[Jesse Pointen]

Ive heard alot but is it only True that musket's have a good range of a 100 yards befor drop out?

I gotta say the way long bow's were made they could sling an arrow 200-300 yards.. dupending on wind speed and direction.

But is the musket still alot better then the long bow?
Musket.
1. musket take's 40 second's reload dupending on skill...
2. musket's have a lazy aim.

Standard bow & arrow.

1. Much faster reload.
2. long range
3. aim duppending on wing and pull.

Witch would be classed best.

[M. Wagner]

I'm pretty sure that the necessary amount of training is the crucial factor.

[George Hill]

First, the major advantage of early firearms is that they hit about ten times as hard as a longbow. A longbow as a general rule cannot penetrate plate armor. Actually, almost nothing can directly compromise the plates of a well made armor.

Firearms are one of the things that can. For a time very heavy breastplates could stand up to them, but firearms got better faster then the armor did.

As to range, the bow was more accurete out to about 80 yards. Past that, you are shooting at an army, and not at a man, but you could hit an army with a longbow out to around 300 yards. With a musket, you could hit an army out to around a hundred yards, or so I'm told. As such, if the enemy do not have much armor, the bow is better. IF they do, the bowmen are out of luck and will be cut down when the enemy walk through the arrows.

Remember that you don't need to be a sniper to hit one of 5000 closely packed men.

[Jesse Pointen]

Lol good point accuracy isnt needed when taking a shot with a musket into a Group of 5000+ soldier's but Also i must add the a bullet slow's down amensly with the gravity dragging it down.. when an arrow uses the gravity pull and bring's the arrow to the same speed as a bullet being shot...

But id rather go with the musket myself.. id rather not take chance's giving that there was thick armour back then and Big sword

But please tell me what you think

[Jean Thibodeau]

Well here is " spotlight " article that covers a lot of this subject: http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=1321

[Stephen Hand]

Muskets have energy to burn compared to bows, are vastly more accurate at all ranges, have double the maximum range and tripled the average casualties in European battles. All the countries of Europe did not spend the equivalent of trillions of dollars in modern terms to reduce their firepower.

Now let's wait for the inevitable claims from the romantics that they did.

[Bjorn Hagstrom]

I have been taught that the smoke and the noise created by the early firearms also contributed to their popularity. Could that be correct?

Also I imagine (from an armchair perspective at least) that the logistics of carrying lead balls and powder are lesss cumbersome than the equivalent amount of arrows or crossbow bolts.

There seem to be many factors at play. The question I guess is if the change in arms from bows and crossbows to muskets shoudl be seen as a "revolution" or a more gradual evolution. They did co-exist for quite some time did they not? I would suppose that there are abundant material in this topic, but do we have a condensed academic consensus on this?

[Jesse Pointen]

Very true but Bow's these day's are considered Better then our standard firearm's. what would be diffrent from the med age.. there are always complication's with whateva is considerd the strongest. personly id rather take my chance's swinging a sword then take a full minute reloading a musket that had little chance of a killer shot, or a bow were accuraccy would take to much brain power..

[Randall Moffett]

The question is somewhat hard to give a definitive answer. If I had to put forth a few ideas it would be that they were easier to learn to use, that anyone could learn to use them with minimal training- at least not several years to be proficient, they do have power to burn as Steven said compared to bows with many many times the initial energy. I think with range it highly unlikely they were very accurate generally as most testing has shown them to decline rather quickly after a certain point (let alone more accurate than longbows, which depends on who you are shooting with I suppose) until they had been around for some time. The musket continues from the 16th on until the american civil war so alot happens. I know some archers that are pretty good marksmen at a fair distance. I do know there are some people who can do pretty amazing things with muskets. In general I think musketmen were not used for range shooting, in fact most historical accounts seem to indicate this is pretty standard not to fire until some 100 or less yards, I think 80 yards was stanard in Napoleans time period, which is with a fairly developed form of the weapon. In the 16th much shorter, it seems Bert Hall indicates just before pikes would engage to make accuracy unimportant. Since you usually are shooting into bodies of men it really is not important how accurate in large battles I suppose, unless you need to take out leaders, Welsh do this in the 13th adn 15th with longbows, in the american revolutionary war is done with muskets. It depends on what musket you are using, what powder, who is using the weapon... a whole world of variables is involved but my initial sentance in pretty much my opinion about how it went from one to the other.

