Cavalry

[Watchman]

A decent arquebus and a late-end steel-stave crossbow ("arbalest") are about equals in killing power and armor penetration, and the crossbow actually has a longer accurate range. However, an arquebus is slimmer and takes up less room, is mechanically simpler and more reliable (it's undamentally nothing more than a metal tube plugged at one end), makes for a better club in a pinch, punches through cover better and is, quite frankly, scarier. Both people and animals are simply scared of the loud noise, flame and smoke it produces - I've read that in the first battle in which the Russians used firearms against the Golden Horde the nomads were so shocked by the first discharge (which didn't even cause any meaningful casualties) they simply rode off the field...

This is probably the key to the comparative efficiency of firearms - not so much the killing power as the psychological effect, especially of volley firing.

On the whole an arquebus can do most of the things a crossbow can, and enough of them better that it eventually replaced it.

Now, archers are nice and ones with composite bows even nicer; the problem tend to be the availability, as barring more or less full-time profesional troops who train diligently the about only way to get them is to have a populace who uses them matter-of-factly in their everyday lives. Steppe nomads and assorted hunters are a good source. The English yeoman system was an attemp at "artificially" producing a pool of skilled archers, and while it worked fairly well it was anything but an ideal solution and there were constant issues in making the peasants actually fulfill their training quota in tha practice butts - most of them frankly had better things to do. Medieval Scandinavia (and presumably East Europe) had it better, having vast stretches of sparsely populated woodlands the peasants could hunt in and hence a decent pool of skilled archers who could be enrolled into the military.

The problem, even with composite bows, seems to have been that even the Janissary foot archers do not seem to have had enough drill to reach the sheer volume of fire necessary to stop an armored cavalry charge. You had to pour a pretty serious amount of arrows into the assault line to cause enough casualties and chaos for the charge to falter, and it appears even elite archers rarely achieved this.

The Mamluks apparently managed to drill their horse-archers (who shot standing still, as "regular" horse-archers of settled nations are wont to) to the degree where these could stop a Crusader charge on sheer firepower alone, though.

Infantry makes much smaller targets than horsemen and get more cover out of their shields, but on the other hand are slower moving; it seems to have been a bit case-by-case how well archery worked against such troops, especially if they were armored.

[Krusader]

Wow. Is it just me or did this topic totally derail?

[Watchman]

Not really. The importance of cavalry can only be understood in the context of the other "arms of service" of a particular period, and especially the means the footsloggers used to avoid getting squashed by the horsemen.

[Mr Frost]

At 100 meters a ball from a smoothbore musket will land anywhere {random dispersion} within a {roughly} 20 meter diameter circle reguardless of how good the shooter is .

At that same 100 meters , a truely expert archer can place his arrow into a man sized stationary target with a fair degree of confidence .



Steppe horsearchers like those Tartars learned to ride and use a bow as soon as they could walk and practiced constantly in work {hunting and war} , earnest and play throughout their lives thus were truely master archers .

The typical Napoleonic line infantryman had a few months of training and then most of his drill/practice was in marching , not shooting {even the superior Brittish system focused on loading drills rather than shooting for smooth bores , logical given that the maximum range you can actually be sure your shot goes where you want it is so close that any fool could hit one of a solid line of several hundred men , thus rate of fire becomes more usefull} .
Only rifle regiments focused on accuracy to any extent {there have been mentions in some publications that a British soldier was expected to hit a man sized target at 200 yards , this would only be possible for rifles though some clearly ignorant authors have suggested it refered to regular smoothbore musket armed troops , which would have resulted in about 99 percent of all such troops failing to qualify :P} , thus with little attention paid to line infantry developing accuracy with their smooth bore muskets , bullet drop {notable with those weapons} adversly effect their accuracy at longer ranges even more than most would think . Basically , at any decent range , the broad side of a barn can relax and feel safe from a Napoleonic line infantryman , but the horse archer should make the infantryman sweat blood



Realistically , a loose ordered troop of genuine Steppe horse archers {which the Tartars would have had} would be vastly superior in a "fire" fight to a typical Napoleonic line regiment . They would have only been hit at 100 meters by pure chance {loose order , and accuracy at that range with smoothbores is only possible if the target is 20 meters wide and taller yet again !} yet considered hitting several hundred stationary men in neatly ordered tight formation litterally childs play {their 10 year old sons could have done it , their grandmothers too no doubt} .


I remember reading that Wellington wished England still had {fully skilled} longbowmen as they would have been murderously effective against the large infantry columbs the French deployed {though the Rifle regiments would have had longer range and better accuracy , the Longbow would have had far greater rate of fire -20 seconds+ for loading a Baker Rifle , 4 seconds rapid or 8 sustained for a longbow in a prepared possition that takes less than 60 seconds an a handy cowpat to ready} .

