new musket ranges and theirs no need to have it vs. arrows so it gets dropped. We now have a Napoleonic soldier in effect, minus the bayonet. The loss of Armour now allowed an explosion in numbers of muskets also.
SO, I believe my point still stands, had Longbows still been present in big number at the time of the Napoleonic war they could have done immense damage, they just got phased out because Musketeers wearing advanced plate where nearly as effective, (not quite, but close enough and easier to train) as longbows. Later unarmored musket-men would have been easy meat IMO.
Why didn't others adopt the Longbow though? four reasons. Pride, Difficulty, Chivalry, and Religions. Whilst not everyone adhered to the code of Chivalry as individuals, as a whole the Knights of the time felt it was VERY important and would never have stooped to breaking it by being dishonorable and using missile weapons. The Large reason for it being such a big things though was religion. If you fought Chivalrously and thus honorably, you where more likely to go to heaven, which was a being incentive. (And if you didn't fight honorably you might be sent to hell as punishment). This means few rulers would have been willing to risk the backlash from their Knights to try switching to Longbows, (the knights might not mind fighting alongside those wielding missile weapons, but a decision like that would probably have been even worse than being made to use them in their eyes). Pride of course is well known as a problem, British, French, and American alike have been guilty of ignoring better weaponry throughout both world wars just because it isn't home grown. This would have been doubly worse in the middle ages I expect. Lastly the practicalities of switching the peasants to Longbowmen would have been immensely difficult to do.
Sorry for taking so long to answer. Was on a campaign all yesterday, I just left the net running in the background.
That's actually quite good, except for one minor problem. Completely unarmored British Regulars with muskets often faced foreign armies with pretty sophisticated bows and decent archers (especially the Eastern ones that had retained composite bows of some sort or other in their armies) and still beat them while suffering fairly minor losses. Still doesn't quite work, although you make good points. Bows did go up against firearms, often with disastrous results. And of course it's hard to claim that there were more muskets than bows in those cases, as the Europeans were almost always outnumbered in their empire-building wars.
Some thing else to consider on that is European armies had a tendancy to love artillery.
Nothing quite makes people keep their heads down than fire from big guns at a higher elevation.