I think what is overlooked is the pike is really the mainstay in most armies in the very late 15th and the 16th into the 17th. Pikes grow in numbers percent wise in most continental armies immensely. It is almost always very heavy pike to everything in most 16th and even in some armies in the 17th century. The tactics do not depend on firearms to win the battle alone. If you have a fair bit of time read Bert Hall's book, 'Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe' it answers this question rather well.

RPM

[Anders Nilsson]

Ease of use is one important factor to keep in mind. You can learn to load and aim a musket in a quite short time. It takes a lot longer to become good with bows.
A bow is also dependent on the physice of it´s user. Average yoe can´t use a longbow, he´s to weak. But with a musket, he is as deadly as anyone.
The musket is also better in defense than the bow. You can fire the musket from a window or while lying down behind a wall. The bow requires more space to use.

[Elling Polden]

[George Hill]

[Caleb Hallgren]

Remember, 'armor' doesn't just mean plate. A good jack can also stand up well to arrows. There are many stories of soldiers looking like porcupines after battles due to the amount of arrows stuck in their armor. Shields are also very useful against arrows.

Guns, even primitive ones, couldn't be defeated by nearly any form of armor.

Arrows could be reduced in their effectiveness by most forms of armor.


Look at the point blank logistics of things too. Lets say I pepper an enemy unit with my musketeers as they approach me. I save a volley for when they are 30 meters away, after which the line of musketeers will withdraw behind my sword-and-buckler men, halberdiers, pikemen, etc. That single volley will be devastating to the enemy since nearly every hit (and it is not at all difficult to hit at that range with anything) will inflict a serious wound, whether or not the enemy is armored or carrying shields.

The same tactic with archers will produce far fewer casualties and far less shock amongst their ranks.

[D. Michael McIntyre]

I wonder if there could be some difference in terms of avoidability. In a rain of arrows, it's probably moot, but if someone is shooting at you close to one on one, wouldn't you have at least some minuscule ability to see the arrow in flight, and take protective action? It seems possible, but I'm open to the suggestion that this is a patently stupid thought. I don't think there's any question that it's virtually impossible to see a musket ball in any meaningful way while it's in flight.

Anyway, the whole discussion is almost begging for some Myth Busters style investigation. Dress some pig carcasses up in various kinds of armour, and shoot at them with period weapons to see what works and what doesn't. If we can't get pig carcasses, we could probably substitute spammers.

[Jesse Pointen]

Remember the fact that musket's were indeed less powerfull then a 22 caliber rifle (and you could catch a 22 round in your hand if u had hard skin...)
And musket where a Great source cuase it was an army of 5000 vs 5000 each shooting each other.

Also a arrow was fired in the sky.. most usualy to get it further also to give it more strength.. but what im getting at is the arrow is fired above eye sight giving you a small chance of noticing it... (dupending on how freaking dumb they were )

But you could see a gunman and take action's such as run away shot the guy or you could just get shot and hope you dont get hit somwhere important.

But musket were more powerfull but they were a joke.. Reload time was rediculous and range and power also aim was big issue.. becuase you had to be close 50 feet range to atcualy do some Serious damage to the target.. but arrow's were more classy you could sling a arrow 400+ feet (dupending on the wing direction) and do the same damage as a musket blowing a hole in a door...

[Caleb Hallgren]

[Robin Smith]

[Stephen Hand]

OK, I'm not going to waste too much of my time on this recurring topic because it would seem that whatever is said, the romantics believe that all the governments of Europe practically sent themselves bankrupt keeping up with each other to buy weapons that were worse than the ones they already had.