The Problem is , ofcourse , a Napoleonic line infantryman took mere months to train {even Rifleman took little longer} whereas a truely skilled archer like a Steppe Horse Archer or British Longbowman took over a decade starting from earliest childhood .
The Golden horde {if somehow shifted through time enmass into the Napoleonic era} would still have been able to conquer Europe , and with medical advancment of that time , Ogadi might have survived his alcholicism long enough to finish the job

[CBR]

At 100 meters a ball from a smoothbore musket will land anywhere {random dispersion} within a {roughly} 20 meter diameter circle reguardless of how good the shooter is.

I have no idea where you got that from but that is definitely not true. Muskets where not very precise weapons but the theoretical performance was a lot better than what you describe. Back in the 18th/early 19th century several tests and calculations were made. You can find out more in the book "Firepower" by Major-General BP Hughes

The mean error at 150 meters, from a musket fired from a rest, is mentioned as 75cm in height and 60cm laterally.

In battles no one came near these results as human error as well as battlefield conditions would reduce it. IIRC US Civil War was about 25% efficiency compared to theoretical performance.

Realistically , a loose ordered troop of genuine Steppe horse archers {which the Tartars would have had} would be vastly superior in a "fire" fight to a typical Napoleonic line regiment . They would have only been hit at 100 meters by pure chance

Well actually the French did encounter Tartars and we can look at their experiences with bow armed loose order cavalry.

Arrows v French cavalry
http://www.napoleonic-literature.com/Book_3/V2C38.html

Their efforts were chiefly directed against Sébastiani's cavalry, and in a moment the barbarians surrounded our squadrons with loud shouts, letting off thousands of arrows. The loss these caused was slight, for the Bashkirs are totally undrilled and have no more notion of any formation than a flock of sheep. Thus they cannot shoot horizontally in front of them without hitting their own comrades, and are obliged to fire their arrows parabolically into the air, with more or less elevation according to the distance at which they judge the enemy to be. As this method does not allow of accurate aiming, nine-tenths of the arrows are lost, while the few that hit are pretty well spent, and only fall with the force of their own weight, which is inconsiderable; so that the wounds they cause are usually trifling. As they have no other weapons, they are certainly the least dangerous troops in the world. However, as they were coming up in myriads, and the more of these wasps one killed the more came on—the vast number of arrows with which they filled the air were bound sooner or later to inflict some severe wounds. Thus one of my non-commissioned officers, named Meslin; was pierced from breast to back by an arrow. Seizing it in both hands he broke it and drew the two portions from his body, but died a few minutes later. I fancy this was the only case of death caused by the Bashkirs' arrows: but I had several men and horses hit, and was myself wounded by the ridiculous weapon.


Muskets v Tartars
http://www.napoleonic-literature.com/Book_3/V2C37.html

During our stay at Pilnitz, the enemy was receiving strong reinforcements, notably 60,000 Russians under Benningsen. These came from beyond Moscow, and included many Tartars and Bashkirs, armed only with bows and arrows. I have never understood with what object the Russian Government brought up from so great a distance these masses of irregular cavalry, who could be of no use against troops armed in the modern fashion, and only made food more scarce for the regular troops. Our soldiers were in no way impressed by the sight of these half-savage Asiatics, whom, from their bows and arrows, they nicknamed ' the Cupids.' The newcomers, however, who had never seen Frenchmen, encouraged by officers nearly as ignorant as themselves, expected to see us fly at their approach. The very day after their arrival they assailed our troops in countless bands, but were received with musketry-fire, and left many of their number dead on the ground. Their losses seemed only to excite them further; and as any ground suited them they began wheeling round us like swarms of wasps, and it was hard to catch them. When our troopers did get at them, the execution was considerable.

Overall they were not that impressed by bow armed cavalry. They might not have had the best discipline but muskets did seem to do the job.

We can also go back to the Crusades and find that crossbowmen could keep enemy horsearchers at a distance and cause big losses too. And crossbows didnt have a high rate of fire or were very accurate.

An archer who spends all day shooting at a target at a certain range will develop a high skill and might end up being able to hit a target with his eyes closed but battlefield conditions will reduce the efficiency considerably.

Long rang shooting is basically plunging area fire which is not very accurate and even at shorter range the archer cant be certain of the precise range which will hurt his accuracy as low velocity arrows are more dependent on knowing the exact range than guns are.


CBR

[Watchman]

Let's remember one thing - it was after the Russians got their mitts on guns that they in time conquered most of Asia right until the border of China. Firearms were more or less what broke the military advantage of the steppe peoples for good - those guys were really good at what they did, and supremely adapted to their environment, but in some rather important ways their culture was a technological dead-end. Once their neighbors got past a certain point they simply had nothing to mobilize in reply...