was long bow really eclipsed by 1600?

i was readin up on bows recently,,it seems a longbow could reach out some 300 to 400 yards and a turkish recurve mabey 700 to 8oo yards...from 1600 to 1840 troops massed in tight lines and traded musket balls at 150 yards ,right?rate of fire 2 to 3 rounds a minute ,total rnds mabey 30 before dirty black powder of that era would clog the barral beyond use....these troops had no armor no sheild and rigid training to stand fast and present,fire.......wouldnt a force of archers with minamal training (remember they only need hit a rigid tight block of men not an individual...an archer could get off 15 to 20 shots in an minute...better range ,faster rate ,cheaper more fool proof weapon...wouldnt a couple thousand archers be hell on wheels at waterloo...also would be safe from cavelry (wool tunic)....am i missing something here?...is this force not the queen of battle.....a shower of arrows hitting a square of redcoats at 250 yards,then another ,another, 3 more...game over,new target.

 

There is a huge difference between musketeers of 1600 (in which time I tend to agree that archers, though you are seriously overestimating their effective range, could still be useful) and those of Waterloo. In 1600 the average musketman could fire one shot every two-three minutes, needed ten-rank formations and protection from pikemen. By 1815 the musket had become far more reliable, far more practical; it allowed soldiers to fire three shots per minute, making three-rank formations sufficient for continuous volley fire. The bayonet provided effective protection against cavalry. Against such a formation, of which the guns were also far more practical, archers hardly stand a chance.

Archers themselves are highly vulnerable to cavalry and no body armour is going to change that. Their only chance is to disrupt attacking cavalry with missile fire, something they can only truly achieve at short distances if the cavalry is armoured.

By the way, muskets were very easy to use, whereas archers could only be really good if they trained for years.

 

what5 was efective gunfire range in 1600, in `1815?

 

A man needs constant training to be able to pull the bow and shoot repeatedly - some bows needed practised archers to even string them. It's not strength, it's having the skill to do it that makes the difference.
Roel's last sentence is the clue - an archer needed YEARS of constant training to be effective, a musketeer could be shown the principles in 10 minutes and regrdless of his training the musket itself was a fairly inaccurate weapon - which is why volley fire by large numbers of men was used.

 

The english long bow which was the famous weapon we are all talking about was only effective due to the time the users put into it.

It was law for considerable parts of the middle ages that all men of a certain age and rank practise with a bow every week.

So muskets had the advantage that any monkey could be quickly taught to load and fire a fire arm, and more importantly, any skill or accuaracy and rate of fire with a fire arm is not dependant upon years of practise and physical strength.

very few modern people have the strength to use a medieval long bow as you need to be firing them consistantly for years to build up the strength to get a decent enough draw on them.

check out this site - www.longbow-archers.com for more info

FNG

 

In 1600, guns could theoretically fire about 1500 meters out, but their effective range was 30 meters. In 1815 that had been increased to about 200 meters.

This is a range that even a trained archer will not be able to match unless he has trained from infancy.

 

Typical longbow range was more like 200 yards.

The problem with having archers in later armies is firstly, as has been noted, to be any good at all archers need to have spent a lifetime training. Secondly, by 1600 improved metallurgy techniques had produced armour capable of stopping longbow arrows at all but the very closest ranges. This armour caould not stop the shot from gunpowder weapons however, which was one reason why firearms became so popular and armour was ditched. Thirdly, a force of archers has little or no means of self-defence. Musketeers can convert their muskets into a mini-pike (with the bayonet)*, while archers do nt have this luxury, necessitating either a fixed defensive position, or a whole load of heavy infantry troops whose only role is to protect the archers. The genius of the musket is that infantrymen became both missile troops (shot) and heavy infantry (musket with bayonet).

Oh, and pity the poor archers who get attacked by cavalry. Woolen jerkins are really no defense against lance or sabre.


*Obviously, before the bayonet was invented musketeers were as vulnerable as archers

 

Slightly less so surely? At least a musket makes one hell of an effective club, I'd imagine trying to batter someone with a long-bow would take quite some time, they'd probably die of boredom or starvation rather than injuries.