Energy - muskets have a lot - bows don't - end of story

Range - muskets can at least in theory shoot a very long way - the 17th century French general the Conde was severely injured through armour when struck by a musket ball when walking over 400 yards from enemy walls. There is no reliable record of an arrow ever being shot this distance. Contemporary sources claimed that musket balls were lethal to 600 yards.

Loading time. I can load and fire a matchlock musket in 40 seconds and a flintlock in 30 and I haven't done that much drill.

Accuracy - a person who has never shot a musket before in their life is generally more accurate over any distance that I have ever seen muskets or bows shot over than all but the best archers. Experienced musketeers can outshoot any archer I've ever seen. Most people can consistently hit a man sized target at 50 yards with a musket. To 100 yards accuracy is OK but beyond that it starts to drop off very dramatically. In my experience the same is true of archery, but the bows are less accurate at every distance. Maximum effective range of both weapons is 100 yards with 50 being a lot better bet for an individual ball or arrow hitting the person it was aimed at.

Actual battlefield results - Battle of Flodden 1513 - Scottish knights in plate armour front a pike schiltron and attack English longbowmen - Eyewitness Bishop Ruthven writes that "they were so encased in armour that the arrows did them no harm"
-Battle of Bicocca 1522 French knights in plate armour front a Swiss pike block and attack Spanish arquebusiers - eyewitness Giovio states that the four ranks of arquebusiers each fired a volley and retired, at the end of which all but one man in the first four ranks of French knights was dead.

As someone who devotes a large part of his life to romantic old weapons, I understand the attachment to old weapons, but they were replaced for a reason and that reason was because newer weapons were more effective, maybe not as nice, certainly not as sexy, but undeniably more efficient.

To the romantics - guns are more effective at killing people than bows - get over it!

Cheers
Stephen

[Randall Moffett]

Can I make a small suggestion. We need to define what era of musket as they are being discussed. This topic really is not likely to show conlusive information either way but the problem here is that the musket is the main missle arm of most military forces for hundreds of years. It clearly does not remain the same over this time. THe types of powder, barrel length, design, all sort of changes take place to make it more effective. The earliest muskets were somewhat stubby and club like, a musket from the napoleonic war not so, long and sleek. The some people are using the early areas while others the late is not going to help those who know little to nothing about muskets only make them more confused.

Firearms have a huge amount of power behind them. I'd find it hard to believe by the 16th century musket balls had the same force as a .22 caliber but I'd have to go and take a look at this as I do not know off the top of my head and I have a date with about 6 volumes of medieval manuscripts today. So perhaps someone else knows off the top of their heads to tell the answer to this? My assumption is that early firearms were pretty powerful. The aerodynamics of the ball would kill the flight by drag but a person can throw a rock pretty far by pure strength. Besides if you shoot the gun off at close ranges it does not matter as much.

Caleb,

I think what you said regarding this 30 meters is important to the tactics they employed with muskets. It does just that. More casualties even to armoured men. While archers at that range could damage armoured men the same number of men with easier to use weapons could do the same damage or more. It also indicates the range issues with early firearms and how they dealt with them. If they do not fire accurately after a point then do not do it that way. It perhaps is not they cannot shoot further but it is most effective thet way. Just like it typically works better to hit from the flanks or behind a pike block with heavy horse. It can be done perhaps but likely not as effective.

RPM

[Elling Polden]

If i remember correctly, in a non-military context, more people are killed by .22 LR than any other caliber in the world.

This beeing said, a .22 LR delivers about 95 ibs/ft at point blank. A .69 ACW era musket with black powder and ball delivers more that 1300 Ibs/ft.
This is more than a 5.56 NATO, the current service round in most of the world.

Btw, a baseball thrown by a pro pitcher delivers about 85 Ibs/ft. A soccer ball kicked by a pro could deliver 200 Ibs/ft!
But this is, litteraly, another ball game. While it is posible to stop a soccer ball with your hand, a bullet will penetrate, even at half the kinetic energy.