"When did firearms become better than bows? " Topic

I don't think the bow was the cause of most casualties at Agincourt – it may well have been the bow that enabled the victory but not by its kill rate.

Anyone doing physical work for a long time will tire, however used to that work they are. Dysentry saps energy and tiredness would have set in much sooner in those sufferring from it.

I don't think the bow was the cause of most casualties at Agincourt

Well if it wasn't the bow what was it?

1. Soft lead balls are an easier manufacture than a steel arrow, and creates a ghastlier hole with greater internal damage due to fragmentation. 2. The volume is a lot more intimidating. 3. No one was adopting a rapid-fire bow. 4. There was a legitimate reason that the Plains Indians gave up the bow when firearms became available…status and convenience (see above).

@gildas & Margard;

Got to agree with you both there. Archery probably didn't cause as many fatalities, but unhorsed and wounded many knights. Fatalities were caused with hand to hand weapons after the battle!

No one seems to worry about the advantage the bow has in the field of noise. Much better for sniping sentries and such if it doesn't make a noise! Proof: Birding Crosbows were still being manufactured for hunting waterfowl into the 1860's.

All of your estimates of training musketmen seem a bit high to me. I can make a complete novice into a musket skirmisher in one afternoon!

This is an interesting question, with many strong opinions. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, bows clearly required more training, but had better accuracy and probably better armor penetration than an early hand gun. But guns advanced pretty quickly, and an early 1500s arquebus was probably capable of similar if not superior performance in those categories. Muskets, I believe, would have definitely out-ranged a bow. After that point, the bow's main advantage is rate of fire -- which it retains for a long time.

Part of the confusion about the accuracy of early muskets, comes from applying knowledge of later musket practices. My research has shown that a smoothbore weapon can be quite accurate if using tight fitting ammo (or a good patch), and there is some evidence that in the 16th and 17th centuries, soldiers would opt to use tight fitting ammo or loose as they saw fit -- the first when they wanted range and accuracy, the latter when they wanted to increase the rate of fire. Later when close range volley fire became vogue, and armies standardized their ammo, they chose undersized bullets.

The rate of fire of archers seems to have no longer have been an issue at that time, although in colonial conflicts it may have made a difference. I know that the introduction of rifled muskets surprised the Plains Indians in their first encounters with them, so perhaps by that point the range of firearms was more than enough to overcome the slowness of fire? --shrug-- Just some ramblings on the subject. :-)

BullDog69

If you are looking at specific examples, take a look at the O.O.B. for Fornovo (1495), and Pavia (1525), both during the Italian wars. The vast amount of missle armed soldiers during Fornovo were (cross)bowmen. Take a look to Pavia, 30 years later, almost all of the missile combantants were armed with the arquebus.

People realize there was a coorelation between the length of a barrel and the velocity of the projectile. Handgonnes, or handcannons, with a barrel length of 6-8" were not very effective alone. You lengthen the barrel, and you do increase the velocity, thus range, penetration and accuracy. Also the "corning" of power became better. Powder did not separate into it's respective 3 compounds as readily (remember, gunpowder is a physical mixture, not a chemical compound.)

All the other reasons mentioned applied as well. But in the end, like most things, it was all about economics. Any idiot could hold a metal tube, point and shoot. In fact, often times forlone hopes of prisoners were issues with handgonnes, hoping they would hit their enemy, might earn their freedom, but a lot of the time blew up in their face before barrels were cast or forged, rather than banded and forge welded by iron strips.

Guns became cheap to make, cheap to use, cheap to train people, and cheap to find someone else who could do the same thing in a day.

ilodic.

Lion,
I don`t mind you disagreeing or even suggesting alternatives to the Lee Metford… but it might just boil down to being a question of knowing in the first instance what the accuracy and rates of fire of all these weapon types actually were.

Fair point, and I would assume that the Brits wouldn't be as aware of the (civilian) Henry and Winchester repeaters. The Lee is a very fine rifle, and I need to find one for my collection.