 

on a weekend camp out ,i once trained a bunch of small children till they could hit a small cardboad box 30 feet away.lite bows 7 to 25 lb draw weight (i have lotts of bows an arrows)...still ,belive me ..you wouldnt want to get hit with even a target arrow from a 25lb bow....i dont think it would be hard to train a bunch of young men to draw75 lbs and shoot a box 10 ft x6 ft x200 ft. full of arrows in minutes A TIGHT GROUP OF ROOTED.MEN) it would take mabey 6 weeks ,plus pike drills.....think how many arrows would strike the enemy formation in 1 minute.... a bow and arrows weigh nothing.a man could carrie a short pike and small buckler....no?...the archers at agincourt destroyed a heavily armoured french cav attack (horses were not armoured) these archers pounded wooden staves on a 45% tilt ,then sharpened the points.also i think they used their big mallets later again to good effect that same day...

 

Archers typically carried short swords/long daggers as personal weapons - contrary to what you see in films, hitting an enemy with your bow is both ineffective and a good way to bust your bow.


Majorwoody - ok, so we add a block of bowmen into Waterloo. What happens? Their advantages are rate of fire & accuracy. However, they have a number of drawbacks.

1) Ammunition storage. The long-range arrows needed to reach 200 yards are big. In order to keep up their high rate of fire (the thing that will save them from being wiped out by the first cavalry unit to see them) for the course of the whole battle they will need lots & lots of ammo - far more than the men can carry. So they must stay in a fixed position - or at best be a very slow-moving formation - rendering them ineffective.

2) The battlefield has changed an awful lot. The enemy now have battlefield artillery which far outranges the longbow. A short bombardment followed by a cavalry charge would often cause units of heavy infantry to break - what chance do light infantry have?

3) Fortifying your position like at Agincourt again removes your mobility - fatal in Napoleonic battles. The enemy could decide to simply ignore the 200-yard area around your position, or stand off and batter you to shreds with cannon-shot... Remember too that cavalry of this era had firearms, so that even if they could not reach you with their sabre they could still shoot you.

4) Infantry formations have changed. While Medieval battle formations depended on depth for effectiveness, Napoleonic formations depended on width. This reduces the effectiveness of your arrow shower, as the target is much much narrower (unless your enemy forms into a column formation).

Bottom line, you best-case scenario is that your enemy advance a column of men towards your bowmen, who are then decimated by the rapid-firing arrow shower. If you are very lucky, your enemy will do this twice, and you will have enough arrows to deal with both columns. If you are luckier still, the enemy will not think to use his cannon. If you are startlingly lucky, your ammunition-less archers will be able to get off the battlefield without being pursued by enemy cavalry.

 

let suppose we puchase our bows and sgts from turkey...bows of that era would go 400 yards ,righrt?...we have donkey pack trains carrieing thousands of spares,,,lite compared to guns and lead... ...not swords .... lite pikes 9 ft ...spiked on butt so as to stick pike butt deep in the turf with a detachable iron spur that a man can stand on,lugged to pike shaft...i think rate of fire would nullify calvalry....artillery of that time ,could be seen deploying ,right?....pack up an beat thy feet....(9 ft pikes would out reach bayonetts perfectly...yes?) the technology was there ..i think a force with recurve bows ,pikes and packtrains would be murder on muskets from 1660 to 1820....think about it ..if you were mounted ,would you rather have a flintlock carbine and sabre /pistole...or a 70 lb recurve bow and 30 arrows (even an old fart like me can train and soon draw 70lbs)...youll lern deflaction shooting quick cause u can track every shot and u would be shooting a lot...prolly ,what ten shots for every carbine musket ball......i read that those early carbines fouled completely in only 30 to 40 shots ...rifleing was invented to collect some of this burnt matter in grooves..twisting was done to make them longer,hence more storage....

 

Rifling was invented to spin the bullet and improve accuracy, surely. If the rifling collects "junk" then it could cause a jam or a barrel explosion.

