Missile weapon effectiveness, especially in the 16th century

[Nijis]

Arguments about the relative effectiveness of bows and firearms in the transition period are one of the biggest cliches in wargaming. However, I think it's revisiting in this forum because arquebuses and bows seem to be roughly equal in overall effectiveness - the bow has a slight edge in range, the arquebus in armor penetration - and I'm curious about the assumptions that the designer made.

I think this is the right decision to make. A lot of wargamers claim that the firearm only supplanted the bow because arquebusiers were cheaper to train, or because the noise of a massed volley was devastating to morale. However, I would point out that plenty of early modern armies -- Ottomans, Moghuls, Russians - had no problems mustering large amounts of skilled bowmen, and they still made sure they had lots of arquebusiers as well. Moreover, there's no evidence that arquebusiers prevailed at battles like Panipat or Chaldiran through weight over numbers. The arquebus also found favor in frontier settings where the shock value was less important than in open battle.

In terms of damage and penetration, I think few dispute that the firearm has some advantage. There are a lot of claims that archery was more accurate but it seems to rely on comparing the battlefield performance of early firearms with the training ground performance of bows. They don't take into account the effects of fear, adrenaline, warped arrows, or the need to compensate for drop when the range is not known in advance.

Still, there is one area in which the bow would seem to have a huge advantage over the gun, and that is rate of fire. While a Napoleonic infantryman might be able to get off three to four shots a minute, a 16th century arqubusier would be lucky to get off a fraction of that. (Some of the rate-of-fire estimates I've seen seem too low to be believable, but less than one shot a minute seems a safe bet - maybe a tenth of what an archer could get off.)

So, why does Pike and Shot treat arquebusiers as being as effective as bowmen, man-for-man? Not cost effective, but effective effective?

I can think of a couple of reasons:
1) Firearms pack so much wallop compared to arrows that it offsets the rate of fire
2) The fatigue involved in pulling back a bowstring, plus limited supplies of arrows, considerably reduces the effective rate of fire of a bow
3) A lot of the in-game shooting involves a gunner approaching an enemy formation, choosing a good moment to shoot, and scuttling back. In this scenario, rate of fire is not as important as other factors.
Any thoughts would be appreciated!

[TheGrayMouser]

Some thoughts

*accuracy of bows and effective range overestimated
*armor penetration/range of firearms underestimated
*claims of horrible rates of fire are likely also bias and or a misunderstanding of the context of the use of the weapons. The 3-5 rounds/minute by later 18th c armies were likely parade ground tests, could not be sustained very long at all, and by all accounts were innaccurate volleys that did little real damages ( but potentially were still scary, see Prussians at Mollwitz)
It also does not account that arquebus /musketmen, at least in the beginning of the period, fired by march and counter march etc , no volleys or platoon fire, and that the soldiers were likely actually expected too AIM at an individual target. All this would "reduce rate of fire", at least for the individual.
The wounds caused by a ball appear to have been more deadly and harder to treat than arrows. ( Even the Romans wrote that sling bullets were much deadlier and caused more mischief even for a non fatal wound than a arrow...)

I have read Monluc's memoirs, and the litany of officers and nobles he notes of having been killed by firearms far exceeds other causes, plus th evalue he places on arqebusiers even during a transition time where the x-bow was still the primary weapon for the French army.

Just guessing here, but also, ammunition ( powder) was likely more amniable to mass prdocition and thus more economic than producing bolts and arrows.

[jomni]

Maybe you did not notice, bows are better against (unarmoured) mounted targets. I suppose this is due to rate of fire. Since riders are harder targets to hit because of their speed, an archer can take more shots to finally score a hit than slow loading firearms.

Shooting POAs are not in the manual but we will put them in Sengoku Jidai.
Firearms have -100 POA vs mounted. Bows have no modifier. But when target is armored, the Firearm POA against armor may negate the mounted penalty while the bow gets penalised in return.

[Nijis]

I have read Monluc's memoirs, and the litany of officers and nobles he notes of having been killed by firearms far exceeds other causes, plus th evalue he places on arqebusiers even during a transition time where the x-bow was still the primary weapon for the French army.

That's interesting - it's good to have a single source that makes this observation. I should definitely read his memoirs as a P&S companion.

Maybe you did not notice, bows are better against (unarmoured) mounted targets. I suppose this is due to rate of fire. Since riders are harder targets to hit because of their speed, an archer can take more shots to finally score a hit than slow loading firearms.

