Flintlock Muskets are better than English Longbows

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Muskets...slow to reload, inaccurate, unreliable, and they throw up massive plumes of smoke! Why use them at all when a quieter, faster, and more reliable weapon not only existed, but predated the musket by so many years?? Well the disadvantages of the musket may not be quite so numerous as you imagine! In this video, I discuss why the flintlock musket was a superior weapon- both of war and of battle- than the longbow.
You can find my editor's website, and his new book, here: www.summertime...
...and you can find the blog I reference here: kabinettskrieg...
...and the video from Tod's Workshop about armour versus longbows: • ARROWS vs ARMOUR - Med...
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[@BrandonF]

This video was sponsored by Skillshare! The first 1,000 people to use this link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/brandonf10211 A month free trial isn't only a great way to get access to thousands of videos on all sorts of amazing topics, it's also an excellent way to support my channel. Thank you all!

[@weebishusername9288]

I need to know if Wales is an important country

[@ComradeHellas]

I am actually puzzled that a video like this is needed.

[@vaclav_fejt]

Don't think you've hidden your artificial beef with Atun Shei well enough. :-D He will find you, and he will make fun of you. Again.

[@arnijulian6241]

I always find it hilarious when people try to compare the bow to the predictable operation & expectation of deflagration ordinance! Never Mind the difference in training time of weeks compared compared to month or years The nonsense about rain but even by Leonardo's time his wheel lock covered pan/later designs mitigated much of this problem to at minimum practically guarantee one volley. I want attention to a sling lobbing a grenade;) Because I think that would have worked to upset tight packed formations cheaply & effectively? Edit: What if perhaps you just built a pre determined length of cord/rope into a grenade to assist in it biomechanical propulsion? I'd be curious to see the results for ground warfare.

[@arnijulian6241]

If injured or ill a musket men can still possibly load & fire unlike a bow men whom relies on biomechanics. Just something to add to the pro's of deflagration;)

[@mario_1683]

The best argument: If bows were better, they would have used them.

[@blakebailey22]

I left this reply on another comment, but just a thought experiment is that sometimes armies just don't come up with a certain idea. Jeorge Sparve from the slingshot channel indulged in some experimental archeology and made a bow that was capable of holding an arrow magazine, made out of materials available to the time period and made with the tools and techniques of the time as well. Maybe there was a hidden use for the bow that no one came up with simply because they didn't come up with it. No one came up with the magazine fed bow until recently.

[@Del_S]

Ah, but maybe it was a conspiracy! Big Musket suppressed the truth, or something.... :P

[@danielomar9712]

@@Del_S They shattered the truth! With a volley! A big volley!

[@somehistorystuff4859]

This is usually but not universally true. There are many circumstances where despite certain innovations being technologically and logistically possible they took a significant period of time to come about (intermediate calibre rifles being the one I can most easily think of). There are also examples where doctrines with inefficiencies were commonly used taking a while to come up with better ones (the 18th century has at least a good bit of this but it's more apparent with the pike and shot era especially in terms of cavalry doctrine). There are also examples of times when more efficient military solutions are politically infeasible such as with the mass mobilisation of citizen armies as pioneered by Napoleon. I would say that longbows would be subject to all of these and more to some degree as well as just their factor of really not being as useful as muskets.

[@sowianskizonierz2693]

@@blakebailey22 The instant Legolas really wouldn't be that useful as compared to a regular bow. In the best case scenario it'll have an advantage in firing a quick arrow burst at the beginning, but the archers will still get tired - and the regular bow will keep on going for a much longer period of time.

[@halfmask3]

"If artillery is the king of battle, then logistics is the god of war." This video has summoned a like from me regardless, but this quote ought to get it's own like button.

[@drtidrow]

Reminds me of a saying I heard some time ago: "Lieutenants and captains study tactics, majors and colonels study strategy, generals study logistics."

[@Kevin_the_Caveman]

It was overlooked for the longest time as it was seen by largely aristocratic officer corps as unbecoming of gentlemen... Military academies being themselves aristocratic, it was neglected for the longest time. Revolutionary France, having no such impediment for obvious reasons, had an edge in logistics, and it quickly caught on. Not for everyone though, as the Russian underperformance in WWI is largely due to lacking logistics, again explainable by a very aristocratic military

[@JimmyS.25]

That's going in my quote book btw

[@SStoj]

Common misconception, that's actually Kratos

[@erictheepic5019]

@@Kevin_the_Caveman >Not for everyone though, as the Russian underperformance in WWI is largely due to lacking logistics, again explainable by a very aristocratic military Replace 'WWI' with their current war, and this is equally as valid. Well, 'aristocratic' is a very generous term, but anyhow.

[@SaftonYT]

A forum that I frequent used to discuss this subject quite often, with the occasional proponent of the bow popping up. One poster -- a veteran of the Canadian Army and an amateur military historian -- discussed the subject of bows vs. early firearms in a fairly in-depth and intriguing manner. I'll post his words here for those who are interested: "In any event in the late 16th century all these points of this thread were specifically brought up in England during the firearms debate. In 1590 Sir John Smythe, a proponent of the bow, published a book arguing for archery, stating the bow had a rate of fire four times greater, was more reliable (matchlocks of the time were hideously finicky) and that that although the bow might be weaker, it was more effective at terrifying the enemy with flights of arrows and wounded soldiers. In 1594 Captain Humphrey Barwick responded, stating that rate of fire on the battlefield was not as important as Smythe thought. Against charging cavalry neither archers nor muskets would get many shots, and against infantry both would have multiple chances to fire. And then the far greater lethality of the musket would be telling - Barwick considered Smythe's argument about the "terror" of the bow nonsense. Barwick also pointed out that while the musket was less reliable, it demanded little of the firer. The bow however required the archer to be in top physical condition for best performance. Given the condition of soldiers on military campaigns in the 16th century, Barwick pointed out that it was better to rely on the weapon than on the health of the soldier. Barwick finished by pointing out that muskets were the way of the future with many opportunities for improving the weapon, training and tactics - bows had peaked, but muskets were only going to get better. Barwick and his fellows won the debate, and the English abandoned archery, with the musket and pike ruling the battlefields of the English Civil War half a century later. The argument for the Natives converting from bows to muskets comes to us from the Europeans rather than the Natives themselves. The Europeans (who acknowledged the limitations of their weapons and still held a sort of romantic fascination for the bow) wondered why the Natives were so quick to adopt muskets when they were skilled archers, and muskets were loud, noisy, slow firing, harder to acquire ammunition for, and somewhat incompatible with their traditional "skulking." They felt it largely came down to a matter of firepower. An arrow could be deflected by leaves, scrub and bush, and could even be dodged by an alert warrior. In the skirmish warfare of the North American bush, being able to fire repeatedly didn't mean a great deal if your opponent had already sought cover - you had your best chance to kill with the first shot. And a musket would go right through the foliage, and would ensure a nasty wound on impact. Although a bow could be fired faster, a good musket shot or salvo would deliver a much more devastating blow. For warriors skilled in bounding overwatch (which they called fighting "blackbird fashion") and fire and maneuver (Native tactics more closely resembled those of modern infantry than the Europeans, and calling them merely 'hit-and-run' is simplistic) that ability to make the attack count was crucial, and provided a key military advantage that all the benefits of the bow could not overcome. On brief reflection, I see some parallels with what we saw in Afghanistan from the Taliban. The RPG-7 is less accurate, harder to carry and conceal, with less ammo and a lower rate of fire than the AK-47, and with old PG-7 warheads it's not even all that effective against even our lightest armoured vehicles - but what it has is much higher lethality against infantry. The rate of fire of the AK-47 gives it a higher potential kill rate, but in practice (save in the hands of a handful of marksmen) all it did was make lots of noise: once a firefight began, everyone sought cover and all that rapid fire just kicked up dust. After the opening shots, almost no one ever died to direct fire. Casualties were almost always suffered in the opening salvos, and there the RPG had a massive advantage. So the Europeans and Natives fought very differently in their wars, but both found reasons to consider the musket (and we're talking the deeply flawed matchlocks here too) superior." ------------ Not directly related to the subject of flintlock vs. English longbow, but I figure it's still tangentially relevant. If the comparatively crude arquebus still managed to dethrone the bow at a time when the latter had tons of institutional & cultural inertia behind it in both England and North American indigenous tribes... that says a lot about the premise of "those guys were so silly, they should have raised a corps of longbowmen out of thin air for Wellington!" (even putting aside the fact that that supposed request is almost certainly apocryphal).

[@edwardmaginot]

26:00 Precisely, the musket HAS ended plate armour as we knew it, but for this we should exit the flintlock musket and 18th century, and instead check the Renaissance and the first western firearms. The subject is complex, I don't claim to have all the elements, but the spirit is that the effectiveness and armor penetration have led to the decline of armor as an individual protection, until bulletproof and some other things in the Modern Era. While the harquebus isn't much concerned about this, or at least it wasn't reputed for that, a small arm I call the "True" Musket did. It was a matchlock big harquebus which had a caliber so high that the plate armor of its time couldn't fare well for most. Though, the Musket was heavy and bulky, it required a fourquine for handling and so the musketeers, little mobile because of these characteristics, needed pikemen to protect them. This was until the replacement of Muskets by lighter and maybe more effective rifles that made the riflemen more mobile while the apparition of the bayonet has allowed them to not need pikemen anymore. Maybe these rifles were less Anti-Tanky, but Wall Guns have surely replaced the Musket for this role anyway. Back to my point, the ineffectiveness of armor against the evolving firearms has led to its own evolution into thicker cuirasses but less body coverage because of the weight this implies, until the point armors were only chestplates and helmets. Another evolution is the apparition of a kind of line in the middle of the armor to try to "slope" them in order to resist bullets better by ricocheting them. Bullet armors, if you try to mind me about them, are one of the steps of this evolution, and it seems to have failed too. We can eventually advance the Gods of War that are logistics and economy about the supply of armors, because it is possible that a full suit of bullet armor was also too expensive and impractical to supply and use which wouldn't help in preventing its decline. The Cuirassiers used as an example in this video wear only a chestplate and a helmet that doesn't cover the whole head in the same manner as of a medieval helmet : this is pretty much the end of the line for gunpowder warfare armors. I don't even talk of the cannon which has literally helped blasting the medieval society away! Bows, swords, spears and such have existed since forever, and even if they probably changed a lot in the prehistoric and ancient periods, I doubt they have changed as much the world in their long histories as firearms did during the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance alone. Note, I don't really source this all (except about cannons I mentioned a little, but it's a video in french from a military history streamer), as I gathered that up a bit chaotically from everywhere so I would like a bit of light on the subject so I finally come up with something solid. 29:00 Even though a firearm faces reliability issues in comparison due to what it engages and its inherent complexity (simple is often sturdier), the longbow probably sees its problems, and some can be similar. Will the longbow's wood be of great quality always? Will it last very long? And what about the rope? It isn't unbreakable either, though it can be assumed sturdier as it's only wood, rope, and craftmanship. In general, I blame Romantism, and many other stupid beliefs and lies we inherited from the 19th century, like the obscurantist Middle Ages. Many authors passed their time dissing the Modern Era because it faces problems (and still does), and notably on the basis that a thousand years ago there was a golden age where nobody was cultured but everyone lived with honor and justice, in proximity to nature ("ignorance is bliss"), like if modernity and science were the cause of every problems that only appeared because of guns and industrialization, and not of things that could date back from their cherished period. That's Romantism in a nutshell, and it's still dominating today as people still want the Middle Ages to be better than the things after them, and it honestly pisses me off as behind this bs there is only denial of modernity and convenient rewriting.

[@mangalores-x_x]

We also associate plate armor to the middle ages and ignore that they did reach up into the 17th century with high status plate armor keeping ability to withstand musket/arquebus fire and early cuirassiers wore so called three quarter plate aka they ditched some armor on the lower legs to reinforce the rest of the armor to extend their ability to be bullet proof. That is where the term came from for heavy cavalry. They were still the shock cavalry of the 16th / 17th century. However in contrast as all infantry started picking up guns and only rarely ended in melee, they ditched their armor earlier because whether you got shot or not was considered more or less bad luck and foot soldiers had better abilities by being mobile. Overall by the end of Thirty Years War the transition to all musket armies with pretty much ditched armor for everyone started. Even the late heavy cavalry rather not get involved into battle in such a way that they needed it and overall artillery was more and more important on the field. TLDR: plate armor disappeared in the 17th century and what we considered line tactics appeared in the 18th. I would argue a good number of centuries later than most people associate plate armor with.

[@edwardmaginot]

@@mangalores-x_x Thanks for detailing my explanation and adding other useful precisions. Indeed, the Thirty Years war has pretty much laid the basics of Early Modern Warfare, like the role of artillery, infantry and cavalry in a line battle.

[@cynicalhumanist5632]

An additional point I haven't seen mentioned yet: In ranged combat, which is therefore inherently linear combat, firearms have a flatter trajectory at anything more than very short range. This makes them more dangerous at range than longbows in this style of warfare, because you're hitting a line of potential targets (or a target moving forward or backward), not a point coming down vertically. Medieval warfare was almost always in blocks of troops, tailored for the melee, and these were the targets best suited for the longbow at range, because as long as you aim for the center of mass, you have a great chance of hitting something at any trajectory. And a bonus point, you can see arrows coming, and for a longer time, so a more agile formation can react or develop tactics in advance if they expect to face longbows.

[@vatsmith8759]

But on the other hand, here in England I need a licence to fire a musket but not to shoot a longbow.

[@FlyingNinjaish]

I think fouling was a much larger concern when it came to rifles, which required a tight fit on the barrel to begin with. Muskets all had windage to start with, so you'd need a lot of fouling to start obstructing the bore.

[@baddog9320]

Not true. Fouling is a problem in flintlock, when the pan fire doesn't reach the charge. This is a common problem with flintlock. But don't think this means all the time. And it's a easy fix also. For the most part. Weapons cleaned daily won't have this problem. 20 rounds in a day would be a lot.

[@daisyshields8342]

A year later this video is still probably one of the best I've seen

[@semajniomet981]

I can think of quite a few advantages that a musket has over a 160-180 lb. war bow, some of which may or may not be mentioned in your video. (I'm writing this comment at the beginning, so I don't know if you're going to state these as reasons.) (1) Muskets can be pre-loaded and kept loaded until they are needed. Not quite possible with any kind of bow, actually. (2) Minimal strength needed to kept aimed straight. (3) Muskets don't tire the user as much as repeatedly using a war bow. In theory, this means that the musket's rate of fire will not decrease over time, or at least not as quickly as that of a war bow. All these are merely theories on my end, and are not necessarily the truth. Also bear in mind that I wrote the above at the beginning of the video, so I don't know if these are true or not.

[@FreedomFox1]

No one who is familiar with the history of firearms would ask this question. The flintlock musket was the result of hundreds of years of innovation. Early firearms were indeed comparable to common bows (often crossbows) and as a result these armies were typically comprised of a mixture of both (to take advantage of their various strengths under different conditions). So it was after hundreds of years of innovation and experience that bows were slowly moved away from, at least by any army that could choose between the two. An enormous amount of trial, experience and innovation went into this change. Yes, there was a point when the choice between bow and firearms was a close call. But once we get to muskets, that point had been passed hundreds of years ago.

[@LtBob38]

One big advantage of the Longbow you missed: It has two LRM 20s and two LRM 5s. Only like 300 BV more than a Catapult but a lot more missiles

[@johns3106]

Lots of good points here, but it is interesting that no mention was made of “stopping power”. Much as you wouldn’t use a .22 instead of a 30-06 to hunt deer, the force behind a musket ball is MUCH greater than that of an arrow…if an arrow is traveling 200 yards in 2 seconds (for example), a musket ball is traveling several times faster, hitting the enemy harder and causing more debilitating injuries (or death) than arrows would.

