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
i dont really buy early guns penetrating the high quality steel armor, that isnt likely at all, the reason why guns could penetrate armor better is that most armor was of other lighter types that were cheaper to make and could be mass produced, those armors could be penetrated by gunshot, but were resistant to arrows.
is there any possibility to use metric system? yards doesn't tell me anything. me and a great proportion of the world audiences doesn't have a comparison too feet and yard.
@Joseph Green Thanks, man. But IMO he missed the biggest driving force! *_Arrows & bolts could be easily stopped_* by pavise-shield & wagon's wall... while a bullet would punch right through them.
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
I think it’s the latter things you said. Even with Napoleonic era muskets, there was a test performed where a regiment of foot fired each of their guns once at a white cloth stretched across the field, the height and width of an enemy unit. They scored about 100 shots on the cloth, but the same volleys under battlefield conditions only succeeded in three successful hits. Three!
@JarlFrank "It was all about massed volley fire, just like with muskets." I want to pinpoint that the idea of mass volley fire isn't that accurate. Archers didn't wait for a command to fire in unison, they'd fire at their own individual rates to attack the enemy. From what I've collected by watching these videos, volley fire wasn't really a "thing" until muskets came along. This is because muskets took an exceptionally long time to reload, so the act of firing volleys, moving to the back of the line, letting the line behind you fire, and repeating the process was more efficient.
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.
A little off topic, but there were those crossbows that would shoot a lead ball, I have seen them only in history books and a museum, it would solve the arrow making problems but I don't have any information on lethality. Even if it didn't penetrate chain mail it would really hurt. Would it crack the sternum or lacerate the liver enough to cause problems? I don't know.
@Th3Flick I’m aware of they were in masses. And the musket would win. I was comparing more of a 1 on 1 from a moderate distance with both having some form of cover. Not sure the exact speed of a musket ball? But I know it is faster than an arrow but you can’t fire it as rapid as an archer can pluck arrows at you was basically what I was getting at. In barrage of arrows and musket balls flying… Still would be a blood bath.
@Assassin Man X But you dont go into the battlefield of 16th century europe 1v1 a bowman with a musketer , You are looking at this wrong lol, They fought in formations and a mass volley from guns was more effective than arrows, simple as that. ( and ofc all logistics and training included)
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.
My understanding with respect to English archers is that they would have some hardened arrows but mostly used the mild steel arrows. The hardened ones were kept for special circumstances. Also I recall that the English kings of the era complained about the cost of the hardened arrows.
@egyptian316 that was Asano Yoshinaga, who was Katō Kiyomasa’s lieutenant. I’m actually doing a series of videos on the Siege of Ulsan which directly inspired that quote. The matchlock single handedly saved the Japanese defenders there!
@BlueTemplar En Taro Brian! If you read futher about battle you refer to you'd learn that only 4000 soldiers were European aka British and from that lot of German merceneries. They barely took any loses as their main purpose there was to justify putting them on a paintings later. Indians did most of the fighting. Rockets barely did anything. Wellington was impressed with a weapon but he was not really great commander or person anyway. Wellington is only famous because he faced Napoleon. He was hated by British people. They stoned his carriage in London when he became ministar. He was called "Iron Duke" because he had iron windows on his carriage to protect him from people throwing stones. Anyway other 50 thousand troops were Indian allies or Company Indian troops. Similar like in ww1 where there was hundreds of thousands of Indians fighting for the British but you barely will ever see pictures of them even though they were majority of troops in many campaigns. Mostly English soldiers make it to those pictures and rest are largely ignored or hidden. Same for ww2 eastern british theater of war.
@ABC DC Well, this says that 60k British soldiers took part in the last Anglo-Mysore War : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Mysore_Wars (Maybe you're forgetting to count East India Company troops ?) Mysore seem to have had quite a bit less, and eventually lost, but seem to have really impressed the British with their rockets, leading to the British trying to develop that technology on their own.
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.
@Anthony Ngu Mobile and spread out formations typically lost any time prior to the 1850s, so choosing to do that in the gunpowder age probably was not an option (the exception would be the elite riflemen of Napoleonic times who would soften up the enemy through skirmishing units, but it would still be tight formations which would do most of the damage)
@Marneus Calgar the French probably stayed in tight slow moving formation which could be taken down by firearms, rather than something more mobile and spread out.
@Patricius vun Kempen Not the same type of gunpowder! Gunpower used in artillery and the one used in harquebuses differed in quality and size of the granulation.
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.
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.
+Eirik Ronald Fossheim Nice try but you basically plagiarized ad verbatim everything that SandRhoman History said in their "How Artillery Revolutionized European Siege Warfare" video.
Wow, I just came from the Artillery video and seeing this, with the same sources is nice to know that some of the viewers of this channel know the subject just as well as the KZclipr
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well, you're not at the top speed all the time, and while it's tiring, you can maintain good pace for a long time - if you were training with a bow for a long time. There's a reason archery was popular among upper classes not just for warfare, but as a good workout.
@Assassin Man X Yes, modern recurve bows are all under 50lbs. But they shoot very light arrows (e.g. carbon/aluminum with tiny points), whereas medieval arrows had heavy points (to penetrate) and so needed thick wooden shafts to take the shock of release. Also modern bows shoot max 90m, whereas medieval bows were for 200-300m (in order to get max nos. of arrows away into an advancing/charging enemy). Result: medieval bows were 200-300+lbs draw weight. Remember, those guys were just as smart as anyone today, h=just ion a different environment. So you would have done the same as them?
