Bows were better than Guns #shorts

I guess that’s when battle formations stop putting the range soldiers (bowmen) at the back protected by infantry, and started stacking them (riflemen) in front, because it no longer mattered much if they died. They’re easily replaced, just like the polearm infantry.

Talking about early guns: Hussites did to medieval knights in Europe what ashigaru regiments did to samurais in Japan: Some random warlord could gather lots of common peasants and turn them into soldiers in a short time, destroying armies of nobles who trained for war their whole lives in the process

guns also has more range and accuracy

Its also why england started to win... a lot. The king made it mandatory that every peasant to train with one on sunday so you had hundreds of hours of training in most individuals in your population

No

Another big advantage is fatigue. Bows use human strength and energy to propel their arrows. This can exhaust the energy of an archer quickly. A gun uses the chemical energy in the gunpowder to propel the bullet. You can keep firing your gun until you run out of powder or shot. When that happens, you can still maneuver across the battlefield since you aren't fatigued.

Which is one of many reasons why everyone should have one. Having a sword or bow for defense doesnt mean shit when youre a 55 year old woman, but having a firearm does.

The invention of rifling is when guns surpassed bows.

Still prefer my compound bow

It's also cheaper and lighter to bring along enough gunpowder and tiny lead balls compared to big bulky and labor intensive arrows. Plus, battles can last a long time. Shooting a longbow for prolonged period long time would be exhausting.

In contrast well srilled musketeers will fire in groups and maintain constant fire down the field for hours if necessary, and always keep a reserve of loaded muskets to deliver a devastating close quarters volley to anyone who attempts to charge.😢

"as the founding fathers intended"

Bows can stay in the past. But can we please bring back zweihanders?

As one man one said amateurs deal in tactics and strategy professionals deal in logistics and sustainability

I keep seeing people make this point that bows were better weapons than guns but they never seem to mention anything about effect on the target. Sure you can fire a bow faster, and you can hit a man size target at more than double the range, but other than that there really isn’t any advantage to bows. Firearms just hit harder. A volley from a line of gunman can mangle fortifications that would stop arrows. You fire an arrow into a rank of soldiers it’s gonna wound or kill one guy you fire, you fire a gun into a line of soldiers and It’ll kill the first guy and probably mangle the guy behind him. This is on top of them being easier to use and easier to keep supplied logistically. Matchcord, gunpowder and lead shot, are easier to manufacture in large quantities than arrows.

I'm a Powhatan native. I'm still trying to figure out how my ancestors couldn't defeat the English disease aside

Training investment time is incorrect; but yeah otherwise correct.
Fun fact: slings were notably much more deadly than bows, and were displaced by the bow for essentially the same reasons.

This is pure unmitigated bullshit. It is often repeated, even by professional historians. However testing even the earliest handgonnes tells a very different story. Just so long as it is not an inferior copy made by someone that doesn't understand the principles involved. They have far greater range and penetration than even a heavy English war bow. Accuracy too with a large amount of practice. Meaning it is also not true that training not being important was what lead to the adoption of firearms.

And yet….when i play Age 3 as England I always spam bowmen…

Peasants were required to be proficient with bows, so what you say makes a little sense, but ends with your ignorance. See, they made the archers pick up the rifles, but trained both from an early age. Around 6 for young men. The old adage "aim small, miss small" was an archery technique. Blanket fire was adapted more and more, because archers and "the firing squad" suffered many losses, so you lose efficacy over time, no matter the shooter, or how they shoot. A long as the projectile goes in the correct direction.

Guns weren’t guns yet they were still cannons different tool for siege and not yet ready for combat

Same reason polearms were the king of the battlefueld for Milennia, youvsn train a peasant to use a sharp stick pretty fast, while other weapons take a lifetime.

And if you think about it, guns are just spicy ranged polearms.

Not against armor

Imagine alternate history where we have an aolutomatic crossbow

I agree 100 👍🏿
I however still like to know when the gun powder and casings expire , a two-handed Scottish Claymore can keep going thru. 😂

The weapon that makes it to the battlefield is usually not the deadliest, most reliablee or most versatile weapon.
It is usually the cheapest.

I have a question could the eastern Roman's capital have survive against the ottoman

And the entire time they used pikes until relatively recently.

This is a bit reductive.
1. While archery was widespread as a talent, hunting small game isn't the same thing as drawing a warbow.
2. Muskets beat out bows because of penetrating power at range. Muskets still required extensive training to teach people not to flinch while firing an already inaccurate weapon. Mortars weren't used in the same capacity as warbows.
3. If range weren't the determining factor, the reload speed of a longbow would always prevail. Your rate of fire doesn't matter if you get killed before you're enemy is even in range. Again, longbows of the peroid were cheaper to make than guns so one couldn't reasonably train their population en masse.

Bowmen yes a loss was big, but crossbow men no, just like guns any pesent could be traied in a couple days

Another thing crossbows and guns have over bows, is that you can keep them loaded/at full draw for hours, while you can't do the same with a bow. This means you can be an effective sniper.

Cheaper to train because you got a reserve army of working class people

Which ultimately gives us the fixed bayonet musket. A gun and polearm (almost) in a single weapon.

I’m 16 and I’m about to get a bow and I want to know the best type of bow if anyone has recommendations I’d like to hear them. I’m trying to activate my inner robin hood

Thanks.

How very fascinating.

Sums up to - Guns make big boom which is scary

For early guns and Crossbows the weapon the more expensive than the user
So as long as the weapon wasn't captured or destroyed you could have another gunner or crossbowman on the field within a month

So why did every army eventually retrain their skilled archers to use guns? By the 15th hunderts guns were superior almost every way to bows. I guess it all depends with how early guns you mean. They developed really fast

Also - don’t discount the additional “sir, i may have created something very special — i combined our riflemen with our Pikes and now they can shoot AND stab them with slightly shorter spears!”😂

Notice how as it became easier to kill people, we started killing more people?

Silver is the sinews of war

Guns might not have been great, but live is cheap and time is expensive.

This is also the reason why some native american tribes/siberians seem to be on par with the colonists in history. You'd think gun>bow, but at the time the gun was not much better than a bow, but if you kill a bow, there's one less bow, and if you kill a gun, there's another gun a few weeks later.

This is the case for most weapon development and adoption. Slings were better than bows for a while but it took ages to train a slinger. Crossbows were way more expensive to produce than bows and more cumbersome to transport but all you really had to do to train a crossbowman was show him how to load it and tell him to point it. Guns were realistically a trash weapon for a decent amount of the time they existed. Take forever to load, infinitely more maintenance and cleaning, impossible to acquire ammo unless you have a supply line to an entire industrialized process dedicated to it, and a weapon that has comparatively huge amounts of parts that could break, wear, or go missing that might not be easy to fix or fabricate in the field.
But if you're losing 500 people per day in a war, you can keep training gunners and get more guns. For bowman or slingers, you realistically only have the amount of bows as you have trained troops in reserve. There wouldn't be a huge amount that finish training during the duration of the war (generally)

I believe the English had a saying related to this: "to train an archer begin with his grandfather."

Must have boomstick

Fun fact: bows were still a popular weapon in warfare when guns dominated. They often had troops armed with bows during marches, because a company of bowman can respond to an immediate threat, like an ambush, faster than a company of gunmen.

finaly ! someone who does know what he s talking about ! thanks

"Just more guns"
Swedish Caroleons would like to have a word with you

Crossbow will still go threw a lvl 4 vest with ceramic inserts no problem