This makes sense, and would also help explain why bows remained the prime missile weapon so much longer in eastern regions that had lots of unarmored horsemen.

Are there any other POA modifiers for different missile weapon types? Can I find them in any of the files?

[rbodleyscott]

Are there any other POA modifiers for different missile weapon types? Can I find them in any of the files?

No, but here is a chart. Sorry it is so hard to read.

[Nijis]

Thank you!

If I could push further, do you have a rough assumption for how many shots per firer make up a P&S "shot" - in particular, the ratio of arrows fired in a shot compared to the number of arquebus bullets fired?

In other words, are the bow and arquebus roughly equal because the arquebus is several times more effective, round per round, or because the effective rate of fire is not all that different due to fatigue, ammunition, time spent repositioning, etc?

[rbodleyscott]

Thank you!

If I could push further, do you have a rough assumption for how many shots per firer make up a P&S "shot" - in particular, the ratio of arrows fired in a shot compared to the number of arquebus bullets fired?

In other words, are the bow and arquebus roughly equal because the arquebus is several times more effective, round per round, or because the effective rate of fire is not all that different due to fatigue, ammunition, time spent repositioning, etc?

The POAs already take into account rate of fire.

[Nijis]

I understand that - I was asking about your assumptions as a designer about the historical battlefield rate of fire of arquebuses vs bows. Not the theoretical rate of fire, but the actual number of arrows likely to be launched on a battlefield by every archer, compared to the number of shots fired by every arqubuesier, in a given fire phase. It doesn't affect how I would play the game, but it's interesting to me in terms of visualizing what happens.

[rbodleyscott]

I understand that - I was asking about your assumptions as a designer about the historical battlefield rate of fire of arquebuses vs bows. Not the theoretical rate of fire, but the actual number of arrows likely to be launched on a battlefield by every archer, compared to the number of shots fired by every arqubuesier, in a given fire phase. It doesn't affect how I would play the game, but it's interesting to me in terms of visualizing what happens.

Well obviously the archers can at least theoretically shoot more arrows in a given time frame. However, their arms will soon get very tired, and over a longer period of time the arquebusier has more staying power, as he is using gunpowder rather than his own muscle-power to propel the missile. This was also an issue in campaigns, as men's fitness tended to deteriorate during a long campaign in this era, which had more adverse effect on archers than it did on arquebusiers.

Also arquebus balls were considerably more deadly than arrows, particularly against armoured targets, so the higher rate of fire of bows would not necessarily translate into a significantly higher number of men incapacitated in the target unit.

I would however state that Pike and Shot is a top-down simulation, not a bottom-up simulation. The mechanisms are designed to achieve the right overall historical effect, without worrying too much about how those effects actually came about.

Trying to make a bottom-up simulation is fraught with problems, because any error in the basic assumptions can lead to massive errors in the final results achieved. (And even assumptions based on modern day reconstructions are unlikely to be anything close to accurate). Thus a bottom-up simulation based on estimates of rate of fire, range, penetration and so forth, can often end up less accurate than a top-down simulation based on modelling historical results rather than attempting to model the underlying processes in detail.

As contemporary 16th century commentators point out, in theory the bow was in many ways superior to the arquebus, but it practice it wasn't, and the bow became obsolete, which more or less proves the point.

[Nijis]

Thanks! That's good to know - I would make very similar assumptions.

I understand your point about top-down rather than bottom-up, and about starting with the macro effect (guns supplanting bows) and working backwards. But it's good to know why you as a designer think why this trend happened.

[KateMicucci]

There was quite a big debate in the 16th century, especially in England, about whether bows were still militarily useful or had become obsolete, with both sides presenting their arguments in pamphlets and military manuals. I've been studying these debates, along with every battle I could find where both firearms and bows were present, for the past couple years.

The only aspect of how bows and crossbows are represented in-game relative to firearms that really bugs me is their range. "Arquebusiers" have a range of 2, while bowmen and crossbowmen have a range of 4. However in the military manuals they always say that firearms outrange bows. That theory also translates into practice, since in battle accounts I've also found that gunners were shooting bowmen from outside their range.

Hans Delbruck says, "At the shooting tournaments towards the end of the fifteenth century shots were made with firearms to distances of 230 to 250 paces, whereas the range for a crossbow amounted to only 110 to 135 paces.... the greater distances in competitive shooting are so extensively confirmed that we cannot doubt them."