@kreek22 no, it's just that they didnt realized because they didnt had accurate statistics or simply didnt bother to check because they assumed that soldiers killed other soldiers, a lot of human history is just assuming things just like how everyone used to just assume that sicknesses propagated thanks to bad odors until the microscope was invented, or how everyone just assumed that thinderstorms we're caused by Thor fighting the frost giants or shit like that Older assumptions about things are challenged all the time, i don't see why this can't be the case specially once as i say the army made investigations on their own later and realized that Marshall assumptions where right, i don't see why you believe the military would lie about that when they don't have any reason to do so (in fact at the time most military experts we're against the idea it wasnt until later investigations that it was discovered that while Marshall's numbers where higher than reality, ie his "1/4 of the men don't fire" where wrong it was proved that a good chunk of the soldiers do not fire against the enemy or fail on purpose) because of this is why you are seeing changes in the training that the army uses like again replacing bullseye with human siluetes and encouraging bayonet charges despite their uselessness, because those types of training are ment to desensitize the soldier against killing a human being Now of course during wars people died during the fights yeah, it's just that the percentage of people willing to kill another human being without hesitation is much lower than it was through before Also historical proof agrees with Marshall btw
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.
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.
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
@Aftershock 416 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 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!
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.
One thing that you didn't cover in regards to the rate of fire of these weapons, was that bows - especially higher poundage warbows - were extremely taxing to draw and loose. This gave archers a "window" of ideal rate of fire when they were fresh, which quickly deteriorated as they grew exhausted.
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.
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?
@SandRhoman History 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.
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
Based on the test performed by Tod's Workshop here: kzclip.org/video/DBxdTkddHaE/бейне.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.
@Ewald Kintzli Nope. The reason is more simple, and armour penetration is not it. Ease of training and better logistics of firearms is what really won out, not the increased penetration of gunpowder weapons, though do not get me wrong that is a nice bonus to add on top. Fact is it takes years to train a longbowman, not only do they require technique, but they require years of practice to build up the musculature required to draw a big war bow. This tends to mean that among your population the ones who can afford to really put the training in to gain both skill and musculature are the richer peasants, hence why the best English Archers were Yeoman Archers, Yeomen actually owned their land, they were not tenant farmers, as a result the Yeomen were the wealthier strata of the Peasant classes. Now, ask yourself a question. How long does it take to train a man to use a musket? Theoretically a few hours, though more practically a few weeks training will take a peasant and turn them into a soldier able to hold line, march, and keep formation as well as one able to operate and fire his weapon. Weeks, not years. In addition it is easier to supply firearms. Gunpowder for 10,000 musket shots despite its dangers is lighter and less bulky than 10,000 arrows. In addition ammunition is relatively small, and as a bonus can be manufactured around campfires by the troops themselves if supplied with lead. THAT is why guns replaced Longbows. As armies grew larger in the mid to late Medieval period it became increasingly difficult to find skilled archers, and even if you were able to find them it became increasingly difficult to find enough fletchers to make the hundreds of thousands of arrows needed. Guns were the answer, they were simpler to operate, required less training to teach soldiers how to utilise them, and it requires less transportation to keep them supplied with ammunition. Their increased armour penetration was simply the bonus that clinched the deal as it were, but even had guns not had any extra armour penetration over arrows, the guns would still have replaced bows or crossbows because of the training and logistics aspects. Those two aspects are actually MORE important than the ability to penetrate armour.... At least when it comes to armies....
@Donald Sheckler At about 10:30 they explain it: they used .5% carbon steel and air cooled like they found on surviving armor. The biggest difference is that today's steel is more homogenous
@Donald Sheckler As far as I know it was made as close to an authentic piece as it's possible by a smith that forges replicas by trade so probably mild steel or low carbon. Also 2.5mm is the frontal thickness, the maximum, side and back are about 1.5mm for knight armor, on average.
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.
@Old Rabbit no... Not entirely.. guns still destroyed armies that weren't using/prepared for them, even if their accuracy wasn't quite there. Muskets were fired an masse in one direction, so yeah, carnage was wrought
@Argentvs Tercios dominated battlefields in the 16th and early 17th centuries, but when they ran up against Swedish linear formations and field artillery starting in the 1620s, their day was done.
@ADOLF HIPSTER YOLOCAUST So I look it, and I found nothing about Stormtruppen charging and engaging in melee. I don't say they didn't do it, but they seem to have been equipped with flamethrower, small machine gun, grenades, not specially for melee, so more a close range unit. Ardent though seems to have been used as melee fighters, yes. Because they charged DURING an Italian shellbombing that suppressed the enemy fire and prevent them to decimate the unit. So yeah, of course if the enemies don't fire at you, you can survive fire, I didn't say there was a magical law that forbid melee in WW1, just that the fire was too powerful to approach.
Very good video. Wish you had talked a bit about the bullet proof armor at the time and why that eventually went away. Short answer is that while it could stop bullets it was thicker and heavier then the armor of the 15th century and were incredibly expensive. Armies also became more mobile which made it even harder to justify spending so much money on something so bulky and heavy.
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!
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.
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.
I've always wondered why both were not deployed onto a battlefield? The time commitment for training said archers is a huge factor, sure, but imagine a barrage of arrows versus a standing army unequipped to deal with such a volley (little/no plate armor, no shields, etc). It would mean combat could occur at short, medium, and long ranges.
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.
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 :-)
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
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
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 ...
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
@cambs 01 That is partially true. It boils down to the innate ability of a person to learn to use a weapon. Few years back a bowhunter in Texas just got a new compound. First time bowhunting. He shot a crackhead who was trying to break into his truck while he was asleep in the back. Nailed him through the buttcheeks I believe... There are cops who have been on the force for decades and they just cannot shoot a pistol properly even if their lives depended on it... Some people are just a few fries short of a Big Mac, you get what I am talking about, right?
@Historical Archery 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.
@Cat 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
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
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.
Also, you can cast a round lead bullet in well under a minute. It took all day for medieval arrowsmiths to manufacture one complete arrow from scratch.
It's amazing to think we whent from 10 rounds in an Hour to 2 round per minute without majorly changing how the guns even worked. It's also amazing to think that the Army's of the world keep with these kinds of guns when the era equivalent of an Assault Rifle was available.
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
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.
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.