[@benjaminstevens4468]

You’d drop the bow and pull your sidearm, no one would put extra risk to their life, in order to hang onto something, that they could replace with a couple days labor, if they have to break and regroup after losing the day.

[@theredpanda3729]

A great deal of the arguing regarding the efficacy of the longbow v. the musket are done in total abstraction from any real conditions, as most people only really know about the longbow in abstract, from tabletop or video games or history books they read as a child. They of course are not familiar with any of the conditions of war around the adoption of the musket in Europe, and I have seen plenty of people cite again specific examples in the European conquest of America where bands of native Indians would "kill many a Spanish- or Englishman" with their bows, all done with zero context around these people's or culture's lives. The Indians had very few workshops for the production of muskets or musket balls, or mines for black powder or iron to produce working muskets, and then whenever they captured muskets they did not have the resources to maintain them. In combination with the examples given by these arguers as being almost exclusively skirmishes or small ambushes or even raids, it is unsurprising that their arguments hold much merit. Most people know their information on historical or even contemporary weaponry almost exclusively from generalized examples of their usage, and know of the more "boring" side of historical life even less, which of course is the majority of it, and that means they lack context. This applies to almost all history and even science, "popular" discourse all being done in abstract with little regard to the real conditions under which things operate, from funding to transportation to politics. A classic example repeated throughout history by disconnected nobles and our modern "internet scholars" is the belief that armies can "feed themselves" from wildlife or such, and thus don't need large supply trains to support them. This being prevalent enough to get special emphasis by Sun Tzu in his famous work "Art of War", a book which he made partially because he had to lecture many Chinese nobles on the basics of warfare, nobles which often formed the generals of his armies, and who were often ignorant to the reality of warfare. anyway i have to acknowledge that i am very much the pot calling the kettle black, as i have no formal degree in history or warfare, and my only credentials are my time served in the army as an engineer. by acknowledging this i submit myself to be hung in the town square for the blasphemy of writing two paragraphs on the matter with the consultation of zero sources and zero credentials relevant to the topic. May it be known I regret my crimes and if spared I will never engage in "internet discourse" without the use of relevant authoritative sources. My life is in your hands.

[@Del_S]

The only Longbow more effective than muskets carries hellfire missiles and a 30mm cannon.

[@SonsOfLorgar]

And the only Archer company more effective than a 17th century musket line has 12 pieces on six heavy duty wheels, a self propelled hydraulically articulated all terrain armored chassi and a magasine fed multi piece ammo 155mm howitzer with 50km range and a remote controlled weapon station sporting either an FN MAG or a 'Ma deuce' machinegun for close in self defence.

[@colbunkmust]

This is a valid statement.

[@GeneralJackRipper]

loooooool

[@essexclass8168]

Okay but a good old Massachusetts Minuteman beats an apache, it's base, and the cities around it any day

[@colbunkmust]

@@essexclass8168 yeah, but by that logic a three-prong spear or a large freshwater fish that produces caviar is also better than a longbow 😂

[@MickHaggs]

*Reads title* Well, yeah. Obviously. Guess I don't need to watch this video. *Watches video anyway*

[@Loromir17]

I probably would be like "duh" if I didn't play too much musket-involving Warband mods back in the day. Remembering the machine-gun native american archers makes me wanna hear why precisely that would be just video game bullshit.

[@vanivanov9571]

Haven't seen the archers in Warband, so I can't comment. Overall though, you can expect a rate of fire of 1 arrow every 5 seconds or less, compared to 1 about every 20; so rate of fire is a legitimate concern.

[@Loromir17]

@@vanivanov9571 well, the rate of fire does not exist in a vaccuum (not literally). I actually somewhat disagree with Brandon's point about archers getting tired because you don't need a very powerful bow or heavy arrows when your opponent only wears clothing (I do understand he's talking about the English longbow specifically though). Still, you can only have so many arrows on one person, not to mention that producing arrows is an economical nightmare compared to some lead beads and dried dung extract. Native americans swapped bows for guns pretty quickly and for a good reason.

[@vanivanov9571]

​@@Loromir17 Yeah, Joe Gibbs can shoot something like a 160# bow all day, IIRC. The Qing specifically got people to use bows under their maximum draw weight for faster firing. Meanwhile, muskets need to be periodically cleaned of powder-residue, or it gets really awkward. As for arrows... 60x 80g arrows is about the weight of a Brown Bess, and the bow weighs almost nothing, so it's either the same or better for the archers. At Carrhae, they just put most of the arrows with the baggage animals, and it was no trouble to keep restocking the archers all day long. Black powder was actually fairly expensive, along with lead. Enough that many armies didn't give their troops much ammo to practice with, whereas you could practice cheaply with a bow. And the American Indians could actually shoot straight, so that made a big difference, but they didn't really fully change over to guns until rifles were part of American culture, IIRC.

[@dragonace119]

@@vanivanov9571 The question is would you prefer 1000 men that have 10 shots each or 100 men with 30 shots each?

[@Old_Jack_Ketch]

I was in the army as infantry for a number of years , and Brandon is absolutely correct about ambushing. Silence is critical up until the moment the ambush is sprung. Then, it’s the complete opposite: you want as much noise, light, smoke, shrapnel and whatever other shit you can think of to amplify shock and confusion.

[@matt86096]

I never understood why modern know-it-alls critique or judge the adoption or discontinuation of military arms /armor or tactics within history as ignorant or misguided. Throughout all of human history nations rose and fell due to the ever ongoing arms race. Don't you think if ANY advantage on the battlefield was to be gained a nation would adopt it? People in the pre modern era weren't stupid. If the longbow was replaced then there must have been a good strategic reason for it, and I think Brandon hit all those points on the head.

[@thewerepyreking]

Agreed, but there are instances where it takes some blood to catch up. Is this instance the hundreds of years where flintlock rifles overtook bows? No. Muskets were quickly viewed as better, and economics were the main limiting factor overall.

[@vanivanov9571]

Yes, this is very ignorant... you think Europe comprises the whole world. Bows and guns went on in parallel up until the 19th century, outside of Europe. The Samurai and Chinese had fine guns (the latter having invented them), but still considered archery quite useful. And as you said, they weren't idiots. They just had a culture that maintained some warrior traditions, where people spent their free time training with bows or the like, unlike Western Europe who destroyed their lower and middle classes and reduced them factory workers dying of cholera.

[@ottersirotten4290]

"Don't you think if ANY advantage on the battlefield was to be gained a nation would adopt it?" No. Napolion refused to equip his Forces with breach loading rifles(100 years before those became wide spread) despite having the opportunity to do so, Ian McCollum of forgotten weapons made a Video about that

[@armelburgess8651]

@@vanivanov9571 He never said that Europe was the world. The discussion was regarding Europe specifically. You reached this ignorant conclusion on your own.

[@vanivanov9571]

​@@armelburgess8651 "Duur... he never said Europe was the world," Can we get a prize for Sherlock, over here? Maybe a dictionary, so he can learn what "implication," means. But OK, he didn't imply Europe was the world...? That would mean he just implied that everyone outside of Europe WAS stupid, since they didn't do what Europe did. Very fitting point for someone with a King Louis XIV profile. Seriously, what kind of idiocy is it to whine that bow vs gun is a topic SPECIFIC TO EUROPE...? Sounds like you're desperate to keep inside a bubble of Eurocentrism.

[@musketbread5936]

Commenter: Noo!!! The Long bow is better than a flintlock! Chad fusiliers & musketeers: haha line goes brrr

[@jaysonlima9271]

I don't know why but this comment tickled me lol but yeah...no ... being on the receiving end of anything going brrr ...un-fun

[@Harsh-tf9he]

more like BOOM

[@legofan4047]

Nice one, but people that bring the argument often don’t think about loistics etc. and don‘t want to hear it, most, as far as I know, just wanna be right and will change up the fictional battle scenario in favor of the longbow… facts sadly don‘t help to change their minds, because, remember, all people back then were just stupid!!

[@watchface6836]

What was it that Napoleon said? Amateurs study tactics, experts study logistics?

[@theaman42069]

Why did they even use longbows? They should have just climbed trees, wore armour, and used machineguns.

[@vanivanov9571]

Bows and guns went on in parallel up until the 19th century, outside of Europe. The Samurai and Chinese had fine guns (the latter having invented them), but still considered archery quite useful. And as you implied, they weren't idiots. They just had a culture that maintained some warrior traditions, where people spent their free time training with bows or the like, unlike Western Europe who destroyed their lower and middle classes and reduced them factory workers dying of cholera.

[@GeneralJackRipper]

It's the same when comparing tanks. Yup, the tank with superior gun and armor will win the fight while they are standing a few hundred yards from each other one day a month, but the tank that wins the war is usually the one that is the best on the other 29 days of the month.

[@1KosovoJeSrbija1]

@@watchface6836 *proceeds to have all his horses die in russia*

[@samueljohnson4414]

A factor you surprisingly didn't mention was that guns in general have a much higher lethality to bows. And just the ability to remove people from the field with each and every skirmish can win wars.

[@Del_S]

Good point. A longbow hitting you is hardly gonna be fun times, but a musket ball is literally bone-shattering.

[@nehukybis]

Brandon didn't mention buck and ball, which is when you turn your musket into a 10 or 12 gauge shotgun. Imagine a line of infantry firing that at you at close range.

[@LOOY756]

With spherical musket balls vs war arrows you're probably not going to be much use after you take a non-glancing hit from either weapon so I don't think that would have been a deciding factor. Though guns are definitely "messier" and more intimidating.

[@vanivanov9571]

Umm, you have a source for that? The accounts I've seen of musket and arrow injuries doesn't seem to imply one does a lot better than the other. People have continued on after getting shot many times with modern firearms (more familiar with those), but I don't know of anyone without armour continuing with multiple arrow wounds.

[@vanivanov9571]

@@LOOY756 Right. It's a fairly insignificant difference. The main advantage to a musket is you can hit more than one person per shot, with luck, due to overpenetration.

[@brandond9900]

So as someone who currently shoots a 85lbs warbow. May I give my two cents on this and bring up another point on why Brandon F is correct. While the musket maybe prone to miss firing or having wet powder. The archer is also prone to being, sick, hurt, or just in bad shape. I had a medical reaction a couple months ago that kept me from being able to fully draw my bow for a while. My body needs to be near top shape for me to be able to use my bow. You don’t need that for a musket, you can give it to the sick, the old, or young and they’ll always be able to use it.

[@LOL-zu1zr]

I think this is the most important factor.

[@vanivanov9571]

...The elderly, children, and the sick? No, you can't have those people marching with you on campaign, they can't even carry their own gear. So if someone is made so sick he can't use his bow, he's barely in a state to march with a heavy pack and perform construction.

[@SonsOfLorgar]

@@vanivanov9571 who said anything about marching with heavy packs? Anyone fit enough to reload, lift and aim a firearm can still participate in defending a village, an outpost, a city or a fort unlike a bow, pike, spear or swordsman too weak to draw a bow or keep up in a melee.

[@colbunkmust]

@@vanivanov9571 Debilitating illnesses were not uncommon on the pre-20th century battlefield. It is more likely that the casualty figures from disease are higher than those from the battlefield in historical military campaigns. Even high ranking individuals were prone to this issue, Edward the Black Prince of England died of dysentery while on campaign in Spain. The Siege of Harfluer in 1415 left many of the besiegers and besieged with the same issue. Basically my point is, it was quite common for soldiers to get sick or injured(obviously) while doing their job.

[@vanivanov9571]

@@colbunkmust ...Ummm... it's utterly obvious that disease casualties are higher than casualties from wounds in most wars in history, yes. There should be no question about that. And what's your point? If someone gets smallpox, you don't give them a gun, you get them as far away from the rest of your army as you can. They're called, "DEBILITATING" illness for a reason, you can't just ignore it and fight at 50% HP. If you figure this is so common, get me a case where they say the archers were too weak to draw their bows, but apparently perfectly fit to fight in other capacities.

[@secdup2510]

Unlike a longbow you don't need to start training with a musket from adolescence to be combat effective with it, the hardest part is making sure they stay in a somewhat cohesive line and don't run away before firing their first shot.

[@CorePathway]

This. Take a recruit, give him a week’s training and he can load and fire a musket. And then he can attach a bayonet and charge with a spear/club.

[@phuripongphansiri1740]

That’s the thing with crossbow and guns, they are easier to aim and shoot therefore more accurate. It takes far more skill for archer to achieve the same accuracy

[@Jake-dh9qk]

@@phuripongphansiri1740 Musket accuracy is advertised at about 45% hit ratio during training situations but in combat it was prone to a lot of human error that dropped the accuracy to literally 1%. In Napoleonic war records, commanders would estimate about 400 shots per 1 casualty and that was the norm throughout France, British and Prussian armies. Guns are definitely easier to train, but their biggest advantage is fear factor rather than actual casualty production. One of the most recent sources depicting human error in musketry is during the US civil war, after the battle of Gettysburg, they collected 27,000 muskets from both sides. 24,000 of those muskets were still loaded and over half of them were loaded incorrectly. Some muskets had double the amount of gunpowder, some had too little and some even accidentally put 2-3 balls inside. It's because the extreme fear of the battle made the soldiers completely unaware of all the mistakes they were doing. To put things in perspective, if a line of 300 musketeers fired, 2/3 of them would miss have shot too high or too low. Some muskets would've failed to ignite, and majority of remaining the men who loaded their guns properly would've still missed due to smoke and recoil+exhaustion or miscalculated the enemy's distance.

[@shadowdeslaar]

@@Jake-dh9qk as much as I believe you. This would apply to all warfare, and therefore… some humans are naturally suited for combat. Otherwise… Roman Legions wouldn’t be as known as today.

[@reactionare]

@@Jake-dh9qk well battle back then less casualties were from the actual combat most casualties came from them routing and being cut down in the process and even more died from campaign situations than actual battle such as disease, starvation and other beautiful stuff of 18th century warfare

[@NUSensei]

Donald Featherstone in his book _The Bowmen of England_ sums it up wells: the firearm is a perfectible weapon. The bow is tied to the ability and capacity of archer, whose shot will slacken as they are diseased, fatigued, etc. A firearm will always shoot as long as its user can hold it. As history has no doubt shown, the firearm was a platform that could be improved; the bow remained almost untouched for thousands of years. No nation that had access to firearms chose to use bows over the more economical choice. People may romanticise older weapons, but practicality and effectiveness are the judges. Curiously enough for those nerds at gaming discussions, there is a recorded skirmish between Napoleonic musketmen and archers, recorded in the Memoirs of Baron de Marbot when his infantry fought against irregular Baskirs at Plinitz, who were mounted archers. Marbot was very dismissive: "Our soldiers were not in the least alarmed at the sight of these semi-barbarous Asiatics, whom they nicknamed cupids, because of their bows and arrows...I had these [prisoners] brought to the Emperor, who, after examining them expressed his surprise at the spectacle of these wretched horsemen who were sent, with no other arms than bows and arrows, to fight European soldiers armed with sabres, lances, guns, and pistols!…" While Marbot himself was hit in the thigh by an arrow, he judged these Baskirs as crudely ineffective, with only 1 in 10 arrows hitting something. While these Baskirs were far from elite archers, the in ability for a mobile unit of horse archers to shred apart a tightly packed formation of unarmoured infantry tells us something about why bows are not the fearful weapon that modern enthusiasts might want to believe. On a side-note, the demonstration of the weapon switching by the editor (17:37) is a bit of a weak argument. While Asiatic mounted archers might have stowed their bows into a special bow quiver, there's no evidence that foot archers would have attempted to retain their bows by wearing it over their torso. The logical thing if a quick weapon switch was needed was to simply drop the bow. If the fight required an archer to enter the melee, it's unlikely they would have needed to switch back to their bow. Either they were fighting to the death or they were out of arrows. There's no evidence of archers actually losing clashes because of slow weapon switching. It's also worth noting that the bow being used in the demonstration is a light, short modern bow with a larger brace height, not the longer bows with heavier draws used historically. Carrying a bow like that would be quite impractical, let alone fighting with one.