Storage of what? A longer bullet (up to certain length/ diameter ratios) REQUIRES spinning, otherwise it isn't stable in flight and is inaccurate.

 

yes ..however bullets were round until about 1860...and the grooves used to be straight...the twist was added to lengthen them...strange but true...

 

Basically, you can use either your pike or your bow, so like Ricky said, you'd need a fixed position. Once you pack up to avoid being shot to shreds by cannon, you are highly vulnerable to cavalry, and you cannot redeploy where they will attack you because you will still be in range of the enemy guns. I really don't think this kind of unit is practical.

The reason why longbowmen prevailed against mounted knights is that the French were painfully incompetent. They stormed straight at a fixed English position manned by thousands of archers with arrows perfectly capable of piercing armour. In any battle of later time there would be more extensive use of combined arms, making the archers terribly vulnerable and easy to crush.

I'm surprised that you say one should use Turkish bows, since the Turks were the first people ever to switch entirely to the use of firearms for their elite infantry, altogether discarding their bows. The Janissaries used firearms instead of bows since the mid-fifteenth century.

If your theory were true, then why didn't any people ever win against European musket-armed soldiers using bows and arrows? Don't think they never tried... Even the much more powerful sling in massive numbers could not defeat a handful of Spanish soldiers in America in the early 16th century.

 

aztec paintings show spanish soldiers well covered in plate armor..i think much of the success of guns in america and africa and asia was because of the shock and noise...indians were terrified of the majic of thunder sticks with inviseble lead missles....the bows of america were puny compared to the recurve bows of the mongoles and huns...once plate armor was discarded in europe i think my imaginary force of archers would be quite deadly..tho history would seem to show otherwise..

 

A well-used sling has no trouble with a bit of plated steel. Besides, the Conquistador's typical armour left arms, legs and face exposed. Yet Inca armies of several hundred thousand soldiers could not defeat what was sometimes less than a hundred Spanish soldiers.

The fear caused by firearms obviously only works once. After that, however, foreign peoples even in highly developed countries such as China kept using their bows to no effect against enemy musketmen.

Like I said, it seems to be the Turkish themselves who first lost faith in their own bows.

 

Turkish bowmen could achieve a rate of fire of up to 30 arrows per minute for short periods.

However, this required a LOT of training. Heck, even sophisticated bows with a low draw weight required extensive training to achive range, accuracy and rate of fire, especially over a prolonged period of time.

 

i dont know ricky...ive taught housewives and children to shoot low power bows in a few hours till they could hit a small cardboard box at 40 feet...id bet i could teach a hundred young men to hit a box the size of a redcoat infantry square at 150 yards with 70lb bows...i think the rate of fire and tightness of enemy formations(and lack of any personal armor ) would make my archers more than a match for most musket formations...isnt there a way to run a computer simulation to check my theory..i wouldnt know how to do it myself....

 

Shouldn't we keep in mind that a simple musket (older or modern) had a vast construction cost in comparison to the simple bow or a crossbow? The bow is just a piece of carved wood with a string (apparently from cattle), but the construction of a musket involves metallurgy knowledge and of course the knowledge to make the barrel shoot straight (in addition to the carving of the wood). It was far more easy to teach a man construct a bow (any type) than to construct a musket. Last, don't forget that firing a musket requires a certain amount of gunpowder which was very rare (and so, expensive) the first years musket was introduced in warfare.

 

I don't think so. A bow cost less than a musket, but the process in making a good bow took a lot longer... Several years in fact. Carving a bow requires a lot more than just sculpting a branch off a tree, how many trees do you see are elastic enough to be stretched like a longbow? none, the carved wood needed to be consistently bent over a period of several years before it became flexible enough to be properly used, and bow-making was a difficult art... Too flexible and the string would not be tight enough to fire; not flexible enough and the bow would snap... Bowmaking required as much skill as making musket, and it took many years to complete a military longbow/crossbow, whereas (in theory) it could take only a few days to construct a working musket, as none of the physical properties need to be changed beyond simple metallurgy...

changing the properties of wood (as was dont in bowmaking) took a very long time