Kaelith

I think Jessica has has found the main arguement here: that the european knight and the samuria are trained with different emphasis. The samuria specifically trains for speed and accuracy, whereas the european knight was more concerned with power and stamina, as well as ofcourse speed, but that wasn't their focus i don't think.

If the samuria and the knight are in their full battle gear I'd put my money on the knight, they could move pretty well in their plate armour and with their increased strength I think the samuria would end up retreating.

The Katana was a slashing weapon and wouldn't be much good against even heavy mail armour I wouldn't think, let alone plate. Where as the european longsword was a long, sharp, heavy metal bar and was as much a crushing weapon as it was a stabbing or cutting weapon.

I think Klion's also made a valid point about japanese warfare being inferior. I think this is apt because I don't think japan had much in the way of conflict with anyone but itself for most of its early history, thus, they only devised tactics suited for combating themselves. it the past couple of centuries, through greater contact with the outside world that their martial mentality really kicked in and they did develope ahead of most of the eastern world, where as china was more inclined to close it's borders and try and remain isolated.

I spose it comes down to where the best materials were and with large amounts of iron in europe it allowed us to develope heavy armour and weaponry. and in later times i think it also allowed us to develop ahead of china in the use of gunpowder as we had the resources to build large amounts of cannon and metal contraptions which developed our knowledge of gunpowder and eventually the idea of steam power etc.

and as someone has pointed out knights had been trained for early childhood in the arts of war and would have been extremely well developed and highly skilled. as the english longbowmen were brought up form an early age to shoot their bows, thus they developed into freakish physiques.


One point people have really missed about the devolution of the longbow was that it took a generation of training to develop a people strong enough to weild a longbow, where as the musket could be handed to anyone who had been talked through the basics of loading and firing, which is also why the crossbow stayed around through the period of longbow supremacy. And it the only reason england seemed to be the only place that was able to field large numbers of longbows was due to it becoming incredibly popular and then it becoming a LAW to shoot your longbow every sunday!

I think the crossbow and musket are better comparisons. i think it was the crossbow that really suffered because of the invention of the musket, due to both not needing a great deal of training, both having long load times and both being effective weapon fired. i think the longbow came about and died out more due to generational gaps and england hoping to advance with the times and encouraging the use of gunpowder, thus not encouraging the continual training of the longbow, and thus the peasants of england lost the ability to weild these weapons on mass in war over the period of probably only a couple of generations (as it was probably not that popular by this time either).

Duke Wellington at the battle of waterloo is supposed to have said that if he had but one regiment of longbowmen he'd have easily beaten the french, and when you think logically that makes a lot of sense! the longbowmen would have massacred the massed formations of unarmoured infantry and cavalry. but the people of england during the period would just not have been able to fire them.

callumf

"Duke Wellington at the battle of waterloo is supposed to have said that if he had but one regiment of longbowmen he'd have easily beaten the french, and when you think logically that makes a lot of sense! the longbowmen would have massacred the massed formations of unarmoured infantry and cavalry. but the people of england during the period would just not have been able to fire them."

Thats really interesting -Im goign to have a think about that one.

Because basically if thats the case why werent bows re-introduced into the English Army following the Napoleonic Campaign?

I mean. A bow is much easier to maintain than a musket/rifle surely? And cheaper to make and maintain?

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Kaelith

actually no. if you have a good production line you can pump out muskets by the hundred with average quality materials. whereas making bows is a 1 at a time job and you need the right part of the tree. it's far more effecient to just make a factory that makes muskets :/

and someone in i think it was 17th century did put a proposal forward for bringing the longbow back into the military arms list and his proposal is in a book somewhere, needless to say it was rejected.

i'm sure wellington would have known there was no chance of bringing the longbow back, the musket was evolving with the recent mass introduction of the baker rifle and with the many years needed to train a generation able to weild the longbow it just wasn't worth while. also i think it was said more as a distinct passing comment, rather than an actual idea. it was better by then to just pump your resources into developing faster loading fire arms and concentrating military training on drill and discipline.