[@vanivanov9571]

Clean slate seems a good idea. As we agreed elsewhere, that gives a misleading impression. Many nations outside of Europe did maintain their bows, well into the 19th century; and all the major ones demonstrated the ability to make firearms, or did produce many firearms as well as bows. Even in Europe, the Ottoman Empire continued to use bows until the 18th century. While the bow might appear untouched, it actually improved immensely over the span of millennia, where it used to be considered equal or lesser to the sling and the pilum. I also mentioned the Kalmyks, another group of horsearchers who did defeat squares of the Grande Armee, taking over a thousand prisoners, so that anecdote can be put down to French arrogance; considering 40,000 men were minced at Borodino, and half a million died on the march to Russia, they're not going to be impressed by some minor losses to guerilla warfare. Even so, Musketeers had about a 5 to 7% rate of accuracy in the Napoleonic wars, so ~10% is actually very good with the archers. Overall, the fact musketeers only got 6 rounds to practice with in most armies, and bowmen train from boyhood... I'd say it's no contest as to who wins. We've established better accuracy and rate of fire for the bow, so it was only later on and with better training that the gun really eclipsed it. That's why so many nation didn't swap earlier. And good point about melee. The longbow is considerably lighter, and the weight of a musket is actually the same as about ~60 160# longbow arrows. The weight of a musket cartridge is also ~56% of that, 45g vs 80g. So, a longbowmen has to carry a lot less, and so can easily carry a serious melee weapon like a bardiche, longsword, spear, etc., if you really want to use your ranged troops in melee.

[@baleriontheblackdread6679]

​@@vanivanov9571 mate just accept it the musket is the superior weapon in an realistic scenario, if only because you get tired shooting a bow also yeah, all those other nations didn't focus on modern weapons like muskets and preferred their tratitonal weapons and that's exactly one of the reasons how western Europe managed to conquer basically the entire world with a far smaller population

[@vanivanov9571]

​@@baleriontheblackdread6679 Well, I think you should consider the facts I've presented, and tell me why they don't seem correct. To me, they seem quite compelling. Additionally, contemporary studies show that even trained Prussian soldiers could only hit a 30x2m wall at a range of 75m HALF the time, using 18th century rifled muskets. Meanwhile, bowmen can hit individual men at that range. As for getting tired, Crecy was fought after a forced march, after much of the army suffered debilitating sickness and many were sent home, and with low provisions, IIRC, winning one of the greatest victories in history. Tiredness and illness have always been part of warfare, but people continued to use bows until the 19th century, so there's no reason to assume this was a major setback. As I said, the other nations did mass-produce guns, from the 16th century onwards. Many of them were better marksman than the Europeans, from what details I can find, so the gap between bow and gun should have been larger. And yet, they didn't all mass-produce guns and replace all bows. In fact, the Ming who did use a modern-style musketeer army lost to the Manchus, who were primarily horse-archers. That's how the Qing Dynasty was formed, with the greatest territorial extent in Chinese history. So the idea Europe was superior and won due to guns is an incredibly simplistic fiction, which ignores all other factors.

[@petriew2018]

@@vanivanov9571 I just really have to call out how you cherry pick history in a lot of places, since everything you said about the Ming-Qing transition is dynasty is frankly wrong. The Ming lost because they were riven with internal division and multiple armed revolts (Beijing, the Ming capital, had already been captured by a rebel warlord when the Manchus arrived), and practically bankrupt... they were an empire teetering on a brink, the Jurchens were just the ones to pushed them over the edge. There was no true uniformity in it's army, or the funds to field a western-style gun-based army. It had some modern formations, it also had a lot formations of literal peasants with bamboo spears... the Jurchens who became the Manchu won because they were better unified and in a large part by simply buying generals away from the Ming with promises of rank and riches in the new administration. Most (over 70% by most credible historians) of the Qing armies at the time of victory were chinese defectors (many with guns and cannons), not horse archers. The weapon that won that war was frankly better PR. You really need citations for the Kalmyk thing... when and where that happened is critically important because the Grande Armee that marched on Moscow is not the one that retreated from it, so actual dates and battle reports are critically important for that anecdote to have any comparative value in this conversation You're also seriously over-estimating the effectiveness of the average bowman compared to the average musketman. The bow itself is a weapon that requires years of physical training to use with any level of competence with a draw weight large enough to kill a man. A musket can give a user that ability in ten minutes of instruction. If you have to field an army in the tens or hundreds of thousands on short notice, then replace casualties during a war... that right there is why the use of bows died so rapidly in a military sense. Did armies still use bows occasionally? if they had them already, sure. Armies that still had trained bowmen used them until they died or retired, nations like Russia in times of desperation made use of whatever peasant militias came equipped with. Is that an argument in favor of the bow? no, not really... because they're isolated incidents that require loads of context.Truth is basically everybody who could afford large numbers of guns chose guns every time. most of the arguments you use lack any substantial depth, really.

[@ihl0700677525]

1. IMO war bow is superior *ranged weapon,* but musket is superior *weapon system,* suitable for mass deployment. 15th century master archer could shot 18th century marksman dead before he could load his musket, but while you could train 30,000 musketeers in weeks, you will never be able to find 1,000 master archers in your lifetime. 2. While musket/firearm is indeed a "perfectible" weapon, it requires massive industry/industrial capacity, and centralized administration/organization for any society/nation to be able to field a large number of soldiers equipped with standardized weapon. I mean poorly made arrow and shoddy bow could still work, but bad ammo and poorly made firearm could be dangerous to the user. Many nations (including China, the birthplace of gunpowder) choose to retain traditional bow/crossbow despite their exposure to matchlock musket. 3. As for "Baskhir mounted archers", they might not be able to beat French cuirassier/lancer in one-on-one fight, but they have no problem overwhelm French patrol and ambush French supply convoy. They were not shock cavalry, but raiders that use hit and run tactics. Baron de Marbot was a fool to be that dismissive of them. Remember that Ming/Korean crossbow/halberd combination was good enough to beat Japanese musket wielding soldiers during the Imjin war. Also Timur (Tamerlane) crushed the Ottoman army with well-executed Mongol tactics with mounted archers and heavy cavalry combination at the battle of Ankara.

[@charleslathrop9743]

"The warrior will always yield to the quartermaster."

[@SandRhomanHistory]

How has the algorithm not recommended this to me earlier? Well argued and well presented!

[@BrandonF]

Well thank you! And hey, at least it brought you here eventually!

[@vanivanov9571]

Ummm... this was not well argued, and was presented as an aimless rant. He used barely any sources, and, incredibly, intentionally skipped over the subject of accuracy altogether. This will be because contemporary accounts and statistics on musketeers' accuracy showed it was very, very poor, and data suggests skilled bowmen would be a lot more accurate. The accuracy of the English longbow can only be estimated from them practicing at hundreds of yards, against relatively small targets, and being praised for hitting a "barge" at about 200yds, supposedly the size of an infantry formation. Modern archery and Eastern archery can give some indication, however, like the Qing originally practicing against man sized targets at 135 yards (this was reduced as their bow culture declined). Kenneth Chase reckons that a Mamluk archer was expected to hit a man sized target at about 70m, 5 out of 5 times (citing Saracen Archery). To compare, contemporary statistics reckon that a musket can only hit an infantry block sized target at about 70m about half the time, and most musketeers were given two to six rounds to practice with (the British received 30). So, mathematically, it's not really possible for the weapon wielded with greater accuracy, with a higher rate of fire, and similar range, to inflict less casualties and be bested. If you were comparing the Japanese arquebusiers of the Imjinwaeran to English bowmen, then they would probably carry the day since they could shoot straight and were similarly well-trained and veteran troops. But the 100 years war veteran English bowmen against typical European or British musketeers of the 18th century...? It wouldn't be any contest, unless you put many factors in favour of the musketeers. Honestly, you could cover this topic a lot better than Brandon did.

[@BrandonF]

@@vanivanov9571 Man, you've been spending a lot of time in this comments section. I'd recommend you look at the article I referenced in the video and linked in the description to read more about the accuracy and range of musketry.

[@vanivanov9571]

​@@BrandonF Interesting to start with a personal comment. You reference a blog that says basically nothing about accuracy, as a way to contradict contemporary statistics in my comment to Sand? It gives the vaguest possible impression of accuracy, stating the obvious that troops tend to start fighting well outside of effective range, for fear of dying, and by the time they're close enough to be within effective range they're resorting to a bayonet charge. And of course, it makes no comparison with the bow... so the subject of accuracy was only hinted at, not covered in any fitting manner. And this is weird since you should be knowledgeable about the subject, as data on musket accuracy is not that hard to find. Elements of the Science of War from 1811, for instance, found that "well trained" men could shoot a block of cavalry at 100yds 53% of the time, and "ordinary" men could hit it 40% of the time. The French found their musket technically could hit an infantry-block sized target at 300m 20% of the time.. if the musket was fixed in place and so had perfect aim. Clearly, their loading/patching or their guns were not very good. Weirdly, it only had 60% accuracy at 75m on the same target, so it's no wonder muskets have such a bad reputation in Europe, where even George Hanger considered hitting a man intentionally at >=150yds was ludicrous. So, what data exists suggests European musketeers would be thoroughly outmatched by the original Qing archers, practicing against single man-sized targets at 135yds. And it seems the elite bowmen of England were similar. To not cover the most basic point of musket v bow of ranged weapon effectiveness renders the video a pointless exercise.

[@hedgehog3180]

@@vanivanov9571 This is just a bizarre comparison, so you're saying that because a conscript regiment of line infantry couldn't beat a veteran unit of English longbowmen the longbow is superior? Even if this claim is true (and I'll get to that) it doesn't prove your point because it literally just comes down to one unit being more experienced than the other. But also there's no world in which this claim is true, there's simply no way that a single company of English longbowmen could actually carry enough arrows to make use of their theoretically higher fire rate. At the same time the muskets have a much more effective weapon which has a huge morale shock effect and they are able to fix bayonets and charge. If we just assume that the line infantry fight competently there's no reason why they couldn't just fan out and surround the longbows, making their volley fire fairly useless and eventually find some sort of angle to charge them at.

[@Viper54K]

About armor penetration: The longbow was used during the era of plate armor. It did not obsolete plate armor. Once the arquebus came around, armor started to evolve: forget the legs, arms, helmet. The chest plate doubled in thickness instead. The thin plates were no longer enough to stop musketballs. Eventually even cavalry dropped the armor in the late musket era. I think that speaks for itself. If the longbow was this powerful, why is it that the thinner full body plate became MORE popular during the era of the longbow?

[@spitandfire]

Thinner plate tends to come about because the technique in forging improves. A well rounded plate can better deflect arrows. And of course reduces the weight the bearer deals with. I hope I'm not coming across as condescending.

[@herrmannvonsalza5228]

That's an interesting point, but there are some problems with it. If you have ever seen a helmet from the 13th century, it is very, VERY thin. Armor on the large gets thicker throughout it's use in history. The thing is, in the 15th century, a technique was used called fluting that allowed for less metal to be used in the piece, but also for it to have equal strength. Just look at 16th century Gothic armor, the bumps on it are what make it strong, but on the whole it is rather thin. But, about the forget the helmet thing, if you look at colonial armor, they did wear helmets, but on the whole the visor was dropped because it needed to be thin and was difficult to flute, so it was almost pointless. You can't put heavy armor on your limbs in battle or you'll get tired and weighed down. And limbs are difficult to hit as it is, however, it is said that field marshal Tilly was killed with an arquebus bullet to the leg. So fluting is why the armor was thinner, it's not like they slimmed down the armor just because a longbow couldn't cut it. But yeah, muskets are the best.

[@gustavoaraujopenha8463]

@@herrmannvonsalza5228 I think you missed his point. His is not saying that after longbows entered the game everyone started using thiner armor, he is saying that compared to musket era armor, longbow era armor was thiner (But not thinner than before)

[@Specter_1125]

@@herrmannvonsalza5228 fluting increasing the strength of armor was most likely a pleasant side effect of decoration rather than an intentional attempt to increase the strength of the armor. It was done to mimic the look of the puffy, high end clothing. You can tell by looking at the greaves. The greaves on armor was basically never fluted, since the clothing they mimicked were tight fitting stocking. If the additional strength was what they were looking for, they would’ve fluted the greaves as well.

[@dflatt1783]

@@spitandfire His point still stands.

[@Subutai_Khan]

I totally agree. I cannot think of a culture that chose bows over even matchlock arquebuses given the option. Look at the Japanese. They had bows roughly similar in power to the longbow (probably a bit less) yet they still seemed to believe matchlocks are far superior weapons. The arquebus is also one of the reasons why Toyotomi Hideyoshi had success on land against the Koreans who were still using bows. Yes, they had some gunpowder weaponry but not to the same extent Toyotomi's army did.

[@bubbasbigblast8563]

The Native Americans in North America weren't very impressed by matchlocks, being unreliable and hard to supply: it was only with the flintlock that they gave up bows more-or-less en masse.

[@Subutai_Khan]

@@bubbasbigblast8563 I think supply was the bigger issue there especially early on when the colonies were small.

[@toncek9981]

Some ottoman soldiers still used bows in the late 17th century, although it was primarily cavalry weapon by that time I believe... But you are right firearms are superior.

[@bubbasbigblast8563]

@@Subutai_Khan If that were the case, Flintlocks wouldn't change all that much: in point of fact, many of the natives pushed against gunpowder weapons for exactly the reason of supply and repair difficulties, but their protests had no real effect, as the Flintlock proved too useful.

[@lordulberthellblaze6509]

The difference between a matchlock and a flintlock is that a flintlock after being loaded can be picked up and shot. A matchlock requires you to always carry a burning line of match cord and you still need to manually open the hatch over the powder.

[@skenzyme81]

10 hours of practice with a musket, and you're useful for soldiering. 10 hours practice with a longbow, and you're useful for handing the bow to someone who knows what he is doing.

[@Kidneyjoe42]

You have it backwards. 10 hours of practice with a musket and you're liable to kill yourself and wound several of your colleagues. 10 hours of practice with a longbow and you can shoot an arrow into a mass of men almost as well as a master. The vaunted training time of bows is almost entirely about physical conditioning. But back when 90+% of the population were manual laborers of some kind, you could hand pretty much anyone a decently powerful bow and they'd have the strength to draw it. Not the absolute most powerful English longbows, sure. But those still couldn't penetrate contemporary armor so what is that extra draw weight actually doing for you? Towards the end of the gun vs bow debate in England when pretty much everyone had finally agreed guns were superior and had already almost completely replaced bows, the proponents of bows still argued that bows should be retained in case there was a need to equip untrained conscripts in a hurry. On the other hand, during the adoption of firearms, not a single proponent of them ever argued that they should be adopted because they are easier to train men on.

[@bcb5696]

@@Kidneyjoe42uh yeah no who tf typed this stupid drivel this isn’t even close to true or even semi accurate you have no idea what you’re talking about lmaoooo yeah just anyone could pick up a bow and shoot an arrow almost as well as a “master” you’ve never fired a bow or gun in your life

[@cooperdellinger7165]

@@Kidneyjoe42 this is just objectively wrong😂

[@sxc-150]

​@@Kidneyjoe42what?

