Quote Originally Posted by dopp
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.
You are overestimating equiptment when there was a variety of factors.

1. Superior command structures, the British Sergeants happen to have been overall the best during colonial times.

2. Better commanders, fuedal armies which is essentially what Europeans crushed in their empire building wars are not especially known for their good commanders.

3. Better soldiers, British regulars had some of the best training in europe, they could fire at least 3 shots for everyone one shot fired by French or Spanish regulars.

4. Artillery was involved as well. The French won the Hundred Years War partly because of superior cannon, and for using them as field artillery instead of as just siege engines, and this brings me to my next point.

The Great Longbowmen trained their enitre lives in the art of archery with Longbows, they had the life time training in common with Knights, however to be effective the Longbowmen had to be close together and firing in volleys at around the same place, and because they are great at killing but not perfect at it to avoid a cavalry charge they may need to puts stakes in the ground. Now this is all well and good in and age when the bombard is essentially a siege engine, but when there are very effective field artillery pieces around the outranged Longbowmen will get killed by a few blasts or need to disperse and become worthless. Out of formation a Longbowmen may get a lucky shot and perhaps even down a knight, but overall he is not very significant to the battle. Yes it is true that he could draw sword, but that isn't exactly when you want with a longbowmen is it? That might be why the Longbow was not kept on as a weapon for only a single elite troop supporting the muskets, since afterall the costs of getting a good enough longbowmen, wiegh that against them either dying or being made worthless every battle, just what is the point? Especially considering that musketeers scattered by artillery fire could theoretically join with another line or column for the battle, still be effective, and then return to their original officers when they could. Despite it's advantage the Longbow was made obsolete.