I've shot (replica) Henry and Winchester lever-actions, they're as fast as a modern self-loading rifle. Faster, in some cases.

Though I suppose I could also refer to the scene in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where Quartermain sniffs at the 'American shooting' Winchester in comparison to his double rifle. But Tom Sawyer *was* an awful shot with that Winchester, Americans of the time called the Winchester the 'rifle you loaded on Sunday and shot all week.' None of this spray-and-pray nonsense.

And if any Brit would like to take a bit of a trip across the pond, I will be happy to arrange a shooting expedition.

Lion,

Thanks for the open invitation.

Ahhh… if only we could, but I think that the true measure of this would be to match up about 9,000 English Longbowmen (c.1346) against the same number of United States infantry or cavalry c.1876 at a range of 200 yards.

MichaelCollinsHimself

That's a great example. At what point in history would those English longbowmen look at the weapons their opponents were using and think: 'hmmmm – time for an upgrade'?

I would suggest that the transfer takes place in the early to mid 16th century.
Busbeq says that Turkish cavalry could not face European mounted arquebusiers then. In Siberia the cossacks use firearms to defeat Tartar and other horse bows.
English bowmen on expedition are declared useless by their French opponents who laugh at them.
These are not economic arguments. They are about effectiveness.
The big difference between bow and arquebus is not about cost or ease of raising troops (at Fornovo the Italians had no trouble finding the number of crossbowmen,) the big difference is that when a bullet hits you it is more deadly than an arrow, At Agincourt armoured French cavalry on armoured horses got to the stakes, the longbow was not good enough against the armour. Massed handguns were death to the nobility.
In the Asian theatre handguns were deadly to horses. men who relied on the horse for social status, pay rate and to be effective in battle had to be very wary of handgunners.
There is a battle in the late 16th century (it might be Metzo kerestes) where the Turks learn that , despite winning, it is too dangerous to try it on with European pike and shot formations because the Europeans have mastered the delivery of continuous fire.

Roy

Lewisgunner

Very interesting post – this is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to discuss.
Interesting that you say the French laughed at the English longbowmen – I would suggest that this mirth was short-lived though? Do you know when the English last used the longbow in action and what was it replaced with? That would seem a reasonable (though admittedly very Anglo-centric) starting point for answering the question.

the big difference is that when a bullet hits you it is more deadly than an arrow,

What evidence is there to support that view?

Just one other factoid. I recall reading that the Hun/Avar/Tartar/Mongol horsemen used a compound bow that was composite made of layers of wood and horn with glue. In wet weather it lost its power because of materials swelling and potential delamination. This put some tactical limitations on their army.

From the very first.

As Epturner observed, it takes years to train a good archer, while you can train any number of clods to operate a hand gun in twenty minutes.

Second, in spite of English mythology, Longbows won't do much against plate armor. On the other hand, those nice big bullets will wonderfully deform going through the plate or mail and make horrible gaping wounds that can't help but be fatal.

Arrows will make relative clean wounds, but the balls will carry bits of cloth, armor, and dirt and grime deep into the body, much to the joy of the gangarene bacillus, along with a host of others from essentially filthy people.

The Noise. Arrows are relativelsilent, but there's all those blasts and smoke and flame which when unleased at short range has all sorts of devastating and unnerving morale effects.

Arrows won't penetrate several ranks, but cannon balls do,a nd worse, the arrows won't splatter the brains of the guy in front of you all over you face.

Arrows make nice neat wounds and surgeons had a wonderful assortment of tools for removing all sorts of arrowheads. The terrible, gaping, smashing bloody wounds from hand guns and early muskets were quite beyond the surgical skill of the day. Even a crossbow bolt that broke a major bone could be extracted and set. There's nothing you can do with a limb smashed by a hand cannon ball but cut it off.

To be hit by a hand cannon or an early musket was virtually a death sentence. They might not be that accurate but the effect when they did hit was devastating.