[@Maverick966]

​@@Kidneyjoe42Ehm ok musket hater

[@Gallipoli620]

All I'm getting from this is that we need more musket-wielding YA protagonists.

[@haraldisdead]

What's YA?

[@Evirthewarrior]

True, bows are almost as dumb as the dual wield trope.

[@Dogirot]

@@haraldisdead young adult fiction books

[@haraldisdead]

@@Dogirot thanks

[@coltpiecemaker]

Yes, but you see: Musket = Industrial = BAD Bow = Classical = Good And everyone knows that Industrialization was the worst thing that ever happened to humanity... (**Rolls Eyes**)

[@CDKohmy]

Point on training: Bows: years of training Musket: stick go boom Point on intimidation: Bows: low volume precision Musket: stick go boom Give a monkey a bow, it’ll take a while to learn with mild excitement when shot. Give it a musket, it’ll learn quickly and be scared.

[@danielomar9712]

Stick go boom

[@SonsOfLorgar]

Stovepipe goes *boom! Whoosh BOOM!* ^^ /This comment was brought to you by The *Heavy* Mortar gang.

[@kyriss12]

Arrow: punctures clean little hole in target. Diagnosis, pull arrow out, wrap bandage on wound, and give 2 to 3 weeks bed rest. Musket ball: punches big ugly hole in target hard enough to pulp soft tissue, and turn bone into shrapnel. Diagnosis, amputate, cauterize, permanently outta the fight.

[@TheGeoCheese]

@@kyriss12 meanwhile one is more accurate than the other. The musket has more stopping power at the cost of being horrendously (and comically) inaccurate while the other could turn someone’s head into a pinhead. Also having a misfire just plain sucks. It hurts the kill rate. A line of longbows/crossbows could decimate a musket line. The only two chief advantages of using the musket is for its superior armor penetration and the bayonet. The bayonet turns the musket into a weapon capable of shooting and stabbing but on top of that a mixture of marching, horrifying and wounds that cannot be stitched back up, and chemicals would make getting stabbed by someone with a bayonet an immediate death sentence. No one is going to be scared of getting shot at by an opposing line unless their own line has taken severe casualties, the more of the opposing side they are able to kill the less likely they were going to get bayoneted. However if a line begins to buckle under the pressure, a bayonet charge is incredibly intimidating that the opposing line will break and run. Now rifles on the other hand are something else entirely. Just like the crossbow (just using the more accurate of the different bows) they are pin point accurate. Unlike the crossbow not only does it superior range and armor penetration (because rifles are very accurate) they can also tear a entire line apart. The major problem with the rifle (at the time) is they were expensive. Muskets were much cheaper in comparison and this is one of the reasons why you don’t see rifles being used often. The other reason is rifles required more time to load/reload in comparison to the musket and were often relegated to skirmishers until the minie ball was made which then outdated and outclassed the musket in every imaginable way.

[@ImNotCreativeEnoughToMakeUser]

While I like a lot of what you're saying, you must consider that while modern people may consider muskets "inaccurate", that's simply because they have very high expectations after so long of being spoiled by the wonders of modern guns, which unlike handmade muskets, are usually made with computer guided accuracy to ensure quality.

[@TomSmith-nw9bk]

Only one point you did not mention in your video. While England utilized the long bow, most of Europe relied more on the crossbow. To get a truly powerful crossbow you would need a windlass to cock it, giving you a rate of fire of about 3 shots a minute. Just wanted to mention this because any discussion of bow vs musket always mentions rate of fire, but for most of Europe a musket was no slower than normal nullifying that point slightly.

[@gibbousmoon35]

Good point. Before muskets, the crossbow was chosen over the longbow for some of the same reasons. Less strength required and easier/quicker to train.

[@abchandler4]

⁠@@gibbousmoon35yep, and in that case the longbow was definitely superior, in the hands of someone who could use it as proficiently as a typical crossbow wielding soldier. This was why it was mandated in England that every man had to practice with the longbow for several centuries. The advantage of a crossbow was in the relative ease with which someone could be trained to use one. At the Battle of Crécy particularly the English longbows famously had a higher rate of fire, longer range and more stopping power than the French and Genoese crossbows

[@blocoes2757]

the longbow is prob better because just in rain the crosbow is usless because you dont pull the strings back and let go a trigger does and if the strings are wet they are less efective so eaven if lonbow strings are wet they could still be mildly effective against a crosbow

[@dr.woozie7500]

Longbow training took months if not years and require massive upper body strength. You can teach anyone to load and fire a musket in a few days.

[@demomanchaos]

Archery itself is actually much easier to learn than musketry, so the only issue is building strength for more powerful bows (Though lower end warbows in the 70-90 lb range aren't too difficult to draw if you aren't a couch potato). Learning how to draw a bow and loose an arrow is quite easy, and can be done in just a few moments. The basics of loading a musket however are quite complicated with a lot of steps to master. With a bow you can recycle ammunition, watch it fly and impact your target and see what adjustments you need to make. With a musket you cannot recycle ammunition, you cannot watch the projectile fly, and you cannot tell where the shot landed easily meaning it is much more difficult to make adjustments. I also would argue that the basics of bow marksmanship are far simpler than the basics of firearm marksmanship, as there are a lot of little things that can have a tremendous impact on your accuracy with a firearm.

[@societalnormality2268]

@@demomanchaos bruh. Did you even watch the video? Learning how to pour powder down a barrel, ram a ball down, and prime the pan is probably easier to learn than a bow. Plus with a bow you need angling.. not really with a musket with their flatter trajectory.

[@Riceball01]

@@demomanchaos Recycling arrows is possible, but not a guarantee. It would depend greatly on what you hit with it. As seen in the clip from Tod's Workshop, a longbow arrow hitting a hardened steel breastplate results in 0 penetration and an arrow without a head. Even if the arrow doesn't effectively shatter you still have the distinct possibility of blunting the head or having it lodged in your target. As far as adjusting your aim, you can adjust your aim with a musket, or any firearm in the same manner. You aim, fire, watch for the impact, and adjust your aim accordingly.

[@societalnormality2268]

@@demomanchaos you point and fire a firearm.. you have to know angling of a rifle..

[@Woody-mu6hr]

As someone who is "decent enough" in both archery and musketry I will say archery is MUCH harder to master.

[@bogdanvasut8915]

The crucial argument, imho, is that the best archer using the best longbow will be limited by his muscle power while a mediocre musketeer will have virtualy unlimited energy stored into the "villainous saltpeter". You can change wet powder and replace a dull flint but you can not scale up the amount of energy that a set of human muscles can deliver (that's also why the winner was the musket, not the crossbow). And I think they somehow foresaw that the firelocks had a long way of improvement ahead, but not so much the longbows.

[@justarandomtechpriest1578]

A crossbow stores energy Just not enough

[@sjakierulez]

@@justarandomtechpriest1578 Also where does it get the energy from?

[@veemie8148]

@@jakobinobles3263 where does the energy to wind up the mechanism come from?

[@hinti24]

@@sjakierulez from a pre-tentioned steel flat spring that is cogged via various devices offering mechanical advantage. leavers or winches. crossbows are inferior in design to firearms when it comes to scaling while competing for the same role. (higher poundage crossbow == reduction on gearset of winch == slower cocking. also more stress on the material - more risky - hence more material is used- hence is heavier - hence has its limits.)

[@hinti24]

@@veemie8148 mechanical advantage is a thing. Gear Reduction rates can be tailored to allow toddlers to crank a 1250 pound crossbow (theoretically. DON'T LET TODDLERS play with crossbows) .

[@TitusCastiglione1503]

The simple fact that the matchlock had almost entirely replaced the bow in military use within around a fifty year period should tell one that, yes, guns are superior to bows.

[@desthomas8747]

Two Tudor ships were sent from England to France with supplies. One was the Mary Rose in 1560''s it sank in the Solent it had hundreds of Longbows and thousands of arrows amongst its cargo. 50 years later a ship was sent with supplies for an English Army in France, it sank off he coast of the Channel Islands. It had no longbows on board only firearms and gunpowder.

[@longbowenjoyer2154]

Not really the main reason was training. To train a longbowman it would’ve taken years and you’d have to start from childhood to be able to be really good. muskets take little training in short time making it easier to get large armies. Same for armour you couldn’t afford to give every infantry man armour in that time period it would be too expensive and their soldiers usually didn’t buy their equipment in those days unlike medieval times.

[@TitusCastiglione1503]

@@longbowenjoyer2154 don’t forget that a gunshot is much more deadly than any bow or crossbow.

[@longbowenjoyer2154]

@@TitusCastiglione1503 true but longbowmen could easily put their arrows where humans die quickest

[@TitusCastiglione1503]

@@longbowenjoyer2154 I’m not convinced that’s as much of a factor as is sometimes claimed. The rapid rate of fire will begin to die off fairly quickly, as the men tire. A gun doesn’t tire you out; it shoots the same no matter how tired you are. To be sure the longbow’s higher fire rate is an advantage over the firearm, but it’s the only real advantage it has. And, not for very long.

[@richardarcher7177]

I remember this debate in a novel I read once. Set in 1520 at the Field of Cloth of Gold. An English noble waxes lyrical about their bows and a French Noble issues a challenge between an archer from the Englishman's retinue against an arquebusier from his (the arquebus being the musket's grandfather so to speak). In the challenge the English outshoot the French arquebusier and full a hay bale full of arrows in the same time the Frenchman gets off one shot that only just clips the edge. The English see this as proof of the superiority of their weapon of choice and condescendingly tell the French that they'd better train their arquebusiers better if they ever hope to succeed. The Frenchman asks how long it took to train the archer and are told it takes 10-12 years to train a good archer. The Frenchman points out that his candidate is actually his cook and that this was the first time he'd ever picked up the weapon. Needless to say, the significance is not lost on the English.

[@Raleyg]

Do you remember the title of the book? I really want to read it

[@richardarcher7177]

@@Raleyg 'Knave of Swords' by Nicholas Carter. The bow versus gun scene is only a small part of it but it stood out as a powerful reason why bows were supplanted by guns.

[@edwardmaginot]

How the French roasted the English!

[@midshipman8654]

i think the training time of bowmen as a significant factor is highly over rated. especially when it comes to military application. the gunpowder age was actually a time of somewhat standing armies. and most of that time for bowmen is just in regards to the particular strength requirements of the heaviest long bows. I would t be surprised, that given the physical ability, someone could adequately be trained to fire for military use of a bow within a few week.

[@PuppetMasteronVHS]

The English archer after riddling a hay bale with arrows: I trained since I was 10 to do that. The French arquebusier after blowing a hole through the hay bale: I just learned to do that.

[@Tareltonlives]

" When the War Chief had viewed us all it was found between us and the Stone Indians we had ten guns and each of us about thirty balls, and powder for the war, and we were considered the strength of the battle. After a few days march our scouts brought us word that the enemy was near in a large war party, but had no Horses with them, for at that time they had very few of them. When we came to meet each other, as usual, each displayed their numbers, weapons and shields, in which they were superior to us, except our guns which were not shown, but kept in their leathern cases, and if we had shown[them], they would have taken them for long clubs. For a long time they held us in suspense ; a Chief was forming a strong party to make an attack on our centre, and the others to enter into combat with those opposite to them. We prepared for the battle the best we could. Those of us who had guns stood in the front line, and each of us had two balls in his mouth, and a load of powder in his left hand to reload. We noticed they had a great many short stone clubs for close combat, which is a dangerous weapon, and had they made a bold attack on us, we must have been defeated as they were more numerous and better armed than we were, for we could have fired our guns no more than twice ; and were at a loss what to do on the wide plain, and each Chief encouraged his men to stand firm. Our eyes were all on the tall Chief and his motions, which appeared to be contrary to the advice of several old Chiefs, all this time we were about the strong flight of an arrow from each other. At length the tall chief retired and they formed their long usual line by placing their shields on the ground to touch each other, the shield having a breadth of full three feet or more. We sat down opposite to them and most of us waited for the night to make a hasty retreat. The War Chief was close to us, anxious to see the effect of our guns. The lines were too far asunder for us to make a sure shot, and we requested him to close the line to about sixty yards, which was gradually done, and lying flat on the ground behind the shields, we watched our opportunity when they drew their bows to shoot at us, their bodies were then exposed and each of us, as opportunity offered, fired with deadly aim, and either killed, or severely wounded, every one we aimed at. The War Chief was highly pleased, and the Snake Indians finding so many killed and wounded kept themselves behind their shields ; the War Chief then desired we would spread ourselves by two’s throughout the line, which we did, and our shots caused consternation and dismay along their whole line. The battle had begun about Noon, and the Sun was not yet half down, when we perceived some of them had crawled away from their shields, and were taking to flight."-Saukamappee, Peigan Nation, describing a late 18th century battle when Firearms reached the Plains Cree.

[@aparioss1072]

" and each of us had two balls in his mouth" I am resisting the urge to utter a Deez nuts joke at this line

[@Winaska]

thats a really awesome description, especially since it backs up the whole idea that native Americans fought in lines with shields....something Samuel de Champlain also recorded when he witnessed a battle between Canadian warriors and the Mohawk, and the only firearm to be seen on the field was his. This leads to a very interesting understanding of the encounter between the Vikings in Newfoundland and their Miqmaq enemies. The battle would have been far more familiar to both sides then w might think.

[@Tareltonlives]

@@Winaska Absolutely. The Norse had better armor and swords but they fought in very similar ways. There's European records of native Americans in wooden army and using longbows, war picks and lances.

[@5.7moy]

“I am and I shall remain -” Brandon

[@tsk9277]

Remain what!

[@ottersirotten4290]

@@tsk9277 Brandon

[@Moshiko926]

@@tsk9277 we will never know

[@irongeneral7861]

That's it. He is, and he will continue to be.

[@siyacer]

Let's go Brandon

[@theaman42069]

Something i'm surprised Brandon didn't bring up, is that the Bowaboos say that bows are stealthier than muskets, but you cannot fire an English longbow while being prone, and it would probably quite difficult to do it crouched, meaning that to fire the supposedly "Stealthy" longbow you would have to stand straight. And make a large target of yourself. And one a sidenote, by the Mid/Late 18th/Early 19th Century, the use of bows had greatly decreased to a point where there were probably less than 1000 people who could effectively use an English longbow. Meaning that a bow Battalion, or regiment, would have to be trained from scratch. Which could take years to train, a battalion mustered to fight at Rolica, would see its first engagement at Waterloo. And the reason I make the comparison with a longbow in mind, and not a yumi, a daikyū, or a Mongolian composite bow, is the fact, that Brandon used the longbow as a comparison in the video.

[@Tareltonlives]

I think it's a confusion with native american tactics. Archery was used for surprise attacks FROM COVER as you didn't know where the arrow came from without a flash or noise. Of course, you can't do that on most battlefields, and the effectiveness goes away the longer the fight goes on.

[@Jake-dh9qk]

Brandon only used longbows in comparison because he doesn't want to bring other bows from Asia which are known to be far superior to longbow and smaller as well. This would break his logic in the video

[@Tareltonlives]

@@Jake-dh9qk That's nice but they're even worse in terms of production (they take months to make), more delicate (they will literally fall apart) have the same firepower as a longbow (still not as lethal as a musket) and still require a lifetime of training to be more effective than a musketeer trainee.

[@Jake-dh9qk]

@@Tareltonlives What do you mean by composite bows falling apart? And the composite bows have same firepower as longbow but it takes less strength to wield them due to better energy efficiency. A 120lb composite bow is more or less equal to a 150lb warbow. Thats due to the longbow's inefficient design.