A well made historical narrative on the evolution of firearms on the battle field. I have seen "Bullet Proofed" armor. Essentially a second breast plate that stood off about a quarter inch from the first. This spaced armor was rare and very expensive (no doubt contributing to it's rarity). The dents from musket ball impacts proved it worked in shielding the wearer from the shot, at least at range.
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!
Many of your animations depict men with two handed swords with waved blades. Would love to see remarks on the role this weapon played in the battlefield. @7:40
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 ⚔️
CapAndBall did a great video where he tests muzzleloading firearms and arrows against reproduction steel armour. Might be worth a watch for some of you.
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.
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.
There's a TV documentary uploaded to youtube called "First firearms", in that they show early hand gunners firing special arrows for use against armor, and I'm curious as to how good those were at penetrating armor compared to lead ball.
Another reason, provided by a 1590's English treatise, that I have a copy of, stated that long bowmen tired as the battle wore on, resulting in shots of decreasing range & force. Firearms, however, were as powerful at the end of the battle as at the beginning.
Why did the price of saltpeter decrease? Also; do you know if any other specific instances of materials for early guns decreasing or becoming more available? And if you have any specific reading recommendations for that please let me know lol. That sort of thing has been massively interesting to me.
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.
@SandRhoman History - could you make an episode on Ottoman battlefield tactics, their evolution, and how did they compare with the evolution of Western European tactics over time? Particularly in the introduction of firearms and cannons, it seems that the Ottomans are important players in the story early on...many thanks!
What great video! I can't remember which clan was it, but, one clan in Japan used archers to help pin down the enemy while the matchlock men could reload.
پیاده نظام خان Guns became very popular in the late 16th century. While they did use bows still it was far less and horseback archery pretty much died out on the battlefield at that time
In my opinion, it was not the guns who made knights obsolete, but rather the development of the military machine itself. During early modern age, fortifications and barricades on the battlefield appeared commonly and the defending infantry could stand up on them and recieve an elevated position, which made it a lot easier to fight with a previously higher-than-you horseman. Since not all firearms at high distance could penetrate proper breastplates.
Archers rate of fire is largely dependent on the strength-endurance of the archer and is actually quite limited over time, while it is possible to loose several arrows in relatively rapid succession, you are pretty much spent after that, since long bows have draw weights of an average of 110 lbs or more (as according to the finds on the Mary Rose). How many reps of 110 lbs + lbs are you able to do? A very strong archer will be able to produce 6-10 reps of a high weight bow before tiring, as you can only pull so many reps at that weight. Meanwhile the musketeers continue to fire slowly but relentlessly well past when you can pull your bow back anymore.
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.
I have a hard time seeing training to load and fire a muzzle loading firearm (plus all the stuff you need to know to protect the powder) was easier than learning to shoot a crossbow. And making a gun barrel seems harder to make than a heavy crossbow. Although those huge windlass crossbows might have been slower to reload than a handgun I suppose - and lighter to carry. True the penetration factor is going to be higher for a black powder weapon.
The loading procedure for loading a gun is definitely more complex than crossbows. But a windlass crossbow is extremely heavy and loads even slower than your regular guns. Bolts are also more expensive than simple lead shot. The crossbow prongs take alot of good steel to make. And of course the spanning mechanism is also expensive. Pretty much when the arquebus became adopted, the crossbow fell out of favor. Its heavier, more expensive, less stopping power and slower rate of fire. You can use lighter crossbows, but they will have less range and even less stopping power. Guns are also noted to be pretty accurate for the period. Using well made guns and proper shot, they can be very accurate. The Japanese were very impressed by the arquebus demonstration in Tanegashima.
It's good you mentioned the Magnus-Effect, it could be the main reason why smooth bore barrels where so inaccurate. Most writers a talking about balls bouncing in the barrel, well that can't explain those differences.
You can get a smoothbore musket to be at least as accurate as a bow by using a tightly fitted or patched roundball matched to the bore of the barrel, which will mitigate the Magnus effect. In this way, smoothbore fowlers can take deer-size game up to 50 yards. Of course, military musketry was all about rate of fire, so projectiles were made smaller to speed up reloading, but the increased windage gap made them much less accurate.
Hmm. This lends itself to what I presume happened - a period where you field high quality archers alongside low quality musketmen and presumably a few relative snipers with early accurate rifled muskets. And I guess ask them to target different enemies at diferent ranges where possible. Worth even giving a longbowman a musket for closer action maybe?
Nah that's a stupid idea, I'm sure it will never take off. Also I heard some lunatics say that we should put gunpowder in metal casings, do they have any idea how expensive that'll be? Jeez, at least arrows could be made from wood found here and there, we don't need that shell casing bs.
I guess it all adds up to guns simply being the most versatile all-round ranged weapon. There are ranged weapons that can be used to outfit mass armies of quickly trained soldiers. There are counters to heavy plate armour. But no other weapon combines both of those.
It is quite interesting to note how the musket became the standard weapon for centuries, with some guns even used by third world nations during ww1 and even as a last resort weapon in ww2.
One detail I almost never hear mentioned is the materials needed to produce ammunition for guns vs bows. There is much less material in musketballs, they are very simple and easy to manufacture, they have no organic material susceptible to wear and tear, moisture etc. Plus a soldier could more easily carry a large amount of shot than even arrows or bolts.
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
You should also do videos on Indian battles like 1st,2nd, and 3rd battle of panipat, battle of Plassey,tipu sultans battles against British,Maratha battles against mughals,Sikhs battles against mughals great sieges like siege of kondhana,chittor and more
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.
Wasn't morale also a huge part of the success? Charging into a musket formation, just to hear the thunder of their shots, having the entire formation torn apart into getting countercharged sounds like something that might break an untrained soldiers will to fight...
With a musket or arquebus even a lowly peasant can kill a professional soldier, while a bow needs years of training. There's also the psychological aspect; the loud noise and flash of light it makes when firing spooks horses and also enemy soldier, knowing that armour may not save them (though armour did stop bullets from early firearms at a certain distance). Plus, the lead ball may cause some nasty after effects to a wound
Wouldn't arrows be harder to make than lead balls and need better care so they arent ruined before using? Also arent 100 arrows going to take up a lot of room that a hundred lead balls don't ?
