Longbow vs. Longbow?
daniel patrick duffy
faced each other on opposite sides? Probably during the War of the
Roses. What was the result? Did they wipe each other out after an
initial exchange of volleys, leaving the field to the knights and heavy
foot?
Chris Allen
1) the number of archers on each side were less.
As I understand it, most of the population (including a lot of the lords)
stayed out of the conflict. Hence they could not muster the massive arrow
storm the skewered the frogs so effectively. By contrast, when the Pomes
fought in France they had more support (from the Pomes) and so it was
easier to muster large forces of archers.
2) As the poms understood the effectiveness of the arrow better than any
one else, they were probably better at evading it.
William Black
daniel patrick duffy <thed...@fuse.net> wrote in message
news:3B1233F0...@fuse.net...
The Wars of the Roses (note the plural) were rather odd in European terms.
Firstly there were few sieges as there were few modern castles in England.
Second, the archers had been decisively defeated at Castillon in 1453 (?)
by cannon and were well obsolete by then. They kept on being used for the
next few years because of inertia.
Third, By the Wars of the Roses everybody in armour was in some sort of
plate (and illustrations of the period show archers in plate armour as well)
and there is no contemporary evidence of archers being able to penetrate
plate armour.
So in answer to your question: By the time anyone pitted large numbers of
archers against each other they had ceased to be as effective as they had
been and so didn't wipe each other out.
Now if the French project to raise archers had succeeded...
--
William Black
------------------
On time, on budget, or works;
Pick any two from three
D. Spencer Hines
William Black
---------------------
Good Point. Most Americans get this wrong ---- and we should learn from
the Brits on this one.
--
D. Spencer Hines
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
"Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit." Publius Virgilius Maro
(Virgil) [70-19 B.C.] [Aeneid I, 203] Aeneas, seeking to comfort his
men as they contemplate an arduous journey to Italy, reassures them
that, "Someday, perhaps, it will be pleasant to remember all this."
All replies to the newsgroup please. Thank you kindly.
All original material contained herein is copyright and property of the
author. It may be quoted only in discussions on this forum and with an
attribution to the author, unless permission is otherwise expressly
given, in writing.
Vires et Honor
Julian Richards
The only point that I must disagree on is about the amount of plate
armour in the field. When one of the great battles was excavated
(someone here will know which), they were amazed by the fact that many
of the wounds were obviously against unarmoured bodies. It seems in
fact that very many turned up without even the protection of a helmet.
There is a later picture of the battle with everyone in full sets of
armour but this seems to have been very much not the case.
--
Julian Richards
"Cultures that wilfully anaesthetise themselves to the past, will
infantilise themselves. To have no sense of your parents, and your
grandparents, and of the pleasures and pains of actually understanding
your antiquity, is to be completely robbed of any freedom to shape
your posterity" Cicero
David Brewer
>
> On Mon, 28 May 2001 18:48:08 +0100, William Black said,
> >
> > daniel patrick duffy <thed...@fuse.net> wrote in message
> > news:3B1233F0...@fuse.net...
> > > Any information on battles where large formations of English longbowmen
> > > faced each other on opposite sides? Probably during the War of the
> > > Roses. What was the result? Did they wipe each other out after an
> > > initial exchange of volleys, leaving the field to the knights and heavy
> > > foot?
> >
> > The Wars of the Roses (note the plural) were rather odd in European terms.
> >
> > Firstly there were few sieges as there were few modern castles in England.
I wouldn't call that cause and effect. English (and Welsh) castles
could potentially hold out for a long time (ask Jasper Tudor), but
to do so was mostly an irrelevant act. Armies were usually
recruited for a short duration and had to seek battle quickly and
hope to defeat and scatter or capture the opposing partisans.
Cromwell slighted most of our castles, because they represented a
military threat. This has the pleasing side effect of creating
numerous picturesque ruins that one may visit.
> > Second, the archers had been decisively defeated at Castillon in 1453 (?)
> > by cannon and were well obsolete by then. They kept on being used for the
> > next few years because of inertia.
With hindsight, we look upon archery as a dead-end, but at the
time archers, especially English archers were highly respected and
valued.
Cannon never did win many battles alone and Castillon was not a
very representative pointer to things to come, which mostly
revolve around pike and cavalry.
> > Third, By the Wars of the Roses everybody in armour was in some sort of
> > plate (and illustrations of the period show archers in plate armour as well)
> > and there is no contemporary evidence of archers being able to penetrate
> > plate armour.
This is silly. We have the evidence of the Howard Household books,
among much other evidence, to show that great magnates equipped
men in brigandines and gesserants and the like. Henry VIII was
able to equip his army in plate armours by buying in vast amounts
of armour from Germany. England had no capacity for making plate
body armour during the Wars of the Roses, but produced linen
armours, brigandines and mail armours and some helmets. Plate
armours were all imported.
> > So in answer to your question: By the time anyone pitted large numbers of
> > archers against each other they had ceased to be as effective as they had
> > been and so didn't wipe each other out.
The evidence of earlier eras is that archery never did wipe
anybody out, anyway, but wounded, blinded, annoyed and generally
rendered an advancing enemy ineffective. See the rather dogmatic
Kelly DeVries's work "Infantry Warfare".
> > Now if the French project to raise archers had succeeded...
The French raised permanent companies of Ordannance archers, as
did the Burgundians. Burgundian and French archers fought in 1465
at Montl'hery in a somewhat Wars-of-the-Roses-y battle.
> The only point that I must disagree on is about the amount of plate
> armour in the field. When one of the great battles was excavated
> (someone here will know which),
Towton, see thread "Bloody Towton" and take heed of my evil
reputation.
> they were amazed by the fact that many
> of the wounds were obviously against unarmoured bodies. It seems in
> fact that very many turned up without even the protection of a helmet.
These troops were buried far from the field and likely killed
while fleeing for their lives. Possibly they had discarded
encumbering armours.
> There is a later picture of the battle with everyone in full sets of
> armour but this seems to have been very much not the case.
The evidence of French manuscript illustrators is poor evidence
indeed. There are very few pictures of English soldiers depicted
by English artists. See for an example the picture of William I in
Rickart's Calendar (a.k.a. the Mayor's Calendar of Bristol) who is
surrounded by liveried archers and men-at-arms.
--
David Brewer
Woodcrafter
rather because of a stupid mistake of the English commander. He frontal
assaulted a fortified handgun position of the French. Bowmen do not assault
but are a defensive feature. If he had waited for the French to attack, then
the tables could very well have been completely turned.
True much of the plate armour was proof against arrows and crossbows. Some
was even proof against handguns. However it was not cheap enough to clad
your archers in it.
Still during the battle of Towton in 1461, Lord Clifford was killed by an
arrow, and Lord Dacre was shot in the head by a crossbow bolt when he took
his helmet off to rest during a lull in the battle. This tells us two things
(three really). One, archers and crossbowmen were still being used, probably
because any army is equipped by the lowest bidder. Two, 'archery' was used
extensively enough that it was not 'just' at the start of the battle where a
large volley was fired. Three, archery must have been effective enough to
include in a battle, especially when they are making important kills like
that.
Woodcrafter
"William Black" <black_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9eu30m$6vf$1...@neptunium.btinternet.com...
Bob
"Julian Richards" <julian-...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:3B12B480.MD-1.4....@ntlworld.com...
>
> The only point that I must disagree on is about the amount of plate
> armour in the field. When one of the great battles was excavated
> (someone here will know which), they were amazed by the fact that many
> of the wounds were obviously against unarmoured bodies.
Could one not arguer that those wearing plate armor either 1) didn't get
wounded 2) received less wounds, and 3) received less life threatening
wounds, whereas those without armor tended to be 1) wounded in greater
numbers and 2) received more serious wounds which were more likely to lead
to death within hours.
I wouldn't be amazed by the fact that many of the wounds were obviously
against unarmored bodies.
Bob
William Black
David Brewer <da...@brewer.to> wrote in message
news:3B12ECC1...@brewer.to...
> Julian Richards wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, 28 May 2001 18:48:08 +0100, William Black said,
> > >
> > > Firstly there were few sieges as there were few modern castles in
England.
>
> I wouldn't call that cause and effect. English (and Welsh) castles
> could potentially hold out for a long time (ask Jasper Tudor), but
> to do so was mostly an irrelevant act. Armies were usually
> recruited for a short duration and had to seek battle quickly and
> hope to defeat and scatter or capture the opposing partisans.
>
> Cromwell slighted most of our castles, because they represented a
> military threat. This has the pleasing side effect of creating
> numerous picturesque ruins that one may visit.
The Cromwell one is interesting. There are lots of ruins and lots of money
being voted to slight castles and little evidence of any work being carried
out. Certainly at Scarborough there is a record of the money being voted
and no evidence of it being spent. We've also got to wade through the
Victorian predilection for romantic ruins (Warkworth and etc) someone once
said to me reference castles 'Trust nothing north of the Trent')
> > > Third, By the Wars of the Roses everybody in armour was in some sort
of
> > > plate (and illustrations of the period show archers in plate armour as
well)
> > > and there is no contemporary evidence of archers being able to
penetrate
> > > plate armour.
>
> This is silly. We have the evidence of the Howard Household books,
> among much other evidence, to show that great magnates equipped
> men in brigandines and gesserants and the like. Henry VIII was
> able to equip his army in plate armours by buying in vast amounts
> of armour from Germany
You're right, I've been looking at too many pictures recently. It's a
failing I share with many other re-enactors.
mor...@niuhep.physics.niu.edu
>> The only point that I must disagree on is about the amount of plate
>> armour in the field. When one of the great battles was excavated
>> (someone here will know which), they were amazed by the fact that many
>> of the wounds were obviously against unarmoured bodies.
I'm piggybacking so I am not sure what the exact context of this
comment was...
One very significant archaeological source of information about armour
and combat wounds is the dig of the Battle of Visby that occured in 1362.
If this is what you are referring to my understanding is that the defenders
were the home guard, almost all the fighting age men were off fighting
another battle. So it is presumed that the armour being worn by the home
guard was castoffs from the last generation.
http://www.churchmousewebsite.co.uk/visby.htm
gives some descriptions.
OTOH, I don't remember the numbers, but the documents for the campaign
that led to Agincourt included Welse daggermen, and a couple of other
groups whose descriptions lead one to believe that these folks were not
the best armoured.
My recollection is that the descriptions of the Battle of Crecy in 1346
indicate that maille was very much in evidence there.
FWIW,
Robert Morphis
sophia
<black_...@hotmail.com> writes
>
>
>
>The Cromwell one is interesting. There are lots of ruins and lots of money
>being voted to slight castles and little evidence of any work being carried
>out. Certainly at Scarborough there is a record of the money being voted
>and no evidence of it being spent. We've also got to wade through the
>Victorian predilection for romantic ruins (Warkworth and etc) someone once
>said to me reference castles 'Trust nothing north of the Trent')
There are differing views on this issue (which I think is a fascinating
one). On the one hand we have evidence of votes, resolutions,
budget allocations for destruction etc, and reports of same; on the
other we have evidence of shirking, work not done, bribery,
weaselling out of it etc. MW Thompson, who studied the end of the
castles extensively, discovered evidence for major destruction at
many sites, but a picture that was patchy overall: in some areas there
was a lot of damage, in others not much happened. My own view is
similar, there was a large scale demolition programme, but it was
carried on in a fairly haphazard way in many parts of the country.
It's certainly true that we can't blame the Commonwealth for all the
ruins we see - many castles in England were derelict or partially so
(though still defensible) long before the Civil War. Even with major
royal castles, very frequently the walls were standing but the internal
buildings were virtually in ruins. It was also possible for an important
castle like Fotheringhay, active in the 1580s, to dry up and disappear
in a generation or so.
--
Sophia
Faith in Fabulousness
www.arxana.demon.co.uk/
icq: 93834408
bogus address
Cromwell invaded Tonga???
========> Email to "jc" at this site; email to "bogus" will bounce. <========
Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/purrhome.html food intolerance data and recipes,
freeware logic fonts for the Macintosh, and Scots traditional music resources
bogus address
> On the one hand we have evidence of votes, resolutions, budget
> allocations for destruction etc, and reports of same; on the
> other we have evidence of shirking, work not done, bribery,
> weaselling out of it etc. MW Thompson, who studied the end of the
> castles extensively, discovered evidence for major destruction at
> many sites, but a picture that was patchy overall: in some areas
> there was a lot of damage, in others not much happened.
There is an article (title and author I forget) in the volume of essays
"Scotland and War" edited by Norman Macdougall which compares accounts
of war damage to structures with archaeological or later historical
evidence of what actually happened. Sometimes the contemporary account
and the known subsequent state of the structure matched, but time and
again he found records that claimed the total destruction of something
that was still standing pretty much intact hundreds of years later.
David Brewer
>
> David Brewer <da...@brewer.to> wrote in message
> news:3B12ECC1...@brewer.to...
>
> > military threat. This has the pleasing side effect of creating
> > numerous picturesque ruins that one may visit.
>
> The Cromwell one is interesting. There are lots of ruins and lots of money
> being voted to slight castles and little evidence of any work being carried
> out. Certainly at Scarborough there is a record of the money being voted
> and no evidence of it being spent.
I'm sure you're right, I never did that ECW thing and the homework
to go with it.
> We've also got to wade through the
> Victorian predilection for romantic ruins (Warkworth and etc) someone once
> said to me reference castles 'Trust nothing north of the Trent')
Warkworth, eh? You could park a Nazghul on it.
[...]
> > This is silly. We have the evidence of the Howard Household books,
> > among much other evidence, to show that great magnates equipped
> > men in brigandines and gesserants and the like. Henry VIII was
> > able to equip his army in plate armours by buying in vast amounts
> > of armour from Germany
>
> You're right, I've been looking at too many pictures recently. It's a
> failing I share with many other re-enactors.
Well, I'm told that the Beauchamp Pageant is Flemish, so apart
from Robert Rickart's doodling of William I, I can't think of any
English military scenes executed by an Englishman in England of
the time. Shame.
--
David Brewer
David Brewer
>
> David Brewer <da...@brewer.to> writes:
> > Cromwell slighted most of our castles
>
> Cromwell invaded Tonga???
Truly, a giant who bestrode history.
--
David Brewer
MARTIN REBOUL
Bob wrote...
>
> "Julian Richards" <julian-...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
> news:3B12B480.MD-1.4....@ntlworld.com...
> >
> > The only point that I must disagree on is about the amount of plate
> > armour in the field. When one of the great battles was excavated
> > (someone here will know which), they were amazed by the fact that many
> > of the wounds were obviously against unarmoured bodies.
Probably Towton. Thought is that they had been overpowered or taken
prisoner, and had their helmets torn off or removed before their heads were
smashed in with hammers, and they were hacked about.
> Could one not arguer that those wearing plate armor either 1) didn't get
> wounded 2) received less wounds, and 3) received less life threatening
> wounds, whereas those without armor tended to be 1) wounded in greater
> numbers and 2) received more serious wounds which were more likely to lead
> to death within hours.
All of those to some extent.
> I wouldn't be amazed by the fact that many of the wounds were obviously
> against unarmored bodies.