OSchmidt

Point taken on armour penetration, but can you explain why you think arrows make 'relatively clean wounds'? I see no real reason why an arrow will not carry bits of cloth / dirt etc into the wound in the same way a musket ball would – especially given that the arrow might have been stuck into the ground before it was used?
I remember watching a TV program on this and the historian claiming that the arrow did most of its damage when it was being removed from the casualty.

Also, it seems a little unfair to compare a cannon ball with an arrow in terms of penetrating multiple ranks. Indeed, arrows could certainly rain down on troops behind those in the front rank in a way that (eg) musket balls could not. I recall someone else posting that Montgomery made this observation when he discussed how the British would have fared had they used longbows in the Napoleonic Wars.

Interesting point many are making about how easy early handguns were to use: I tend to think they were much harder to master than some are claiming. Lots of little steps to master and remember and get right to make the damn thing work – and very easy to forget one step in the heat of battle, I would have thought.

Re. morale impact of noise and smoke etc. Difficult to qualify this assertion. Unadvanced tribesmen like the Matabele, Zulu and Fuzzy Wuzzies showed no real hesitation to charge against magazine rifles, machine guns and artillery, so not sure how valid this claim is. I am sure there are some examples of guns taking people by surprise the first time they faced them, but was this really a widespread reaction?

Tuesday.

Can't say for sure which one, but I am sure it was a Tuesday.

"…in spite of English mythology, Longbows won't do much against plate armor."

If the longbow wasn`t able to penetrate mid-C14th. armour, then what was it that annoyed those French knights so much?

Massed handguns were death to the nobility.

Yet musketeers were deemed to need protection by pikes until ca 1700.

Bulldog,
Good question… I think they might have been impressed by the machine gun.

Also, it seems a little unfair to compare a cannon ball with an arrow in terms of penetrating multiple ranks. Indeed, arrows could certainly rain down on troops behind those in the front rank in a way that (eg) musket balls could not. I recall someone else posting that Montgomery made this observation when he discussed how the British would have fared had they used longbows in the Napoleonic Wars.

Acc'd to Keegan, a common cause of injury in units under musket or cannonball fire was bits of bone and especially teeth flying at high speed from hit unfortunates. I guess you'd not get this effect with archery.

Unadvanced tribesmen like the Matabele, Zulu and Fuzzy Wuzzies showed no real hesitation to charge against magazine rifles, machine guns and artillery

But all these had previous experience with firearms before the conflicts they're famous for, didn't they?

YouTube link

link

What is meant by "clean wounds" is the fact the arrow/bolt does not migrate through the body. It is kept relatively perpendicular to the point of entry, thus one direction to pull out, or more often than not, pushed through. Also, you have something to grab onto.

Bullets, being spherical, and easy to cast, are probably the most aerodynamically poorly designed shape. They do not fly straight without being patched or rifled. Thus they tend to migrate through the body, and some of the early firearms were not powerful enough to go completely through the body.

During the TYW, there were so many bullet wounds, that if you get hit in the arm or the leg, you had those limbs amputated (the idea of infection was known, but germ theory did not come about until later.) If you got hit in the torso, you hopefully died before infection set in.

Arrows/bolts are pointy things. This is why they will stick several inches into a tree, but a handgonne bullet will not. HOWEVER, one needs to look at the converse. Example: Suppose you fire a bullet from a crossbow, they do and did exist, mostly for hunting small game, but do not penetrate much. Now if you have a musket arrow, which is a short 3" arrow fitted to the inside of a barrel, you have an extremely powerful projectile. I have done tests with handgonnes, arquebus, and a full bore musket, and find that musket arrows went right through 2mm thick steel with no problem. These were used in combat as anti-cavalry projectiles. They went through anything.

One may also wonder why if the arrow was not so effective at destroying armour, why the French lost so poorly at Agincourt. The assumption is that unprotected horses were most likely the target of the bowmen, and quickly went down.