Again, great summary, which goes against common perceptions but makes a lot of sense in return. One very minor reservation - I'm not sure if higher population necessitated more numerous armies. I rather believe that it *made it possible* to supply such armies. It's very difficult to march a huge army through a desolated area, as Napoleon have learned. If we study his successful campaigns instead, he often sacrificed the quality of supplies for speed, just like Caesar did. That was only possible in a densely populated Western Europe. Soldiers simply stole what they needed along the way. They had guns and training, after all.
So if an officer were commanding both musketeers and archers, what orders would he/she give out? I know for musketeers it's 'Fire' and 'Loose' for archers but how would both be accomodated?
Canons proved themselvs early on by the freedom fighter from Tjeckoslavakien whos little band of warriors defeated large groups of soldiers by connecting wagons together in a circle and cannons in between. He also put cannons on horse drawn wagons for mobilty.
Let me save you time - Bow and Arrows like most Martial Arts REQUIRED Skill, Strength, Training and time to be Deadly with... once Gunpowder and Gun Steel was readily available almost ANY meat puppet with 2 thumbs and the ability to understand a simple loading process became an Assassin in just minutes.
Putting it out, soft lead doesn't have to pierce armor to incapacitate or kill someone. A slug from a shorgun usually won't pierce level 3 soft armor, however the force is strong enough to complete destroy the lungs through compression. I'd like to see similar tests done with soft lead to a breast plate and see the result. While steel plate is harded than soft armor, it only has to transfer enough energy into the chest to cripple or destroy the opponent.
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.
@Stylesheet RA120 pound longbow or 100 pound manchu bow is about equal to 1000 pound crossbow, because crossbow has 10 times less length of pull. Crossbow bolts are thus much thicker, and have less penetration and range
@Ted Archer with the windlass, medieval european crossbows went to the realm of kN, not even a modern human being can break through the 500 N with a longbow. Longbow had the advantage of cheapness, range and of the "parabola", meaning they can shoot through allied formation easily, while crossbow required to be trained to shoot between the allied line.
@Stylesheet RA longbows were more powerful than crossbows at the time, and manchu bows were much more powerful than longbows. Chinese crossbows had about the same draw length as bows btw, as they used composite bows instead of steel. The point of using a crossbow is not the draw length, it's that can be loaded before aiming, and is much more convenient to shoot from behind walls
@Ted Archer why would be the point of using a crossbow with the same draw of a bow lmao They were more powerful but required shorter range and drilling to make effective, by their were way more effective than a bow, the strongest medieval bow (longbow) was unable to make a dent in an knight's armor. They were extremely expansive tho
Meanwhile in China, unlike western Europe, they had to focus on being able to fight both standard infantry armies, and nomadic horsemen with rapid fire compound bows from the north all the way into the 1600s. This dual focus was a major contributor to overall slower gunpowder innovation.
Makes sense why in AOE2 handconnoners don't have any upgrade to reach other than chemistry. For example upgrade from feudal archers to Arbalist upgrades.
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
i dont really buy early guns penetrating the high quality steel armor, that isnt likely at all, the reason why guns could penetrate armor better is that most armor was of other lighter types that were cheaper to make and could be mass produced, those armors could be penetrated by gunshot, but were resistant to arrows.
is there any possibility to use metric system? yards doesn't tell me anything. me and a great proportion of the world audiences doesn't have a comparison too feet and yard.
What was the last battle that had a sizable archer force in Europe.
@Joseph Green Thanks, man. But IMO he missed the biggest driving force!
*_Arrows & bolts could be easily stopped_* by pavise-shield & wagon's wall... while a bullet would punch right through them.
Awesome. Thank you!
It's obvious why.... they upgraded their barracks to unlock riflemen recruitment.
80 more years till our next barrack upgrade will be done.
Hopefully we unlock space Marines
Like on warcraft
we just unlocked lazer rifles
Med 2 amiright laddies.
Well more like musketeers but you know what I meant
Build a university and research chemistry
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
I think it’s the latter things you said. Even with Napoleonic era muskets, there was a test performed where a regiment of foot fired each of their guns once at a white cloth stretched across the field, the height and width of an enemy unit. They scored about 100 shots on the cloth, but the same volleys under battlefield conditions only succeeded in three successful hits. Three!
I think that it's smoothbore vs.rifled barrels.
@JarlFrank "It was all about massed volley fire, just like with muskets." I want to pinpoint that the idea of mass volley fire isn't that accurate. Archers didn't wait for a command to fire in unison, they'd fire at their own individual rates to attack the enemy.
From what I've collected by watching these videos, volley fire wasn't really a "thing" until muskets came along. This is because muskets took an exceptionally long time to reload, so the act of firing volleys, moving to the back of the line, letting the line behind you fire, and repeating the process was more efficient.
maybe the dutch were simply build different
The vast majority of humans don't want to kill someone. So most didn't really aim at peoole
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.
A little off topic, but there were those crossbows that would shoot a lead ball, I have seen them only in history books and a museum, it would solve the arrow making problems but I don't have any information on lethality. Even if it didn't penetrate chain mail it would really hurt. Would it crack the sternum or lacerate the liver enough to cause problems? I don't know.
@Assassin Man X Agreed
@Th3Flick I’m aware of they were in masses. And the musket would win. I was comparing more of a 1 on 1 from a moderate distance with both having some form of cover. Not sure the exact speed of a musket ball? But I know it is faster than an arrow but you can’t fire it as rapid as an archer can pluck arrows at you was basically what I was getting at. In barrage of arrows and musket balls flying… Still would be a blood bath.
@Assassin Man X But you dont go into the battlefield of 16th century europe 1v1 a bowman with a musketer , You are looking at this wrong lol, They fought in formations and a mass volley from guns was more effective than arrows, simple as that. ( and ofc all logistics and training included)
The very existence of the surname Fletcher gives a clue to the extent of the arrow making industry.