Plate armour was more generally available in the late 15th C than is often
realised. Thhink about - the spoils of the Hundred Years War (tons of the
stuff, of the finest quality), the latest production processes, and the
equipping of private armies by rich noblemaen. There are records of even the
lowliest having harness in their posession (Cely Papers). No doubt traded,
swapped, modified by local blacksmiths and joined together in bits and
pieces - seldom ever found in single suit original form.
Cheers
Martin
MARTIN REBOUL
Woodcrafter wrote...
> As I understand it, Castillon was lost not because bows were so
ineffective,
> rather because of a stupid mistake of the English commander. He frontal
> assaulted a fortified handgun position of the French. Bowmen do not
assault
> but are a defensive feature. If he had waited for the French to attack,
then
> the tables could very well have been completely turned.
>
> True much of the plate armour was proof against arrows and crossbows. Some
> was even proof against handguns. However it was not cheap enough to clad
> your archers in it.
Very difficult to fire a longbow in plate armour, they need too much
flexibility.
> Still during the battle of Towton in 1461, Lord Clifford was killed by an
> arrow, and Lord Dacre was shot in the head by a crossbow bolt when he took
> his helmet off to rest during a lull in the battle. This tells us two
things
> (three really). One, archers and crossbowmen were still being used,
probably
> because any army is equipped by the lowest bidder. Two, 'archery' was used
> extensively enough that it was not 'just' at the start of the battle where
a
> large volley was fired. Three, archery must have been effective enough to
> include in a battle, especially when they are making important kills like
> that.
Indeed, the Lancastrians were galled into leaving their excellent position
by longbow fire, the wind giving the Yorkists that little bit of extra range
that meant they could score hits, while the arrows of their opponents fell
short.
Cheers
Martin
MARTIN REBOUL
D. Spencer Hines wrote...
> "The Wars of the Roses (note the plural)..."
>
> William Black
> ---------------------
>
> Good Point. Most Americans get this wrong ---- and we should learn from
> the Brits on this one.
"Wars of the Rival Roses" actually, if you look at the very first use of
that term.
Cheers
Martin
med...@bearfabrique.org
wrote:
>
>> > Second, the archers had been decisively defeated at Castillon in 1453 (?)
>> > by cannon and were well obsolete by then. They kept on being used for the
>> > next few years because of inertia.
>
>With hindsight, we look upon archery as a dead-end, but at the
>time archers, especially English archers were highly respected and
>valued.
>
>Cannon never did win many battles alone and Castillon was not a
>very representative pointer to things to come, which mostly
>revolve around pike and cavalry.
There is no point much before 1800 at which I'd not rather had a
Turko-Mongol bow or even an English longbow in my hands than any kind
of firearm. Greater accurate range and ten times the rate of fire.
Mongols conquered nearly the entire world with armies equipped mainly
with bows and undoubtedly faced every possible kind of armor and the
armor the French knights wore at Agincourt didn't help them much.
Worst case, an archer could shoot the horses; a horse with plate
armor on it wouldn't be able to move.
In real wars, such as took place in Asia during the Mongol centuries,
the most major asset of cavalry armies was extreme mobility, which
would not have been compatible with plate armor. Chengis Khan's
armies traveled with several horses per man and could cover a hundred
miles or more in a day. You couldn't get warning to anybody in time
to save them.
Europeans never developed composite bows nor the skills to use them on
horseback like Mongols did, and the most major martial art which
Europeans ever really got good at was seige warfare. European
missions came back from Mongolia with the secret of gunpowder having
watched Hulagu's soldiers preparing to hurl gunpowder bombs into the
assasin castles, and immediatly started using it for seige warfare,
i.e. started tunneling under enemy walls, lighting kegs of the stuff
off under the walls, and blowing the walls down.
This is the most major part of the answer I can come up with to the
question of why gunpowder weapons got to be popular so long before
they were really more effective than bows. The idea had to be that
with so much of the stuff sitting around, it made economic sense to
try to use it for weapons at all levels. The idea that you could
teach ordinary rifraff to use gunpowder weapons rather than having to
train archers for fifteen years was gravy.
Ted Holden
med...@bearfabrique.org
William Black
<med...@bearfabrique.org> wrote in message
news:3b1476ec....@news.fcc.net...
> There is no point much before 1800 at which I'd not rather had a
> Turko-Mongol bow or even an English longbow in my hands than any kind
> of firearm. Greater accurate range and ten times the rate of fire.
You are right about individual weapons against an unarmoured man.
However a musket will punch holes in a breastplate at 200 yards and you can
train a man to shoot it in a morning.
My mass army of every man who could walk ten miles a day while carrying 25
pounds of equipment would have taken your pityfull handfull of archers in a
morning, The longbowmen while they're still training and your Mongols while
they're still drying sinew.
It's not about individuals, it's about armies.
mor...@niuhep.physics.niu.edu
>>> > Second, the archers had been decisively defeated at Castillon in 1453 (?)
>>> > by cannon and were well obsolete by then. They kept on being used for the
>>> > next few years because of inertia.
>>
>>With hindsight, we look upon archery as a dead-end, but at the
>>time archers, especially English archers were highly respected and
>>valued.
>>
>>Cannon never did win many battles alone
My understanding is that tanks alone don't win very many battles.
>>and Castillon was not a
>>very representative pointer to things to come, which mostly
>>revolve around pike and cavalry.
>There is no point much before 1800 at which I'd not rather had a
>Turko-Mongol bow or even an English longbow in my hands than any kind
>of firearm. Greater accurate range and ten times the rate of fire.
The Brown Bess musket, introduced in the late 1600s has a 3-4 shot per
minute rate of fire, the maximum I have heard for longbow is 12 per minute.
From what I have read I am inclined to credit 1 and 4 shots per
minute respectively for the average musketeer/archer under the nitty
gritty of battle conditions.
Neither archery nor musketry in warfare was primarily a matter of
marksmanship. The idea is to get a huge number of projectiles
dumped into a huge number of human targets.
That said muskets using tight fitting matched balls are far more
accurate than longbows for moderately trained soldiers at ranges
of 50-100 yards.
(Some of the sources I have found do not specify whether the accuracy
is with matched balls or the loose fit balls which would have been
the order of the day for battles.)
>Mongols conquered nearly the entire world with armies equipped mainly
>with bows and undoubtedly faced every possible kind of armor
I do not believe the Mongols ever faced 15th century plate.
>and the armor the French knights wore at Agincourt didn't help them much.
It is a hotly debated topic whether or not archers killed very many
knights at Agincourt using arrows.
>Worst case, an archer could shoot the horses;
At Agincourt only a very small number of French were on horses.
>a horse with plate armor on it wouldn't be able to move.
You don't need plate armour to greatly reduce the effectiveness
of arrows. Against a calvary charge archers get about four shots
before the knights are on them, the effectiveness of the first two
flights would be greatly reduced by leather armour and only the last
flight can be fairly consistantly aimed at a particular target.
>In real wars,
As opposed to the pretend wars in Europe... I'm sure all the people
who died in those wars are comforted by your expert opinion that they
didn't die in a "real war".
>such as took place in Asia during the Mongol centuries,
>the most major asset of cavalry armies was extreme mobility, which
>would not have been compatible with plate armor.
>Chengis Khan's armies traveled with several horses per man and could
>cover a hundred miles or more in a day.
For how many days?
I quite agree that the Mongols moved far faster than European armies but
40 miles per day appears to be more likely for continuous movement.
>[]the most major part of the answer I can come up with to the
>question of why gunpowder weapons got to be popular so long before
>they were really more effective than bows. The idea had to be that
>with so much of the stuff sitting around, it made economic sense to
>try to use it for weapons at all levels.
It "had to be"?
How about the fact that a musket at 100 yards will consistantly go
through any armor that allows movement while arrows can only penetrate
relatively light plate?
Robert Morphis
Paul J. Gans
> med...@bearfabrique.org writes:
>>David Brewer <da...@brewer.to> wrote:
[deletions]
> The Brown Bess musket, introduced in the late 1600s has a 3-4 shot per
> minute rate of fire, the maximum I have heard for longbow is 12 per minute.
> From what I have read I am inclined to credit 1 and 4 shots per
> minute respectively for the average musketeer/archer under the nitty
> gritty of battle conditions.
> Neither archery nor musketry in warfare was primarily a matter of
> marksmanship. The idea is to get a huge number of projectiles
> dumped into a huge number of human targets.
> That said muskets using tight fitting matched balls are far more
> accurate than longbows for moderately trained soldiers at ranges
> of 50-100 yards.
> (Some of the sources I have found do not specify whether the accuracy
> is with matched balls or the loose fit balls which would have been
> the order of the day for battles.)
It must have been with tight fitting balls. The "slap" of
loose fit balls would guarantee that one could not hit the
broad side of a barn from any real distance, which may be
where the phrase originated.... ;-)
[...]
>>such as took place in Asia during the Mongol centuries,
>>the most major asset of cavalry armies was extreme mobility, which
>>would not have been compatible with plate armor.
>>Chengis Khan's armies traveled with several horses per man and could
>>cover a hundred miles or more in a day.
> For how many days?
> I quite agree that the Mongols moved far faster than European armies but
> 40 miles per day appears to be more likely for continuous movement.
As I understand it, raiding parties could move very rapidly.
On the other hand the main forces included a baggage train
with the usual blacksmithing equipment, siege equipment, etc.,
etc., likely did not move any faster than its European
equivalent.
[more deletions]
---- Paul J. Gans
Chris Allen
MARTIN REBOUL wrote:
> D. Spencer Hines wrote...
> > "The Wars of the Roses (note the plural)..."
> >
> > William Black
> > ---------------------
> >
> > Good Point. Most Americans get this wrong ---- and we should learn from
> > the Brits on this one.
>
> "Wars of the Rival Roses" actually, if you look at the very first use of
> that term.
I read that people living at the time called it "The Cousin's War". The
"roses" were attributed to it later.
MARTIN REBOUL
Chris Allen wrote...
Quite right! Very shortly after, certainly. It was the "Roses" thing - no
good, must look it up....
Cheers
Martin
Dick Wisan
>
>
>mor...@niuhep.physics.niu.edu wrote:
>> med...@bearfabrique.org writes:
>>>David Brewer <da...@brewer.to> wrote:
>
>[deletions]
>
>> The Brown Bess musket, introduced in the late 1600s has a 3-4 shot per
>> minute rate of fire, the maximum I have heard for longbow is 12 per minute.
>
>> From what I have read I am inclined to credit 1 and 4 shots per
>> minute respectively for the average musketeer/archer under the nitty
>> gritty of battle conditions.
Depends on which musketeers and when. Jac Weller says Wellington's
well trained people could fire 4 volleys per minute. Three was more
common, I believe in most armies. Remember, the effective range of
those things is so low that they didn't have to keep it up for more
than a few minutes between the time the enemy comes in range and
the time they either get to you (with bayonets) or turn to flee.
>> Neither archery nor musketry in warfare was primarily a matter of
>> marksmanship. The idea is to get a huge number of projectiles
>> dumped into a huge number of human targets.
Standard British army practice was not to aim at all. You "presented"
your musket, holding it at waist level, pointing generally at the
enemy. Rate of fire was more important than aim.
>> That said muskets using tight fitting matched balls are far more
>> accurate than longbows for moderately trained soldiers at ranges
>> of 50-100 yards.
>> (Some of the sources I have found do not specify whether the accuracy
>> is with matched balls or the loose fit balls which would have been
>> the order of the day for battles.)
>
>It must have been with tight fitting balls. The "slap" of
>loose fit balls would guarantee that one could not hit the
>broad side of a barn from any real distance, which may be
>where the phrase originated.... ;-)
You can't use a really tight fitting ball in a musket without
losing rate of fire altogether. Any muzzle loading weapon
needs a certain amount of "windage" -- space between the ball
and the barrel to let the air out as the ball goes in. This
wasted power as the expanding gas escaped through the windage
on the way out. It also meant that the ball did bang back and
forth as it came up the barrel, and that is why the musket was,
indeed, not very accurate.
No doubt, a hunter could use a better (but not perfectly) fitting
ball and load slowly. Muzzle loading rifles were even slower to
load because the ball had to fit close enough to cut its way down
the lands and to engage them as it came up. The minie ball broke
through all this by adding a sort of skirt to the ball. That
made an elongated projectile with a a bit of a waist and a concavity
in the rear. It could be small enough to drop as quickly down the
barrel as a musket ball, then, when the charge went off, the skirt
expanded to make a good fit.
--
R. N. (Dick) Wisan Email: wis...@hartwick.edu
Snail: 37 Clinton St., Oneonta, NY 13820, USA
Just your opinion, please, Ma'am. No fax.
David Read
<wis...@catskill.net> writes
>Depends on which musketeers and when. Jac Weller says Wellington's
>well trained people could fire 4 volleys per minute. Three was more
>common, I believe in most armies. Remember, the effective range of
>those things is so low that they didn't have to keep it up for more
>than a few minutes between the time the enemy comes in range and
>the time they either get to you (with bayonets) or turn to flee.
Unfortunately, Jac Weller, like Sir Charles Oman before him, reached
some fairly dodgy conclusions about British infantry fire tactics based
upon "rate of fire". Two schools of thought had grown up during the
eighteenth century concerning rates of fire for close-order musketry;
what one might call the "quick-fire" school, and the "levelled-fire"
school.
The prime exponents of quick fire were Frederick the Great's Prussians,
which could achieve five or six rounds per minute, and doubtless, their
later imitators sometimes managed to achieve similar results. Almost
needless to say, such rates could not be maintained for more than two or
three minutes, as the musket barrels overheated, the men became
exhausted, and ammunition became depleted. Indeed, in order to achieve
such high rates of fire various short-cuts were taken in musketry drill
which further reduced the musket ball's accuracy, range and penetration.
By the Napoleonic Wars, British infantry fire tactics in the armies of
the Duke of Wellington were usually very different. Even as early as the
1750's, Wolfe, of Quebec fame, could write: "There is no necessity for
firing very fast; a cool and well-levelled fire, with the pieces
carefully loaded, is much more destructive and formidable than the
quickest fire in confusion." So although British training in the latter
half of the eighteenth century did imitate that of the Prussians, there
was a rival system of fire tactics that existed and indeed, it was that
rival system which was used to great effect by Wellington. Typically,
his infantry did not open fire - whether they were defending or
attacking - until the enemy were within very close range and then,
following one or two levelled volleys, they charged with the bayonet.
>
>Standard British army practice was not to aim at all. You "presented"
>your musket, holding it at waist level, pointing generally at the
>enemy. Rate of fire was more important than aim.
No - for Wellington's men, a steady nerve, iron discipline and great
courage were more important than either rate of fire or aim.
Follow ups set to soc.history.war.misc.
cheers,
--
David Read
William Black
> >> The Brown Bess musket, introduced in the late 1600s has a 3-4 shot per
> >> minute rate of fire, the maximum I have heard for longbow is 12 per
minute.
12 a minute seems to have been the military qualifying rate.