Raimond Fourquevaux, 1545, says that harquebuses shoot further than bows and crossbows, "notwithstanding the Archer and Crossebow man will kill a C. or CC. pases off, aswell as the best Harquebusier."

Montluc describes the English bows as "arms of little reach, and therefore were necessitated to come up close to us to loose their arrows, which otherwise would do no execution; whereas we who were accustomed to fire our Harquebuzes at a great distance, seeing the Enemy use another manner of sight, thought these near approaches of theirs very strange, imputing their running on at this confident rate to absolute bravery."

Barnabe Riche in 1573 put the maximum range of the bow at 200 yards, the caliver 360-400 yards, and the musket 480-600 yards. Other Elizabethan military writers more or less accepted these ranges. Of course these are maximum ranges of each weapon, not the "effective" ranges.

During the 1590s, several military men wrote that bows couldn't defend themselves against firearms because the firearms could shoot them from beyond their range. This exact thing was happening at the same time in Korea. A Korean minister complained that the invading Japanese soldiers' muskets "can reach [the target] from several hundred paces away. Our country’s bows and arrows cannot reach them." Englishmen who fought American Indians also reported that their firearms outreached the native's bows and arrows.

https://bowvsmusket.com/tag/range/

[jomni]

Since the arquebus loads slowly, they'd save the shot until they are sure?

[Nijis]

During the 1590s, several military men wrote that bows couldn't defend themselves against firearms because the firearms could shoot them from beyond their range. This exact thing was happening at the same time in Korea. A Korean minister complained that the invading Japanese soldiers' muskets "can reach [the target] from several hundred paces away. Our country’s bows and arrows cannot reach them." Englishmen who fought American Indians also reported that their firearms outreached the native's bows and arrows.

https://bowvsmusket.com/tag/range/

That's a great link! However, there may be a way to reconcile the accounts in that link with an increased effective range for bows, in some circumstances.

As the link points out, missile weapons have a point blank range (where the missile flies true, and the weapon may be aimed conventionally) and a much longer extended range where you point the weapon up to 45 degrees in the air and the missile eventually plunges downward.

Let's say those ranges are 40 paces and 250 paces for a reasonably powerful bow, and 125/750 paces for an early firearm, for the sake of argument.

An archer who has practiced can take advantage of that longer range, to some degree. With an arrow, you can observe the flight and learn eventually how to drop your arrow at the rough range. With an arquebus, you really can't do this - the missile is much smaller and flies much faster, and your view is obscured by a big cloud of smoke. Artillerymen do observe fall of shot, but they have a much bigger missile, which sends up a big spray of earth where it lands, and can usually have crewman standing off to the side, away from the smoke.

So, an archer can take advantage of the 40-250 paces range, whereas an arquebusier can't really take advantage of the 125-750 pace range. But here's the thing - at long ranges, the archers can really only hit an area targets, Christine de Pizan's barge, or a battle of formed troops. There's a sweet spot for the gun - between 40 and 125 paces, say - where it really is much more effective. Moreover, in a skirmish situation, such as before the walls of a fortress or in the Pequod war, indirect-fire archer would seem very ineffective to an observer, even if statistically the occasional arrow or two would find a target.

Also, indirect fire with a bow is only possible if you've practiced it. You'd only do this if you're the kind of archer who knows that one day he's likely to be on a battlefield firing at massed troops. You'd rarely use long-range indirect archery in hunting or skirmishing, so Native Americans probably would never have bothered to learn.

Since the arquebus loads slowly, they'd save the shot until they are sure?

I think this is also an important point. Archers can afford a bit of trial and error with long-range fire, although not too much, as fatigue and limited ammunition will eventually take its toll.

[Old_Warrior]

There was quite a big debate in the 16th century, especially in England, about whether bows were still militarily useful or had become obsolete, with both sides presenting their arguments in pamphlets and military manuals. I've been studying these debates, along with every battle I could find where both firearms and bows were present, for the past couple years.

The only aspect of how bows and crossbows are represented in-game relative to firearms that really bugs me is their range. "Arquebusiers" have a range of 2, while bowmen and crossbowmen have a range of 4. However in the military manuals they always say that firearms outrange bows. That theory also translates into practice, since in battle accounts I've also found that gunners were shooting bowmen from outside their range.