[@vanivanov9571]

@@Tareltonlives I thought I told you yesterday that composites being "delicate" is a myth...? Please stop spreading it. And ask any big-game hunter how long you'll last after taking an arrow... you'll go down inside of a minute. But good point on bows using cover for ambush. All ambushes use cover, honestly... so the idea you need to lie prone is special pleading. Musketeers have to stand up to reload anyway, whereas a bowman can nock arrows while crouching.

[@Swenthorian]

25:31 You missed the flip-side: strong winds hinder arrow speed and accuracy far more than they do musket ball speed and accuracy.

[@HeadsFullOfEyeballs]

I imagine firearms were especially useful for colonial warfare, where your soldiers were constantly catching exciting exotic diseases. An archer needs to be in good health to use his bow effectively (imagine trying to draw a longbow with joint pain from the flu). A musketeer just needs the strength to lift and aim his gun.

[@よしみ-x5j]

Great point! Not only diseases, climate factor could have even greater meaning

[@jeffengel2607]

Large camps would make for diseases without having to go anywhere exotic. Armies often were not fed as well or reliably as, say, farmers or townspeople in peacetime, so you can expect poorer physical condition that way too. And simply naturally shorter, weaker, etc. men were available to draft and train as adequate musketeers when they would never be adequate longbowmen.

[@theducknamednewepicla9507]

EXACTLY

[@Captine3250]

honestly, this is the best edited video that his editor did. i found myself chuckling to a few. the 3 best parts of this for me where the Spanish Gorilla, the stone wall, and the kidnaping. don't ask bout the last one, or you'll go with him...

[@GeneralJackRipper]

Indeed.

[@retrowave762]

Longbows take many years to practice and hone to an effective nature, a matchlock can be trained in groups of dozens of men for 7 hours a day per month and they're masters at the weapon by the end. There's a reason guns became dominant, and that's because they were dominantly simpler and cheaper, which allowed the faith to be put in them enough to improve them to the god pieces we have now. A matchlock has plenty of accounts where 1 shot didn't penetrate decently made plate armor, but it takes 18 years + a bunch of wealth to create one knight, and it takes 5 peasants with boom sticks that only had a month training to blow that away. A troop of longbowmen take 20 or more years to effectively produce, and they are just as easily overwhelmed and blown away by the surge of peasants with boom sticks that only had a month training. I also want to mention that these examples above are with matchlocks. A flintlock, especially a gun from the Napoleonic era, would blow a longbow out of the water.

[@theaman42069]

And remember that longbows were made from a specific type of wood, which makes producing them even harder.

[@Segalmed]

@@retrowave762 And early gun barrels were not even steel. Copper was used too.

[@vanivanov9571]

Not sure about individual muskets themselves being cheaper than individual bows. You have any sources showing that? It does make for an ecological and long-term concern, if you just don't have enough wood for the bows, of course. Someone mentioned copper guns... but I don't think anyone made copper muskets or harquebusses? They'd be bronze, surely. That was generally saved for cannon, and was generally more expensive, not cheaper. But as I pointed out to Brendon: *Economics:* Problem, army size is dictated by the quality of your supply chain and forage in the theatre of war. So while longbows are a bigger upfront investment, like any warrior society, the supply costs and limitations are about the same. You can't supply ten times as many troops because you saved some money ten years ago.

[@retrowave762]

@@vanivanov9571 To my knowledge most matchlocks were made with a cast steel barrel, I don't know where the copper/brass came from. I'm sorry I didn't present my economics point the way I meant to. One on one by themselves a musket would probably cost just a bit more, and by being cheaper I mean that its a lot cheaper to train some line infantry for a month then it is to train longbowmen for however many years necessary for them to be physically fit enough to effectively perform. Sure if you have plenty of longbowmen this advantage doesn't really come into play, and sure enough historically, it didn't until the late 16th century. Records indicate guns in Europe have been around for a fairly long time, even early forms of barrel rifling having been made in 1498, and by the time. It's very clear that it took time for guns to take over, but they certainly did. None of that, however, speaks to the simplicity of even a matchlock; and a good matchlock is infinitely more simplistic than swordplay or the longbow. All you need to do is know how to load one, build up decent endurance to march somewhere, and know how to fire it.

[@Segalmed]

@@vanivanov9571 No, I meant actual copper, not copper alloy. But we are not talking 18th century muskets there but some early matchlocks. I assume that at that early stage this was often easier to produce and more consistent than wrought iron.

[@DSlyde]

I find it interesting that the water risk to muskets is brought up so soften when the same thing happens to bows. At Crecy, one of THE battles for longbow fame, the English archers had to destring their bows to protect them from the rain to avoid them stretching. I'm not saying that bows are necessarily as or more sensitive to water than muskets because that'd take specific testing that i havent done, but they're not immune to the problem of rain and water either

[@Lovemy1911a1]

I believe this is also an issue for bows of composite construction, which could have the glues used at the time degrade if they absorbed water. Even simple wood bows can face serious problems if they dry out or absorb water. It may very well be that guns were much more rugged weapons that are much less likely to fail from damage &/or have longer usable life.

[@JohnyG29]

That's one of THE main advantages of a longbow over a crossbow or musket. You can have it unstrung (keeping the string under your hat to stay dry) until the moment of battle, thus keeping it effective.

[@Msimo14]

@@JohnyG29 In this case though they're comparing 18th century muskets. Which had a closed and ideally watertight pan, greased cartridges, and a cow's knee (a piece of leather that covered the weapon until firing). All of which added a degree of water resistance. I'm not saying that rainy weather couldn't be an issue- but by this period great efforts had been taken to reduce the impact of said weather.

[@koreancowboy42]

@@JohnyG29 yet as an archer just how many arrows are you gonna be able to carry with you? How mobile can you be? Are you able to maneuver and skirmish the enemy effectively compared to the light infantry skirmshers with muskets? Who can lay down and move around as they like. Take cover behind trees and crouch and fire accurately. Note that archers during medieval period never won most of the battles it was the knights. The archers task was mainly to suppress the enemy and harass them with arrows. The muskets can pin you down considering they have ammo pouches and bayonets. How often do you see an archer gonna go into melee? Plus the muskets can fix bayonets and get very close and fire volleys and charge. How much weight you wanna carry as an archer? Also archers can't form square let alone be able to keep cohesive formations as they would usually get run downed. And that the muskets era they have rifled muskets and rifles that can be just as effective at long distances.

[@rogerpoca9399]

You forgot the elephant in the room, that gunpowder weapons rose as a complement and an improvement over crossbows, in an era where wars were increasingly being dominated by sieges.

[@eirikronaldfossheim]

Brandon F. As someone who has studied this in depth, you forgot about the most important point. The main reason for why the English (and French, Germans and Scots) didn't continue to use bowmen was because they had cut down every single yew tree in Europe. The price of bowstaves reached such an outrages price, even with regulations, that people couldn't continue the practice. A new act in 1566 in England allowed bowyers to charge 6s 8d for the best bows. That is about 20 days worth of pay for a skilled worker. In the mid 14th Century they only cost around 16d, or or 4 days worth of pay. That's 5 times more. And they had to buy new bows regularly for themselves and their sons. In England we have a few sources telling us that about 50 % of the male population in the middle of the 15th Century actually trained with the bow. English kings probably recruited only around 10-20 % of the best and strongest men of this entire group. In other words, they only wanted the best, and we have over a dozen sources stating this fact. The biggest assembly of bowmen ever accomplished was probably at the battle of Towton in 1461. Here probably about half the force consisted of bowmen. The rest were men-at-arms and billmen. It's estimated that there was around 50,000-65,000 men on the battlefield. That's around 25,000 to 32,500 archers. One source said that England had 150,000 archers as a reserve, but that would be everyone, not just the best. English Kings only had about 12,000 to 15,000 archers in their service at any time. They, like modern soldiers had to have downtime at home to maintain the morale. These numbers would never have been sufficient in the 18th Century. A few additional points. 08:40 There were no such minimum practice range at the marks with a military arrow. This was with a prick shaft, and you can reach 220 yards with a 80lb bow and a prick shaft. This law does not say anything about the power of the bow, it's about aiming, and more important, forcing men to rather participate in roving instead of cloth shooting, which varied from close to long range on uneven ground. The reason for why those who were older than 22 years old couldn't shoot at marks closer was because at that age it was expected of the men to be accurate enough to participate in roving to hone instinctive shooting or long range cloth shooting to practice aim. However, we do have written sources saying that archers were expected to reach 240-280 yards with military arrows. That is about what we get with a 100 gram arrow and a 75 gram arrow shot out of a 140-150 lb bow, respectively. 11:35 There is no evidence for 12 arrows per min. Most heavy bow archers, as you said, shoot about 6 a min. 13:45 Archers had to show up at muster with 24 arrows. The Crown on average supplied them with 48 arrows each. That's 72 arrows. Sometimes the Lord or knight leading the indentured men provided a few arrows. One such retinue during the Agincourt campaign had 12 arrows on average per archers. At the battle of Poitiers in 1356 one source said that some of the archers shot over one hundred arrows, but in order to do this they had to recover arrows from half dead wretches. 17:40 Bowmen didn't swap weapons. They simply dropped their bows on the ground and picked up the 5ft long mallet or a halberd/bill/pike/spear, or drew the sword + buckler. As protection against cavalry they used prefabricated stakes.

[@migueeeelet]

Age of empires 4 has the stakes! It's so goddamn obvious that I'm not surprised people just don't think about them nowadays

[@vanivanov9571]

Good points. Might have something of interest to add: *Trees:* Good point about the Yew. I heard those forests had been reduced, but had no idea it was as bad as that. *Population:* Looking it up, the population during the 16th century was only about 3 million, and doubled by the 18th century, then jumped up to about 16 million by the Napoleonic wars, it seems. So, in an example of the Napoleonic wars, by your estimates there'd be a body of about a million archers to choose from, and since the British standing army was about 200K, IIRC, they'd be able to select the 20% who are best. Of course, it'd be more logical to use a mixture of musketeers and archers, as everyone did outside of Europe. Overall, I don't recall armies in the 18th and 19th century becoming a much larger percentage of the population, so I wouldn't expect this to be a concern for any era. *Shooting Speed:* I recall several citations from Eastern archery manuals and writings, about men being able to shoot multiple arrows before the first hit the ground, and other such techniques. I'd have to dig up the examples, but I do know in modern examples Justin Ma managed a rate of 10 arrows a minute (6 arrows in 35.4 seconds), and Peter Bogar managed a rate of 20 arrows per minute (9 arrows in 27 seconds), each using a 100# bow. So, I don't see a reason to deny the possibility, as I'd expect there to be archers of even greater skill at the time. *Arrows:* Fun bit of trivia, I found that if you subtract he weight of the musket and cartridges (assuming a brown bess with 60 cartridges, per one account I found), you can easily carry 86x 80g arrows for that weight. You can also carry a superior melee weapon and less arrows, of course. Arrows cost significantly less as well, it seems, where an arrow apparently cost less than a hapenny back in 1353 (not sure how de/inflation affects that). Something I'd really like to know, though, is how many arrows there were at Carrhae.

[@migueeeelet]

@@vanivanov9571 You made me think, aren't muskets easier to mass produce aswell? Gunpowder and musket balls are definitely easier than arrows. The musket itself may be harder but it doesn't suffer from having to be of a specific material

[@vanivanov9571]

​@@migueeeelet Not sure I'd call mixing gunpowder easy... you do it poorly, and you get low quality powder, or you blow up. Arrows seemingly were cheaper, in any case, so they were "easier" in terms of materials and labour, apparently. Muskets were pretty complex weapon systems for the time, so they definitely weren't easier to produce compared to bows, at least if you don't factor in yew scarcity. But yeah, if you've run out of materials... what's easy changes.

[@migueeeelet]

@@vanivanov9571 Well I mean, I don't know much about gunpowder, but surely you could make larger batches of it while with arrows you have to work one at a time. Then again, wouldn't be hard to simply hire more people to work on arrows

[@ST-zm3lm]

I’ll never forget my work friend who once insisted a modern rifle wasn’t the equal of a bow in the right hands. No joke, he told me he carried a pistol crossbow in his car because “A gun would just be too pedestrian.” After talking to him for a couple of years, he finally broke down, got an old SKS, and he’s never looked back lmao.

[@hippyjoe]

@@HelghastStalker Backwards? Didn't they like, make a sun or something?

[@dragonace119]

@HoboMaster Uh what? No they don't, they either would use sub-sonic ammo or something low calibre with a really good surpressor. Granted the most common is a surpressor plus sub-sonic ammo.

[@dragonace119]

@HoboMaster Show me an article, video, picture, or document of that happening.

[@tylerrobbins8311]

@@HelghastStalker A 85lb hunting bow will drop a 200lb sow dead with one loose. There are plenty of cases of guns failing to do the same with modern smokeless powder, let alone the drastically inferior black powder guns. Why I bring this up? A 150lb war bow will punch through a bulls skull with ease and you are drastically underestimating bows.

[@tylerrobbins8311]

@HoboMaster No nation uses crossbows for any regiment. Only people who use any bows are specific spectial forces and only if the individual chooses it. Airguns are exclusively used over bows because they are far more efficient.

[@lordwunglerbeckett]

"Until the next time, my dear viewer, I am and I shall remain" well, that's a relief

[@Great_Olaf5]

3:12 Well, my know jerk response is that they were much, much easier to learn to use at a basic level of competency, and orders of magnitude easier to master, but I'm sure you'll give a more detailed answer than that. 3:40 Also, I think the English were pretty much the only ones in western Europe using them (longbows) in large numbers anyway. Crossbows were preferred by the late Medieval period pretty much everywhere else.

[@BrandonF]

That's definitely one of the reasons! Though there are many more!

[@Great_Olaf5]

Another potential reason is that longbows were, by this time, near the apex they could reach for war without advances in material sciences, where muskets were new, and had a long way they could still improve, but that's more of a reason why guns in general overtook bows, rather than specifically muskets and longbows. And archers typically fought in a similar way to musketeers. In battlefield conditions volley fire is just the most efficient way to use ranged weapons. Yeah, there's a good reason why archers were most frequently used as a defensive weapon rather than offensive. You needed to have a good supply of arrows, and they weren't easy to carry in a convenient to use way. You could carry plenty of them, but they'd have to have time to set up positions where they could be unleaded.

[@Great_Olaf5]

I don't know what kind of bayonet you're referring to at around 19 minutes, but didn't they start out with only plug bayonets? You do have to attach those during combat, which would take about as much time as reloading. I was pretty sure ring bayonets were a fairly late invention, so not something that would be relevant to their immediate adoption over bows, more of just one more step giving guns an edge over them.

[@Great_Olaf5]

I imagine that at least a portion of the reason why armor began to fall out of favor more once the gun prevailed was that guns were starting to be considered a better use for the metal than armor was, which could never have happened with bows being made of wood.

[@demomanchaos]

Archery is actually much easier to learn than musketry, the only issue is building strength for more powerful bows. Learning how to draw a bow and loose an arrow is quite easy, and can be done in just a few moments. The basics of loading a musket however are quite complicated with a lot of steps to master. With a bow you can recycle ammunition, watch it fly and impact your target and see what adjustments you need to make. With a musket you cannot recycle ammunition, you cannot watch the projectile fly, and you cannot tell where the shot landed easily meaning it is much more difficult to make adjustments. I also would argue that the basics of bow marksmanship are far simpler than the basics of firearm marksmanship, as there are a lot of little things that can have a tremendous impact on your accuracy with a firearm.

[@lucasfeliphe7028]

If muskets are so inferior to bows then why even the cultures most rooted in the bow also adopted it? Or why they also adopt combinated arms instead of throwing away their muskets? Some of these nations even produced their own muskets... It's amazing to see the fanatical defense of bow fanboys still maintaining the myth that Wellington wanted longbows, and even creating a paltry attempt to discredit period accounts like Baron de Marbot or trying to exaggerate his light arrow injuries as if it was lethal. Also, the hit/battlefield comparison is not a very fair comparison. If it were, the armaments of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan would be wildly inaccurate.