Not meaning to get "nerdy" here, but arrows can pierce armour given a couple of conditions. If an arrow hits 90 degrees at armour, which is not fully hardened, it can pierce it. However, a slight deviation from 90 degrees does in fact cause the arrow/bolt to slightly deflect, and thus imparting its energy on the tip of the shaft, and often times the projectile is broken. A hit at 80 degrees to the armour, will cause a 1000lb force crossbow bolt (which was the common warbow draw) to impart about 15lbs of its bolt at whatever speed it impacted at, which is sometimes enough to break the tip.

To make things even more difficult for the bowman, styles of armour, namely gothic, were designed with all kinds of protruding angles (must like a stealth aircraft deflects radar), so it would be difficult to find a point of entry close to 90 degrees.

ilodic

One may also wonder why if the arrow was not so effective at destroying armour, why the French lost so poorly at Agincourt.

I thought marching on foot through mud had a lot to do with their crushing defeat. Some mounted knights actually penetrated the flanks of the English.

"Ahhh… if only we could, but I think that the true measure of this would be to match up about 9,000 English Longbowmen (c.1346) against the same number of United States infantry or cavalry c.1876 at a range of 200 yards."

This is not really the true measure of it.

If you take 9,000 English longbowmen and pit them against about 100,000 musket armed soldiers of any period then you would have a better idea of why the bow went out of favour.

"What evidence is there to support that view?"

The damage a balistic injury causes is usually due to the velocity of the projectile more than its mass. Energy increases by the square of the velocity but only linearly with the mass.

Say you have two projectiles. One is moving at 2 distance/time and has a mass of 4. It has an energy of 16.

If the other has a mass of 2 and is moving at 4 it has an energy of 32.

An ACW muzzle velocity was about 950 fps.

A longbow arrow leaves the bow at about 310 fps.

A Minnie ball weighs about an ounce.

So a Minni ball would have about 902500 ozfps of energy.

To get the same energy out of an arrow it would have to weigh about 9 ounces or more than half a pound.

Modern arrows weigh about an ounce too. I don't know what an English lowbow arrow would weigh but I bet it wasn't close to half a pound.

You want the bowmen out-numbered by more than 10:1 ?…

anyways, have a look at:

PDF link

"Interesting that you say the French laughed at the English longbowmen – I would suggest that this mirth was short-lived though?"

Nope, they turned around and slapped their arses shouting 'shoot! English, shoot' it was discussed in the Pike and Shot Society journal Arquebusier a long time ago.

The French had better weapons and they knew it. When Henry V111 had to take on the northern English he employed Continental mercenaries and the new technology.

There can be no doubt about it guns changed things.

Maybe it's me, but there seems to have been an unvoiced assumption on this thread that the medieval bow was a wonderfully accurate weapon, certainly more so than, say, the flintlock musket. No doubt in the hand of an expert they were really very accurate. But then so were flintlocks when in the hands of an expert.

The relatively low "muzzle velocity" of a bow means that you are having to elevate your hand above the target, thus obscuring it, at relatively short ranges. using randomly selected arrows (bulk-production, warping in dry or damp weather, poorly fletched, green wood, some straighter than others), adds to inaccuracy. Wind and rain anyone? All of these add up to a relatively inaccurate weapon under battlefield and campaign conditions. But the law of large numbers always works. One cold wet archer might have trouble hitting a barn door at 200 yards with one shot, but 100 firing 10 each would feather it.

Note I could just as easily have suggested that "one cold wet musketeer might have trouble hitting a barn door at 200 yards with one shot, but 100 firing 10 each would pepper it" and nobody would bat an eyelid.

Both the bow (whether foot longbow or mounted composite bow) and the musket were area effect weapons. Fire enough wood/lead in the enemy's direction and they will take hits; it will slow them down and disorganise them. Their purpose is to discomfort the enemy; whittle away at his resolve, but they would only rarely cause enough casualties to win a battle on their own. For that you normally need something more – the threat of hand-to-hand combat.

I really don't believe that individual weapon accuracy (which wasn't great) and rate of fire (these aren't machine guns) were the big determinants that we like to think they are.

