Why Firearms Took the Place of Bow and Arrow - The Rise of the Musketeer in Europe

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

It's obvious why.... they upgraded their barracks to unlock riflemen recruitment.

The future is now old man!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Early modern goes bang Knights: damn

Imagine a pike attached to a gun

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

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.

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

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.

As a physics and math student with a history hobby. This, this video, touched me in all the good spots.

Drink every time he says "however"

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.

1. Arrows/bows take skill and years to train. 2. Give a gun to a newbie or conscript, they can beat skilled people. 3. Gun penetrate knight's armor, something arrow can't. 4. Battles are fought in formation, guns scare off formations. Perhaps the most important is how most line battles are determined later in history by discipline. Like British redcoats holding their ground until to unleash a volley up close.