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.
My understanding with respect to English archers is that they would have some hardened arrows but mostly used the mild steel arrows. The hardened ones were kept for special circumstances. Also I recall that the English kings of the era complained about the cost of the hardened arrows.
@egyptian316 that was Asano Yoshinaga, who was Katō Kiyomasa’s lieutenant. I’m actually doing a series of videos on the Siege of Ulsan which directly inspired that quote. The matchlock single handedly saved the Japanese defenders there!
@ABC DC same lame bs from the French with their colonies visual representation (paints, pics) vs the reality of participation
@BlueTemplar En Taro Brian! If you read futher about battle you refer to you'd learn that only 4000 soldiers were European aka British and from that lot of German merceneries. They barely took any loses as their main purpose there was to justify putting them on a paintings later. Indians did most of the fighting. Rockets barely did anything. Wellington was impressed with a weapon but he was not really great commander or person anyway. Wellington is only famous because he faced Napoleon. He was hated by British people. They stoned his carriage in London when he became ministar. He was called "Iron Duke" because he had iron windows on his carriage to protect him from people throwing stones. Anyway other 50 thousand troops were Indian allies or Company Indian troops. Similar like in ww1 where there was hundreds of thousands of Indians fighting for the British but you barely will ever see pictures of them even though they were majority of troops in many campaigns. Mostly English soldiers make it to those pictures and rest are largely ignored or hidden. Same for ww2 eastern british theater of war.
@ABC DC Well, this says that 60k British soldiers took part in the last Anglo-Mysore War :
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Mysore_Wars
(Maybe you're forgetting to count East India Company troops ?)
Mysore seem to have had quite a bit less, and eventually lost, but seem to have really impressed the British with their rockets, leading to the British trying to develop that technology on their own.
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.
@Anthony Ngu Mobile and spread out formations typically lost any time prior to the 1850s, so choosing to do that in the gunpowder age probably was not an option (the exception would be the elite riflemen of Napoleonic times who would soften up the enemy through skirmishing units, but it would still be tight formations which would do most of the damage)
@Marneus Calgar the French probably stayed in tight slow moving formation which could be taken down by firearms, rather than something more mobile and spread out.
@Patricius vun Kempen Not the same type of gunpowder! Gunpower used in artillery and the one used in harquebuses differed in quality and size of the granulation.
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.
Damn, that and Patricus comment make a lot of more sense than most of the video. Thanks.
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.
Incorrect. Many people could care less about old-timey cannons.
@Prof. Yuri Valdés Álvarez Arzate Vizcarrondo RPA I posted this long before he did.
+Eirik Ronald Fossheim Nice try but you basically plagiarized ad verbatim everything that SandRhoman History said in their "How Artillery Revolutionized European Siege Warfare" video.
Wow, I just came from the Artillery video and seeing this, with the same sources is nice to know that some of the viewers of this channel know the subject just as well as the KZclipr
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.
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.
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.
The future is now old man!
Keep living and you will be old too. And now is called the present 🤔.
You gotta conTEMPORiize, maaaaan!
He who writes the past controls the present. He who controls the present inherits the future.
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.
Well, you're not at the top speed all the time, and while it's tiring, you can maintain good pace for a long time - if you were training with a bow for a long time.
There's a reason archery was popular among upper classes not just for warfare, but as a good workout.
@Assassin Man X Yes, modern recurve bows are all under 50lbs. But they shoot very light arrows (e.g. carbon/aluminum with tiny points), whereas medieval arrows had heavy points (to penetrate) and so needed thick wooden shafts to take the shock of release. Also modern bows shoot max 90m, whereas medieval bows were for 200-300m (in order to get max nos. of arrows away into an advancing/charging enemy). Result: medieval bows were 200-300+lbs draw weight. Remember, those guys were just as smart as anyone today, h=just ion a different environment. So you would have done the same as them?
@kreek22 no, it's just that they didnt realized because they didnt had accurate statistics or simply didnt bother to check because they assumed that soldiers killed other soldiers, a lot of human history is just assuming things just like how everyone used to just assume that sicknesses propagated thanks to bad odors until the microscope was invented, or how everyone just assumed that thinderstorms we're caused by Thor fighting the frost giants or shit like that
Older assumptions about things are challenged all the time, i don't see why this can't be the case specially once as i say the army made investigations on their own later and realized that Marshall assumptions where right, i don't see why you believe the military would lie about that when they don't have any reason to do so (in fact at the time most military experts we're against the idea it wasnt until later investigations that it was discovered that while Marshall's numbers where higher than reality, ie his "1/4 of the men don't fire" where wrong it was proved that a good chunk of the soldiers do not fire against the enemy or fail on purpose) because of this is why you are seeing changes in the training that the army uses like again replacing bullseye with human siluetes and encouraging bayonet charges despite their uselessness, because those types of training are ment to desensitize the soldier against killing a human being
Now of course during wars people died during the fights yeah, it's just that the percentage of people willing to kill another human being without hesitation is much lower than it was through before
Also historical proof agrees with Marshall btw
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.
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.
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
@Donald Sheckler it doesn't mean anything. Longbow can go through a gambeson from 200 meters, but can't go through a breastplate from 5 sometimes
@Ted Archer I meant 60 yards.
@Donald Sheckler maybe 60 years from 1300 lol
I believe that in the historical record it states that English long bows could defeat armor out to about 60 years.
@Aftershock 416 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 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!
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...
One thing that you didn't cover in regards to the rate of fire of these weapons, was that bows - especially higher poundage warbows - were extremely taxing to draw and loose. This gave archers a "window" of ideal rate of fire when they were fresh, which quickly deteriorated as they grew exhausted.
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.
As a physics and math student with a history hobby. This, this video, touched me in all the good spots.
Same as me dude.
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.
One advantage of being an archer: it’s not deafening to shoot an arrow.