I've seen people shoot 15 or 18 a minute aimed shots with a reasonably heavy
draw-weight bow.
med...@bearfabrique.org
>You can't use a really tight fitting ball in a musket without
>losing rate of fire altogether. Any muzzle loading weapon
>needs a certain amount of "windage" -- space between the ball
>and the barrel to let the air out as the ball goes in. This
>wasted power as the expanding gas escaped through the windage
>on the way out. It also meant that the ball did bang back and
>forth as it came up the barrel, and that is why the musket was,
>indeed, not very accurate.
Air gets pushed out the hole for primers or flash powder. No modern
black-powder hunting weapons which I'm aware of use loose fitting
ammunition and I can't believe any rifles ever did, other than in the
case of military weapons using miniballs as you note. Miniballs used
for hunting, where rate of fire is not important, are tight fitting.
Ted Holden
med...@bearfabrique.org
Dick Wisan
Judging by the catalogs, modern black-powder hunting weapons are not
muskets but rifles, firing minie balls. Pre-minie ball rifles did
need a tight fitting ball, and they had to ram it down very hard,
sometimes, I believe, with a little hammer. Wellington's riflemen
used two kinds of ammunition. Rifle balls fit tightly, had to be
rammed down and took about a minute to load. They also carried a
smaller ball able to slide rapidly down the barrel, which could be
"musket loaded" with which they could fire at least 3 rounds/minute.
Normal military practice would be to open with a carefully prepared
rifle ball, followed by musket balls firing fast. Skirmishers, I
suppose, might use either as required.
MARTIN REBOUL
David Brewer wrote ...
> William Black wrote:
> >
> > David Brewer <da...@brewer.to> wrote in message
> > news:3B12ECC1...@brewer.to...
> >
> > > Cromwell slighted most of our castles, because they represented a
> > > military threat. This has the pleasing side effect of creating
> > > numerous picturesque ruins that one may visit.
> >
> > The Cromwell one is interesting. There are lots of ruins and lots of
money
> > being voted to slight castles and little evidence of any work being
carried
> > out. Certainly at Scarborough there is a record of the money being
voted
> > and no evidence of it being spent.
I didn't know the National Lottery went back that far?
> I'm sure you're right, I never did that ECW thing and the homework
> to go with it.
>
> > We've also got to wade through the
> > Victorian predilection for romantic ruins (Warkworth and etc) someone
once
> > said to me reference castles 'Trust nothing north of the Trent')
>
> Warkworth, eh? You could park a Nazghul on it.
He wrote a good chronicle though!
> [...]
> > > This is silly. We have the evidence of the Howard Household books,
> > > among much other evidence, to show that great magnates equipped
> > > men in brigandines and gesserants and the like. Henry VIII was
> > > able to equip his army in plate armours by buying in vast amounts
> > > of armour from Germany
> >
> > You're right, I've been looking at too many pictures recently. It's a
> > failing I share with many other re-enactors.
>
> Well, I'm told that the Beauchamp Pageant is Flemish, so apart
> from Robert Rickart's doodling of William I, I can't think of any
> English military scenes executed by an Englishman in England of
> the time. Shame.
I've often wondered about the Beachamp Pageant. It looks v. English to me,
and the artwork is peculiarly realistic, whoever did it. Does anyone have
any info on this MSS? If I can read it, it must have been written by an
Englishman, surely? Good artist whatever, well superior to the average
'illustrators' of the time. He could draw.......and he didn't draw what
'should be'. he drew what he saw as far as I can see. Compare with the
fanciful illustrations in 'The Arrivall of Ed IV' ....stylised, ridiculous
really. I expect the Pageant was written about the same time (possibly a
little later). What say you?
Cheers
Martin
Lblanch001
>I've often wondered about the Beachamp Pageant. It looks v. English to me,
>and the artwork is peculiarly realistic, whoever did it. Does anyone have
>any info on this MSS? If I can read it, it must have been written by an
>Englishman, surely? Good artist whatever, well superior to the average
>'illustrators' of the time. He could draw.......and he didn't draw what
>'should be'. he drew what he saw as far as I can see. Compare with the
>fanciful illustrations in 'The Arrivall of Ed IV' ....stylised, ridiculous
>really. I expect the Pageant was written about the same time (possibly a
>little later). What say you?
Going completely from memory here, I think it was produced c. 1483 and that it
was commissioned by Anne Beauchamp, widow of the Earl of Warwick, to instruct
her grandson Edward of Middleham. When the long-anticipated facsimile edition
comes out (supported by a grant from the Richard III and Yorkist History Trust)
I imagine any number of questions will be answered.
In the meantime...I think I recall that Kathleen Scott has an entry on the
Pageant in her _Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390-1490. A Survey of Manuscripts
Illuminated in the British Isles, vol. 6 (1996). It may answer some of Martin's
questions.
Regards,
Laura Blanchard
lblan...@aol.com (or lbla...@pobox.upenn.edu)
http://www.r3.org/
(see http://orb.rhodes.edu/ to reach major medieval gateway sites)
MARTIN REBOUL
Lblanch001wrote...
Thanks Laura. I must get a copy of that, I've only ever seen snippets in
WotR coffee table books. Any plans to re-publish John Lydgate's 'Troy
Book'....? There's some very interesting stuff in there, and (I suspect)
some 'hidden treasure' which no-one has spotted!
Cheers
Martin
>
David Brewer
>
> David Brewer wrote ...
>
> > Well, I'm told that the Beauchamp Pageant is Flemish, so apart
> > from Robert Rickart's doodling of William I, I can't think of any
> > English military scenes executed by an Englishman in England of
> > the time. Shame.
>
> I've often wondered about the Beachamp Pageant. It looks v. English to me,
> and the artwork is peculiarly realistic, whoever did it. Does anyone have
> any info on this MSS? If I can read it, it must have been written by an
> Englishman, surely? Good artist whatever, well superior to the average
> 'illustrators' of the time. He could draw.......and he didn't draw what
> 'should be'. he drew what he saw as far as I can see. Compare with the
> fanciful illustrations in 'The Arrivall of Ed IV' ....stylised, ridiculous
> really. I expect the Pageant was written about the same time (possibly a
> little later). What say you?
I honestly don't know the origin of the Beauchamp Pageant or who
the writer(s) and the artist were for this unfinished work.
Someone told me once that the artist was possibly Flemish and I
haven't been able to confirm or deny this. I assume he'd've been
working in England.
The point, really is that you have to treat any source with care.
I'm used to seeing fifteenth-century reenacters uncritically using
sources from the 19th Century ("It's my Clan tartan"... the mind
boggles) backwards ("Its Roman, so they could have used it") and
generally making up stuff and then believing what they've invented
is true.
--
David Brewer
David Brewer
>
> med...@bearfabrique.org writes:
> >David Brewer <da...@brewer.to> wrote:
>
> >>> > Second, the archers had been decisively defeated at Castillon in 1453 (?)
> >>> > by cannon and were well obsolete by then. They kept on being used for the
> >>> > next few years because of inertia.
> >>
> >>With hindsight, we look upon archery as a dead-end, but at the
> >>time archers, especially English archers were highly respected and
> >>valued.
> >>
> >>Cannon never did win many battles alone
>
> My understanding is that tanks alone don't win very many battles.
Fair comment. Let's say instead that cannon were neither a direct
replacement for archers, nor the primary arm around which armies
were formed. I do not see how cannon make archers obsolete.
[...]
> >There is no point much before 1800 at which I'd not rather had a
> >Turko-Mongol bow or even an English longbow in my hands than any kind
> >of firearm. Greater accurate range and ten times the rate of fire.
However accurate bows are believed to be, they have little
"stopping power" compared to firearms at any decent range. An army
of archers would just get blown to hell by musketeers, I think.
I recall a wargames magazine article, a few years back, which
discussed how battle casualties were affected by the introduction
of firearms. Before this, armies would suffer few casualties up to
the point where one army broke and fled, at which point the
victors massacre the losers. As firearms become predominant
casualties among the victors increase notably, until we get the
attrition hell of the ACW and ultimately WW1.
--
David Brewer
Paul J. Gans
I think that this was often true. But there were exceptions.
The piles of dead at Courtrai are an example. The French may
have been stupid, but they were brave. They died facing the
enemy. But they still died.
---- Paul J. Gans
med...@bearfabrique.org
wrote:
>> >There is no point much before 1800 at which I'd not rather had a
>> >Turko-Mongol bow or even an English longbow in my hands than any kind
>> >of firearm. Greater accurate range and ten times the rate of fire.
>
>However accurate bows are believed to be, they have little
>"stopping power" compared to firearms at any decent range. An army
>of archers would just get blown to hell by musketeers, I think.
If the archers were good, the musketeers would all be dead before they
ever got within their own range.
>I recall a wargames magazine article, a few years back, which
>discussed how battle casualties were affected by the introduction
>of firearms. Before this, armies would suffer few casualties up to
>the point where one army broke and fled, at which point the
>victors massacre the losers. As firearms become predominant
>casualties among the victors increase notably, until we get the
>attrition hell of the ACW and ultimately WW1.
You need to read up on Chengis Khan. Nobody conquers the major part
of the world by counting coup. "The Devil's Horsemen" would be as
good a place to start as any.
Ted Holden
www.bearfabrique.org
Osmo Ronkanen
wrote:
>>"stopping power" compared to firearms at any decent range.
I do not get that. An arrow is lethal at any range it can fly.
As I understand the archers generally shot with high elevation.
>>An army
>>of archers would just get blown to hell by musketeers, I think.
>
>If the archers were good, the musketeers would all be dead before they
>ever got within their own range.
However, such an army would use different tactics, like blowing
the archers with cannons. The cannons could fire case shot beyond
the range of the archers.
>>I recall a wargames magazine article, a few years back, which
>>discussed how battle casualties were affected by the introduction
>>of firearms. Before this, armies would suffer few casualties up to
>>the point where one army broke and fled, at which point the
>>victors massacre the losers. As firearms become predominant
>>casualties among the victors increase notably, until we get the
>>attrition hell of the ACW and ultimately WW1.
This was because of the tactics used. They blasted each other at
70 meters or so until either side broke. After that the other
side charged. Now it is clear that in this situation casualties
are high on both sides.
Now I do think the effect of archery is overestimated. One
typically hears the same battles as examples of it and that in a
war Britain lost.
Osmo
alex milman
"Paul J. Gans" <ga...@scholar.chem.nyu.edu> wrote in message
news:Y8BT6.13$gX5...@typhoon.nyu.edu...
> I think that this was often true. But there were exceptions.
> The piles of dead at Courtrai are an example. The French may
> have been stupid,
As a nation or just this particular army? In the last case we can
find some wisdom in Count of Artouis recruiting exclusively the
idiots: (a) he could pass for a smart person, while being surrounded
by the idiots, and (b) the rest of the territory would not suffer from
unnecessary loss of a brain power in the case of defeat.
>but they were brave.
And to prove this, they climbed on the top of each other before
they died. The most interesting part of this exercise was to manage
to do this trick while being on a horseback and THEN release the
horse (AFAIK, "piles" did not involve any dead horses).
> They died facing the
> enemy.
Rather difficult (IMHO) to achieve while climbing on the top of a pile: you
have to look under your feet.
> But they still died.
If this is of any consolation, all the victors are also dead.
William Black
<med...@bearfabrique.org> wrote in message
news:3b20bc65....@news.fcc.net...
> >However accurate bows are believed to be, they have little
> >"stopping power" compared to firearms at any decent range. An army
> >of archers would just get blown to hell by musketeers, I think.
>
> If the archers were good, the musketeers would all be dead before they
> ever got within their own range.
Nope, musketeers are killing people in armour at 200 yards. Archers are
just bouncing off.
Remember that people were still wearing armour which will keep out arrows
until well after 1650, the bow had disapeared in Europe an 100 years
before.
> You need to read up on Chengis Khan. Nobody conquers the major part
> of the world by counting coup. "The Devil's Horsemen" would be as
> good a place to start as any.
Bow armed cavalry versus volley firing European musket armed troops. It did
happen a couple of times, guess who won :-)
I've been to see the armour and weapons taken from the defeated and
shattered remnants of Asiatic cavalry, including the heavy armour, who
tried to face musket armed volley firing European (and European trained)
troops, it's very impressive.
The victors brought some of it back to show people.
--
William Black
------------------
On time, on budget, or works;
Pick any two from three
They are neatly and respectfully displayed in a museum
alex milman
> wrote:
>
> >> >There is no point much before 1800 at which I'd not rather had a
> >> >Turko-Mongol bow or even an English longbow in my hands than any kind
> >> >of firearm. Greater accurate range and ten times the rate of fire.
> >
> >However accurate bows are believed to be, they have little
> >"stopping power" compared to firearms at any decent range. An army
> >of archers would just get blown to hell by musketeers, I think.
>
> If the archers were good, the musketeers would all be dead before they
> ever got within their own range.
To be more precise, arquebusires. Muskets came to the scene much later.
As for the archers vs the arquebusires, there were contemporary discussions.
One of them, quoted by The Obsolete Historian included the following
exchange of the arguments:
Archer's proponent wrote that archers are very useful in scaring the horses.
His opponent wrote that, while this is true, firearms are killing the
riders.
Which, IMHO, gives some idea about relative "stopping" and "penetrating"
powers, as viewed by the contemporaries.
BTW, there were numerous encounters between (mounted) good archers
and musketeers of XVIII century (when Russia had been subduing various
nomadic nations). Strangely, results were almost always in the favor of the
firearms. Which probably should also tell something about the effective
range
of the bows.
>
> >I recall a wargames magazine article, a few years back, which
> >discussed how battle casualties were affected by the introduction
> >of firearms. Before this, armies would suffer few casualties up to
> >the point where one army broke and fled, at which point the
> >victors massacre the losers. As firearms become predominant
> >casualties among the victors increase notably, until we get the
> >attrition hell of the ACW and ultimately WW1.
>
> You need to read up on Chengis Khan. Nobody conquers the major part
> of the world by counting coup. "The Devil's Horsemen" would be as
> good a place to start as any.
Mongolian victories were mostly result of a superior tactics and not of the
use of any particular weapon.
alex milman
"Osmo Ronkanen" <ronk...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
news:9fqsla$s0o$1...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi...
> In Article <3b20bc65....@news.fcc.net med...@bearfabrique.or
> wrote:
> >On Wed, 06 Jun 2001 23:53:45 GMT, David Brewer <da...@brewer.to>
> >wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>However accurate bows are believed to be, they have little
> >>"stopping power" compared to firearms at any decent range.
>
> I do not get that. An arrow is lethal at any range it can fly.
A very interesting idea but hardly correct for any non-explosive weapon:
> As I understand the archers generally shot with high elevation.
IMHO, this would be hardly applicable for the short distances and would
also lower a chance to hit something besides a big deep formation. Which
was not "generally" the case because most of the archers were mounted
nomads, who did not (as a rule) fought in the deep dense columns. :-)
alex milman
"William Black" <black_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9fr5ui$5bh$1...@neptunium.btinternet.com...
>
> <med...@bearfabrique.org> wrote in message
> news:3b20bc65....@news.fcc.net...
> > On Wed, 06 Jun 2001 23:53:45 GMT, David Brewer <da...@brewer.to>
> > wrote:
>
> > >However accurate bows are believed to be, they have little
> > >"stopping power" compared to firearms at any decent range. An army
> > >of archers would just get blown to hell by musketeers, I think.
