Slitherine

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.

I know in later times, troops simply pointed their muskets in the general direction of the enemy. So definitely not aiming. Also after a volley or two, the smoke generated often could make even seeing a target very difficult. But I don't believe that is true with crossbows or longbows with direct fire. They were accurate weapons and smoke was not a problem. Longer ranged plunging fire would have to be directed at a general mass but at closer direct fire range, I could see aimed fire or at least accurate fire at a consistent proper height to hit. Considering the non-rifled barrels of guns, a ball could have substantial variability in direction and elevation once it exits the barrel.

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.

I'd suggest though that while the bullet might travel a long way, you cannot follow it with your eyes as you can an arrow - thereby precluding the kind of indirect fire ("a rain of arrows") that you can with bows. Artillery, in contrast, you can spot, because the ball kicks up a lot of visible turf.

On Wellington asking for longbows, you got me. I think I heard that on the internet, so I don't have any sources. I do recall reading somewhere that Benjamin Franklin wanting to raise bowmen, and that is something I can probably check.

On the paper on why the longbow fell out of favour, I admit that the writers are not historians by any means. However, a study of history needs a good understanding of the economic incentives, so on that front the paper adds value. Non historians will get the equipment minutiae incorrect, but people are people and they respond to incentives no matter the time period. I am of the opinion they highly exaggerated the effectiveness of the longbow which is why I called them "obvious longbow fans".

However, they make a very important point. Archery (and imho horsemanship as well) relies on economic incentives to thrive. Imaging you are a steppe nomad. You have to shoot things, whether people or animals all day. Practising extra is good for you since it increased your expected returns over your lifetime and for your family over generations. However, imaging you are a craftsman who makes say shoes in Manchester. The amount of practice needed to be good at archery (40 hours a week, over 5 years) is highly damaging to your livelihood, and has high opportunity cost. It means you can't research new shoes, market your shoes, supervise your workers, etc. And even if you did, what's the use of being a good archer? So you can accidentally shoot (or purposely poach) the king's deer and become a outlaw like Robin Hood? Without the government mandating practice or sponsoring tournaments, archery is a net negative to English, and is only positive for nomadic cultures.

Turkey had a huge archery culture and outfitted fine bowmen. But once the Turks became the Ottoman Empire and a settled people, it costed expensive, expensive subsidies from the government in order to ensure a cadre of bowmen for fighting, especially in naval battles. This means Lepanto was pretty decisive, since the loss of those archers meant that no more was coming to replace.

There is this snippet by a historian (not economists, so rest easy yall!) here that compares and contrasts the rate of fire, accuracy and penetration of the Turkish Bow versus the Arquebus and Spanish Musket and the crossbow. This is a good reference for the comparative effectiveness. I feel it would be of interest to this discussion, and they also summarize the need for settled people's to subsidize archery else archery goes extinct.

http://www.angelfire.com/ga4/guilmartin ... apons.html

I gave the section of your link related to small arms a quick read. One thing that's interesting- I'd never thought to use the rear sight of a musket to hold the match before.
http://www.angelfire.com/ga4/guilmartin ... /Fig05.jpg

Historians who spend their careers discussing historical weapons should try using them.

It was not, in sum, the technical superiority of gunpowder weapons which made the difference. Under most circumstances gunpowder weapons, even the mighty Spanish musket, were quite inferior to the composite recurved bow. Only in the specialized circumstances of a formal head-on clash between galley fleets or a siege on land did the musket’s superior impact energy give it the edge. But because archery depended totally upon the economically vulnerable values of a traditional society the nations relying upon it were deprived of resilience in the face of adversity.

I don't know the exact circumstances of every country using composite bows but that certainly wasn't the case in England.

Whenever musketeers/harquebusiers and and bowmen fought, the musketeers usually won. French harquebusiers are recorded defeating English bowmen during the Italian wars in 1545, just a few days before the Mary Rose sank. During the lead up to the battle of Pinkie Cleugh,1547, a small band of foreign mercenary harquebusiers was chosen to take bridges, assault Scottish strongpoints, and other important tasks instead of the much more numerous English bowmen. During the battle of Pinkie Cleugh itself, the bowmen were ineffective, one account states, due to the hills and weather. The bowmen serving under Sir John Wallop in the Pale of Calais were recorded as useless. In 1549, Cornish bowmen were defeated by mercenary harquebusiers during the Prayer Book Rebellion and the same year saw the London militia, armed with harquebuzes, drive Kett's rebel bowmen out of Norwich. No Frenchmen were killed with arrows during the siege of Lieth in 1560. In Ireland, both sides found that firearms were the most effective weapon. English arrows were deflected by Irish wicker shields. O'Neill paid men trained with calivers better than other infantry, including his own bowmen. The later we go in the century, the harder it is to find evidence of English bowmen actually serving in combat, even though on paper bowmen were still a large percentage of the English army. It seems that their commanders simply didn't consider the bowmen useful enough to bring to war in place of other arms. There's a lot of evidence that firearms did have the edge over bows if we look at the actual history instead of theorycrafting hypothetical matchups.