I've read that article about the knight vs samuria. very interesting! i think a lot of my above post is probably a little unfounded now hehe

angels_and_daemons

Callum a musket in once upon a time land was essentially a tube with a hole in it, you just replaced the wicks, later match and flintlock systems were interoduced. Maintainance was pretty simple. A bow, especially a good quality longbow on the other hand had to be oiled dailly and strings had to be replaced...

As for manufacture a bow would have been easier to produce - there was no "manufacturing" until the 18th century, prior to that everything would have been hand made, a musket is a lot of work, the barrel alone is a nightmare - forming a tube prefectly straight, and welding it closed without forming any welding spatter (easier as the techniques involved didn't use a torch... but still not fool proof). If once it was made and tested the barrel wasn't true enough they would scrap the barrel and start again...

On the other hand a bow is cut from a straight bit of tree and planed into shape

Stewan Seagull

Yes, i think training is the deciding factor. Its just alot easier and faster to field a company of musketeers/crossbowmen than archers.

callumf

Im also not convinced on this "training" issue.

Honestly I have fired a bow and in order to be able to hit the proverbial barn door at 100 yards really doesnt take that long to become efficient at. I dont think it would take more than a few hours to become pretty adept at hitting largish objects - even ones moving at speed - especially at short distance where you could use a flat trajectory.

I think again its this myth of the longbowman being the supreme marksman rather than the probable reality that he was literally firing off as many arrows as well as possible so those thundering horses dont mow him down =)

Do you really htink the average peasnat was doing anything other than saving his own skin?

And that he was some sort of Robin Hood spending his weekends out wiht his bow and arrow?

Most peasnats worked 14 or more hours per day , 7 days a week. No they didnt get SUndays off =)

Now Im no expert but we need to cut out the mythic belief and look at the actual realistic theory of why and what would have happened.

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Jessica Nubtus

As I said earlier, leaders and outfitters of armies liked to be COOL. There was constant infighting and bickering between English lords who called up their armies should the king ask, and they wanted to look better than their peers. No-one would be seen dead with longbowmen when there were cooler boomsticks available. In the same way that I personally think crossbows are cooler than longbows regardless of their relative effectiveness, ease of use and other points, at the time, guns, even if they weren't actually any better than bows, were just cooler and everyone's men had to have them...

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callumf

Yup Jess - I tend to agree with you there 100%

I reckon if you took 100 men

Split them into 2 units of 50

Gave them an hours training on longbow and musket

Then stood them 100 yards apart and said on your marks get set go

The bowmen would win hands down

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Thorien

What Wellington meant when he said that was due to the terrain, the ability to sit behind a hill and arc arrows over the top of it out of the way of the french cannons would have won it easier, than having to have a line of sight to the enemy to use his own men.

The change in style of cavalry would have also rendered archers a lot more ineffective as the cavalry were a lot quicker in the napoleonic era than in the medieval age so a lot harder to hit.

Thorien

I think you're forgetting the smoke as well callum, most napoleonic battlefields were covered in smoke in minutes, so aiming becomes pointless on both sides, the theory being you marched up to where you think you're enemy was, stand 50 yards away and blast ball after ball to where they ought to be if your fighting in line, praying that a load of cavalry dont come blasting out of the smoke in the meantime or that the enemy artillery didnt notice you generating a big ball of smoke and start hurling cannon balls down at you.

Kaelith

One thing people are horrendously missing here is that it didn't take years to learn how to aim the longbow, it took years to develop the physique able to pull the longbow and aim it..

the english warbow (the longbow) was a minimum of 100lbs! going up to what we think was about 180lbs. no normal person can pick up one of these bows, practice a few hours and be able to shoot it. it takes years of working up from 30-40 lb bows.

english children at the age of 6 were made to stand with their arms out holding a stick so they would develop not only the muscles but also a good steady arm.

basically, don't start believing the myths that say the longbow could be fired once every few seconds, could penetrate armour at 300 yards and was still only a simple peasant weapon.