> >
> > If the archers were good, the musketeers would all be dead before they
> > ever got within their own range.
>
> Nope, musketeers are killing people in armour at 200 yards. Archers are
> just bouncing off.
>
> Remember that people were still wearing armour which will keep out arrows
> until well after 1650, the bow had disapeared in Europe an 100 years
> before.
>
And, what's interesting, armour became substantially heavier with a mass
introduction
of the firearms.
Paul J. Gans
>>but they were brave.
>> But they still died.
Hooray!!! Alex is back. Now the average wisdom per post will
go up. Badly needed around here.
----- Paul J. Gans
med...@bearfabrique.org
<black_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Nope, musketeers are killing people in armour at 200 yards. Archers are
>just bouncing off.
Extreme accurate range for a musket was about 60 yards. Even in the
mid 1700's, Freidrich the Great's solkdiers said that Prussian muskets
worked better if you didn't try to aim them. 200 Yard shots? Forget
it.
>Bow armed cavalry versus volley firing European musket armed troops. It did
>happen a couple of times, guess who won :-)
>I've been to see the armour and weapons taken from the defeated and
>shattered remnants of Asiatic cavalry, including the heavy armour, who
>tried to face musket armed volley firing European (and European trained)
>troops, it's very impressive.
Mounted archers facing musketeers close-up would have lost as you
describe, but the real problem seems to be that their leadership had
gone brain-dead by that time. One of Chengis Khan's generals using
reasonable tactics, in my estimation, would have had little difficulty
with an army of european musketeers wearing plate armor. They'd have
fallen back in front of it over a wide area, shooting from 200 - 300
yards at which range they'd have been safe from musket balls and,
after the second or third day, either the plate armor would have been
discarded or the Europeans would have died from exhaustion. You can
picture the rest of the story.
The firearms would have won out eventually, but it's still amazing to
me that people switched over to them as early as they did. Again, the
bows had a much greater accurate range and many times the rate of fire
than the first few hundred years worth of firearms, and it's far from
obvious to me that plate armor would make all the difference as
claimed.
Ted Holden
www.bearfabrique.org
William Black
<med...@bearfabrique.org> wrote in message
news:3b220261....@news.fcc.net...
> On Fri, 8 Jun 2001 19:36:08 +0100, "William Black"
> <black_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> >Nope, musketeers are killing people in armour at 200 yards. Archers are
> >just bouncing off.
>
> Extreme accurate range for a musket was about 60 yards. Even in the
> mid 1700's, Freidrich the Great's solkdiers said that Prussian muskets
> worked better if you didn't try to aim them. 200 Yard shots? Forget
> it.
I agree that extreme accurate range for a musket is 60 yards, I also know
that 600 of them letting drive at a target 200 yards away will do some
considerable damage to the oncoming force. That's why you don't aim, it
upsets the statistical effect of letting go with 600 of them if they all
shoot at an officer.
As I keep saying on this thread, it's not about one man.
Osmo Ronkanen
wrote:
>On Fri, 8 Jun 2001 19:36:08 +0100, "William Black"
><black_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Nope, musketeers are killing people in armour at 200 yards. Archers are
>>just bouncing off.
>
>Extreme accurate range for a musket was about 60 yards. Even in the
>mid 1700's, Freidrich the Great's solkdiers said that Prussian muskets
>worked better if you didn't try to aim them. 200 Yard shots? Forget
>it.
Check the Firepower by Hughes. Still at 200 yards there was about
20-30% chance of hitting a row of men.
>
>Mounted archers facing musketeers close-up would have lost as you
>describe, but the real problem seems to be that their leadership had
>gone brain-dead by that time. One of Chengis Khan's generals using
>reasonable tactics, in my estimation, would have had little difficulty
>with an army of european musketeers wearing plate armor. They'd have
>fallen back in front of it over a wide area, shooting from 200 - 300
>yards at which range they'd have been safe from musket balls and,
>after the second or third day, either the plate armor would have been
>discarded or the Europeans would have died from exhaustion. You can
>picture the rest of the story.
How many arrows do you think they carried? One is not safe from
musket balls at that distance, nor are bows effective against
plate armor, especially at that distance. Battles of the day did
not generally last that long. Even with a musket one could shoot
all the ammo in a hour or so.
In anyway the best cavalry tactic against early firearms was
charge. That was what Mongols did. Poles learned that from the
Mongols and Finns (or Swedes) learned that from Poles.
>The firearms would have won out eventually, but it's still amazing to
>me that people switched over to them as early as they did. Again, the
>bows had a much greater accurate range and many times the rate of fire
>than the first few hundred years worth of firearms, and it's far from
>obvious to me that plate armor would make all the difference as
>claimed.
Bows may in theory have had grater effective range but practice
was often very different. Also think how much it takes to make an
arrow with steel tip compared to a lead ball.
Osmo
David Read
<ronk...@cc.helsinki.fi> writes
>In Article <3b220261....@news.fcc.net med...@bearfabrique.or
> wrote:
>>On Fri, 8 Jun 2001 19:36:08 +0100, "William Black"
>><black_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Nope, musketeers are killing people in armour at 200 yards. Archers are
>>>just bouncing off.
>>
>>Extreme accurate range for a musket was about 60 yards. Even in the
>>mid 1700's, Freidrich the Great's solkdiers said that Prussian muskets
>>worked better if you didn't try to aim them. 200 Yard shots? Forget
>>it.
>
>Check the Firepower by Hughes. Still at 200 yards there was about
>20-30% chance of hitting a row of men.
Check Hughes even further, and you'll see that in real-life conditions,
i.e., in his calculations for Albuera 1811, "when muskets of this time
were firing at ranges of 100 yards or less over the full period of the
engagement casualties were caused by some 5.5% of the bullets ordered to
be fired. When other muskets firing from up to 200 yards also delivered
fire, that figure might drop to 2% or 2.5%." p.127
(note follow-ups).
cheers,
--
David Read
ArtKramr
>From: ronk...@cc.helsinki.fi (Osmo Ronkanen)
>Date: 6/9/01 11:39 AM Pacific Daylight Time
>Message-id: <9ftqh9$6d7$1...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>
I took 15 years to train a really skilled archer. You could train a Museketeer
in a week. Nuff said.
Arthur Kramer
Las Vegas NV
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer
Alex Milman
Paul J. Gans wrote in message ...
>alex milman <am...@gte.com> wrote:
>
>Hooray!!! Alex is back.
Never was away. Just desperately (and unsuccessfully) tried to find a thread
in which I would be able to interfere. :-)
> Now the average wisdom per post will
>go up.
... regardless of my usual attempts to lower this level to a degree, which
can be
understood by the simple non-Kalamozians like me ....
> Badly needed around here.
How can this happen witth you being present?
Alex Milman
med...@bearfabrique.org wrote in message
<3b220261....@news.fcc.net>...
>On Fri, 8 Jun 2001 19:36:08 +0100, "William Black"
><black_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Nope, musketeers are killing people in armour at 200 yards. Archers are
>>just bouncing off.
>
>Extreme accurate range for a musket was about 60 yards. Even in the
>mid 1700's, Freidrich the Great's solkdiers said that Prussian muskets
>worked better if you didn't try to aim them. 200 Yard shots? Forget
>it.
IMHO, you are missing accuracy with an ability to kill. Accuracy, as an
ability
to hit a particular target did not even considered important in the armies
of
the XVIII century: most of the training was dedicated to the ability to fire
in the
salvos. An ability of a musket bullet to kill or wound is another story and,
IIRC,
200 - 300 yards were an effective range of the muskets.
OTOH, the stories about the archers definitely created a mess out of a
maximum range, effective range, and arrow's penetration ability in general
IMHO, part of this is due to the fact that results achieved by the
individual
masters had been often mistaken for an average level.
>
>>Bow armed cavalry versus volley firing European musket armed troops. It
did
>>happen a couple of times, guess who won :-)
>
>>I've been to see the armour and weapons taken from the defeated and
>>shattered remnants of Asiatic cavalry, including the heavy armour, who
>>tried to face musket armed volley firing European (and European trained)
>>troops, it's very impressive.
>
>Mounted archers facing musketeers close-up would have lost as you
>describe, but the real problem seems to be that their leadership had
>gone brain-dead by that time.
Any proof to substantiate this statement?
AFAIK, Crimea Tatars of the XVII - early XVIII had quite competent leaders
and had been able to do a lot of damage. They even had been able to destroy
the whole armies in mid-XVII. But these armies rarely had been the armies of
the "musketeers". OTOH, without substantial change in the quality of the
muskets
but with a very serious change in tactics and training Russian armies of
mid-XVIII
did not have any noticeable problem with defeating Crimea Tatars on a
battlefield.
> One of Chengis Khan's generals using
>reasonable tactics, in my estimation, would have had little difficulty
>with an army of european musketeers wearing plate armor.
IMHO, this is a meaningless exercise. European armies of the firearms
era usually did not consist exclusively of the musketeers. They also
included
artillery and cavalry. And at the time of a "plate armour", soldiers armed
with
the firearms usually ammounted for appr. 30% of an infantry ("plate armour"
definitely excludes Russian armies and almost definitely excludes Poles,
which would ammount for 99% of the real-life encounters) For your statement
to make some
practical sense, you have to point exact time and exact army because they
substantially
differed in the armaments and tactics over time and space.
>They'd have
>fallen back in front of it over a wide area, shooting from 200 - 300
>yards at which range they'd have been safe from musket balls
... just as their opponents would be safe from their arrows (200 - 300
yards being a _maximum_ range). One of the lattest practical experiments
had been made in 1813-14 and discussed in this NG while ago.
> and,
>after the second or third day, either the plate armor would have been
>discarded or the Europeans would have died from exhaustion. You can
>picture the rest of the story.
How fortunate that general Rumiantsev did not know that he is doomed (his
soldiers did not have any plate armour whatsoever). If he knew, he would
definitely lost at Larga. :-)
>
>The firearms would have won out eventually, but it's still amazing to
>me that people switched over to them as early as they did. Again, the
>bows had a much greater accurate range and many times the rate of fire
>than the first few hundred years worth of firearms, and it's far from
>obvious to me that plate armor would make all the difference as
>claimed.
To start with, bows were much less popular in Western Europe than crossbows
(not being widely used outside England, which, AFAIK, represented a rather
small part of the WE) so the whole premise of bow vs firearms is rather
pointless
and you can discuss advantages/disadvantages of crossbows vs. the early
arquebuses.
Second, in the areas where bows had been used in the mass quantities,
everybody
who could do this, switched to the firearms as soon as was practically
possible.
This includes Janissares, Poles, and Russians. The only people who kept
using
bows were nomads: Tatars, Bashkirs, Kalmuks, Kazakhs (not to mix with
Cossacks),
etc. The reason was quite obvious: they did not have money to buy the
firearms
(in the noticeable quantities) and did not have technology to produce them
(but they
tried to get what they could). Which, probably, should indicate that even
the earlier
firearms (AFAIK, everybody started with the cannons) had been more efficient
than the bows. With them being definitely "slower" than the bows, we can
assume
that advantages were in the ability to kill.
Paul J. Gans
> Paul J. Gans wrote in message ...
>>alex milman <am...@gte.com> wrote:
>>
>>Hooray!!! Alex is back.
> Never was away. Just desperately (and unsuccessfully) tried to find a thread
> in which I would be able to interfere. :-)
>> Now the average wisdom per post will
>>go up.
> ... regardless of my usual attempts to lower this level to a degree, which
> can be
> understood by the simple non-Kalamozians like me ....
Yes. Shows the depths to which we have descended.
>> Badly needed around here.
> How can this happen witth you being present?
I've fallen down on the job. I've got more books to read than
time to read them. And some of them already look as if they
don't agree with my views. I may have to not read them.
:-)
----- Paul J. Gans
David Brewer
>
> In Article <3b20bc65....@news.fcc.net med...@bearfabrique.or
> wrote:
> >On Wed, 06 Jun 2001 23:53:45 GMT, David Brewer <da...@brewer.to>
> >wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>However accurate bows are believed to be, they have little
> >>"stopping power" compared to firearms at any decent range.
>
> I do not get that. An arrow is lethal at any range it can fly.
An arrow is just a stick, with a pointy bit of metal at one end,
and some feathers at the other. It has no magic killing powers, it
has to arrive fast enough to pierce deep into the target at some
vital point.
A musket ball is a dense, small, fast, blunt projectile that will
really fuck you up.
> As I understand the archers generally shot with high elevation.
At long ranges, of course, because arrows are so slow they require
a high trajectory, and being slow, with much drag from the long
shaft and feathers, they arrive without the velocity needed to
easily kill.
> >>An army
> >>of archers would just get blown to hell by musketeers, I think.
[...]
> >>I recall a wargames magazine article, a few years back, which
> >>discussed how battle casualties were affected by the introduction
> >>of firearms. Before this, armies would suffer few casualties up to
> >>the point where one army broke and fled, at which point the
> >>victors massacre the losers. As firearms become predominant
> >>casualties among the victors increase notably, until we get the
> >>attrition hell of the ACW and ultimately WW1.
>
> This was because of the tactics used. They blasted each other at
> 70 meters or so until either side broke. After that the other
> side charged. Now it is clear that in this situation casualties
> are high on both sides.
...which is something archers didn't do, blast each other at close
range. Killing, on these battlefields, was accomplished
predominantly by handstrokes, not at range. The introduction of
firearms permitted killing at range to become the predominant
means of waging war.
> Now I do think the effect of archery is overestimated. One
> typically hears the same battles as examples of it and that in a
> war Britain lost.
Not "Britain" but "England".
--
David Brewer
David Brewer
>
> On Wed, 06 Jun 2001 23:53:45 GMT, David Brewer <da...@brewer.to>
> wrote:
>
> >> >There is no point much before 1800 at which I'd not rather had a
> >> >Turko-Mongol bow or even an English longbow in my hands than any kind
> >> >of firearm. Greater accurate range and ten times the rate of fire.
> >
> >However accurate bows are believed to be, they have little
> >"stopping power" compared to firearms at any decent range. An army
> >of archers would just get blown to hell by musketeers, I think.
>
> If the archers were good, the musketeers would all be dead before they
> ever got within their own range.
This is romantic assertion unsupported by historical sources.
> >I recall a wargames magazine article, a few years back, which
> >discussed how battle casualties were affected by the introduction
> >of firearms. Before this, armies would suffer few casualties up to
> >the point where one army broke and fled, at which point the
> >victors massacre the losers. As firearms become predominant
> >casualties among the victors increase notably, until we get the
> >attrition hell of the ACW and ultimately WW1.
>
> You need to read up on Chengis Khan. Nobody conquers the major part
> of the world by counting coup. "The Devil's Horsemen" would be as
> good a place to start as any.
Your powers of colloquialism defeat me, as "counting coup" means
nothing to me.
Are you telling me that victorious Mongol (archer) armies suffered
as appallingly high casualties as "victorious" ACW and WW1 armies?
--
David Brewer
Osmo Ronkanen
wrote:
>Osmo Ronkanen wrote:
>>
>>
>> I do not get that. An arrow is lethal at any range it can fly.
