muskets vs.longbows in MTW2

[Freedom Onanist]

It seems to me that in all these discussions of the usefulness of the Longbow the salient point has been overlooked. What is indisputable is that English armies used the longbow in large numbers throughout the period of the Hundred Years war and beyond (War of the Roses). It was a mainstay of the weapons mix. They must have seen some value in it beyond many of the incidental effects mentioned in this thread, they must have know they were on to something good. The fact that they were used in such large numbers argues for the fact that the English DID see these weapons as battle winning devices. And after all they were there, putting their trust in the abilities of the weapon to deliver on the day. If the only effect of a longbow arrow was to deliver a hefty punch would the arrow heads be of the bodkin variety and not of a blunter form which would have been easier and cheaper to produce whilst (arguably) delivering more shock energy? It seems to me dubious to argue that people who had direct and real experience of the longbow would invest so much trust and resource in it otherwise of a period of several centuries. I don't exactly see what the argument can be? The English introduced a major change to the usual weapons mix of medieval armies, following this the effectiveness of their armies increased dramatically. I am not denying there were many other factors at play, but I don't think the causal link can be denied.

[maestro]

Electric Eel, whilst what you say is, indeed true. Nowhere did anyone mention TV programs testing longbows against modern mail and armour. I've seen plenty of programs on UKTV History and the History Channel and the such like with proper, anal historians recreating armour of all kind using medieval methods and then dressing up a medieval straw dummy in the armour and shooting at it with medieval weapons.

Whilst I agree with everything you say, it's kind of a moot point in this circumstance cause I've definitely seen it done on telly with "the real McCoy"

[Freedom Onanist]

Back to the topic of longbow v firearms. To me there can be little doubt that a unit of Longbowmen would decimate any arquebus/musket opponent. Rate of fire, range and accuracy (rifling not withstanding) are all on the bow's side. The question then is why did England abandon them? Well, as ha been pointed out they didn't entirely for quite some time (even Drake had some in the 1570's). However, the Hundred Years war and the subsequent War of the Roses especially had a serious impact on English society in terms of its ability to provide trained archers. Handguns really made their full impact in a period when England was recuperating from these and dealing with such internal upheavals as the Reformation. Luckily for England its continental neighbours were more occupied with their own disputes to look much its way. By the time England re-emerges onto the European scene as it where there is no longer an archer recruitment pool available. Expediency dictated the use of handguns.

[Temujin]

The English introduced a major change to the usual weapons mix of medieval armies

They really didn't. The English had great archers, so they focused on them to reinforce success. But English longbowmen did not popularize archery tactics in the rest of Europe. Sure, the french made a half-assed attempt to copy them with their own archer corps, but they didn't have the troops to pull it off, and never really abandoned their cavalry-focused tactics.
Compare the influence of English archery to that of Swiss pike-formations in the late medieval/renaissance; now there's a major change.

To me there can be little doubt that a unit of Longbowmen would decimate any arquebus/musket opponent.

Any? No matter the other qualities of the soldiers involved? I think not. Longbowmen could be as green, cowardly, de-motivated and skittish as any other soldiers, and they demonstrated this in numerous battles.

Wargamers have an unfortunate tendency to focus too much on the "hard", constant factors, such as equipment, in their discussions, I think. Contemporary commentators rarely mention equipment details. When speaking of the English, they don't use the term "Longbowmen", they call them "Archers", because that's how they saw them; as common archers of uncommon proficiency. That the English variety of archers should be something entirely different (a different "troop-type") is a wargaming convention, invented by games designers that are too eager to put fighting men in neat little boxes to make representing them in their games easier. In reality, the draw-weight of your bow and the shape of your arrowheads were completely insignificant details compared to morale, motivation, training-levels, fatigue, discipline, leadership, tactics and circumstance.

[Watchman]

I wouldn't vouch for that last part. A weapon system that just plain cannot fulfill an important battlefield function - and the short hunting bow fairly commonly used did not against armoured enemies - is not going to play a very prominent role period, not in the least because there's little point in expending resources on it. The feudal levy invariably turned up a number of fellows handy with a bow or sling (commonly used by shepherds and the like to chase off wild animals, and by children to keep birds from dining too brashly in the fields), and those skills were naturally put to use (I've read slings were particularly useful in sieges, being able to seriously injure even through helmets which were obviously what you mostly saw of the defenders behind the crenellations); but their effectiveness on the battlefield against decently equipped soldiery, or rather lack thereof, did not warrant any further effort on the topic.

The crossbow, longbow and in the East the composite bow were however another story, and promising enough that serious soldiers put an effort into refining them and the higher-ups became interested in exterting the effort and resources to have them available.

Something I just read was that when King Henry ordered his army closer to the French, to goad them into attacking, the French cavalry did not charge the archers in the vulnerable stage of removing their sharpened stakes from the ground, carrying them forward, and putting them back in the ground. Total negligence on the part of the French. They waited until the stakes where all planted and the archers in formation. A fatal error.

...which smacks of discipline issues. If half the people supposed to take part in the cavalry action hadn't even turned up to the banners the formations would hardly have yet been in the state to mount an effective attack, all the more so as many of those present no doubt voiced (sensible) doubts about the point of sallying forth with so comparatively few men. By the time these things had been sorted out and the troops organized and formed up the opportunity to move against the English in the middle of redeployement would have been long gone.

