[Anders Nilsson]

Judging by the angle he was shoot from the most probably shoot came from a Norwegian fort.
There is an interesting theory that it was a Swedish bullet fired from a Norwegain cannon. The siege had been going on for a while and the Norwegians was running out of grapeshoot. So they gathered Swedish musketballs that had been fired their way and used as grapeshoot.
It makes sence since the King was in a new trench that was to be used for a coming assualt, ie he was fairly close.

[Colin F.]

http://www.cotasdemalla.com/test2.htm

Would this be of interest to you?

[Peter G.]

We discussed this topic ad lenght prior christmas.

A musket is cheaper, the ammunition can be made in field and the hitting power is greater.

A bow is far more accurate, has a far higher firerate and a higher effective range.

The musket replaced the bow not because it was the superior weapon but because you can train every numbnut to stand in line and fire a musket in about 3-4weeks.
To train a bowman it takes years and years of training.

As late as the napoleonic wars the forming of a bowmen-regiment was proposed-it never happend due the lack of skilled soldiers-but considering the effective range and the firerate i would allways bet on the bowmen.

[Dan Howard]

Napoleonic generals considered a longbow regiment because the English were still deluded about the mythical superiority of the longbow (many still are today). By the time of the English civil war firearms are superior to the longbow in every way that counts on the battlefield.

[Peter G.]

They considered it because of the far superior firerate and the far superior effective range-nothing mythical about that.

As discussed in the other thread-the firearms were NOT superior "to the longbow in every way that counts on the battlefield"-they were just far cheaper to make and far faster to manage to a usefull degree.

[Nick B.]

Unless the battle is taking place in the rain. Ever hear the old saying "keep your powder dry".

[Peter G.]

Rain isn´t good for bows either -they still fire but with much less power :-)

[Werner Stiegler]

[Nick B.]

Less power is better than no power. A musket makes a very poor spear if it won't fire.

[Peter G.]

In the other thread i posted the results of various testshootings from 1800-1830

check in this thread

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...highlight=

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Nick B.]

Another disadvantage to the musket is, if you're shooting from cover the smoke will give away your location.

[Elling Polden]

The practical range for a musket was assumed to be about 75 yards. At 40-50 you could be quite certain to hit a man sized target. If your sights are on.

It is a established fact that the practical accuracy of a weapon is determined to a large degree by the velocity of the projectile.
A faster projectile has a flatter trajectory, which means that you will not need to adjust elevation as much.
Essentially, a modern rifle has a "grassing" range of several hundred meters.
If you aim straight at someones chest at 200 meters, you will still hit him, without having to worry about elevation.
Once fired, the bullet threatens everything in its path out to 300+ meters, for a 7,62x51

A longbow, however, will need to be elevated to near45 degrees to reach 200 meters at all.
And when the arrow comes down, it threatens a space of maybe 15 cm, since its trajectory is so steep.
Is kind of trying to hit a single man with a cold mortar shell.

In short, you have to aim in three dimensions instead of just one, with a weapon without sights, at a trajectory so high that you can't even see the target when shooting. Add flight time, and a extreme susceptibility to wind.
Then add the stress of combat, and the tendency of combat troops to just fire in the general direction of the enemy.

In sufficiently large numbers, longbows might actually hit something at long range. However, so would muskets, and especially, cannon.

Also, disciplined infantry will advance into machinegun fire if ordered to do so, as amply illustrated in WW I.
Thus, longbows would not be able to break or rout foes on their own.

At close range, musket accuracy is a matter of point and click. Even if the balls scatter 10+ cm at 50 meters, you still hit.
ROF is lower, but since the regiment is marching in ranks anyhow, you can still keep up the fire.
And, musketmen, in the knowledge that their accuracy only improves as they close, will walk right up to enemy formations.

To my knowledge, noone has ever fielded archers as line infantry. Quite possibly because archers need a stable firing position, and will rout if enemy infantry come into charge range.

Basically, if using longbows on the battlefield was such a great idea, it would have been done.

[Ian Hutchison]

The following was done by Pete Plunkett of Middlesex Village Trading Company. He used a Charleville 1777 and fired 5 shots from 50 yards. Not bad, if I do say so myself. Keep in mind, most military muskets had no sights, at least no rear sights.

Results:

[Peter G.]

With a longbow you can start ballistic fire at about 400m-like in crecy.
If you assume that an average longbowman can fire about 8-10arrows/min a 1000men-regiment can fire 8000-10.000arrows/min at a regimentsize target-no need to fire at individual soldiers-you´ll hit anything anyway.
At 200m range the best marksmen switch to aimed fire, the lesser bowmen at about 150m

A regiment in line needs some time to march the 350m to the 50m range which was considered a good range for musket-fire.
In all this time, they receive 1000arrows/5-8sec without the possibility of counterfire-and opposed to muskets an arrow after ballistic flight still has enough hitting power to kill an anarmoured ennemy.