>
>An arrow is just a stick, with a pointy bit of metal at one end,
>and some feathers at the other. It has no magic killing powers, it
>has to arrive fast enough to pierce deep into the target at some
>vital point.
To my knowledge the terminal velocity of a dropping arrow is fast
enough to penetrate an unprotected body. It really does not
take much for the sharp tip to penetrate. An arrow needs much
less energy to incapacitate someone than a bullet.
>A musket ball is a dense, small, fast, blunt projectile that will
>really fuck you up.
It needs more velocity to wound. Specifically it needs 50 m/s to
break the skin.
>> This was because of the tactics used. They blasted each other at
>> 70 meters or so until either side broke. After that the other
>> side charged. Now it is clear that in this situation casualties
>> are high on both sides.
>
>...which is something archers didn't do, blast each other at close
>range. Killing, on these battlefields, was accomplished
>predominantly by handstrokes, not at range. The introduction of
>firearms permitted killing at range to become the predominant
>means of waging war.
That is correct.
Osmo
Osmo Ronkanen
artk...@aol.com (ArtKramr wrote:
>
>I took 15 years to train a really skilled archer. You could train a Museketeer
>in a week. Nuff said.
Actually it took much longer than a week. The most important
part in the line tactics was to start o your position no matter
what and load the weapons while others fall on the side. This
requires strict drill relics of which still are kept in almost
all armies. I think in earlier days when there were less
musketeers they had even more training.
Still I agree that there is a difference. With bows making the
bows, making the arrows, training the archers all take longer
time. You may win battles with bows against muskets but you will
not win wars against determined enemy.
Osmo
MARTIN REBOUL
> >Nope, musketeers are killing people in armour at 200 yards. Archers are
> >just bouncing off.
>
> Extreme accurate range for a musket was about 60 yards. Even in the
> mid 1700's, Freidrich the Great's solkdiers said that Prussian muskets
> worked better if you didn't try to aim them. 200 Yard shots? Forget
> it.
>
> >Bow armed cavalry versus volley firing European musket armed troops.
> > It did happen a couple of times, guess who won :-)
>
> >I've been to see the armour and weapons taken from the defeated and
> >shattered remnants of Asiatic cavalry, including the heavy armour, who
> >tried to face musket armed volley firing European (and European trained)
> >troops, it's very impressive.
True - but picture the scene at, say, Edgehill......? How would either side
have fared if the other had contained a formation of a few hundred
experienced Longbowmen who were aware of the shortcomings of the musket?
I've asked this before, but I read somewhere that at least one commander in
the Civil War dearly wished he'd had such a force in his army. What would
they have done to Prince Rupert's cavalry charge? What would have happened
to the raw Parliamentarian pikemen slogging across the field? I think I
know.......
> Mounted archers facing musketeers close-up would have lost as you
> describe, but the real problem seems to be that their leadership had
> gone brain-dead by that time. One of Chengis Khan's generals using
> reasonable tactics, in my estimation, would have had little difficulty
> with an army of european musketeers wearing plate armor. They'd have
> fallen back in front of it over a wide area, shooting from 200 - 300
> yards at which range they'd have been safe from musket balls and,
> after the second or third day, either the plate armor would have been
> discarded or the Europeans would have died from exhaustion. You can
> picture the rest of the story.
Not quite safe in their light armour, but able to easily move up after the
first volley and discharge five or six volleys of arrows into the ranks of
their opponents, with no reply whatsoever. I suspect there never would be a
reply after that....
> The firearms would have won out eventually, but it's still amazing to
> me that people switched over to them as early as they did. Again, the
> bows had a much greater accurate range and many times the rate of fire
> than the first few hundred years worth of firearms, and it's far from
> obvious to me that plate armor would make all the difference as
> claimed.
The partial, poor quality armour of the Civil War would not be something I'd
fancy relying on against the longbow. However, it never happened, so that's
it. Perhaps it could have done with some imagination and dedication Perhaps
it could again - I wonder what the effect of even a few dozen good
longbowmen would have had against, say, a Police cavalry charge during the
Miner's strike, or the Poll Tax riots perhaps.......? And for the first time
in nearly 500 years we have quite a few around again. Makes you think.....
Cheers
Martin
David Brewer
>
> In Article <3B22B6CA...@brewer.to David Brewer <da...@brewer.to
> wrote:
> >Osmo Ronkanen wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> I do not get that. An arrow is lethal at any range it can fly.
> >
> >An arrow is just a stick, with a pointy bit of metal at one end,
> >and some feathers at the other. It has no magic killing powers, it
> >has to arrive fast enough to pierce deep into the target at some
> >vital point.
>
> To my knowledge the terminal velocity of a dropping arrow is fast
> enough to penetrate an unprotected body. It really does not
> take much for the sharp tip to penetrate.
It takes more to kill someone than a vague ability to penetrate
skin. A small stab wound is rarely lethal, a dent in a helmet much
less so.
> An arrow needs much
> less energy to incapacitate someone than a bullet.
This may be true, but they have really so much less, that it is
unimportant.
> >A musket ball is a dense, small, fast, blunt projectile that will
> >really fuck you up.
>
> It needs more velocity to wound. Specifically it needs 50 m/s to
> break the skin.
All the theory in the world doesn't change the actual historical
record.
> >> This was because of the tactics used. They blasted each other at
> >> 70 meters or so until either side broke. After that the other
> >> side charged. Now it is clear that in this situation casualties
> >> are high on both sides.
> >
> >...which is something archers didn't do, blast each other at close
> >range. Killing, on these battlefields, was accomplished
> >predominantly by handstrokes, not at range. The introduction of
> >firearms permitted killing at range to become the predominant
> >means of waging war.
>
> That is correct.
So, if arrows kill across the whole of their range and have a
greater rate of fire than muskets, needing less energy to
incapacitate (etc. etc.) why were they *not* used in the same
fashion as firearms?... because they have less "stopping power",
as I noted.
--
David Brewer
Alex Milman
MARTIN REBOUL wrote in message ...
>True - but picture the scene at, say, Edgehill......? How would either side
>have fared if the other had contained a formation of a few hundred
>experienced Longbowmen
War chariots also would be nice. Not to mention the battle elephants.... or
longbow..., oops, MacWasherwomen. :-)
> who were aware of the shortcomings of the musket?
Two scenarios: (a) if they had been aware only of the shortcomings, most of
them
would be killed in the process of learning about its advantages; (b) if they
knew
both about shortcomings and advantages, they'd probably run from the
battlefield. :-)
>I've asked this before, but I read somewhere that at least one commander in
>the Civil War dearly wished he'd had such a force in his army.
General saying something stupid is not somethig rare and unusual....
> What would
>they have done to Prince Rupert's cavalry charge?
Now, this is extremely easy to answer. They'd run just as they did at
Bannockburn
when they had been exposed to a cavalry charge without heavy infantry
covering
them.
> What would have happened
>to the raw Parliamentarian pikemen slogging across the field? I think I
>know.......
IIRC, it took a lot of time (and cavalry attacks) to do a noticeable damage
to the
static Scottish schiltrons at Falkirk. Dismounted French had marched across
the
field at Agincourt with few thousands archers on the other side of it (they
had a
better armour but OTOH recent rain and exhaustion factor more than
compensated
this advantage).
[snip]
>Not quite safe in their light armour, but able to easily move up after the
>first volley and discharge five or six volleys of arrows into the ranks of
>their opponents, with no reply whatsoever. I suspect there never would be a
>reply after that....
Martin, just out of an idle curiosity, do you have any idea about the
infantry
tactics of the age of 30 Years War? Musketeers never had been arranged
in a single line and never fired all together. They used either caracolle
(or some
other method of fighting by the rows) or firing by platoons. In other words,
some
method which always left a considerable number of them with the loaded
muskets.
Not to mention that ability of the longbowmen to move fast and practically
shoot
on the run (which is what your scenario looks like) is something they hardly
ever
demonstrated.
med...@bearfabrique.org
>I took 15 years to train a really skilled archer. You could train a Museketeer
>in a week. Nuff said.
>
Agreed. But I see one other major factor in the picture, and that is
the giant quantities of gunpowder which very quickly appeared all over
Europe for the purpose of tunneling under enemy walls and blowing them
up. Again, the one kind of warfare Europeans ever really got good at
was seige warfare.
Once you had that much of the stuff sitting around, simple economics
would dictate the desirability of making ALL weapons work using the
same technical basis more or less, and this apparently took place
despite the fact that bows would have enjoyed several kinds of
advantages over the first two or three hundred years worth of
firearms. Aside from the question of accurate range and rate of fire,
there is the simple consideration of what I might have done in the
position of the black prince facing an army of musketeers, i.e. wait
for the first heavy rain and then attack...
Ted Holden
med...@bearfabrique.org
ArtKramr
>Date: 6/10/01 9:41 PM Pacific Daylight Time
>Message-id: <lLRU6.3206$6d5.1...@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>
These arguments are rediculous. In case no one noticed, Bows and arrows are
out. Guns are in . end of story.
alex milman
<med...@bearfabrique.org> wrote in message
news:3b2445ae....@news.fcc.net...
Agreed. But I see one other major factor in the picture, and that is
the giant quantities of gunpowder which very quickly appeared all over
Europe for the purpose of tunneling under enemy walls and blowing them
up. Again, the one kind of warfare Europeans ever really got good at
was seige warfare.
I suspect that this is more or less a fantasy. Massive use of the siege
artillery should
consume much more gunpowder than these "tunneling" activities. As for
the Europeans becoming _really_ good (in the sense of being very efficient)
in a siege warfare, this can be probably attributed to the Woban's times
(and
heavy reliance on the artillery).
> Once you had that much of the stuff sitting around, simple economics
> would dictate the desirability of making ALL weapons work using the
> same technical basis more or less, and this apparently took place
> despite the fact that bows would have enjoyed several kinds of
> advantages over the first two or three hundred years worth of
> firearms.
Now, this is a complete and total fantasy. To start with, the bows were not
a
wide-spreaded long range weapon in the Western Europe at the time when the
firearms became popular. Contrary to a popular perception, England did not
constitute a major percentage of the european territory and/or population.
After 100 Years War (which it lost) it was a military and political
backwater for
quite a while. So whatever advantages/disadvantages longbows posessed was
completely irrelevant to the course of the military development. The
competition
was between crossbow and the firearms in the Western and Central Europe and
between the bows and firearms in the Eastern Europe. The bows in question
were of the Turkish and Tatar models, not the longbows. AFAIK, Ottomans
switched
to the firearms very early and the same did Poles and Russians (Tatars
simply did not
have money and technology).
As for the advantages/disadvantages, the most important advantage of the
earlier
hand-held firearms was their ability to kill the armoured opponents.
As for the accuracy, don't mistake the individual results with the high
speed mass shooting
(esp. at a high angle). If under these conditions the longbows provided
combination of
the high accuracy and killing ability, it would not take hours of shooting
AND numerous
cavalry attacks to destroy Scotts at Falkirk. There would be no need to
launc a cavalry
counterattck at Poitiers and very few French would be able to cross the
field at Agincourt
with the thousands archers shooting at them (probably very few French riders
of the 1st
wave would make it back, also). At Nikopol there would be no need in an
attack of
the heavy Ottoman cavalry because all crusaders would be killed by the
Janissares' arrows.
It also worth noticing that at Nikopol Janissares managed to keep their
position because
they fortified it with the stakes and opponent attacked piecemeal. At Varna
they had only
ditches in front of them and lost their position (fortunately for them,
attackers lost discipline
and could be eventually defeated).
>Aside from the question of accurate range and rate of fire,
... and penetration capacity ....
> there is the simple consideration of what I might have done in the
> position of the black prince facing an army of musketeers,
"Army of musketeers" never existed so what said simply makes no sense.
> i.e. wait
> for the first heavy rain and then attack...
Very interesting tactics. Just out of a curiosity, what if there was no rain
for a week or so? :-)
Osmo Ronkanen
wrote:
>Osmo Ronkanen wrote:
>>
>>
>> To my knowledge the terminal velocity of a dropping arrow is fast
>> enough to penetrate an unprotected body. It really does not
>> take much for the sharp tip to penetrate.
>
>It takes more to kill someone than a vague ability to penetrate
>skin. A small stab wound is rarely lethal, a dent in a helmet much
>less so.
A stab wound may not be lethal, but it pretty well is
incapacitating. An arrow would is even more considering the
arrow is left sticking out.
>
>So, if arrows kill across the whole of their range and have a
>greater rate of fire than muskets, needing less energy to
>incapacitate (etc. etc.) why were they *not* used in the same
>fashion as firearms?...
What do you mean? Line tactics? Well maybe they did not see need
for those. Line tactics was only developed later. Well the whole
line tactics was pretty strange and not everyone subscribed to
it. Here for example everyone shot only once in two volleys after
which there was a charge. As I understand the main reason for
thin lines was artillery. In deep formations round shots took
appalling casualties.
Osmo
MARTIN REBOUL
ArtKramr wrote...
Snip....
>
> These arguments are rediculous. In case no one noticed, Bows and arrows
are
> out. Guns are in . end of story.
You're right of course Art. It never happened.... for very good reasons.
Fantasy, but so what? Burt Reynolds did okay with his bow in 'Deliverance'
though, don't knock 'em entirely....
Cheers
Martin
Brett K. Heath
> Your powers of colloquialism defeat me, as "counting coup" means
> nothing to me.
I'm not quite sure what Ted is arguing but "counting coup" seems to
refer to a type of ritualised war practiced (I believe) by some
plains Indians in which an individual warrior who had bested an
opponent would, rather than killing them, inflict a token wound or
some other humiliation. It always struck me as a particularly
civilized approach to battle, of course it only works if both sides
play by the same rules:-)
Before anybody jumps on me for spreading myths (Urban or otherwise)
let me hasten to add that the romantic version of this propagated in
movies probably has little to do with the reality although I do
believe there were a small number of tribes who followed this
practice at times. It is also my understanding that similar practices
have been reported for various other "primitive" societies at various
times.
HTH
Brett K. Heath
Alex Milman
Osmo Ronkanen wrote in message <9g34je$3q5$1...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>...
>What do you mean? Line tactics? Well maybe they did not see need
>for those. Line tactics was only developed later. Well the whole
>line tactics was pretty strange and not everyone subscribed to
>it. Here for example everyone shot only once in two volleys after
>which there was a charge.
If I understand correctly, "here" goes for Sweden (Finland being the part of
it at the time when line tactics had been in use). Statement that Sweden
did not "subscribe" to the linear tactics is very strange: the "father" of
the
linear tactics was Gustav Adolph, King of Sweden. :-)
>As I understand the main reason for
>thin lines was artillery.
It was not: Gustav's opponents (Poles, Tilly and Wallenstein) had much
weaker
artillery than Swedes. The goal was to maximize effect of the infantry fire.
med...@bearfabrique.org
<martin...@virgin.net> wrote:
>The partial, poor quality armour of the Civil War would not be something I'd
>fancy relying on against the longbow. However, it never happened, so that's
>it. Perhaps it could have done with some imagination and dedication Perhaps
>it could again - I wonder what the effect of even a few dozen good
>longbowmen would have had against, say, a Police cavalry charge during the
>Miner's strike, or the Poll Tax riots perhaps.......? And for the first time
>in nearly 500 years we have quite a few around again. Makes you think.....