@Big Chungus Mouse well, muskets are much louder than modern firearms.
What about a blunderbuss those thing where probably louder than a pistol
@name I was highlighting that they are surprisingly loud, not saying they are equivalent to firearms in loudness.
@Kyle Smith Compared to guns though? Bows are loud, guns are much much louder.
actually, usually with black powder and heavy projectiles, the early guns did not create a sonic boom.
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?
@Boy Tulus Sinaga that’s pretty ingenious! I never knew that. Honestly, I think the close range nature of this warfare kind of answers your question.
@SandRhoman History Also curious, why did arquebusiers in Eastern Europe tend to use Bardiche (polaexe) instead of fork for steadying their weapon?
@SandRhoman History 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.
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
The gradual decrease in armour, and the numerous reasons for it, would also be an interesting topic to cover.
Based on the test performed by Tod's Workshop here: kzclip.org/video/DBxdTkddHaE/бейне.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.
@Ewald Kintzli Nope. The reason is more simple, and armour penetration is not it.
Ease of training and better logistics of firearms is what really won out, not the increased penetration of gunpowder weapons, though do not get me wrong that is a nice bonus to add on top.
Fact is it takes years to train a longbowman, not only do they require technique, but they require years of practice to build up the musculature required to draw a big war bow. This tends to mean that among your population the ones who can afford to really put the training in to gain both skill and musculature are the richer peasants, hence why the best English Archers were Yeoman Archers, Yeomen actually owned their land, they were not tenant farmers, as a result the Yeomen were the wealthier strata of the Peasant classes.
Now, ask yourself a question. How long does it take to train a man to use a musket? Theoretically a few hours, though more practically a few weeks training will take a peasant and turn them into a soldier able to hold line, march, and keep formation as well as one able to operate and fire his weapon. Weeks, not years. In addition it is easier to supply firearms. Gunpowder for 10,000 musket shots despite its dangers is lighter and less bulky than 10,000 arrows. In addition ammunition is relatively small, and as a bonus can be manufactured around campfires by the troops themselves if supplied with lead.
THAT is why guns replaced Longbows. As armies grew larger in the mid to late Medieval period it became increasingly difficult to find skilled archers, and even if you were able to find them it became increasingly difficult to find enough fletchers to make the hundreds of thousands of arrows needed. Guns were the answer, they were simpler to operate, required less training to teach soldiers how to utilise them, and it requires less transportation to keep them supplied with ammunition. Their increased armour penetration was simply the bonus that clinched the deal as it were, but even had guns not had any extra armour penetration over arrows, the guns would still have replaced bows or crossbows because of the training and logistics aspects.
Those two aspects are actually MORE important than the ability to penetrate armour.... At least when it comes to armies....
@Donald Sheckler At about 10:30 they explain it: they used .5% carbon steel and air cooled like they found on surviving armor. The biggest difference is that today's steel is more homogenous
@Theophrastus Bombastus I heard it was made from modern 1050. Not sure if that's correct.
@Donald Sheckler As far as I know it was made as close to an authentic piece as it's possible by a smith that forges replicas by trade so probably mild steel or low carbon. Also 2.5mm is the frontal thickness, the maximum, side and back are about 1.5mm for knight armor, on average.
2.5 mm sounds rather thick. Wasn't that also modern steel?
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.
@Mr. Person Humanson they had been used before to varying extents, and cannons had been readily used for a long time. so no not really.
@Old Rabbit no... Not entirely.. guns still destroyed armies that weren't using/prepared for them, even if their accuracy wasn't quite there. Muskets were fired an masse in one direction, so yeah, carnage was wrought
@Argentvs Tercios dominated battlefields in the 16th and early 17th centuries, but when they ran up against Swedish linear formations and field artillery starting in the 1620s, their day was done.
@Krankar Volund wow you are starting to learn how war works
@ADOLF HIPSTER YOLOCAUST So I look it, and I found nothing about Stormtruppen charging and engaging in melee. I don't say they didn't do it, but they seem to have been equipped with flamethrower, small machine gun, grenades, not specially for melee, so more a close range unit.
Ardent though seems to have been used as melee fighters, yes. Because they charged DURING an Italian shellbombing that suppressed the enemy fire and prevent them to decimate the unit. So yeah, of course if the enemies don't fire at you, you can survive fire, I didn't say there was a magical law that forbid melee in WW1, just that the fire was too powerful to approach.
Very good video. Wish you had talked a bit about the bullet proof armor at the time and why that eventually went away. Short answer is that while it could stop bullets it was thicker and heavier then the armor of the 15th century and were incredibly expensive. Armies also became more mobile which made it even harder to justify spending so much money on something so bulky and heavy.
It is very interesting to see how technology proceeds tactics. These new weapons definitely weren’t used to the best advantage!
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!
The audio makes a big difference to the video quality. A lot of military history channels unfortunately omit this aspect.
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.
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.
I've always wondered why both were not deployed onto a battlefield? The time commitment for training said archers is a huge factor, sure, but imagine a barrage of arrows versus a standing army unequipped to deal with such a volley (little/no plate armor, no shields, etc). It would mean combat could occur at short, medium, and long ranges.
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.
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 :-)
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
@Mike Oxsmal Only ineffective because you apply the same level of effectiveness to each man on the field. Not even a corporal would make that mistake.
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
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 ...
You've managed to make a question with a seemingly obvious answer much more interesting than many of us would assume. Thanks!
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
China was the first region, where firearms were implemented in war. The Fire lances were amazing proto-guns that proved useful on the battlefield.
@cambs 01 That is partially true. It boils down to the innate ability of a person to learn to use a weapon. Few years back a bowhunter in Texas just got a new compound. First time bowhunting. He shot a crackhead who was trying to break into his truck while he was asleep in the back. Nailed him through the buttcheeks I believe... There are cops who have been on the force for decades and they just cannot shoot a pistol properly even if their lives depended on it... Some people are just a few fries short of a Big Mac, you get what I am talking about, right?