I doubt that the attaking regiment would force the march-and if i doubt that more then 400 would reach the 50m range-then they still would be outshoot by the arrows-maybe not in hitting-power, but in firespeed-thats whats counts.

As said in the older threat-the musket replaced the bow because
-it was cheaper
-it was far far easier to handle(2 days of training against years and years)
-unlimited supply of recruits (NO skill needed)
-logistics far easier

Ammonition for muskets is easily made in field, needs easy to get compounds and doesn´t weight a lot.
Arrows are slow to make, needs specialists to produce, needs good wood and good feathers and is heavy.

At waterloo several millions of bullets were fired-this wouldn´t have been possible with arrows due to lack of supply.

[Lafayette C Curtis]

[Dan Howard]

[Stephen Hand]

What will it take to finally kill this bizarre fantasy that the collective states of Europe nearly bankrupted themselves replacing bows with weapons that were inferior. They did not. Muskets are more effective than bows. They have the same effective range (show me one scrap of evidence that this is not true) and a far greater maximum range (bows habitually shooting at 400m range??? This is over 100m longer than the longest recorded bowshot that Hardy could find when writing his book on the longbow). Muskets have many, many times the stopping power. Muskets cost far more (English records from 1596 show the government paying between 12s and 30s for arquebuses and muskets compared to 6s8d for longbows) yet replaced bows anyway. Muskets are far, far more accurate than bows. I have seen a lot of musketry and a lot of archery and I have always been surprised by how much more accurate any sort of firearm is to a bow at any range, even when comparing people who barely shoot muskets vs archers who train all the time. The advent of the musket led to more training, not less. The myth of the poorly trained conscript musketeer is just that, a myth.

Eyewitness accounts that I put up here just before christmas talk about armoured men walking unscathed through English arrow storms, while similar formations were not just defeated, but obliterated by musketry. The difference in effectiveness between archery and musketry against almost identical targets under perfect firing conditions at the battles of Flodden (1513) and Bicocca (1522) is so stark that I can not believe that any rational person could discount it. The introduction of guns resulted in a massive increase in battlefield casualties. Between 1550 and 1650 average battlefield casualties in Europe went from 7% to 17%.

The idea that every state in Europe suddenly started spending over 75% of their GNP to obtain new weapons because they wanted their armies to be less effective is one of the most pernicious fantasies in the study of military history. No matter how many times it is proved false, and not just false, utterly ludicrous, it manages to rear its ugly head, again and again.

Muskets might not be as pretty or as romantic as bows, but they are undisputably more effective. Get over it!

[Jean Thibodeau]

Steven;

Real World, real history and factoring in all the variables including artillery cancelling out any theoretical advantage the bow might have ( rate of fire mostly assuming a huge supply of arrows ) I completely agree.

And this type of comparing of " theoretical " weapon systems is something I find fun finding the pros and cons and relative advantages or disadvantage of these weapons systems if we could set up a simulated battle between them.

Were this can go wrong is in taking it too seriously or trying to prove that real history got it wrong.

Without repeating much to much information that one can just read in the other thread, my conclusions were that there was a rock, paper, scissors relationship between the way archery and musketry would very " theoretically " interact:

1) Against armoured troops the musket is much more effective, to the point that armour becomes useless and is no longer used.
2) Against armoured troops archery's effectiveness is much reduced but still better than nothing before a better weapon came along. ( firearms ).
3) In an 18th century context the use of armour is not a factor so the bow could have been effective in " theory " but only for one or two battles as effective counters would have been easy to find. ( Read at the end of my post ).

Artillery's range would cancel out any possible archery advantages except in very limited tactical scenarios. ( Ambushes, irregular warfare: Think Zulus against the British and replace archery with spears and closing to hand to hand fighting ).

As to the feasibility of creating an archery regiment in the 18th century, all the reasons that it wouldn't have worked in practice have been stated already. ( Or not cost effective even if possible ).

My original " Thought Experiment " was about a simulated battle were unarmoured late 18th century troop using muskets would fare against the best of the 14th or 15th century archers supported by armoured foot soldiers and men-at arms. The psychological factors involved in a real life version of this simulation being factored out.
( Need a time machine or a computer simulated gaming version of this to make it work. )

So, again, as a " Thought Experiment " either one finds this amusing or one is appalled if people try to apply the idea to real history. ( Stephen I guess that this is your reaction to the whole discussion !? ).

COUNTERS to the archers that could/would be used after the first initial battle.

1) Range issue: Practical musket range shorter than the bows where the bow's accuracy and rate of fire factor in, but the maximum range is much greater with the musket, so I would use long range musket fire supported by artillery out of range of the archers and avoid closing until the archery formations are decimated.

2) There is NO #2 as number one sort of takes care of the problem.

[Glennan Carnie]