Hans Delbruck says, "At the shooting tournaments towards the end of the fifteenth century shots were made with firearms to distances of 230 to 250 paces, whereas the range for a crossbow amounted to only 110 to 135 paces.... the greater distances in competitive shooting are so extensively confirmed that we cannot doubt them."

Raimond Fourquevaux, 1545, says that harquebuses shoot further than bows and crossbows, "notwithstanding the Archer and Crossebow man will kill a C. or CC. pases off, aswell as the best Harquebusier."

Montluc describes the English bows as "arms of little reach, and therefore were necessitated to come up close to us to loose their arrows, which otherwise would do no execution; whereas we who were accustomed to fire our Harquebuzes at a great distance, seeing the Enemy use another manner of sight, thought these near approaches of theirs very strange, imputing their running on at this confident rate to absolute bravery."

Barnabe Riche in 1573 put the maximum range of the bow at 200 yards, the caliver 360-400 yards, and the musket 480-600 yards. Other Elizabethan military writers more or less accepted these ranges. Of course these are maximum ranges of each weapon, not the "effective" ranges.

During the 1590s, several military men wrote that bows couldn't defend themselves against firearms because the firearms could shoot them from beyond their range. This exact thing was happening at the same time in Korea. A Korean minister complained that the invading Japanese soldiers' muskets "can reach [the target] from several hundred paces away. Our country’s bows and arrows cannot reach them." Englishmen who fought American Indians also reported that their firearms outreached the native's bows and arrows.

https://bowvsmusket.com/tag/range/

I dont know ... in the Napoleonic era the effective range of a musket is 100 yards .... 200 yards is max range. Rifles 300 yards. No commander would have his men try for a target 300 yards away with a musket. Very inaccurate.

I am not sure I would trust that assessment. Certainly the Napoleonic musket had a better range than the arq.of the 30YW!

[kongxinga]

Thank you Njis for bringing up this topic. As you have noted, the bows versus guns argument is nearly cliche, but I think this is still worthy of discussion.

On range, there can be some confusion. Most bows did outrange Napoleonic smoothbores. But something to note is that even some Pike and shot era (ie 100 years earlier) rifled matchlocks/ wheelocks way outranged the Napoleonic smoothbore musket. I believe the smoothbores were optimized for Rate of Fire, not range or accuracy. So it is not a stretch to say that bows, especially the longbow outranged the Napoleonic musket, since even earlier guns did. Those took a big step back on range for faster and easier reloads.

On effectiveness, the bow did get a significant boost in killing power once armour fell out of fashion. However, we all know that longbow/english fans will say that the longbow can defeat plate, while plate fans will say the opposite. I rather not get drawn there.

The one newish point I will bring is this argument from obvious longbow fans. They wrote a academic paper that notes that the reason guns replaced longbows in England had to do with the weakening of Royal Authority. Their premise was that the English King can and did force the training of a ready corps of longbowmen by sponsoring tournaments and mandating fines for those that did not practise archery. They could do so since their secure position meant they did not fear internal rebellion. In contrast, Scottish and French kings, the main English enemies had relatively weak monarchs. These monarchs dare not train longbowmen since it would mean that their dukes could suddenly overthrow them. To them internal enemies were scarier since Foreign enemies could not rule the people and would eventually leave, and would not kill the king. Unfortunately, internal rebels can rule the land and almost always killed the entire Royal family. This meant that optimizing for internal security at the cost of lesser power versus foreign powers was a better solution than having the possibility that some duke could take his longbowmen and overthrow the king. This paper is available here

http://www.peterleeson.com/Longbow.pdf

They say the Longbow was so good that Wellington asked for a few regiments of longbowmen to be raised to defeat French fusiliers, before giving up the idea when someone told him that no one knew how to use that thing for over 100 years. And the reason this skill was lost was because there was a period of weak royal power in England that led to the discontinuation and therefore skill gap in longbows. Like horsemanship, once you create a skill gap (one generation of people who had no teachers), it is very hard to ever regain that skill again. I am quite a believer in the skill gap theory to look life of people and to explain the sometimes rapid transition of a culture from a horse people to sedentary kingdoms.

[fogman]

it is a good thing for the authors of the article that it was published in the journal of 'law and economics' and not of medieval history (had they even tried to submit)!

[Jagger2002]

We are talking about range of weapons but ignoring accuracy. The range of a weapon is unimportant if you cannot hit the target. Effective range is what is really important. At what range can enough firepower actually hit a formation to cause a significant reduction in their willingness to fight?