Though it takes a lifetime to make an effective archer, as a rifleman takes weeks.
@Historical Archery 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.
@Cat 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
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 found this video through a subreddit. Many people are gonna find it
poewhite ...
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.
I couldn't have said it better!
Also, you can cast a round lead bullet in well under a minute. It took all day for medieval arrowsmiths to manufacture one complete arrow from scratch.
It's amazing to think we whent from 10 rounds in an Hour to 2 round per minute without majorly changing how the guns even worked.
It's also amazing to think that the Army's of the world keep with these kinds of guns when the era equivalent of an Assault Rifle was available.
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
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.
Always great to find a good military history channel, subscribed.
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.
@Leo Zschokke Thanks, you are right! I haven't remembered Drachinifel, despite he actually deserves it too.
Drachinifel!
A well made historical narrative on the evolution of firearms on the battle field. I have seen "Bullet Proofed" armor. Essentially a second breast plate that stood off about a quarter inch from the first. This spaced armor was rare and very expensive (no doubt contributing to it's rarity). The dents from musket ball impacts proved it worked in shielding the wearer from the shot, at least at range.
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!
Many of your animations depict men with two handed swords with waved blades. Would love to see remarks on the role this weapon played in the battlefield. @7:40
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 ⚔️
CapAndBall did a great video where he tests muzzleloading firearms and arrows against reproduction steel armour. Might be worth a watch for some of you.
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.
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.
There's a TV documentary uploaded to youtube called "First firearms", in that they show early hand gunners firing special arrows for use against armor, and I'm curious as to how good those were at penetrating armor compared to lead ball.
Another reason, provided by a 1590's English treatise, that I have a copy of, stated that long bowmen tired as the battle wore on, resulting in shots of decreasing range & force. Firearms, however, were as powerful at the end of the battle as at the beginning.
Why did the price of saltpeter decrease? Also; do you know if any other specific instances of materials for early guns decreasing or becoming more available? And if you have any specific reading recommendations for that please let me know lol. That sort of thing has been massively interesting to me.
@78FrozenCats pls more i must learn
Saltpeter was created artificially on special saltpeter farms. Those farms simply became more common between the 1300s and 1500s, lowering the price.
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.
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.
@SandRhoman History - could you make an episode on Ottoman battlefield tactics, their evolution, and how did they compare with the evolution of Western European tactics over time? Particularly in the introduction of firearms and cannons, it seems that the Ottomans are important players in the story early on...many thanks!
@SandRhoman History - completely understand, thank you for the acknowledgement! Keep up the good work!
Well it's on our (very long) list of topics
What great video! I can't remember which clan was it, but, one clan in Japan used archers to help pin down the enemy while the matchlock men could reload.
پیاده نظام خان Guns became very popular in the late 16th century. While they did use bows still it was far less and horseback archery pretty much died out on the battlefield at that time
In my opinion, it was not the guns who made knights obsolete, but rather the development of the military machine itself. During early modern age, fortifications and barricades on the battlefield appeared commonly and the defending infantry could stand up on them and recieve an elevated position, which made it a lot easier to fight with a previously higher-than-you horseman. Since not all firearms at high distance could penetrate proper breastplates.
This is the first I heard they didn’t quench armor it seems like such an important step for blade strength
Archers rate of fire is largely dependent on the strength-endurance of the archer and is actually quite limited over time, while it is possible to loose several arrows in relatively rapid succession, you are pretty much spent after that, since long bows have draw weights of an average of 110 lbs or more (as according to the finds on the Mary Rose). How many reps of 110 lbs + lbs are you able to do? A very strong archer will be able to produce 6-10 reps of a high weight bow before tiring, as you can only pull so many reps at that weight. Meanwhile the musketeers continue to fire slowly but relentlessly well past when you can pull your bow back anymore.
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.
Also the psychological warfare aspect of firearms. The sound of gunshots aimed at you is terrifying
I have a hard time seeing training to load and fire a muzzle loading firearm (plus all the stuff you need to know to protect the powder) was easier than learning to shoot a crossbow. And making a gun barrel seems harder to make than a heavy crossbow. Although those huge windlass crossbows might have been slower to reload than a handgun I suppose - and lighter to carry. True the penetration factor is going to be higher for a black powder weapon.
The loading procedure for loading a gun is definitely more complex than crossbows. But a windlass crossbow is extremely heavy and loads even slower than your regular guns. Bolts are also more expensive than simple lead shot. The crossbow prongs take alot of good steel to make. And of course the spanning mechanism is also expensive. Pretty much when the arquebus became adopted, the crossbow fell out of favor. Its heavier, more expensive, less stopping power and slower rate of fire. You can use lighter crossbows, but they will have less range and even less stopping power. Guns are also noted to be pretty accurate for the period. Using well made guns and proper shot, they can be very accurate. The Japanese were very impressed by the arquebus demonstration in Tanegashima.
It's good you mentioned the Magnus-Effect, it could be the main reason why smooth bore barrels where so inaccurate.
Most writers a talking about balls bouncing in the barrel, well that can't explain those differences.
You can get a smoothbore musket to be at least as accurate as a bow by using a tightly fitted or patched roundball matched to the bore of the barrel, which will mitigate the Magnus effect. In this way, smoothbore fowlers can take deer-size game up to 50 yards. Of course, military musketry was all about rate of fire, so projectiles were made smaller to speed up reloading, but the increased windage gap made them much less accurate.
I could imagine psychological effects to have also been relevant, which contributed to the later use of volley fire.
Hmm. This lends itself to what I presume happened - a period where you field high quality archers alongside low quality musketmen and presumably a few relative snipers with early accurate rifled muskets. And I guess ask them to target different enemies at diferent ranges where possible. Worth even giving a longbowman a musket for closer action maybe?
Imagine a pike attached to a gun
The_Jaguar_ Knight its quite small
@AbyssWatcher well if it was hard to use, why did they use it in late 17th century
I am playing Napoleon total war and I unironically thing a weapon like that was necessary.