So if we accept that they have a similar battlefield role do you, as ruler, want to base your continued survival on a relatively small minority of your population who have a life-long training with the bow (and who may not like you for dragging them away from their farms/herds), or do you build up a system where the unproductive dregs of your society (whom nobody will miss) can be terrorised/volunteered into using firearms on your behalf? (And whom you can also use to terrorise those uppity independent yeoman types.)

To answer the OP, I suspect the answer is more sociological than mechanical, and so it's not that one weapon that is better than another. The changeover would happen when the war leader (KIng/Khan/Kolonel) determines that he can exercise more control with gunpowder than he can with bowstrings, and that will happen at different times in different places with identical technology.

In the wide-open spaces of the Eurasian steppes, the bow will last a lot longer because mobility is a bigger force-multiplier than firepower, because bows are more universally used by males of all ages (i.e. society is relatively homogenous), and because it's also difficult to reload a matchlock on the back of a moving horse. In the relatively crowded spaces of the low countries and northern Italy, surplus urban populations are a problem looking for solutions, and simple firearms are one answer. To some extent this both permits and causes the rise of the nation state. Muskets in large quantities soon lead to state-controlled armouries and powder mills (because you don't want your rivals undermining your supply), which leads to more centralisation, etc, etc.

I think I may have wandered off topic ….

Clive

You want the bowmen out-numbered by more than 10:1 ?…

That is kinda the point. A bow takes a lifetime to master. The English required every man to practice for an hour a day, IIRC. But I can get someone to modern military proficiency with a rifle, cover, concealment, etc, in three months or less, and I can get Joe Farmboy competent enough to stand in ranks and fire a muzzleloader in an afternoon, two weeks for military drill and discipline.

I think I commented on it before, but the Japanese ended up with three different infantry formations: spear, bow, and a mixed firearm/bow unit. The bowmen in those mixed units were there to cover the gunners while they reloaded, but the firearms were the core of the unit.

This is one of those topics that reappears from time to time drawing all sorts of off the cuff opinions.

Joe Collins has already answered the question (with a very well informed reference).

A few more points:

The French did fear (and sought to copy) English Bowmen well into the "handgunne" period. In 1500 an Italian diplomat noted: "[The English] have a very high reputation in arms; and from the great fear the French entertain of them, one must believe it to be justly acquiered."

As to taking on the "northern English" (I assume the author means Scots), Henry VIII did not use Bow and Bill not Continental mercs.

As to penetration of armor it did depend on angle and quality of armor (highly variable in this period). But armor was certainly penetrated very few French knights made it to the stakes at Agincourt and most of the foot also turned back without making contact.

In 1402 at Homildon Hill: "[T]rusting too much in his equipment and that of his men, who had been improving their armor for three years…The Earl of Douglas was pierced with five wounds, notwithstanding his elaborate armor." The arrows tended to incapacitate rather than kill.

It was cost not effectiveness that spelled the end of the warbow. (Time was also a huge factor the English preferred their bowman to begin at age 7, a long term project far beyond the attention span of medieval or indeed modern goverments.)

TomT

It's effectiveness that kills the various forms of bows, not costs. The king of England goes on raising bowmen and they keep on turning up even as late as the Armada. English generals are, however, desperate to get firearms rather than bowmen. This is not because the bowmen are not good at their task, the draw weight of the Mary Rose bows is so high that they must represent archery at its peak, yet Henry would rather have had shot in his armies and indeed hired in German mercenaries to provide this new technology.
The discussion on the longbow has rather diverted us to looking at that weapon, but the point was made earlier that the crossbow was also rendered obsolete by gunpowder weapons. Most of the special considerations of the longbow do not apply to the crossbow. It is cheap to train someone to use a crossbow and, given that it lasts for many years, it is not that expensive to produce. Yet the crossbow is replaced and this is surely because it is an inferior device for killing armoured men!