> Cheers
> Martin
Makes me wonder when the BATF is going to outlaw modern archery
equipment (it's "silent") or, alternately, force archers to use
something which makes a 100-decible noise when an arrow is released.
Imagine going out looking for Bambi with a bow in one hand and a
ghetto-blaster in the other?
Ted Holden
med...@bearfabrique.org
tiglath
<med...@bearfabrique.org> wrote in message
news:3b260382....@news.fcc.net...
>
> Makes me wonder when the BATF is going to outlaw modern archery
> equipment (it's "silent") or, alternately, force archers to use
> something which makes a 100-decible noise when an arrow is released.
> Imagine going out looking for Bambi with a bow in one hand and a
> ghetto-blaster in the other?
>
The state of Maryland wants gun manufactures to provide law
enforcement with a sample bullet/case fired through each gun for sale.
"Gun fingerprinting."
Before you shoot someone in Maryland remember to run a rat-tail file
through the barrel a few times, and after the deed pick up the cases
and trash the gun. We'll have to go back to ice picks.
alex milman
"tiglath" <tig...@usa.net> wrote in message
news:9g589h$6k1$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
>
> The state of Maryland wants gun manufactures to provide law
> enforcement with a sample bullet/case fired through each gun for sale.
> "Gun fingerprinting."
>
> Before you shoot someone in Maryland remember to run a rat-tail file
> through the barrel a few times, and after the deed pick up the cases
> and trash the gun. We'll have to go back to ice picks.
Simply buy the gun in another state.
Osmo Ronkanen
wrote:
>
>If I understand correctly, "here" goes for Sweden (Finland being the part of
>it at the time when line tactics had been in use). Statement that Sweden
>did not "subscribe" to the linear tactics is very strange: the "father" of
>the linear tactics was Gustav Adolph, King of Sweden. :-)
Yes, I meant latter period in late 17th early 18th century and I
meant the tactics where one blasts several volleys against each
other. Sure they still used lines, but the tactic was much more
aggressive emphasizing movement instead of fire.
Osmo
Osmo Ronkanen
wrote:
>
>Makes me wonder when the BATF is going to outlaw modern archery
>equipment (it's "silent") or, alternately, force archers to use
>something which makes a 100-decible noise when an arrow is released.
I would not be surprised if the sound of a strong bow was 100
decibels. Silenced firearms create about 120-140 dB.
Osmo
Dick Wisan
ronk...@cc.helsinki.fi says...
>
>What do you mean? Line tactics? Well maybe they did not see need
>for those. Line tactics was only developed later. Well the whole
>line tactics was pretty strange and not everyone subscribed to
>it. Here for example everyone shot only once in two volleys after
>which there was a charge. As I understand the main reason for
>thin lines was artillery. In deep formations round shots took
>appalling casualties.
AIUI, the point of massing musketeers in lines was to maintain
control, concentrate the fire, and produce an effective killing
zone with short-range, slow-firing weapons. The massed line in
open-field warfare became more and more obsolete and disappeared
as range and rate of fire increased. --Of course, it's the
_enemy's_ range and rate of fire that matters. In colonial warfare,
Massed breech-loading rifle fire remained effective against spear-
wielding opponents.
Possibly, the rate of fire that archers could produce made
massing them in formal lines unnecessary, or did it? Anybody whose
arrows could "darken the sun" will have been working pretty close
to each other and probably shooting on order. The fact that arrows
are shot at a steep elevation would give reason to open the forma-
tion a bit --enough so you don't think of it as a formation.
--
R. N. (Dick) Wisan Email: wis...@hartwick.edu
Snail: 37 Clinton St., Oneonta, NY 13820, USA
Just your opinion, please, Ma'am. No fax.
alex milman
"Osmo Ronkanen" <ronk...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
news:9g5e4g$khk$1...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi...
> In Article <9g3ql8$gmv$1...@news.gte.com "Alex Milman" <am...@gte.com
> wrote:
> >
> >If I understand correctly, "here" goes for Sweden (Finland being the part
of
> >it at the time when line tactics had been in use). Statement that Sweden
> >did not "subscribe" to the linear tactics is very strange: the "father"
of
> >the linear tactics was Gustav Adolph, King of Sweden. :-)
>
> Yes, I meant latter period in late 17th early 18th century
This was rather easy to figure out but, IMHO, there is a VERY long shot from
the bows
to Charles XII and even between Charles and Gustav Adolph. :-)
>and I
> meant the tactics where one blasts several volleys against each
> other.
>Sure they still used lines, but the tactic was much more
> aggressive emphasizing movement instead of fire.
Linear tactics was not limited to the fire-only or even predominantly
fire-based
deployment. Charles XII, AFAIK, was considered somewhat "unorthodox" in
his menthods but he still belonged to this tactics. Look at Frederick II:
his most successful
battles involved very little shooting and had been won by a speedy attack
and he definitely
belonged to the "linear" school. Emphasis on the shooting or attacking
depended on many
factors including commander's personality, quality of his troops, and
quality of opponent's
troops.
Charles was initially lucky because most of his opponents were either
irregulars (Poles),
or badly trained (Russians at the early stages of war), or demoralized
(Saxons). As a result,
he could use his superior troops for achieving the fast solution by a
bayonet attack. But this
worked only until opponent was noticeably inferior: battles at Lesnaya and
Poltava involved
a lot of shooting (with the bayonet charges in between).
The same goes for Frederick: you can compare Rossbach (easily won by an
energetic attack)
and Kunersdorf (started with an attack and lost after 6 hours of a heavy
fighting).
William Black
alex milman <am...@gte.com> wrote in message
news:9g5bb5$i0o$1...@news.gte.com...
Have you considered stopping shooting people. I know it's a fairly radical
step but...
And before you ask: Yes I do own guns, yes I did own pistols, and yes I do
approve of the UK pistol ban.
--
William Black
------------------
On time, on budget, or works;
Pick any two from three
Paul J. Gans
> Ted Holden
> med...@bearfabrique.org
Heck Ted, I'd much rather see *real* hunters go out after
Bambi armed with a loin cloth and their bare hands. Then
we'd see if brains are better than brawn. And we could
televise it as one of those "reality" shows. Keep track
of who was ahead -- likely the deer.
----- Paul J. Gans
tiglath
"William Black" <black_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9g5te8$8du$1...@uranium.btinternet.com...
> > Simply buy the gun in another state.
>
> Have you considered stopping shooting people.
Here is someone who thinks guns owners go around shooting people for
no reason.
Recently someone in Japan killed seven, and injured more, in a school
with a sword.
McVeigh killed 168 with fertilizer. Should be ban horse dung?
A good man shoots people only when his life or that of others is
threatened. Life takers should be shot before you lose your life or
harm comes to your family or other good people -- only in the gravest
extreme. Evil people do exist, in no small numbers. Read the
papers.
Successful, bloodless, self-defense by gun owners against intruders,
muggers, etc., go largely unreported. People see only the other
side: school massacres. It's a skewed panorama.
Swimming pools kill more children than guns.
A gun can save your life. Society is not safe sometimes.
> ... I do approve of the UK pistol ban.
The lasting effects or our Revolutionary War.
MARTIN REBOUL
alex milman wrote ...
>
> Agreed. But I see one other major factor in the picture, and that is
> the giant quantities of gunpowder which very quickly appeared all over
> Europe for the purpose of tunneling under enemy walls and blowing them
> up. Again, the one kind of warfare Europeans ever really got good at
> was seige warfare.
>
> I suspect that this is more or less a fantasy. Massive use of the siege
> artillery should
> consume much more gunpowder than these "tunneling" activities. As for
> the Europeans becoming _really_ good (in the sense of being very
efficient)
> in a siege warfare, this can be probably attributed to the Woban's times
> (and
> heavy reliance on the artillery).
A 'mine' used substantial amounts of powder (when it was used for blowing
walls and fortifications, rather than timber and fire). The 'trench and
mine' system is a little late for me however.....
As far as England was concerned, I think you are right. Armour was largely
invulnerable to Longbow fire by the late 15thC, what other reason would
there be for the introduction of handguns? Every advantage would seem to be
with the bow with regard to accuracy, rate of fire, reliabilty and so forth.
So why were handguns used? They did something bows could not - punched
through armour.
Quite....
> > there is the simple consideration of what I might have done in the
> > position of the black prince facing an army of musketeers,
>
> "Army of musketeers" never existed so what said simply makes no sense.
>
> > i.e. wait
> > for the first heavy rain and then attack...
>
> Very interesting tactics. Just out of a curiosity, what if there was no
rain
> for a week or so? :-)
Well, the royal guns at Northampton were buggered by rain. I believe it
happened in Japan too in an important battle (which I saw in a film, ahem!).
These fantasy scenarios aren't quite a waste of time, I enjoy them at least.
But I still reckon that a few hundred longbowmen would have decided the day
at Edgehill and even Marston Moor, if deployed carefully and well supplied
with arrows. We'll never know of course. That's the fun of 'what-if?'.
Cheers
Martin
MARTIN REBOUL
"Alex Milman" <am...@gte.com> wrote in message
news:9g11co$eu6$1...@news.gte.com...
>
> MARTIN REBOUL wrote in message ...
>
> >True - but picture the scene at, say, Edgehill......? How would either
side
> >have fared if the other had contained a formation of a few hundred
> >experienced Longbowmen
>
> War chariots also would be nice. Not to mention the battle elephants....
or
> longbow..., oops, MacWasherwomen. :-)
>
> > who were aware of the shortcomings of the musket?
>
> Two scenarios: (a) if they had been aware only of the shortcomings, most
of
> them
> would be killed in the process of learning about its advantages; (b) if
they
> knew
> both about shortcomings and advantages, they'd probably run from the
> battlefield. :-)
>
> >I've asked this before, but I read somewhere that at least one commander
in
> >the Civil War dearly wished he'd had such a force in his army.
>
> General saying something stupid is not somethig rare and unusual....
And doing something stupid as well - agreed.
> > What would
> >they have done to Prince Rupert's cavalry charge?
>
> Now, this is extremely easy to answer. They'd run just as they did at
> Bannockburn when they had been exposed to a cavalry charge without heavy
infantry
> covering them.
I don't agree there Alex. Had they been deployed behind a screen of pikemen
(as I would have deployed them), Rupert would unquestionably have been
utterly destroyed!
> > What would have happened
> >to the raw Parliamentarian pikemen slogging across the field? I think I
> >know.......
>
> IIRC, it took a lot of time (and cavalry attacks) to do a noticeable
damage to the
> static Scottish schiltrons at Falkirk. Dismounted French had marched
across the
> field at Agincourt with few thousands archers on the other side of it
(they had a
> better armour but OTOH recent rain and exhaustion factor more than
> compensated this advantage).
Better armour - that's what it is all about. By the Civil war they weren't
so well or completely armoured, or experienced, or well trained. They'd have
run like rabbits as their friends went down beside them in droves -
Parliamentarian or Royalist.
> [snip]
> >Not quite safe in their light armour, but able to easily move up after
the
> >first volley and discharge five or six volleys of arrows into the ranks
of
> >their opponents, with no reply whatsoever. I suspect there never would be
a
> >reply after that....
>
> Martin, just out of an idle curiosity, do you have any idea about the
> infantry
> tactics of the age of 30 Years War? Musketeers never had been arranged
> in a single line and never fired all together. They used either caracolle
> (or some
> other method of fighting by the rows) or firing by platoons. In other
words,
> some
> method which always left a considerable number of them with the loaded
> muskets.
> Not to mention that ability of the longbowmen to move fast and practically
> shoot
> on the run (which is what your scenario looks like) is something they
hardly
> ever
> demonstrated.
I'm not familiar with the Thirty Years War, but the tactics employed at the
start of the English Civil War were probably not refined and the men not
quite so well disciplined. Although there were some men with experience in
Europe around, there hadn't been a serious war for a century or so, and it
showed at Edgehill in particular. I didn't say 'shoot on the run' either.
Moving forward quickly and firing was undertaken at Towton for example -
what chance the musketeers, desperately trying to reload under a hail of
arrows? Or even a second rank trying to aim and fire under an arrow storm?
They would be out of accurate range....... If they managed to hit 5% or even
10% at 150 - 200 yds, the archers massed fire would still cut them to
pieces. I stand by my hypothesis (safe in the knowledge that it was never
proved and never will be!).
Cheers
Martin
MARTIN REBOUL
tiglath wrote...
Tricky question this. Despite all those no doubt toting shooters at the
time, nobody shot McVeigh unfortunately. Nutters will always be around, and
will never be stopped however many of us are armed.
I have to ask myself this. If I had packed a gun, particularly if I'd always
had one in the car during my life, I would have used it on several
occasions. I'd have killed people without a shadow of doubt. Had I also
supected that everyone else was likewise probably armed, I'd probably have
killed far more - and very probably have been killed myself. As it happens,
I never actually needed to have a gun (so far), much though I'd have felt
safer with one in a few tight spots.
I'm Lucky I suppose - a couple of black eyes, a few stitches, and a lot
of shouting (you should have seen the other guys...ahem, bad taste!).
Although I'm certainly not a hooligan who goes out looking for trouble, it
has come my way, and I'm ashamed to say that on several occasions instead of
backing down or talking my way out, I'd have opened fire without a doubt.
So I'd probably be dead and so would several others if we all had guns.
Now some might say that's no bad thing, but obviously I don't. It is
hard to get hold of them in the UK - illegal ones are available to all of
course, but a conscious effort has to be made, and few bother. I have heard
it claimed that suspicion that evryone has a gun or a weapon on them makes
for better 'manners'. i.e. you don't get punch ups about parking spaces or
'who spilled my drink?' and so forth. I doubt that somehow - and even if it
does, everyone lives in fear and an atmosphere of frustration and paranoia
develops. Like the USA in other words. I'll stay without thanks.
Cheers
Martin
Curt Emanuel
Just fire it a couple hundred times. I've been told that'll totally
alter the ballistics, particularly if you fire it when the barrel's hot.
--
Curt Emanuel (cema...@accs.net)
tiglath
"MARTIN REBOUL" <martin...@virgin.net> wrote in message
news:VKyV6.5478$0a6.8...@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
>
> I have to ask myself this. If I had packed a gun, particularly if I'd
always
> had one in the car during my life, I would have used it on several
> occasions. I'd have killed people without a shadow of doubt.
Why?
One must open eyes to reality. It is very dangerous to have guns at home
if there are kids and the guns are not properly kept. One of Gun Control,
Inc. ads drives this point home unequivocally: "Joe hid his gun so well it
took little Jimmy five years to find it."
There are also violent people who shouldn't be allowed to own guns. If you
get convicted of beating your wife, there goes your gun owning privilege.
Same if you are a convicted felon, or have a history or mental illness, or
drug use. There are good laws in place. In fact 20,000 of them for guns
alone. Law enforcement is patchy but legislators feel the need to make new
laws instead of just enforcing those in the books.
An armed society is a polite society.
Here in Virginia there is a concealed carry permit (CCW), as there is in
many more states. The anti-gun lobby predicted this would be Dodge City
after the CCW legislation passed. They were utterly wrong. Violent crime
has decreased, and very few permits have been revoked for improper gun use.