[@1KosovoJeSrbija1]

The musket is much like an imperial lasgun (other than the fact that a musket can pretty much kill anything it hits) It's easy to produce, versatile, easy to use, and while in pre industrial times reliability wasn't a thing to rely on, it's more reliable than a literal slab of wood.

[@BrandonF]

This comment meets the approval of the Arbites

[@1KosovoJeSrbija1]

@@BrandonF O:

[@danielomar9712]

AND YOU GET A BAYONET!

[@SonsOfLorgar]

To be fair, a lasgun is a seriously powerful infantry weapon easily capable of dismembering a human sized adversary... They only seem weak in comparison to the xenos and Astartes

[@essexclass8168]

@@SonsOfLorgar Also the power of it's hit technically depends on the power soirce or setting and not the weapon itself depending on the pattern. Also, last ditch grenade function is pretty nifty.

[@jarongreen5480]

This video was a lot of fun to edit. Took a while but I think it paid off in the end :)

[@power2ix605]

yep! Enjoyed the edits thanks!!!!!!!

[@jarongreen5480]

@@power2ix605 Glad you enjoyed it :)

[@power2ix605]

@@jarongreen5480 the edits were the best i had ever seen on any of Brandon's videos

[@tamlandipper29]

The comments just above this were saying you did an amazing job.

[@carterwgtx]

Don’t forget that longbows didn’t disappear overnight. There are plenty examples of armies that carried bows and men with firearms while this transition took place over years. Once the muskets became less cannon like and more musket like the general advantages of the musket were apparent and the switch finally happened at scale in European armies. But plenty of tribal armies took on rifle armed armies and won (not most of the time but history has lots of examples) even into the 19th century.

[@ahmedabdolghani8879]

Of course the longbow is better! In a fantasy world, where the rules of logic and physics are bent…

[@Harsh-tf9he]

and the main character greatly aids the force by chopping a tree and when its in a specific setting where they kick ass

[@shadowshots9393]

If you know how to enchant a bullet with Megumin magic then a musket is still better

[@krockpotbroccoli65]

Ben Franklin once proposed making and issuing longbows to continental troops. He was resoundingly shot down. Even if muskets, powder and lead are in short supply, they are still far better than bows.

[@badguy5554]

I bet the "warriors" in the Continental Congress who turned down the idea....never fired a "shot in anger" or participated in a battle standing in line in front of enemy ranks.

[@Kevin-jb2pv]

@@badguy5554 I don't think that's really as true as you're assuming. Times were different, then. The further back you go, the more you tend to see members of the aristocracy having a martial background. There were quite a few people in the continental congress who had either previously served in the military during the French and Indian war or who were _actively_ taking part in the revolution as part of a militia or the continental army. This is more about Ben Franklin being a bit of an eccentric nut who was out of touch with how the military worked. (BTW, I fucking _adore_ Ben Franklin precisely _because_ he was an eccentric nut.)

[@olexandrs6639]

I think the most vital reason is the availability. yes, bows are better in any regard, considering unarmored range fight, but it's simply not possible to hire 50 000 - 100 000 bowman, because they simply do not exist. u can hire 5000, but when enemy can hire 50 000 musketeers, ur bowman's advantage becomes irrelevant. ancient warbow is labor intensive weapon which requires to much skill and strength to operate. skeletons of bowman are altered, because of warbow usage. u can hire a musketeer almost any adult man and woman. pool availability is way bigger. and in war, number count.1 bowman defeats 1 musketeer. 5000 bowman can defeat 5000 musketeers, but 5000 bowman can't defeat 50 000 musketeers.

[@yjlom]

@@olexandrs6639 what about 5000 bowmen and 45000 musketeers, though?

[@olexandrs6639]

@@yjlom bad day for bowmen.

[@kurukblackflame]

All the points raised were excellent. There's also the matter of the musket being far more powerful than the bow. An individual musket shot is not only better at penetrating armour but will also deliver a more devastating wound.In addition you can create tighter formations of muskets and thus concentrate greater firepower in a smaller area-Even with a lower rate of fire vs a bow. Muskets then are cheaper, easier to mass produce, cheaper and easier to supply and much easier to use effectivively. They are also more powerful on the battlefield.

[@vanivanov9571]

Have a source for that? The accounts I've seen of musket and arrow injuries doesn't seem to imply one does a lot better than the other. People have continued on after getting shot many times with modern firearms (more familiar with those), but I don't know of anyone without armour continuing with multiple arrow wounds.

[@PaladinPoppie]

@@vanivanov9571 bruh… it’s a .70 Caliber bullet. You do the math. (Edit: I’m sure King Henry V would’ve enjoyed being shot by a .70cal musket instead of that devastating arrow he had embedded in his skull.)

[@vanivanov9571]

​@@PaladinPoppie Certainly, we can't rely on you to do the math.... The US military made a video about the bow, showing it could penetrate better than a rifle, so judging a weapon based purely off energy, or worse purely off calibre, is ridiculous. Knight and the Blast Furnace found the same, that an arrow needs a fraction of the energy to penetrate armoured plates. And this is why a 20# bow used by children is still a deadly weapon, because it only takes a kg of pressure to put a sharp blade deep into a human body.

[@gueststrivler]

Except your notional individual musket is unlikely to hit a barn door at much more than 100yds, and fires three times a minute tops, while a useful range for "pro" longbowmen is 2-300 yds, individual marklsmanship is possible, and not all your targets are wearing armour anyway. For a limited time you can also double or treble musket rate of fire (then you are exhausted and have run out of ammo). Muskets made longbows redundant because they were a logical choice for mass armies, as opposed to the small armies of the Middle Ages. Bayonets made pikes redundant because a musketeer could combine both functions in one weapon. Armies evolved , and weapons and tactics obligingly conformed to their greater size.

[@vanivanov9571]

@@Fahadshamqasim13 ...Then, why didn't you reference it even in passing? Didn't notice any substantial evidence for muskets being more injurious. I think he may've speculated about that at some point, but there was so much directionless prattle I may've missed it.

[@warbandplaysAU9178]

I would really like to see your video on if horses would charge a square of pikes/bayonets or not. I was surprised you said they would.

[@theaman42069]

On a sidenote. Mount & Blade Warband, is a great game.

[@Tareltonlives]

It was rare but it could happen. I wish I could remember the precise instances, but it happen at least once in the Napoleonic Wars. Some medieval examples: Falkirk-the Welsh archers slaughtered the Scottish pikes until Edward I thought it was thin enough to drive in a charge and chase Wallace off the field. Renaud de Dammartin's Brabançons at Bouvines held off the French horsemen until they came in with infantry support. And of course Hastings with the shield wall disintegrating after king Harold fell.

[@petriew2018]

They will if you train them well enough, as a rider you just don't want to if you can avoid it. The horse, if trained to follow commands, won't inherently shy away from a pike or bayonet. The horse has to learn to do that, if it doesn't know any better it doesn't care. The thing about pike and later square formations is that if you're a rider, you don't want to charge into a solid mass like that. Your horse will get slowed to the point where you're just surrounded and an easy target, thus losing your advantage as a rider and rapidly becoming... well, dead, probably. To break a square formation takes a lot of suicidal mass on the part of the riders to break it up enough that you can still ride out through the other side... or break the morale of the square and put them to flight. This is why it usually wasn't done. so short answer : it's usually the rider and not that horse that doesn't wanna commit to it

[@mrquokka4733]

Brandon, you silly billy. Here's your primary source right here: Dear military high command, can I have a company of elite longbowman -The Duke of Wellington.

[@BrandonF]

Oh man, you're right! What a fool I have been.

[@classarank7youtubeherokeyb63]

But you've overlooked another primary source that disproves yours. Dear The Duke of Wellington, what kind of stupid idiot would want a company of elite longbowmen when we have modern flintlock muskets? Request denied. -Dear military high command

[@WarlordWulf]

Rip sound from 39:35 cutting off the catchphrase :(

[@bennodejong5368]

The development of the ring bayonet to replace the plug bayonet was the reason firearms replaced all other infantry arms. The plug bayonet was jammed down the muzzle and prevented further firing. With the advent of a ring that fit around the muzzle you could fire right until the enemy was upon you.

[@TheGreatAmphibian]

Well, no. Because muskets took over from bows while the plug bayonet was still standard.

[@bennodejong5368]

@@TheGreatAmphibian yes but you had pike and musket squares. My point is once the ring bayonet came about you no longer needed pikemen to protect the musketmen.

[@paulbaker5256]

Whilst the longbow was an important factor in English ascendancy during the early 100 Years’ War, it wasn’t the be all and end all. By the end of that conflict, French commanders had learned to adapt and counter the threat posed by the longbow and achieved key victories at Formigny (1450) and Castillon (1453) which decided the war in France’s favour. Both battles exposed the shortcomings of the longbow in the face of arquebuses and artillery.

[@88porpoise]

I think the simplest and yet most conclusive argument is: If bows presented a significant advantage over muskets in an 18th century military, someone would have used them in a large scale.

[@Segalmed]

Don't completely discount the conservatism of military leaders. It sometimes took extended series of disasters before long overdue switches were made. Bows and firearms were used in parallel for quite some time and bows were gradually faded out when it became more and more difficult to procure and maintain them and their users while the firearms slowly improved and dropped in price.

[@vanivanov9571]

I've seen so many people making this same disappointingly narrow-minded comment. There's a lot of world beyond Western Europe, you know. Bows and guns went on in parallel up until the 19th century, outside of Europe. The Samurai and Chinese had fine guns (the latter having invented them), but still considered archery quite useful. And as you implied, they weren't idiots. They just had a culture that maintained some warrior traditions, where people spent their free time training with bows or the like, unlike Western Europe who destroyed their lower and middle classes and reduced them factory workers dying of cholera.

[@88porpoise]

@@vanivanov9571 Note that this video does NOT try to assert that all firearms are better than bows. It argues that 18th century European flintlocks (importantly including the socket bayonet) were. As such weapons became available in quantity they displaced bows pretty much everywhere. Which you can also see in England, the longbow served alongside early firearms for centuries but as the flintlock emerged as a practical weapon for mass adoption the military bows disappeared.

[@vanivanov9571]

@@88porpoise You figure the Qing lacked mass production capabilities? The flintlock is more convenient than a matchlock, but it isn't actually superior in effect. You can shoot a matchlock faster than most can shoot a flintlock, with skill. So hesitance to upgrade their armoury was likely for that reason, and presuming the flintlock is a game-changer seems special pleading. And the socket bayonet is a compromise on the fact soldiers were already carrying a 5 to 7kg weapon, so couldn't be expected to carry a decent melee weapon as well.

[@Segalmed]

@@vanivanov9571 Also in East Asia there was less of an objection to poison bolts and arrows (e.g. the standard size Chinese repeating crossbow was so underpowered that it is highly likely that the bolts were tipped into poison to make them effective). Poisoned musketballs never caught on, although to my knowledge it has been attempted (or wound infections caused by cloth taken into the wound canal by the ball were mistaken for such).

[@greedycapitalist8590]

You're forgetting that longbows are much more ecologically sound than muskets. To make a musket, you have to dig metal out of the ground, forge it etc - very damaging to the environment. Then when you shoot it, you're polluting the air with the smoke from burning black powder. And it's all using limited resources. Whereas a bow and arrow are made out of good old renewable materials, like wood, string and feathers, which grow out of the ground, ready to pick. And you can always plant more string trees etc. I'm sure this green argument would have carried a lot of weight with Henry VIII, who was so keen on ecological issues that he used to fertilise the ground with the bodies of his wives.

[@NoNo-qj3ef]

Your forgetting that environmental issues weren’t that important back then than now

[@noahmiller8042]

@@NoNo-qj3ef i think hes beign sarcastic

[@greedycapitalist8590]

@@noahmiller8042 Not quite. I was being ironic.

[@iapetusmccool]

I best Henry VIII would be frustrated at how he's remembered as a wife-killer. He only killed two of them. But he had four wives that he didn't kill. That's twice as many, and more than most people.

[@hedgehog3180]

@@iapetusmccool You do know that the number of wife murders that most people have committed is 0 right?

[@TITANia69420]

Isn't this similar to when Forgotten Weapons had to talk about why old Bolt-Actions are obsolete to modern weapons?

[@VilleKivinen]

Bolt action rifles have a few niche advantages for them. They allow easier retrieval of the brass for reloading, surplus rifles can be bought very cheaply, they can use very underpowered ammo, since they don't need the gun to self cycle, and there's no magazine that could catch a twig. Niche, and obsolete all the same.

[@leadshark9461]

@@VilleKivinen Surplus market hasn't been cheap for a while now.

[@petriew2018]

@@VilleKivinen from a military perspective the only advantage to bolt action is you don't need a recoil mechanism to cycle it. in large caliber weapons that would require a lot of heavy components moving inside the gun, making it all but impossible to use them semi-auto anyway. manual operation in that case is just more preferable, simplifies and lightens the gun with no practical loss of ROF but yeah, you still get some numpties who talk about how they're slightly more accurate (by milimeters at 300 yards...) as a reason why a lee-enfield is still a viable battlefield weapons...

[@G-Mastah-Fash]

A M24 is about as accurate as a gucci SR25. This ain't the 70's no more.

[@VilleKivinen]

@@petriew2018 accuracy of standard rifles hasn't really been relevant in decades though. No soldier can hit fleeting target at 300 meters when they are tired and the target is only partially visible. Whether the rifle can shoot sub minute of angle groups is just irrelevant.

[@Swenthorian]

25:05 I think you've actually missed a potential advantage of the musket: The smoke makes it harder for a longbowman to hit. An ideal volley would consist of, from each archer, one direct shot and one angled shot, each timed to land around the same time. But neither is as straight as a musket ball; meaning the moving clouds of thick smoke obscuring enemy lines could significantly hinder the archers' ability to actually hit the enemy.

[@BojanPeric-kq9et]

Archers wouldn't need to aim at particular enemy soldier.

[@Swenthorian]

@@BojanPeric-kq9et No, but they do need to be able to see the group they're firing at clearly so that they can judge distance accurately.

[@BojanPeric-kq9et]

@@Swenthorian I find it fascinating that smoke doesn't hinder people with muskets. IR vision?

[@Swenthorian]

@@BojanPeric-kq9et Musket balls don't have as much drop as arrows, and their technique is different. You can just aim right at the cloud of smoke with a musket. With a bow, you typically perform volleys such that you have two shots land simultaneously. The way this works, is one shot head-on, and one shot angled. The angled shot would be much harder to pull-off with smoke obscuring the enemy lines, and the direct shot would also likely suffer some, as it would be harder to estimate the amount of drop the archers need to compensate for.

[@Tareltonlives]

We saw the bow give way to the musket again and again: China, Turkey, India, Britain, Japan, the Americas. Bows still held out in some regions like Central Asia, the Western US and Korea, but that's because they're more useful on horseback.

[@xam113w]

The Turks held onto their Sipahi archer units up to the 18th century, they were the last major European power to retire archery.

[@LOL-zu1zr]

Not quite... It depends on the type of musket.

[@vanivanov9571]

Umm... Asia continued using the bow up till the 19th century. So I'm not sure what you mean.

[@LOL-zu1zr]

@@vanivanov9571 yes Qing China was a particularly good example of this. While in 18th century China, Chinese peasants had used guns for hunting and such, the army, which can easily purchase guns, used bows.