'Course, had the English seen the French begin to move they'd no doubt stopped on their tracks and promptly re-planted their stakes - probably not too time-consuming a process given the softness of the wet ground - and gone to work with their bows. Cavalry advancing in formation have to maintain a comparatively slow pace to keep the ranks intact and to avoid tiring the horses and the soft ground would have slowed them down even further, so catching the English "pants down" may well have been impossible to begin with anyway.

Couldn't the Bodkin points on the longbow arrows penetrate French armour? Also, just as a point of interest, I read the English killed a great many French soldier with head shots.

Not with any degree of reliability except at point-blank range. Even humble mail can stop arrows from the much more powerful composite bows at longer ranges, and do not for a moment think the people using those bows did not have access to all conceivable types of specialized arrowheads the English had ever dreamt of and then some. By Agincourt the harness of a fully equipped man-at-arms was up to the standards of Eastern cataphracts - and those fellows had been conceived to ride through enemy missile fire with impunity and hack them apart in close combat (well, quite a few of the eastern heavies carried bows too and could thus simply out-live most archers in a firefight, but that's a bit beside the point) in parts of the world absolutely crawling with good recurve composite bows and people skilled at using them.

I'll reiterate this: if you assumed the English archers could cut fully equipped men-at-arms down at range, then how would you explain the fact the French heavies were pretty much always able to reach their English counterparts in a condition where the latter still had to work for their money to drive them away ?

The longbow wasn't a battle-winning weapon. It merely made it possible for the English to win with fewer of the expensive men-at-arms and other heavy close-combat troops, and as a bonus was - like any missile weapon with decent range - quite useful in sieges.

Ditto for the crossbow, although given that at their prime the Italian urban armies that could take on any and all comers were mostly crossbowmen screened by a thin crust of armoured militia spearmen and a smattering of often relatively light cavalry, actually even better at it when used correctly.

I presume the composite bow, especially when employed from horseback, did win battles pretty much by itself, but AFAIK in practice that only happened in battles between armies of light cavalry (ie. nomads) and even then shock action was normally used to finish things - nevermind now the invariable presence of armoured elite cavalry primarily detailed for shock duties.

Conversely the pike, at least used in the aggressive and mobile fashion the Swiss made popular (the static Scottish schiltroms having proven to be arrow-fodder), was a "decisive" weapon - while in practice pike armies always included missile troops and cavalry, in principle they would have been able to win battles pretty much solely with their long pointy sticks.
But then again, when you combine them with maneuver pikes are shock weapons. That's one thing the Hellenics apparently never got right back in the day.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

'Course, had the English seen the French begin to move they'd no doubt stopped on their tracks and promptly re-planted their stakes - probably not too time-consuming a process given the softness of the wet ground - and gone to work with their bows. Cavalry advancing in formation have to maintain a comparatively slow pace to keep the ranks intact and to avoid tiring the horses and the soft ground would have slowed them down even further, so catching the English "pants down" may well have been impossible to begin with anyway.

Catching the English pants down has been done in Patay, they had no time to hide behind stakes and were badly defeated. Hardly an impossible scenario.

Louis,

[Watchman]

Well, we're talking the face-off at Agincourt here. And the French having organisational issues.

[Temujin]

I wouldn't vouch for that last part. A weapon system that just plain cannot fulfill an important battlefield function - and the short hunting bow fairly commonly used did not against armoured enemies - is not going to play a very prominent role period, not in the least because there's little point in expending resources on it. The feudal levy invariably turned up a number of fellows handy with a bow or sling

My point is that there were skilled archers, other than English, in Europe at the time who did manage to be effective without longbows (Charles the Bold's Savoyards, for example). Conversely, there were plenty of examples of longbow-armed troops (English or otherwise) being an embarrasment on the field.

I don't see much evidence that longbows outright changed the battlefield role of the soldiers equipped with them. They still fought as massed archers, like Savoyard and Byzantine archers equipped with other types of bow. Indeed, the quality of the longbows is just another factor in efficiency, and a smaller one than the quality of the soldier, I would say.

Professional troops had better equipment, sure, but passing that equipment on to poor quality levies would not have changed their quality significantly, or changed their role in battle.

[Basilios II Voulgaroktonos]

My point is that there were skilled archers, other than English, in Europe at the time who did manage to be effective without longbows.

If we reached the point of doughting about the efficiency of the longbow and the quality of the english longbowmen,WHERE IS THIS WORLD GOING?come on guys the english longbowmen where the best medieval archers and in every battle that the english did they where the key to win.we can'tcompare them to other common archers of the time.maybe only the byzantine archers could in some way be compared to them but by the time the empire lost its strengh also lost and the good archers too!!!

[Tempiic]

Any mentioning of English Longbows used in battle that I have encountered have been against the French, Irish and Scotts. I cannot recall any accounts of English Longbows (or even archers) during the Crusades, while I see no reason to think they were simply not present. Such accounts might be present, as I am not a professional historical researcher myself, but their fame has only been against the Scotts and French, which werent well known for their archery.

No I think I will rather go for archers in the middle east of Arab, Iranian, Armenian, Greek or Turkish origin, regardless whether they fought for Islam or the Byzantines, both mounted as well as on foot.

[CBR]

Since "longbow" is a term from the 16th century that might be the explanation why you "cannot recall any accounts of English Longbows (or even archers) during the Crusades"

King Richard I had both archers and crossbows with him in his crusade. And the English mostly fought against Scots and French anyway.


CBR