The same goes for Florida and Texas. A course that teaches how to use a
handgun safely and effectively is required before granting the CCW.
There are few walking cities in the U.S. It is mostly car life. Your car
breaks down or has an accident and you are a sitting duck. Cell phone and a
9 mm. do help a bit.
> I never actually needed to have a gun (so far), much though I'd have felt
> safer with one in a few tight spots.
> I'm Lucky I suppose - a couple of black eyes, a few stitches, and a
lot
> of shouting (you should have seen the other guys...ahem, bad taste!).
You cannot shoot someone who gives you a black eye. Only if you fear for
your life. And you will have to convince a crime scene expert team, a
prosecutor, and probably a jury that the threat was real and that grave.
Different states have different laws. You cannot shoot someone who steals
your TV. Although in Texas you might. In Virginia you are suppose to
retreat when confronting lethal force, and if you cannot retreat no more
then you can offer lethal force in return. At home, you are obliged to
retreat. In Pennsylvania, they expect you to flee you home if possible, if
under attack.
ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk
martin...@virgin.net (MARTIN REBOUL) wrote:
> You're right of course Art. It never happened.... for very good
> reasons.
The last use of a longbow in combat was in May 1940 by Captain Jack
Churchill of the Manchester Regiment.
Ken Young
ken...@cix.co.uk
Maternity is a matter of fact
Paternity is a matter of opinion
alex milman
Because they became a commonplace in the rest of Europe and this remote
island
off the continent's shore had to follow the suit. :-)
Martin, you missed one of the important points: the good and bad qualities
of the
_longbows_ had been irrelevant for the spreading of the firearms in Europe
because
longbow was not widely used outside England.
>Every advantage would seem to be
> with the bow with regard to accuracy, rate of fire, reliabilty and so
forth.
Not so sure about reliability. I suspect that any bow asks for a lot of care
and should be weather sensitive (esp. the string and the arrows). It was
much easier
to keep dry a small container with a gunpowder than a big quiver with the
arrows.
Not to mention that flight of a bullet much less impacted by the wind, rain,
etc. than the
flight of an arrow (and, I ssupect, even of a crossbow's bolt). BTW, AFAIK,
crossbow
(main competitor of the firearms) was comparably complicated device. The
same goes
for the rate of fire. Can't comment on the comparable accuracy of the
crossbow vs arquebuse.
> So why were handguns used? They did something bows could not - punched
> through armour.
AFAIK, the crossbows, which had been a "primary" long-range weapon in the
most of
Western Europe, could pierce the armour and, anyway, by the time the
hand-held
firearms became popular, armour was not a major issue: Swiss infantry
reigned on the
battlefield and they did not wear a heavy armour. Neither did, AFAIK,
landsknechts.
Spanish infantry had been wearing the quirasses but, AFAIK, not to save
themselves from
the longbows, which had not been anywhere around. Anyway, arquebusires and
then
musketeers represented only a fraction of the infantry until 30 Years War
(IIRC, most of
Tilly's infantry at Breitenfeld were pikemen, while Swedes already had up to
60-70% of the
musketeers).
Handguns definitely changed the cavalry. Regardless of the Swiss victories,
men at arms were
functionally irreplaceable until introduction of the pistols. Pistols
allowed to raise the big numbers
of the low-quality (both socially and skill-wise) cavalrymen on the cheap
horses (vs the small
numbers of the expensive "high-quality" men at arms). Which opened the new
possibilities in
the army organization.
[snip]
> >
> > Very interesting tactics. Just out of a curiosity, what if there was no
> rain
> > for a week or so? :-)
>
> Well, the royal guns at Northampton were buggered by rain.
Which, (a) has nothing to do with my question (regardless the rain being a
major, but rather
unmanageable factor in the proposed tactics) and (b) definitely tells as
that the gunners in
question had been incompetent: cannons had been often used during the rain.
Of course,
this should be judged on the case per case basis but the proposal of
"waiting until the rain" and
then attack does not sound as a sound tactics to me unless you can predict
that rain will come
when you need it.
> I believe it
> happened in Japan too in an important battle (which I saw in a film,
ahem!).
Nothing wrong with that source. :-)
IIRC, Medieval Japanese were not too skilled in the artillery and mostly
imported cannons
from China and Korea. OTOH, they invented a special cover for their
matchlocks to
preserve them from the rain (well, in Japan rain probably can be counted in
as a predictable
factor).
> These fantasy scenarios aren't quite a waste of time, I enjoy them at
least.
Ditto, if they are not too insane.
alex milman
What "screen" means in the practical terms? Pikemen mixed with the archers
or
archers placed on the flanks of the deep pikemen formations?
> (as I would have deployed them), Rupert would unquestionably have been
> utterly destroyed!
Ah, you are not talking about the bowmen staying alone as your initial
statement
implied.
Well, they'd do the same thing as musketeers covered by the pikemen: do some
damage to the attacking cavalry. IIRC, at Poitiers archers had been shooting
at
the point-blank range from behind the cover and some French cavalrymen
managed
to get back. At Agincourt most of the French cavalry managed to get back
with
few thousands longbowmen shooting at them. Why would these archers suddenly
became deadlier than their grandfathers? Anyway, cavalry charge against the
stable
formation of the pikemen would probably fail. OTOH, if the pikemen were of a
low quality, they'd run and leave archers and/or musketeers unprotected
(which
means that they'd also run).
>
> > > What would have happened
> > >to the raw Parliamentarian pikemen slogging across the field? I think I
> > >know.......
> >
> > IIRC, it took a lot of time (and cavalry attacks) to do a noticeable
> damage to the
> > static Scottish schiltrons at Falkirk. Dismounted French had marched
> across the
> > field at Agincourt with few thousands archers on the other side of it
> (they had a
> > better armour but OTOH recent rain and exhaustion factor more than
> > compensated this advantage).
>
> Better armour - that's what it is all about. By the Civil war they weren't
> so well or completely armoured, or experienced, or well trained.
OTOH, AFAIK, they had been attacking on a higher speed than their heavier
predecessors. Which means that there would be very little time for aiming
and
shooting. The rest would be decided by the absense/presense of the pikemen,
their quality and details of the deployment.
>They'd have
> run like rabbits as their friends went down beside them in droves -
Are you sure that you are not talking about the machine guns?
AFAIK, quite a few commanders on both sides, including Rupert, participated
in 30 Years War and should know something about the infantry/cavalry
organization.
Caracolle, AFAIK, became obsolete during this war but we can assume that at
least
this method of deployment was already known in England.
Well, to think about it, it was only appr. hundred years old, which could
make it too
"revolutionary" for the Brits. :-)
>Although there were some men with experience in
> Europe around, there hadn't been a serious war for a century or so, and it
> showed at Edgehill in particular. I didn't say 'shoot on the run' either.
> Moving forward quickly and firing was undertaken at Towton for example
Looks like a legend to me. Or the story about the Yorkist side having time
to
collect the opponents arrows and use them is a BS because it would clearly
indicate a protracted shooting match from the static positions unless
shooting
started when the sides had been few miles apart and Yourkists kept marching
while shooting (at whom?)
> -
> what chance the musketeers, desperately trying to reload under a hail of
> arrows? Or even a second rank trying to aim and fire under an arrow storm?
To start with, you were talking about few hundred archers, which would be
a practically useless number (see de Comnin's remark that to be useful,
archers
must be present in the really big numbers). Second, the stories about the
"arrow
storm" as something really deadly to the opponent are, IMHO, a patriotic
fantasy
unsupported by any facts. Even at Cressy, French attacking piecemeal and
uphill
managed to get to the English men at arms. Third, at the distance where
arrows
could do some real damage (which would be probably well under 100 yards), a
massive
musket fire would cause at least comparable losses. Fourth, in the caracolle
formation
musketeers had been arranged in 10 rows and, after firing, each row either
went back
or the next row went forward. With reloading being 10 times longer than
firing, this
method provided practically uninterrupted fire. 30 Years War reduced the
number of
rows to 6, which would increase the frontage.
> They would be out of accurate range....... If they managed to hit 5% or
even
> 10% at 150 - 200 yds, the archers massed fire would still cut them to
> pieces.
AFAIK, we don't have any practical evidience that at this distance archers
ever did a
serious damage to anything but a static (or practically static) and very
deep formation so,
unless you can produce some real numbers for the _mass_ deployment of the
archers it's just
words.
> I stand by my hypothesis (safe in the knowledge that it was never
> proved and never will be!).
Well, I'll leave you and your hypothesis staying happily side by side.
alex milman
"William Black" <black_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9g5te8$8du$1...@uranium.btinternet.com...
>
> news:9g5bb5$i0o$1...@news.gte.com...
> >
> > "tiglath" <tig...@usa.net> wrote in message
> > news:9g589h$6k1$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
> > >
> > > The state of Maryland wants gun manufactures to provide law
> > > enforcement with a sample bullet/case fired through each gun for sale.
> > > "Gun fingerprinting."
> > >
> > > Before you shoot someone in Maryland remember to run a rat-tail file
> > > through the barrel a few times, and after the deed pick up the cases
> > > and trash the gun. We'll have to go back to ice picks.
> >
> > Simply buy the gun in another state.
>
> Have you considered stopping shooting people. I know it's a fairly
radical
> step but...
I did not start doing this yet and, honestly, did not plan to. Just tried to
be helpful.
>
> And before you ask: Yes I do own guns, yes I did own pistols, and yes I
do
> approve of the UK pistol ban.
I don't and I dissaprove.
alex milman
Martin, I'm afraid that you are missing the point. The "evil" people always
exist
and probably will always exist. This means that the "ordinary" people must
have
some protection against the criminals. Now, there are two extreme
approaches.
One is to leave this completely to the individual: no effective law
enforcement
anywhere around and everybody carries weapons. In other words, classic "Wild
West" situation. This extreme proved to be unsatisfactory. AFAIK, by the end
of
the "wild" period citizens often created the vigilante cometees to get rid
of the
criminals if the law officers were not around (this is not an optimal
approach but it
definitely indicates an attitude).
Another extreme is to completely disarm civilans and to allow state to
handle 100%
of the law enforcement.UK experience is rather young so we can look at the
places
with the longer history of this approach. One of them would be former Soviet
Union,
where the firearms had been strictly forbidden (except for the hunting
rifles, which needed a special
permission) and the same ban existed even for the switchblade knives:
posession would
mean a long prison sentence. Did they exterminate a violent crime? No. Did
they manage
to remove the weapons from the ahnds of criminals? No. The ordinary people
had been
left practically defenseless, while state could not provide a 100% reliable
protection.
Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the optimal system is somewhere
between
those two extremes? Especially when (unlike totalitarian regimes) you can't
simply arrest
criminals as a "preventive" measure.
David Heading
alex milman wrote in message <9g7kbc$juj$1...@news.gte.com>...
<cross posted to SHEM, as its drifting that way anyway>....
>Not so sure about reliability. I suspect that any bow asks for a lot of
care
>and should be weather sensitive (esp. the string and the arrows). It was
>much easier
>to keep dry a small container with a gunpowder than a big quiver with the
>arrows.
>Not to mention that flight of a bullet much less impacted by the wind,
rain,
>etc. than the
>flight of an arrow (and, I ssupect, even of a crossbow's bolt). BTW, AFAIK,
>crossbow
>(main competitor of the firearms) was comparably complicated device. The
>same goes
>for the rate of fire. Can't comment on the comparable accuracy of the
>crossbow vs arquebuse.
The North American Indians had the choice of trading for the musket
(flintlock) or using their own bows and arrows in the 17th century. They
opted for muskets when they could. The reasons seems to have been the
terrain and 'stopping power'. This is discussed in deatil in P.M. Malone,
'The Skulking Way of War', and occured between 1637 and 1670 (the Pequot and
King Phillip's Wars).
This may or may not be germaine to the discussion, but its the only example
I know of of people having a straight choice between guns and bows. Guns
would probably have been more expensive (or at least cost more beaver
pelts...)
>AFAIK, the crossbows, which had been a "primary" long-range weapon in the
>most of
>Western Europe, could pierce the armour and, anyway, by the time the
>hand-held
>firearms became popular, armour was not a major issue: Swiss infantry
>reigned on the
>battlefield and they did not wear a heavy armour. Neither did, AFAIK,
>landsknechts.
>Spanish infantry had been wearing the quirasses but, AFAIK, not to save
>themselves from
>the longbows, which had not been anywhere around. Anyway, arquebusires and
>then
>musketeers represented only a fraction of the infantry until 30 Years War
>(IIRC, most of
>Tilly's infantry at Breitenfeld were pikemen, while Swedes already had up
to
>60-70% of the musketeers).
Not sure I agree with that. I think the ratios of pike to musket were
roughly the same on both sides - about 1:2 (P:M). Certainly that was the
ideal in the ECW. Later (in the 1640's), increasing numbers of muskets were
deployed for reasons other than battlefield tactics, I suspect.
>Handguns definitely changed the cavalry. Regardless of the Swiss victories,
>men at arms were
>functionally irreplaceable until introduction of the pistols. Pistols
>allowed to raise the big numbers
>of the low-quality (both socially and skill-wise) cavalrymen on the cheap
>horses (vs the small
>numbers of the expensive "high-quality" men at arms). Which opened the new
>possibilities in the army organization.
And a pistol at close range could really spoil a gendarme's whole day, you
know.
Cheers
David Heading
David Heading
alex milman wrote in message <9g7mf4$jvh$1...@news.gte.com>...
>Ah, you are not talking about the bowmen staying alone as your initial
>statement implied. <snip>
>Why would these archers suddenly
>became deadlier than their grandfathers?
They wouldn't, simply because they hadn't practised....
>Anyway, cavalry charge against thestable
>formation of the pikemen would probably fail. OTOH, if the pikemen were of
a
>low quality, they'd run and leave archers and/or musketeers unprotected
>(which means that they'd also run).
Which is precisely what happened to about 1/3 of the Parliamentry army at
Edgehill - and they weren't even charged directly.....
>
>AFAIK, quite a few commanders on both sides, including Rupert, participated
>in 30 Years War and should know something about the infantry/cavalry
>organization.
>Caracolle, AFAIK, became obsolete during this war but we can assume that at
>least this method of deployment was already known in England.
>Well, to think about it, it was only appr. hundred years old, which could
>make it too "revolutionary" for the Brits. :-)
Well, recent research suggests that the British were not so backward as may
be expected. Plus a lot of the lesser officers in the armies usually had
some sort of military training - nipping over to the low countries for a bit
of soldiering was reasonably popular as a pasttime for young gentlemen.
<snip>
>Fourth, in the caracolle formation
>musketeers had been arranged in 10 rows and, after firing, each row either
>went back
>or the next row went forward. With reloading being 10 times longer than
>firing, this
>method provided practically uninterrupted fire. 30 Years War reduced the
>number of rows to 6, which would increase the frontage.
Yes, except 'caracole' referred really to cavalry. You mean 'giving fire by
extraduction' or '... by introduction' or one of the other methods favoured
by the theorists, some of which, I'm informed, really do work in
practice....
Cheers
David Heading
William Black
Curt Emanuel <cema...@accs.net> wrote in message
news:3B26BB...@accs.net...