An economic argument for the adoption of firearms is hard to defend. Firearms were far more expensive than bows, and so was firearms training. In 1572 the English government decided to implement the trained band system and have a militia consisting of a small core of well-trained pikemen and harquebusers instead of relying on the large numbers of untrained men armed with bows and bills. Archers could be informally "trained" by mandating that every man own a bow and practice with it at no expense to the government, and so these archery laws remained in force even though the bow was quickly proving itself unsuitable for early modern warfare. The trained bands, however, were a big financial drain on the counties. Experienced captains had to be hired as instructors, powder had to be provided for shooting and skirmishing practice, and the members of the trained band, in theory 10% of men in the county, had to be compensated for their time away from work. That all added up to a major expense which caused some grumbling from the local governments who had to foot the bill.

Contrary to the modern received wisdom that firearms were adopted because they were easy to train, the 16th century mindset was that firearms were specialist weapons requiring skillful users and were extremely dangerous in the hands of poorly trained men. Military training was becoming more intense and expensive than ever before during the 16th century. The focus of this increased emphasis on training was gunmen and to a lesser extent pikemen, not bowmen. Circumstances sometimes might drive raw men into service, but the ideal was to have "perfectly trained" soldiers. The very concept of using hordes of untrained rabble in combat was ridiculed by 16th century commentators. While some historians claim that the main advantage of firearms was that they were easy to train, 16th century soldiers didn't see it that way at all.

the article fails on a number of points related to:

social history:

unlike england, france did not have a yeomen class; land owning free peasants were negligible in numbers and serfs were prohibited from owning weapons.

good infantry came from the free peasant class or urban militia from strong wealthy independent cities like those in flanders and switzerland. france's cities were mostly episcopal and administrative seats rather than manufacturing or commercial centres.

military history:

the longbow was never considered to be the queen of battle in france where warfare was a jealously guarded aristocratic prerogative. no noble would be seen with a bow. the french hired reliable foreign infantry and counted on noble cavalry. the classic combination of swiss pikes and gendarmerie in later years was the continuation of that policy.

the authors failed to mention that the longbow's success depended very much on tactical considerations. it was only successful when the enemy was rash enough to charge a prepared position. at patay 1429 french cavalry caught english archers in the open and it was a massacre. at verneil 1424 the archers failed to stop the charge of the milanese heavy cavalry (whose superior plate armour could not be penetrated) and only the fighting quality of the men-at-arms carried the battle.

the french could adopt a successful new technology when they saw one. their artillery blasted the english at castillon 1453 to end the hundred years war.

political history:

the authors argued that the french crown did not encourage the adoption of this 'new technology' for fear that it could be turned against it. the truth is the only threat to the crown's legitimacy came from england, not internal magnates. the dukes of burgundy never considered usurping even in the reign of the mad charles VI (but did momentarily support Henry V's claim after the assassination of John the fearless).

the direct authority of french kings was largely confined to the royal domain, a small part of the kingdom (which theoretically included aquitaine held by the king of england, and flanders held by the dukes of burgundy). if the dukes of burgundy wanted to encourage archery in their own lands, they could have done so unimpeded.

As the Germans apparently failed to teach the world at the outset of WW II, it's not as much about gadgets as how you use them.

If all you're ever going to do is stand on a firing range and shoot at targets, early muskets are probably easier to learn to use than bows.

But using those weapons on the battlefield is whole different kettle of fish.

Medieval English bow formations were relatively static. The bowmen remained stationary and let loose at targets who were polite enough to charge their accompanying men at arms. Not much of a problem because maneuver wasn't usually a feature of medieval warfare. As long as the formation didn't have to move around much, the only training the archers really needed was in how to use their weapon. But attack an English combined arms formation in any way other than head-on, and the scariest part of its weapons suite runs the risk of disentegrating into a mob of disorganized peasants (and when the French eventually figured that out, their disasters on the battlefield were no longer a foregone conclusion). Introduce a little maneuver into warfare and trained mercenary crossbowmen start making sense.

Early firearms did not let off mass volleys from a stationary position. Firearms were arranged many ranks deep, but only the first rank usually fired. There was an elaborate close order drill for rotating the rear ranks with loaded weapons into the front ranks, and the troops with unloaded weapons into the rear. The troops with firearms were usually attached to the sides of pike blocks: these weren't terribly mobile, but they could change their facing from time to time, and when that happened, the musketeers had to scramble and really know their drill to keep alignment if they weren't going to disentegrate into disorder. Learning to be a musketeer involved a lot more than shoving powder and ball into a barrel and keeping your fuse lit. Anyone who's ever tried to learn ballroom dancing can attest to how easy it is to step on your partner's feet, and the musketeers were learning maneuvers that were a lot more complicated than what goes on in ballroom dancing. A famous accident suffered by one of the trained bands that was trying to learn the drill at the begining of the English Civil War comes to mind (they managed to get so confused they fired on themselves).

So you could master the art of being a medieval longbowman by shooting every weekend in your spare time. But the same couldn't be said for learning to be a musketeer, because groups of musketeers won't learn close order drill from solitary target practise on a shooting range.