sure it was a peasant weapon but it was a very advance idea constructed from very specific wood. as i've pointed out it took YEARS to master and not only that, but to develope the strength required to pull these incredibly powerful bows.

try to imagine picking an 8 stone person with just your right arm over and over again. after the first few times if you haven't developed your muscles you get very tired, very quickly.

arceologists have dug up lots of corpses dating back to the time of the 100 years war and some of them have freakishly broad shoulders. it is very well believed and I think supported that the english longbowman was of a freakish physique due to firing bows from childhood and constant firing of the english warbow. this is what i meant when it takes generations to develope a people who are capable of using this weapon on mass.

the longbow became a popular past time in england and wales in the early medieval period and through this craze, so to speak, it was developed into a formidable fighting weapon. it is strange that it never took on in such a way in any other nation in europe to the same extent.

this leads on to your idea of fashion, which sort of has some grounding. it was more that the nobility never wanted the peasantry to have any means of fighting against them, so while they trained as "honourable" men-at-arms, the peasants were left to till the fields and not given the chance or access to any weaponry of any quality.

the english made it a law which remained active for well over 100 years i believe that after church every sunday every english peasant of a certain wealth must practice the longbow. there were butts all over england, all over towns where commoners, if you like, could practice whenever they wished.

if the warbow had been that easy to pull and still as effective then it would have been used right up til 19th century tbh.. but it just wasn't. it was an incredibly hard weapon to weild and took an extra ordinary amount of muscle power.

i'm 6ft, average build and my dad does archery and he has a 42lb bow. i can pull that comfortably, but if i was to use a 50lb bow i'd struggle. and even with the 42lb bow my arm gets tired quite quickly. i'd guess that if i took up archery after a year or so i'd easily pull the 42lb bow and probably be using a 50lb bow. but i don't think i'll ever have the physique to pull a 100lb bow, i'd have to go into some crazy body building.

callumf

Good points about the physique - I might concede you have a point there.

"try to imagine picking an 8 stone person with just your right arm over and over again. after the first few times if you haven't developed your muscles you get very tired, very quickly."

If that is true then granted its going to take an absolute brute to fire off more than 10 arrows in a single battle. How many people can lift up an eight stone person wiht one arm now?

However:

"a popular past time in england and wales in the early medieval period"

Who had time for past times in the early medieval period?

Professional soldiers and guards perhaps - but everyday peasants? no

So were longbowmen units made up of professional soldiers?

The thing is my hisotrical knowledge is more biased towards social history. =)

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Decardo Imier

You should go watch the programme series called Weapons that made Britain hosted by Mike Loades.
In one episode he compares the Longbow to the Crossbow and later talks about the coming of the muskets. He demonstrates rates of power, tests armour penetration of both etc.
He even takes some noobs and trains them.

An excellent series of programmes

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Ta'Samsca'Rial

In actual fact the entire peasant longbowman idea is false. Most of the English at these battles were proffessional soldiers. When they were killed in droves at the battle of Patay, the English couldn't just muster a few thousand peasants to replace them.

While its certain that most were trained to use the longbow, only the best were recruited and having been recruited they were not spending a season in France and then heading back to tend to their feilds. They appeared as mercenaries throughout Europe, something "peasants" were unlikely to do.

Longbows also required a huge amount of Yew which declined in numbers in England. Further more as the 1400's went on armour started to reach the point where longbows were fairly ineffective.

As for bows vs muskets.. the bows would win hands down if they are standing and shooting at each other. However the muskets should run to about 20-30 yards, fire and then charge with fixed bayonets (or club them to death with their guns depending on whether the bayonet yet exists). If you assume that the bowmen are about equal to the musketeers in melee then I guess they have a slight edge, this however probably wasn't the case.

Kaelith

ok, i do agree that longbowmen were professional, but it was through the popularity of the longbow which came from the peasant/common parts of english and welsh society that brought it to the higher ups attention.

longbowmen weren't nobles or high born, they did come from the commoners, but as olk points out, it was only the best that were turned into professional soldiers.

football, or the origins of football was banned so that people would spend more time practicing the bow.