Something else I forgot to mention, there's evidence that people dodged arrows. In dense, mass formation style combat it probably didn't happen often, but in skirmishing . . .

Lewis gunner:

Longbows had a much higher rate of "fire" were probably more accurate and could arch shooting over obstacles.

Unfortunely far from being at its peak archery was in steep decline in England by the time of Henry VIII (as noted in the famous sermon by Bishop Latimer in 1549). Not even England could maintain a sizable body of trained archers. Handgunners were just cheaper and easier to raise.

Crossbows have the same draw backs as handgunnes (ROF) but are harder to build and maintain.

The need to produce massed armies rendered the
warbow obsolete. (Had armor been the only problem as soon as largely unarmored massed armies appeared the bow should have reappeared – as Ben Franklin proposed not fully understanding the training issue which made this not just impractical but impossible.

Even at the height of the Hundred Years War France realized it needed archers and tried to create a trained body of them but found the sustained effort to do so very difficult.

TomT

Another variable to consider was the types of soldiers produced during and after the Thirty Years War. The demand for high volumes of troops, compounded with better farming aids, produced a vacuum of professional soldiers. At one time it was advantagous for a large number of people to be mercenaries. Being paid, fed reguarly, and being able to travel with the prospect of the spoils of war was favorable to many, rather than living within 5 miles of your house on a farm your entire life with fear of wondering if your harvest will make it though the season.

Thus the regular adoptation of consciption began to evolve. And like any field where a large number of people need to be recruited; the technology, and whatever pertains to the position, inherently involves implimenting a structure which can easily be taught and used by the masses; e.g. firearms.

ilodic

Thomas, the longbow is considerably overrated. As early as the 14th century the French advanced safely on longbows using pavises. As I said, fully armoured knights on barded horses could get through to them. Similarly foot knights could get to them. The important tactic that the English had was combining massed archery with dismounted men at arms. The MAA tend to be or gotten, but it was they who won the victories.
One other important difference between the English archer and say crossbowmen from about 1400 onwards was that the English archers were quite ready to fight hand to hand as well as shoot at a distance. Their equipment improved and often they would have armour and sword and buckler.
However, the English system is actually peripheral to the mainstream of continental warfare. There the important development was the pike phalanx. Dealing with pike blocks , not archers, became the military challenge from 1450 onwards. Develop in parallel with the pike to give the pike phalanxes offensive missile power. When we get to the mid 16th century the arquebus has improved to the point where it drives out the crossbow and the longbow.
I just don't accept that the argument for shot is about cost. Had it been a matter of money then the gun would have been dominant much earlier. The seminal changes occur in the Italian wars when it became possible for arquebusiers to shoot down pikes when combined with their own pikes. The Swiss, who have fewer shot lose out to the Spanish who have more guns and it is Spanish military methods that dominate the later 16th century.
Long bowmen are actually cheap because they pay for their own training and as some wise person said earlier, they do not need powder, powder mills, match, lead for bullets and gunsmith time. Nor do they need powder flasks or apostles.
Old timers might lament the passing of the longbow and what it represented as a way of life, but Henry wanted men who could use firearms whoever were MORE expensive because they were hired foreign mercenaries.

"The French did fear (and sought to copy) English Bowmen well into the "handgunne" period. In 1500 an Italian diplomat noted: "[The English] have a very high reputation in arms; and from the great fear the French entertain of them, one must believe it to be justly acquiered."

As to taking on the "northern English" (I assume the author means Scots), Henry VIII did not use Bow and Bill not Continental mercs."

Italian diplomats not withstanding Tudor commanders are documented as being disapointed with the bows performance in Henry's continental campaign. The French did not fear English bowmen at that time.

No I did not mean Scots, I meant northern English, and was alluding to Henry's domestic employement of good, modern continental mercenaries.

Since you mention Scots, the well armoured Scottish front rankers seem to have taken little harm from the English bowmen at that notable English victory. The English artillery on the otherhand contributed greatly to it. The English army at Flodden was indeed bill and bow but in Tudor terms it represented the past not the future. And this from Europe's premier archer using military tradition.