>
> Just fire it a couple hundred times. I've been told that'll totally
> alter the ballistics, particularly if you fire it when the barrel's hot.
What a nice thought.
Having shot several hundred rounds through pistols in a day and never seen
any measureable change before 9,000 rounds overall (although I'm told
military Browning HP35 go bad at about 4,000) I beg leave to doubt that
statement.
William Black
MARTIN REBOUL <martin...@virgin.net> wrote in message
news:VKyV6.5478$0a6.8...@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
>
> >
> > "William Black" <black_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:9g5te8$8du$1...@uranium.btinternet.com...
> >
> > > > Simply buy the gun in another state.
> > >
> > > Have you considered stopping shooting people.
> >
> > Here is someone who thinks guns owners go around shooting people for
> > no reason.
The problem is that now and again one of them does...
> > McVeigh killed 168 with fertilizer. Should be ban horse dung?
Try buying that amount of the stuff here (or in Ireland) if you're not a
farmer on the appropriate scale
And it's not horse dung, I'm not prepared to discuss the technical detail
here but suffice to say it's a completely artificial product of the chemical
industry.
tiglath
>
> Curt Emanuel <cema...@accs.net> wrote in message
> news:3B26BB...@accs.net...
>
> >
> > Just fire it a couple hundred times. I've been told that'll
totally
> > alter the ballistics, particularly if you fire it when the
barrel's hot.
>
> What a nice thought.
>
> Having shot several hundred rounds through pistols in a day and
never seen
> any measureable change before 9,000 rounds overall (although I'm
told
> military Browning HP35 go bad at about 4,000) I beg leave to doubt
that
> statement.
>
Unique characteristic marks on fired bullets are produced by the
rifling in the barrel. This is unlikely to change much with firing
soft metal through it.
tiglath
Buying small quantities of ammonium nitrate over time can easily be
part of a terrorist plan. Mc Veigh used the equivalent of 80 50lb
bags.
alex milman
"David Heading" <David....@piglet.jet.uk> wrote in message
news:3b27602b$0$12248$ed9e...@reading.news.pipex.net...
Well, it's a good example but definitely not the only one. Even if we limit
discussion to
Europe, the Eastern Europe was a clear area of such a competition (not even
a musket
but various versions of the matchlocks being involved). In
Polish-Russian-Ottoman-Tatar
warfare bows had been a predominant long-range weapon. The firearms first
had been
introduced in the form of cannons but as soon as it was technically feasible
3 out of 4
switched to the hand-held firearms with bows being still in use as a cavalry
weapon for
quite a while, esp. for the nomadic cavalry troops.
>
> >AFAIK, the crossbows, which had been a "primary" long-range weapon in the
> >most of
> >Western Europe, could pierce the armour and, anyway, by the time the
> >hand-held
> >firearms became popular, armour was not a major issue: Swiss infantry
> >reigned on the
> >battlefield and they did not wear a heavy armour. Neither did, AFAIK,
> >landsknechts.
> >Spanish infantry had been wearing the quirasses but, AFAIK, not to save
> >themselves from
> >the longbows, which had not been anywhere around. Anyway, arquebusires
and
> >then
> >musketeers represented only a fraction of the infantry until 30 Years War
> >(IIRC, most of
> >Tilly's infantry at Breitenfeld were pikemen, while Swedes already had up
> to
> >60-70% of the musketeers).
>
> Not sure I agree with that. I think the ratios of pike to musket were
> roughly the same on both sides - about 1:2 (P:M).
IIRC, in Swedish army it was 2:1 (or maybe it was by the end of 30 Years
War?, I'll
try to check). Anyway, the main point was that armies of this time were not
"musketeer
armies". OTOH, by the end of 30YW use of the pike definitely went down.
Grimmelhausen
in "Simplicissimus" joked that person who kills a pikeman kills a completely
innocent man
because there was no case when pikeman did any harm to anybody. As you can
see, a
far cry from the situation which existed during the Italian Wars when pike
was predominant
and when an issue of the crossbows vs the firearms had been solved.
>Certainly that was the
> ideal in the ECW. Later (in the 1640's), increasing numbers of muskets
were
> deployed for reasons other than battlefield tactics, I suspect.
Don't know enough about ECW to comment one way or another.
>
> >Handguns definitely changed the cavalry. Regardless of the Swiss
victories,
> >men at arms were
> >functionally irreplaceable until introduction of the pistols. Pistols
> >allowed to raise the big numbers
> >of the low-quality (both socially and skill-wise) cavalrymen on the
cheap
> >horses (vs the small
> >numbers of the expensive "high-quality" men at arms). Which opened the
new
> >possibilities in the army organization.
>
> And a pistol at close range could really spoil a gendarme's whole day, you
> know.
In some cases even "fatally spoil". :-)
Probably a single gendarme could handle a single reitar but one could
probably hire
quite a few reitars at the same cost and this gendarm would face _a lot_ of
the pistol
bullets.
alex milman
> >musketeers had been arranged in 10 rows and, after firing, each row
either
> >went back
> >or the next row went forward. With reloading being 10 times longer than
> >firing, this
> >method provided practically uninterrupted fire. 30 Years War reduced the
> >number of rows to 6, which would increase the frontage.
>
> Yes, except 'caracole' referred really to cavalry. You mean 'giving fire
by
> extraduction' or '... by introduction' or one of the other methods
favoured
> by the theorists,
My impression was that the term had been used both for cavalry and infantry
but, anyway, judging by The Obsolete Historian, this caracolle-like tactics
had been
used in practice and hence the 10 rows deep formations of the musketeers.
>some of which, I'm informed, really do work in
> practice....
Nicely put. :-)
William Black
> The North American Indians had the choice of trading for the musket
> (flintlock) or using their own bows and arrows in the 17th century. They
> opted for muskets when they could. The reasons seems to have been the
> terrain and 'stopping power'. This is discussed in deatil in P.M. Malone,
> 'The Skulking Way of War', and occured between 1637 and 1670 (the Pequot
and
> King Phillip's Wars).
I haven't read the book but I'd think an Amerindian horse bow doesn't have
the penetrating power of a medieval war bow. They are only 'semi' composite
with a wooden core and wrapped with sinew.
I also doubt the penetrating power of native stone arrow heads, although I
saw some people from Turin University a few years ago who were making and
shooting some and who were getting remarkable results.
The thing is that it's not a contest between musket and longbow. The
longbow had been replaced on the continent long before the musket came along
by the cranquin and arbelast and it was that which was replaced by the
musket.
Now the cranquin and arbelast was more expensive and much heavier and needed
more looking after than a musket but had a performance (as a weapon system,
including the training overhead)which was comparable.
Paul J. Gans
> Why?
One of the major advances in the English legal system came right
after the Norman conquest when murder was deemed a crime against
the crown. Thus murder cases were taken out of the hands of
the locals and placed within the jurisdiction of the King or
his representatives.
This points up the distinction between justice and revenge. Revenge
had been the rule with what amounted to vendettas. The German
tribal way of getting out of this seems to have been to pay a
large indemnity to the family of the injured (or dead) person.
The advantage of what the English did lay in the fact that in
theory revenge did not enter into the judgements. Justice
was dispensed, even if it did not always please the family of
the injured.
The crown's interest was in seeing that murder was not done,
no matter what the circumstances. Even what we would call
"justifiable homicide" had to be decided in court.
What Tiglath has referred to above is very likely the remains
of such notions as interpreted by the various states. I do
not think that anywhere in the US may a private person kill
another just because he *might* have been in danger. How
strong the evidence of real danger must be differs, as Tiglath
said, from state to state.
----- Paul J. Gans
PS: In New York the rules are very strict. Very few folks
with permits ever have them revoked. Our problem here is the
enormous influx of guns bought in other (usually southern)
states and brought into New York illegally.
D. Spencer Hines
It is *not* politically correct to speak of "Indians" or
"Amerindians" ---- these fine people, victims of white genocide, must be
referred to as _Native Americans_.
Secondly, you did not mention the obligatory ---- "Columbus was an
Italian genocidal maniac, financed by the Spanish throne, and he killed
hundreds of thousands of Native Americans with obscenely brutal
genocidal methods and dastardly imported European diseases." That
caveat must be in *every* post you send on this subject ---- prominently
featured.
Thirdly, the Native Americans were *never* nasty to the white
colonists ---- so "King Philip's War" is just a canard, a misnomer and a
figment of your overly fertile imagination. This *scalping* business is
a particularly nasty invention of White Racists.
Now, a good socialist ---- such as yourself, Black ---- should have been
sufficiently sensitive and politically aware *not* to have made these
blunders, comrade ---- particularly on an Open Forum, such as SHM *and*
SHEM. An appropriate entry has been made in your personnel dossier to
that effect. Actually, *two* entries ---- one for the SHM offense and
one for the SHEM offense.
No, you may *not* see your dossier ---- comrade ---- so don't ask.
John 5:14
<Groak!>
--
D. Spencer Hines
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing." -- Attributed to Edmund Burke [1729-1797]
Sol Disinfectus Optimus Est. Peccatoris Justificatio Absque
Paenitentia, Legem Destruit Moralem.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of
in your philosophy." ---- William Shakespeare [1564-1616] The Tragedy of
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act I, Scene V, Line 166-167
All replies to the newsgroup please. Thank you kindly.
All original material contained herein is copyright and property of the
author. It may be quoted only in discussions on this forum and with an
attribution to the author, unless permission is otherwise expressly
given, in writing.
Vires et Honor
"William Black" <black_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9g8b9j$kou$1...@neptunium.btinternet.com...
Paul J. Gans
> In article <V8bV6.9630$6d5.2...@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
> martin...@virgin.net (MARTIN REBOUL) wrote:
>> You're right of course Art. It never happened.... for very good
>> reasons.
> The last use of a longbow in combat was in May 1940 by Captain Jack
> Churchill of the Manchester Regiment.
As I recall it was a case of massed longbow (singular) against
gun (singular). Massed longbow carried the day and longbows,
their record of victory intact, then retired after some 800
years of championship play.
---- Paul J. Gans
Paul J. Gans
Yes, and mostly pure ammonium nitrate.
---- Paul J. Gans
med...@bearfabrique.org
wrote:
>
>Martin, I'm afraid that you are missing the point. The "evil" people always
>exist >and probably will always exist. This means that the "ordinary" people must
>have >some protection against the criminals. Now, there are two extreme
>approaches. One is to leave this completely to the individual: no effective law
>enforcement anywhere around and everybody carries weapons. In other words, classic "Wild
>West" situation. This extreme proved to be unsatisfactory. AFAIK, by the end
>of the "wild" period citizens often created the vigilante cometees to get rid
>of the criminals if the law officers were not around (this is not an optimal
>approach but it definitely indicates an attitude).
As I have heard and read it, even at the height of the so-called
"wild-west" period, New York and other Eastern cities still had
vastly higher rates of crimes of every sort than even the worst
western town. That, obviously, has never changed. I feel perfectly
safe in all parts of the west (other than the dark dominion of
Kalifornia of course). The one place I ever normally go where I'd
really like to have a pistol in the car with me is downtown Baltimore.
People really need to use the term "wild east" more often. In fact,
in New York city back about seven or eight years ago, there came a
point where for about three or four months running the greatest
number of people being shot were being hit by stray bullets; as I see
it, that had to be the point at which the kids switched from revolvers
to full auto weapons, and they simply hadn't gotten the knack of
controlling them yet.
And yet they pass laws there forbidding ordinary law-abiding people to
own guns. Can you believe it?
>Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the optimal system is somewhere
>between those two extremes? Especially when (unlike totalitarian regimes) you can't
>simply arrest criminals as a "preventive" measure.
Every one of the founding fathers is on record to the effect that
private ownership of firearms, the 2'nd ammendment, is there as a
final bulwark against the possibility of government going out of
control, as was basically starting to happen under Slick.
That's one facet of it. At the time of the revolution and for years
afterwards, there were private armies, private ownership of cannons
and warships. . . The term "letters of marque, and reprisal" which
you read in the constitution indicates the notion of the government
issuing a sort of a hunting license to the owner of a private warship
to take English or other foreign national ships on the high seas, i.e.
to either capture or sink them.
You think the idea of you or me owning a Vepr or FAL rifle with a
30-round magazine would have bothered any of those people?
The problem with drug-dealers owning AKs is a drug problem and not a
gun problem. Fix the drug-problem, i.e. get rid of the insane war on
drugs and pass a rational set of drug laws, and both problems will
simply go away. A rational set of drug laws would:
1. Legalize marijuana and all its derivatives and anything else
demonstrably no more harmful than booze on the same basis as booze.
2. Declare that heroine, crack cocaine, and other highly addictive
substances would never be legally sold on the streets, but that those
addicted could shoot up at government centers for the fifty-cent cost
of producing the stuff, i.e. take every dime out of that business for
criminals.
3. Provide a lifetime in prison for selling LSD, PCP, and other
Jeckyl/Hyde formulas.
Do all of that, and the drug problem, the gun problem, and 70% of all
urban crime will vanish within two years.
But I digress. The 2'nd ammendment is there as a final bulwark
against our own government going out of control.
It is also there as a bulwark against any foreign invasion which our
own military might not be able to stop. That is also important,
considering the tidal wave of hatred against the United States which
the perverted foreign policy of the last eight years has brought about
out there in the world.
Admiral Yamamoto, in fact, was once quoted regarding the basic
impossibility of invading the American homeland. He said there would
be a "rifle behind every blade of grass". He obviously meant the 50
million civilians with their own rifles, and not the 200,000 or so
guys with uniforms on at the time.
The need to protect your own home, farm, family etc. from criminals is
yet another, although less critical rational for the 2'nd ammendment.
And there'sone final reason for the 2'nd ammendment, which is to
provide the people with food during bad economic times. When you
listen to people from New York and from Texas talk about the
depression of the 30's, you hear two totally different stories. The
people in New York will tell you about people starving and eating
garbage, and running around naked. The Texans (and others from more
rural areas and places in which laws and customs had remained closer
to those which the founding fathers envisioned) will tell you that
while money was scarce, they always had 22 and 30 calibre ammunition,
and that they always had some damnd thing to eat, even if it was just
some jackrabbit or armadillo.
Ted Holden
med...@bearfabrique.org
D. Spencer Hines
Give me a choice of being governed by Texans or New Yorkers ---- and
I'll take the Texans every time.
The Texans, many of them ---- not all ---- have a well-developed sense
of the Limits of Government ---- while the New Yorkers often do not.
Deus Vult.
--
D. Spencer Hines
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing." -- Attributed to Edmund Burke [1729-1797]
Sol Disinfectus Optimus Est. Peccatoris Justificatio Absque
Paenitentia, Legem Destruit Moralem.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of
in your philosophy." ---- William Shakespeare [1564-1616] The Tragedy of
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act I, Scene V, Line 166-167
All replies to the newsgroup please. Thank you kindly.
All original material contained herein is copyright and property of the
author. It may be quoted only in discussions on this forum and with an
attribution to the author, unless permission is otherwise expressly
given, in writing.
Vires et Honor
<med...@bearfabrique.org> wrote in message
news:3b282d93....@news.fcc.net...