The rare Halberd Sniper Rifle…sounds like German DLC.
Nah that's a stupid idea, I'm sure it will never take off. Also I heard some lunatics say that we should put gunpowder in metal casings, do they have any idea how expensive that'll be? Jeez, at least arrows could be made from wood found here and there, we don't need that shell casing bs.
I wonder how the psychological differences played a role, as well. Battles may be won by morale so noisy weapons could be superior to silent weapons.
I guess it all adds up to guns simply being the most versatile all-round ranged weapon. There are ranged weapons that can be used to outfit mass armies of quickly trained soldiers. There are counters to heavy plate armour. But no other weapon combines both of those.
It is quite interesting to note how the musket became the standard weapon for centuries, with some guns even used by third world nations during ww1 and even as a last resort weapon in ww2.
Firearms, so op that even the F tier ones were extremely useful.
One detail I almost never hear mentioned is the materials needed to produce ammunition for guns vs bows. There is much less material in musketballs, they are very simple and easy to manufacture, they have no organic material susceptible to wear and tear, moisture etc. Plus a soldier could more easily carry a large amount of shot than even arrows or bolts.
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
Great video and interesting topic! Always learning something new with this channel.
Great video! Can you do more videos on this topic?
You should also do videos on Indian battles like 1st,2nd, and 3rd battle of panipat, battle of Plassey,tipu sultans battles against British,Maratha battles against mughals,Sikhs battles against mughals great sieges like siege of kondhana,chittor and more
I love your inclusion of Gustav Vasa of Swedens armour in this video :D
Imagine someone not understanding why firearms replaced bow and arrow.
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.
Just wanted to say that I love this channel.
Great work!!
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.
Wasn't morale also a huge part of the success? Charging into a musket formation, just to hear the thunder of their shots, having the entire formation torn apart into getting countercharged sounds like something that might break an untrained soldiers will to fight...
With a musket or arquebus even a lowly peasant can kill a professional soldier, while a bow needs years of training. There's also the psychological aspect; the loud noise and flash of light it makes when firing spooks horses and also enemy soldier, knowing that armour may not save them (though armour did stop bullets from early firearms at a certain distance). Plus, the lead ball may cause some nasty after effects to a wound
Wouldn't arrows be harder to make than lead balls and need better care so they arent ruined before using? Also arent 100 arrows going to take up a lot of room that a hundred lead balls don't ?
Again, great summary, which goes against common perceptions but makes a lot of sense in return.
One very minor reservation - I'm not sure if higher population necessitated more numerous armies. I rather believe that it *made it possible* to supply such armies. It's very difficult to march a huge army through a desolated area, as Napoleon have learned. If we study his successful campaigns instead, he often sacrificed the quality of supplies for speed, just like Caesar did. That was only possible in a densely populated Western Europe. Soldiers simply stole what they needed along the way. They had guns and training, after all.
Depending on the time period, arrow heads were not made of hardened steel. They were iron.
It takes years for a archer to build up the strength to use a Bow and Arrow, this is why the Crossbows' came in use.
Another reason why I want a 30 years war total war game. Pike and shot.
Imagine showing someone from that time a Gatling Gun from today and tell them “yeah these are cool but we are working on laser weapons now”
Great video. It was really informative. I enjoyed it.
Faith, steel and gunpowder! Really though a very interesting subject!
By Sigmar yes
So if an officer were commanding both musketeers and archers, what orders would he/she give out? I know for musketeers it's 'Fire' and 'Loose' for archers but how would both be accomodated?
Could you make a breast plate made from modern materials that could resist a musket?
Canons proved themselvs early on by the freedom fighter from Tjeckoslavakien whos little band of warriors defeated large groups of soldiers by connecting wagons together in a circle and cannons in between. He also put cannons on horse drawn wagons for mobilty.
Let me save you time - Bow and Arrows like most Martial Arts REQUIRED Skill, Strength, Training and time to be Deadly with... once Gunpowder and Gun Steel was readily available almost ANY meat puppet with 2 thumbs and the ability to understand a simple loading process became an Assassin in just minutes.
Putting it out, soft lead doesn't have to pierce armor to incapacitate or kill someone. A slug from a shorgun usually won't pierce level 3 soft armor, however the force is strong enough to complete destroy the lungs through compression. I'd like to see similar tests done with soft lead to a breast plate and see the result. While steel plate is harded than soft armor, it only has to transfer enough energy into the chest to cripple or destroy the opponent.
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.
@Stylesheet RA120 pound longbow or 100 pound manchu bow is about equal to 1000 pound crossbow, because crossbow has 10 times less length of pull. Crossbow bolts are thus much thicker, and have less penetration and range
@Ted Archer with the windlass, medieval european crossbows went to the realm of kN, not even a modern human being can break through the 500 N with a longbow.
Longbow had the advantage of cheapness, range and of the "parabola", meaning they can shoot through allied formation easily, while crossbow required to be trained to shoot between the allied line.
@Stylesheet RA longbows were more powerful than crossbows at the time, and manchu bows were much more powerful than longbows. Chinese crossbows had about the same draw length as bows btw, as they used composite bows instead of steel. The point of using a crossbow is not the draw length, it's that can be loaded before aiming, and is much more convenient to shoot from behind walls
@Ted Archer why would be the point of using a crossbow with the same draw of a bow lmao
They were more powerful but required shorter range and drilling to make effective, by their were way more effective than a bow, the strongest medieval bow (longbow) was unable to make a dent in an knight's armor.
They were extremely expansive tho
Meanwhile in China, unlike western Europe, they had to focus on being able to fight both standard infantry armies, and nomadic horsemen with rapid fire compound bows from the north all the way into the 1600s. This dual focus was a major contributor to overall slower gunpowder innovation.
Makes sense why in AOE2 handconnoners don't have any upgrade to reach other than chemistry.
For example upgrade from feudal archers to Arbalist upgrades.