[@vanivanov9571]

@@LOL-zu1zr Indeed. China INVENTED guns, but still considered bows worth having. It's because they didn't crush their rural and warrior populace like Western Europe did, with their brutal urbanization, so Asia and Africa still had martial and rural culture to wield bows.

[@famguy2101]

What's amusing is that even in the late medieval period you already has a similar disparity between long bows and crossbows. More medieval armies fielded crossbows despite being more expensive and complicated weapons for many of the same reasons you've given for the musket

[@tylerrobbins8311]

Which is why guns replaced crossbows and not longbows. Longbows were never the conventional weapon of levied missle troops, that was always held by the sling and later the crossbow.

[@scott3462]

And crossbows are wonderful vs armour. Quicker to learn, and for a time the pope tried to outlaw them because of their capability to kill so many well dressed princelings.

[@vinz4066]

​@@scott3462 A crossbow could Not Pierce Plate Armour

[@fredl4173]

Hey at 2:32 you featured my reenacting group the 41st regiment at fort george Ontario. I know it was completely unintentional but thanks for the shoutout i guess, although you do seem to be using us as an example of slow loading.....

[@AlricOfRahls]

Actually, the reliability of the bow is also not that great in the same wet conditions where the musket struggles. Both the string and the bow itself are susceptible to water, which could lead to snapping of the string or the bow losing it's power.

[@archygrey9093]

I remember reading a book set in the middle ages where when in the rain the protagonist armed with a bow had to keep his string in a dry pouch until he needed to use the bow.

[@maryginger4877]

beeswax . . .

[@AlricOfRahls]

@@maryginger4877 not quite the point, as beeswax is a way to waterproof the bow, just as you can try to waterproof the musket. It might be possible to argue that waterproofing a bow is somewhat easier, but it also needs to be done.

[@maryginger4877]

@@AlricOfRahls As an archer, I've used beeswax and shot all day in the rain, no problem - apart from drying me and my kit at the end of the day.

[@AlricOfRahls]

@@maryginger4877 Ok, point taken. Probably still a pain during a campaign, but seemingly less of a problem than I thought.

[@jasonli2474]

to be fair, a flintlock is probably more accurate per bullet fired than that fellow trying to dual-wield light machine guns from the hip

[@Jake-dh9qk]

Idk, historical records said that a musket line of 300 men firing had about 10-15 casualties per volley. That's like a 5% chance of hitting a target per musket fired at around 150 yards.

[@erikryen6912]

@@Jake-dh9qk source? In my experiance 150 yards sounds too far away to let go the first volley... (we practice after period target size at 50 yards)

[@Jake-dh9qk]

@@erikryen6912 100 yard is probably the average engagement range but muskets get exponentially more accurate the closer you are. At 50 yards or meters the hit ratio is just too much for men to be within that distance unless they are well-trained. Musket warfare is kinda like push of pikes. Musketeers generally avoid getting too close if they could. If armies engaged at 50yards all the time then casualties will be sky-high and regiments would rout within a minute of contact. Prussian military analysts in 1813 would test the accuracy of muskets from 100yard up to 400yard for the sake of it. But 100-150yard is generally the engagement range. You're not trying to murder the entire army, you're just trying to push them off the field or rout them. You have certain units and nations inventing doctrines that emphasize on getting up close to enemies and rout them by fear, but those are reserved for specialized and extremely well trained units.

[@onlythefarmer]

@@Jake-dh9qk Just a thought, if you are in a firing line like that, which guy on the other side are you aiming at? How do you know the other 299 guys don't find him kinda suspicious too?

[@sentimentalmariner590]

The thing is though bows only fell out of fashion due to the advancement of armor technology eventually outstripping them entirely. Muskets then killed the armor industry due to their effectiveness against steel plate with most armies after wide spread adoption giving out only a breast plate and helmet at best to their elite infantry after the musket became the main force. Ironically this lessening of armor would have presented archers with a special opportunity. While it is true in terms of penetrative ability bows and crossbows are inferior to muskets they are still easily capable of piercing flesh and bone if they are of a goodly poundage. Couple that with the generally superior accurate range, and rate of fire compared to muskets and they could have theoretically made an effective comeback due to the lessening of armor on the battlefield as the archers greatest obstacle was removed from the field. Gone were the days of even simple men at arms having full jackplate, and mail or the dreaded knights in nigh impenetrable full plate. Arrows and bolts for their flaws were still ridiculously effective against fleshy squishy thing like men whop fought in dress uniforms for example. They are more difficult to learn though, especially in the case of a longbow a weapon that required a lifetime of practice to fully make use of. But a crossbowman with a goats foot lever crossbow of 500 lbs. can fire reliably 4 to 5 shots a minute and at far greater accuracy than a smoothbore musket is capable of matching. In only a slightly longer training process than a line infantryman.

[@tylerrobbins8311]

That is not true at all, armor even to this day defeats many guns. The reason was logistics the strongest armors defeated both guns and bows. A full kit of blued gothic plate could stop even some modern calibers which are supierior to all black powder guns. Bows were also used well into the 20th century, particularly in the east.

[@sentimentalmariner590]

@@tylerrobbins8311 Tell me how cost effective would it be to equip an entire army in gothic plate? It would be as you said logistically impossible. You are forgetting something else too modern bullet proof armor much like medieval armor may stop a single bullet but what about 2 or 4 or 8? Most modern vests with plates are rated for 2 to 3 rounds in the same area. It is not so much they defeated the gun as it is it stopped the bullet that time. I do not know about you but if I saw a company of guys with zweihanders and gothic plate armor trundling towards me I would probably focus my fire on them. The first volley line may not get through but what of the second or the third? Also with full helmet with visor down and gauntlets they would have to be using melee weapons since there is no way in hell you could reliably load a musket in full plate and aim effectively that is part of the reason why modern armies do not use full face helmets. Hell if money is no object of course you could find better armor but by the same token if money in no object you could simple equip all your infantry with hand mortars. I would also like to see proof of your assertion on gothic plate stopping modern rounds. I have seen only one video that I consider accurate and it was a test against a musket it did stop the musket ball but it was severely dented and a second or a third would have gotten through if close to the shot. I have also seen Skallagrim utterly destroy a 14th century churburg quality reproduction breastplate with a single shot as well but this was at relatively close range and the breast plate was older than gothic plate.

[@tylerrobbins8311]

@@sentimentalmariner590 If it's in the context of the 16th or 17th century those guns would do absolutely nothing. There is a reason why people would spend the money to buy that level of protection. It just happens the people who would've used the armor the most didn't have the money for it.

[@hedgehog3180]

Well that's because by the time armor had disappeared enough to matter guns had gotten so much better that even in these circumstances a gun would be better. Like when the gun has a similar or longer range, and it's cheaper to raise large units using them then the bow basically has no advantage. Sure a bow might have twice or 4 times the fire rate, but y'know how you can outdo that? By having 6 times as many soldiers, and early modern armies did have that, armies were now easily reaching into the several tens of thousands, a number that would have been inconceivable even in the late middle ages. At the end of the day the gun still has longer range and you still end up with more stuff going towards your enemy compared to using a bow. However your points do become relevant in some conflicts though, and that is in colonial conflicts, especially when European countries tried to invade areas that largely hadn't had contact to Europe yet and as such didn't have access to firearms. We do see quite a few examples here where European soldiers equipped with muskets were defeated by armies that largely used bows and spears and that is because firearms weren't such a decisive advantage that it was hopeless if you didn't happen, this often came down to superior tactics on the part of the defenders and better knowledge of the battlefield. Another example would be the Imjin war where Japanese armies that heavily relied on matchlocks were in the end defeated by Chinese and Korean armies that didn't really use them, this example is very different from the others since here we're actually talking about major countries facing off against each other in pitched battles and it's another example of how guns weren't the be all end all. In general while overall guns were basically always best, which is why almost everyone who could adopted them. That didn't mean that they didn't have weaknesses that a skilled opponent could and did utilize. It's a fairly nuanced subject where you can't really make a clear judgement on what is best, just what was the most useful in a certain situations and until the development of repeating firearms in the 19th century guns were not at all an obviously and indisputably superior weapon.

[@issarabooncharoen238]

While I agree with the premise of the video I'm a bit confused as to why it's comparing the 18th century flintlock musket to the longbow which apparently last used in European battle in the mid 17th century and had been on it's way for a good century before then. It's a bit like comparing horse cavalry to an M1 Abrams in order to discuss why the horses were phased out of warfare, there's no overlap when anyone would actually be in a position to choose between the two. (Wellington could have demanded longbowmen till he was blue in the face, there hadn't been any trained to a military standard for a century) The real question is why did the system of pike and (matchlock) shot prevail over the system where the longbow was a crucial system of war, it's a question that the video gives clues to the answer of but skirts by comparing technologies a century apart.

[@TheGeoCheese]

Well the pike and shot formation was already being executed with crossbows. Muskets were inaccurate above 100yds which the crossbow (and longbow to a degree) does better. However some of video’s arguments aren’t really because I’m not sure if he understands the military doctrine of the time. Muskets are better than longbows and crossbows for two main reasons, one of them being economical and the other for versatility. You could (and should from the beginning of any battle) attach the bayonet which also made the musket a spear. However a rabble was scared of being in a battle. Professional armies both respected and feared the bayonet because that weapon was almost guaranteed death and guaranteed loss of limbs.

[@rboes208]

I think he's responding to the notion out there that longbows would have been a better option than muskets. I have head it before.

[@hedgehog3180]

@@TheGeoCheese Well bayonets were actually a rather late addition to the musket, first off early matchlock firearms were way too heavy to be used as a spear and also the mechanisms were a bit too fragile for anyone to attempt that, but thirdly and most importantly, when you had a formation of pikes there's no reason to put a bayonet on your gun just to have a smaller worse spear, just let the pikes do it. In Pike and Shot warfare the musketeers would try to avoid melee combat and would instead retreat behind the pikes or let the pikes charge forwards on their own while they tried to keep up the fire.

[@hedgehog3180]

Yeah that's also one thing I'm wondering, like the things he are saying is definitely true of 18th century flintlock muskets but such a gun is a massive improvement compared to the matchlocks that had been adopted to replace bows and crossbows in the early modern period. And those guns had at best roughly half the range of their crossbow and bow contemporaries and were much less accurate, while also being much slower to reload than a flintlock, one manuscript has it taking 31 individual motions to reload a matchlock musket. The big draw for these matchlocks was the economic factor, their stopping power, the morale shock effect, and the ease with which you could train units to use them. For the stopping power, whenever you hear about longbows penetrating armor you have to remember that those accounts are from the early periods of the Hundred Years War, in which plate armor hadn't really been fully developed yet. However by the early modern period armor had gotten really good, late medieval and early modern plate armor was basically impenetrable to bows and only crossbows could hope to penetrate it reliably, hence why they came to dominate the battlefield. A matchlock however could very reliably penetrate armor at distances similar to or further than a crossbow. This of course then came along with the morale shock effect, the fire, smoke and sound from muskets is just inherently scary to both humans and animals and the smoke is also very disorienting, multiplying the scare factor, and this was the case even for trained soldiers, it was hard for anyone to keep it together under sustained fire, especially because bullets themselves are really scary. You can't quite see where they're coming from but you can just vaguely hear them whistling around you, giving the impression that the next one could hit you, whereas an arrow you can at least see. All of this then came together with the other factors to mean that you could easily create a critical mass of fire that could break enemy units, the Spanish Tercio was the first unit to show this when they defeated feared Swiss pikemen with the use of sustained fire from musketeers and artillery, their own pikemen were definitely inferior but they just needed to keep the muskets alive so they could wear down the Swiss and then the pikemen would deal the final blow.

[@TheGeoCheese]

@@hedgehog3180 yeah the bayonets that are feared (and now illegal to use) had to go through three stages. However that’s also where the military doctrine and formations of the time come into play. Also economics was a huge factor. It was actually cheaper mass produce bayonets than it was pikes because you don’t need as many people to fill the roles.

[@enoughothis]

God made Man, Sam Colt made all men equal and John Moses Browning made some men a little more equal than others!

[@theaman42069]

Don't forget Mr. Krag, and Mr. Jørgensen.

[@classifiedad1]

And Mr. Kalashnikov and Mr. Stoner made them even more equal.

[@SonsOfLorgar]

And Mr Nobel made them all into statistics... /This comment was brought to you by the Indirect fire Ordnance crew.

[@lunyteve]

I've often wondered this. Just based on the fact that you can fire arrows so much faster, it has always seemed to me like a bow and arrow would best a musket. But I also know that the bow was not a better weapon. If it were, I'm sure it would have remained in use. But I still have never been able to shake the thought from my mind. This video is one I've been waiting on for years lol. Thanks.

[@coffeemaiden7915]

To be fair with Sharpe, the budget wasn’t enough to portrait (regularly) more than some skirmishing and ambushes. And in those episodes where he ambushed a French convoy (Sharpe’s gold and Sharpe’s siege) those were supplying or transporting something as described in the video (One had valuables and the other medicines and a medic). I have not read the books yet, but at least in the series that’s what happen. This comment is not an angry one, it’s just a matter of defending the fandom’s honor xd

[@sirfox950]

I need a video on cavalry charging into squares

[@laki7480]

The bow was already being beaten by the crossbow most of the time, and an arquebus is simply a better crossbow *Drama*

[@eastonjames3241]

I love this channel for the colonial historical content. Been submerging myself in various times of history these past couple months and I am really glad to have found this channel

[@Woody-mu6hr]

I personally prefer a 1766 charleville and that's saying something considering I had 2 fingers shot off with one

[@billmelater6470]

Okay, story time. Don't leave us hanging.

[@Tareltonlives]

At least you survived that one: somehow you always survive

[@Tareltonlives]

@@billmelater6470 It was March 15, 1781. Earl Cornwallis has been pursuing Nathaniel Greene's force, across the Carolinas, as they used fabian tactics to avoid battle until their numbers were overwhelming. The rebels made their stand in Greensboro at the county courthouse. Loyalist militia had been dealt a bad blow with King's Mountain and Cowpens, so the good colonel's reserve force was strictly the Legionnary Dragoons. The rebels were hardened regulars by now, even the militia had been forged into an actual fighting force, and they took a strong position in the woods and in the fencing, exchanging fire with 33rd, 23rd, Campbell's 2nd Highlanders, and Du Buy and von Röder's Hessians. O'Hara and Tarelton had to deploy the reserves as they pushed the rebels back. Lee's Legion and Campbell's Virginians made a fighting retreat against du Buy's Hessians and Stuart's 2nd Guards. Stuart was shot by the Virginian riflemen and Tarelton rallied the men with a dragoon charge. A flash of cold steel finally settled them, but the rebel infantry gave a good fire, one ball striking the colonel in the hand. It was Cornwallis' Heraclea, but considering how little he knew of rebel positions and numbers, it was a good show by the soldiers that they were able to push through the strong rebel formation.

[@Woody-mu6hr]

@@billmelater6470 It was on March 15th 1781 at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. I had just dismounted my men when that damned rebel Henry "light horse" Lee had his men fire upon us I was trying to rally my men and I got a Yankee musket ball in my hand for my trouble.

[@Woody-mu6hr]

@@Tareltonlives thank you my good man and yes I do live

[@onecertainesquire486]

English Longbows have English the word English in them: automatic win for the Longbow, flintlock gets btfo’d

[@Tareltonlives]

But what's more English than a Brown Bess? It's even got alliteration!