I suspect both crossbows and bows were more accurate at hitting a specific target at longer ranges than either the early handguns and arquebus. However mass targets reduced the need for individual accuracy but still required a critical mass of shots to cluster near the target. Even during the American revolution, reliable fire concentration required pretty much point blank range to achieve effective results. The scatter of those early smoothbores was pretty extreme and thus needed very close ranges to get the attention of the target. In contrast, crossbows and longbows pretty much hit where you aimed with direct fire and thus might have a greater effective range, but not total range, than the early guns.

Hans Delbruck says, "At the shooting tournaments towards the end of the fifteenth century shots were made with firearms to distances of 230 to 250 paces, whereas the range for a crossbow amounted to only 110 to 135 paces.... the greater distances in competitive shooting are so extensively confirmed that we cannot doubt them."

IIRC, rifling was implemented fairly quickly with some of the early firing weapons which might explain some of the ranges of shooting tournaments.

[Nijis]

(Oops double post)

[Nijis]

I was impressed with the article at first read, in that it called attention to a fairly remarkable variable - the laws requiring English villages to produce a corps of archers - and tried to see why the English might have chosen or been able to enact and enforce them, and why other states did not.

However, again on first read, I thought it had a couple of flaws...

1) If any other medieval states consciously chose not to encourage archery, you'd expect to find a mention of that in the chronicles, and
2) English military effectiveness declined dramatically from the 14th to the 16th century, long before the war bow went out of service. In the later battles they did win, such as Flodden, archers played a role but were not decisive. We also have lots of English-on-English battles, in the Wars of the Roses, where archers were present but not decisive. Part of this is due to evolving armor, but plenty of lightly armored troops could and did survive an English arrow barrage without breaking.

What I'd suggest is that, like many journal articles, it points out a useful variable but also inflates its importance. Powerful bows were pretty effective, but they also encouraged Edward I to encourage a standard "national" tactical doctrine and a more professional rural levy, both of which were independently useful. Archers who practice for decades are probably going to be pretty good soldiers in general, while aristocrats who learn to master a particular combined-arms doctrine are going to be better than commanders on average than those who don't.

Other armies however also became more professional in the late 15th and 16th century and picked up an equally effective weapons system (the arquebus) and so Edward I's innovations lost their edge over time.

[KateMicucci]

I dont know ... in the Napoleonic era the effective range of a musket is 100 yards .... 200 yards is max range. Rifles 300 yards. No commander would have his men try for a target 300 yards away with a musket. Very inaccurate.

The maximum range of a musket is far longer than 200 yards, whether you're talking lethal range or the farthest distance that the ball will fly. Napoleonic era accuracy tests were performed at distances as long as 320 yards. The test of real muskets performed at the Graz in the 80's calculated maximum ranges of over 800m for a wheellock pistol and over 1200m for a Spanish musket from the 1580's.

They say the Longbow was so good that Wellington asked for a few regiments of longbowmen to be raised to defeat French fusiliers, before giving up the idea when someone told him that no one knew how to use that thing for over 100 years.

Do you have a source for this? Some people have looked into it before and the "source" of this anecdote appears to be the fiction writer Bernard Cornwell.

For what it's worth, there were some bows used during the Napoelonic Wars by Russian auxiliaries. They performed very poorly. https://bowvsmusket.com/2015/02/27/baro ... pzig-1813/

I suspect both crossbows and bows were more accurate at hitting a specific target at longer ranges than either the early handguns and arquebus.

During the 16th century longbow debates, those who wanted to remove the bow from service said that the guns were more accurate, and those who wanted to keep longbows in service said that the bow was more accurate. One modern test suggests that they're about the same. http://fioredeiliberi.org/phpBB3/viewto ... =3&t=20439

Ultimately the question of which is more accurate is not very important. Soldiers didn't, couldn't or wouldn't aim in combat anyway and hit rates were always a tiny fraction of what the theoretical accuracy of the weapons would indicate.

IIRC, rifling was implemented fairly quickly with some of the early firing weapons which might explain some of the ranges of shooting tournaments.

Delbruck addresses this. "Rifled barrels, which had already been invented at that time, were normally expressly prohibited. Other provisions can hardly be understood in any other way than applying to freehand shooting (and not, for example, to supported hook weapons)."