[@Aurora4804]

I own muzzleloaders as well as bows. Love both and use both. The musket is superior, bar none. Some points that were missed. -You fail to cover the fact that even several arrow strikes can fail to incapacitate a man where as a musket will almost certainly immediately incapacitate the stricken; with or without armor, with armor making this a specifically worse outcome for the bow. -As for armor. Armor remained after longbows came into being. Armor was phased as musketry was developed. This should be considered telling. -In a similar vein as with armor. Musketry was well underway in England while archery was still a legally mandated skill. Early English colonists who were legally obligated to be well trained archers still chose to take matchlock muskets to the new world instead of bows. This should be considered a valuable insight tot the perspectives of the people who saw both weapons contemporarily. -Again in a similar vein to the above; the vast majority of medieval militaries chose crossbows over long bows or laminate bows. The question should be Longbow vs crossbow and then crossbow vs musket... -The smoke produced by gunpowder weapons also works in the favor of the marketmen providing concealment for them to work and move under. Hence why modern militaries use smoke grenades as well as smoke rounds for mortars and artillery. -Bows break. Bows go bad with time bow strings especially do. Inclement weather can have bad effects on them. They not as perfectly reliable as is often depicted. -Finally historically all throughout the ages of exploration and colonization muskets went up against bows, and bow lost all the wars and the vast majority of the battles.

[@wayneantoniazzi2706]

How good was a longbow against armor? Well, that's a "It depends" situation. Against chain mail armor a bowman armed with arrows equipped with a bodkin head, that is, long sharp and skinny, was absolutely deadly. A bodkin headed arrow will pierce chain mail easily. But plate armor? Not at all. At any rate not everyone was wearing plate on a medieval battlefield anyway, only the moneyed classes. A musketman up against someone wearing plate armor? Well, don't be mislead, those cavalrymen's breastplates with the bullet impacts were proof against pistol shots, that is pistols fired by other cavalrymen. They MIGHT stop a musket ball at long range but at close range? No way. At Waterloo the sound of musketballs hitting the breastplates of French curassiers was described as like "Hail on a metal roof." And those curassiers went DOWN. But as it was said, if gunpowder weapons weren't any good they never would have replaced the bow. A thought about logistics to consider, it takes hours for a skilled craftsman to produce arrows, it only takes minutes for a relatively unskilled worker to cast bullets. By the way, the last man killed in battle by an English longbow was a German soldier during WW2. He was zapped by a wild-man British Commando named "Mad Jack Churchill," who carried a longbow into battle because he thought it was cool. He carried a Scottish broadsword too. The Brits DO treasure their eccentrics, don't they?

[@ApersonIguess-rb6fu]

Historical guns didn't immediately make armor obsolete it took a while infact it was an arms race because as guns improved and got more powerful armor in response got thicker in order to resist them. But in the end armor couldn't keep up as guns improved to the point where bulletproof armor was simply too expensive and cumbersome to give to soldiers. So by the time of the Napoleonic wars armor was entirely almost phased out leaving only the curassiers left (though I think the cuirass they wore was more for protection against swords and bayonets rather than for bullets). It wouldn't be until WW1 where armor began to make its return with steel helmets (however they were meant for protection against shrapnel not bullets) and while bulletproof armor was tested it was never standard issue because they proved too heavy and cumbersome given only to specific troops. In modern times armor has made its effective return as we have more materials other than steel to use in making bulletproof armor.

[@hoegild1]

Great video, but yes as you said You missed something... aiming. A man using a flintlock can take his time aiming. waiting in a window for his target to show himself. As Shad and Lindybeige has shown, that is impossible to do with a longbow- and that means a lot on a battlefield that often involves sieges.

[@giftzwerg7345]

In sieges, you often just want to supress the enemy, so you can close in

[@hatforacat3977]

I’d gladly duel someone who’s using a longbow if I get a musket myself.

[@vanivanov9571]

You do competition smoothbore shooting?

[@hatforacat3977]

@@vanivanov9571 no, but nevertheless.

[@sonwig5186]

I wouldn't try that. Any good longbowman or woman can dodge bullets and shoot more than 60 arrows per minute. I know this because I am a longbow archer myself.

[@hatforacat3977]

@@sonwig5186 A person who's advocating for the use of longbows against muskets in actual warfare has probably never shot a single bow in their entire life, and thus would probably be a piece of cake. If I was supposed to duel someone who has had some bow experience, I'd probably: -wouldn't be doing it in the first place, or -fucking die lol

[@vanivanov9571]

Well, this got cringey fast. Apparently, the idiot who has never shot a musket before thinks he can outshoot Joe Gibbs. As it is, we've already seen the duel play out in various videos. Even USMC who pick up a musket for the first time tend to miss by a mile, or sometimes even proficient musketeers miss targets at less than 50m... so I figure you won't hit anything after ten minutes of trying, and are more likely to blow up your musket when you forget to blow down the barrel between shots, or any other number of mistakes. Meanwhile, any member of the longbow society can put shots in a 3m circle at about 200m, about one arrow every 5 to 10 seconds. So you're not even a match for their nice little old ladies. So, we already know the results... you agreed to run around screaming as arrows fall around you, unable to reload. That'd be funny to watch, so do tell me if you decide to back up the e-tough boast.

[@billmelater6470]

There are always going to be idealized scenarios where a longbow could be superior. What can't be ignored is the larger picture of training and equipping an army. EDIT: Brandon covered it.

[@merafirewing6591]

That Longbow being an AK-47 of it's time meme made me laugh.

[@garnix5612]

I totally agree with you, and bows were used in the napoleonic wars - by the bashkirs in the russian army. And well - seems that they were not very effective on the battlefield. But as horse archers they were great for harassing baggage trains (what they were used for). but sorry to say that, but the guy at 18:00 is just silly. You most probably didn't put the bow on your back but held it in your hand while drawing the sword, even using the bow for defense (there is one very interesting clue from an earlier period - the nydam bow - which had an iron spike at the bottom, used as a spear point).

[@aparioss1072]

Yeah but really, if a piece of wood is expected to flex as a bow, will it be any kind of decent spear even with the sharp bit on one end?

[@garnix5612]

@@aparioss1072 Of course it will. Do you realize what force is needed to bend a piece wood to achieve a draw weight of 100lbs? Heck, my 40lbs flat bow is quite hard when not strung and might make a great spear.

[@podemosurss8316]

7:41 In the Spanish army too. Spanish soldiers in the early XIX century trained aiming their muskets for fire at distances of up to 400m.

[@JayFLee1]

For the closest conflict of guns vs bows, see the Qing conquest of Ming China and Korea. The Qing won through superior calvary and organization but they quickly incorporated artillery and arquebus into their armies. They maintained their mounted calvary armies into the second half of the 19th century but it was more due to tradition than effectiveness.

[@matthiuskoenig3378]

why would gunpowder stop cavalry effectiveness in china? it didn't stop them in europe. even in ww2 mounted cavalry proved effective (as long as no tanks with HE were around, they smashed soviet infantry in charges, and Italian cavalry even beat British matildas in east Africa while mounted).

[@JayFLee1]

@@matthiuskoenig3378 I meant the Qing Bannermdn calvary lost their effectiveness. Their organization and training was outdated, and their horsemen failed to reach those standards too.

[@n0rdlys_40]

@@JayFLee1 There's also the Japan-Korean war. Japan used Arquebusses for their infantry and Korea mostly used archers.

[@alexwschan185]

@@n0rdlys_40 Actually guys, both the Qing and the Japanese both used their bows and arrows along with muskets, Qing frontier cavalry used Qing muskets from afar when the enemy came close enough you'd shoot them with a bow and arrow. Qing muskets were not seen as a primary weapon like European muskets and were long and slow reloading high accuracy skirmishing weapons, doctrinally if the Qing ever decide to turn their muskets into a primary weapon they might develop the bayonet and musket drills like the Europeans. Tbh standardization is probably one of the better reasons for muskets to be used, even tho bows are simple to produce on paper, each person has a different height a built and bows are often custom made rather than mass-produced in factories.

[@ONEIL311]

@@JayFLee1 I think u all misunderstand this is a completely different scenario then the wars in Europe. The wars in Europe are pretty much way more advanced warfare then Asia and the Americans at the time. Europe you have armies in a constant state of warfare for centuries with standing armies, mercenaries and big open fields where they killed each other for centuries. In Asia and the America's there are thrown together armies with limited firearms, funds and the specialty to make firearms. Europe advanced them into firearms warfare threw trade and they weren't advanced enough or had the time to completely use them like the Europeans.

[@nicholaswalsh4462]

The Flintlock musket is superior to the Longbow simply because it requires less training to use. A longbow takes a LONG time to develop the necessary muscle strength to use in battle. A musket, on the other hand, requires at most a week or two to become proficient with.

[@Fabianwew]

Matchlocks and flintlocks are quite different

[@lalli8152]

Flintlocks have far more advantages as well. Maybe also some disadvantages too, but its advantages just simply makes it superior weapon. Already earlier types of guns made bows far less useful, but flintlock even improved the gun further.

[@nicholaswalsh4462]

@@lalli8152 the main advantage of the firearm is in the amount of training required to use it proficiently. A longbow requires YEARS of training to use proficiently, meaning a dead longbowman is not easily replaced. A musket, on the other hand, can be handed to a raw recruit who can then be instructed to acceptable proficiency in a week. Of course, that's if you train them on the musket and not anything else. But even then, the training time is significantly shorter for a musketeer than a longbowman. While a regiment of 1,000 longbowmen would require years of training to even have sufficient proficiency to use the war bows, a regiment of 1,000 musketeers could be raised from entirely untrained civilians and be made battle ready in 90 days, and that's taking your time with it. It could likely be done in no more than a month if you weren't particularly worried about them looking like they knew what they were doing.

[@vanivanov9571]

@@nicholaswalsh4462 Note that "acceptable" proficiency was about a 5% hit rate during the Napoleonic wars. The Prussians, one of the better trained militaries, at 150m, found there was a 50% chance of hitting a 30m wide, 2m tall blanket..... So they probably should've spent years practicing their aim, whether with guns or bows.

[@nicholaswalsh4462]

@@vanivanov9571 but why? If you have 1,000 men firing, 5% means 50 bullets are hitting their mark. That is fifty men killed or wounded and 50 fewer men shooting back at you. And since that level of proficiency can be achieved very easily, it is sufficient. Plus, accuracy varies quite considerably between the range (where that Prussian test was conducted) and the battlefield (where most soldiers would do most of their shooting). In battle, you'll never have perfect accuracy. To give you an example, modern US Army marksmanship standards call for 40 shots to be fired at pop-up targets on a known distance range. The minimum number of hits required to qualify is 23, or 57.5%. Fairly comparable to the Prussian test. In combat, however, this changes. Estimates from World War II put the number of expended rounds per casualty at 45,000. Estimates from Vietnam put it at 50,000. Those figures rose to 250,000 per casualty during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So the Napoleonic era standard of around 250 rounds per casualty are actually quite precise. And then there is the fact that the trajectory of bows and firearms are very different. Bows, to achieve the ranges similar to a musket, need to be fired at higher angles, due to the lower launch velocity of the arrow (170 to 180 feet per second) compared to a musket (1425-1700 feet per second). What this means is that, while a musketeer can point and shoot his weapon at an enemy, keeping the barrel and, by extension, the shot level with his vision, an archer can't, meaning his accuracy falls drastically as range increases, far more so than a musketeer.

[@moritamikamikara3879]

I think Brandon, you may be underselling the societal impact the longbow has. To all American viewers: Imagine if you will that the 2nd amendment, rather than stipulating freedom to own firearms, mandated it. Imagine then that it also required you to go to firearms training classes on a weekly basis. Furthermore Imagine that gun companies were required to build 2 shit tier bolt action rifles for every skeletonized gucci AR-15 or modern polymer AK rifle to ensure that every citizen could afford a rifle. Imagine that your boss is legally obligated to pay you a certain amount for bullets every pay check. God... I can just hear all 2A supporters salivating at the thought... and I can hear all gun control supporters screaming in mental anguish. You can imagine the effect this might have had on society... especially given that any noble can rock up in a town and EASILY recruit a decent amount of VERY effective soldiers. Civil war time, here we come! WOOOOOO!

[@wayneantoniazzi2706]

I'm sure you know that in Switzerland EVERY able-bodied male from the ages of 18 to 46 is an army reservist and until recently took his weapon home with him, a state-of-the-art assault rifle supplied by the Swiss government. Several years ago they were given the option of storing their weapons in local armorys instead of taking them home, they are repsonsible for the weapon's security after all. How many do so I don't know. And the Swiss aren't massacreing each other in the streets either. Anti-gun types would have nervous breakdowns if they moved to Switzerland! Interestingly, Baron von Steuben recommended a Swiss-type militia system (it goes back that far) for a post-Revolutionary War American military establishment.

[@vinz4066]

@@wayneantoniazzi2706 Yes they Take the GUN Home Not the Amunition That is the reason there is so little gun violence.

[@wayneantoniazzi2706]

@@vinz4066 Not really. Firearms ownership in Switzerland is a lot less restrictive than it is in New York or New Jersey. Private firearms ownership is no big deal provided you've got no criminal record. And I got that from a Swiss gun dealer. Ammuniton for military exercises is issued and the unused portion has to be turned in, it's still government property, but there's nothing to keep a legitimate firearms owner from buying it over the counter. The reason they have so little gun violence in Switzerland is try it and you go away for a long, long time, and into a prison with a tough regime. They don't fool around with lawbreakers. I got that from the same Swiss dealer as well. Firearms ownership is a lot less restrictive in Israel than NY or NJ as well.

[@vinz4066]

@@wayneantoniazzi2706 I Just meant the Military isiued assault rifels

[@booksen5327]

@@wayneantoniazzi2706 i reckon a modern democracy where people can properly voice their concerns is a lot more stable than a feudal society with constant scheming between nobles

[@roberthall7830]

The point is the longbow was artillery and was replaced by the canon not the musket the musket replaced the sword spear and pike

[@simonamos5426]

I was pondering this the other day. I took the view surely muskets should be better than bows.

[@micahistory]

Imagining having to practice shooting a longbow hours every day

[@asmith2406]

The musket required little training or strength. The longbow a good deal of both.

[@kaoticyagura5242]

now i feel like an idiot for never considering the effects of training time on how many soldiers a nation could field, nor the deficiency in melee combat of the longbow. Overall a fantastic video and im glad to have my mind changed

[@vanivanov9571]

You're not the one who should feel like an idiot, on either of those counts. For melee, he cherry picked a guy who was slow to stow his bow... and even then it only takes 5 seconds. Plus, he's not carrying a 5~7kg musket, so he can easily carry a 2kg spear, which outshines the bayonet in every respect. To quote my response to the video on economics: "" *Economics:* Problem, army size is dictated by the quality of your supply chain and forage in the theatre of war. So while longbows are a bigger upfront investment, like any warrior society, the supply costs and limitations are about the same. You can't supply ten times as many troops because you saved some money ten years ago. ""

[@VideoMask93]

23:26 Funny you say that-Matt Easton did a video last week or so about a battle during the Wars of the Roses that started as an attempted ambush, foiled by the waiting army's banners being spotted. Longbows were also involved, though apparently not very effective on account of the English probably knowing best how to counter longbows.

[@JTelli786]

Fantastic video, fantastic amount of research! I'm no expert, just an armchair historian but I do want to add another advantage of the musket that wasn't addressed. The flatter trajectory leading to a much larger kill zone. Compare the archer having to aim more vertically leading to hitting his opponent with downward plunging fire to that of a musketeer with a far flatter trajectory. The killing field for the musket is much much bigger.

[@FiskKohri]

Brandon, plaese don't tease me with the most important details of warfare for that long of a time: logistics and the economy that stands behind an army. Btw if you are ever looking for ideas on a video...what was the path of ammunition (production and distibution), in detail, for muskets. I guess there are videos about it, but you didn't do one yet, right?

[@micahistory]

You made a very good point about training in longbows being mandatory for so long in England, it really shows it's not that simple