Massed handguns were death to the nobility.

Yet musketeers were deemed to need protection by pikes until ca 1700.

Yes, because the muskets couldn't fire fast enough to keep the cavalry away until people were using platoon or section volleys and flintlocks. The Japanese had to use mixed bow/matchlock formations to protect the gunners.

Long bowmen are actually cheap because they pay for their own training and as some wise person said earlier, they do not need powder, powder mills, match, lead for bullets and gunsmith time. Nor do they need powder flasks or apostles.

But you can't make them quickly. If I can spend gold and train 10 gunners for every bowman you can field, well, that kinda answers the question, doesn't it?

The Last Conformist

And what happened the first time those tribes faced firearms?

Even if we accept that someone's very first encounter of such things might be something of a surprise, everyone seemed to get used to them very quickly.

Lion you are missing the point. We are debating when firearms replaced bows and crossbows. We can argue about which is helper, but the economic calculation is actually a side issue. The crossbowman is not more expensive than the musketeer yet hie is replaced. Why is this? Because he is not as effective. Similarly the replacement of the long bowman in England is because the weapon is not as effective as the arquebus. English commanders demand shot when they could happily get long bowmen .
Yes the Japanese ave to use fences to enable their matchlock men to face cavalry, yet throughout history bowmen would have had the same problem. We have to ask why the Japanese didnT stick to bows despite their military conservatism..
Doubtless a force of long bowmen could have given a matchlock equipped army a hard time, but I doubt that the dismounted men at arms would have looked too clever against a pike and musket combination. In the War of the Roses the massed longbows do not wipe out the nobility because a well armoured man is reasonably well protected against arrows and bolts. It would be a different story against musket balls.

In Japan, it took as little as 40 years after the introduction of the arquebus to the country for it to supplant the bow. Keep in mind, the Japanese bow was considerably underpowered when compared against the European longbow.

By 1600 the Japanese had more arquebuses in Japan than in all of Europe!

By 1600 the Japanese had more arquebuses in Japan than in all of Europe!

A myth invented by Perrin in "Giving up the gun" which is not supported by a shred of serious evidence from European sources.

How many gunners were there at Sekigahara? There were ~90k on each side of the battle, and roughly a third of them were armed with an Arquebus. That's 60,000 guns at a single battle, not counting the other troops holding down the forts back home. I'd suspect less than double the number of troops staying at home, so call it 100,000 guns in Japan.

How many guns did Europe have in 1600?

mid to late 1500's

It's a bit of a how long is a piece of string question ….number of guns in Europe. I wouldn't be surprised at half a million though. Areas such as the Turkish border are heavily militarised . As Lion says there are always plenty of men left at home, in garrisons, as militia to add in to the numbers in firm ld armies..
As to Japanese bows being weaker than the longbow, I'd bet that European armour of the xvth and early xvith cent. is more resistant and deflective than Japanese armour.

And what happened the first time those tribes faced firearms?

I don't know. I sort of doubt anyone does, as gunpowder weapons had been used in the Red Sea area since at least the 16C and muskets had penetrated much of interior Africa long before European armies (with attendant writers) got there.

As ACW troops went to ground when shot at, I think it's safe to say that "tribesmen" usually did likewise or took to the brush when faced with massed shot.

A lot of rehashed nonsense above. "50 pound" longbows, really! (that's in the link, and you can discount the whole thing when it makes a statement like that)

Bows and arrows don't penetrate plate armor, really! Yes they do, and no they don't. The subject isn't that simple as a shot into a tempered breastplate would hardly represent the whole man, who has exposed/vulnerable areas no matter how good the plate armor is. And as already noted, if you saturate the target area with enough missiles in a brief enough time you will get hits, a lot of them.

Arguing effectiveness and cost is circular logic from observer bias. And without sufficient information to break the argument. Simple fact is, gunnes replaced bows/crossbows, and in not too much time from the advent of gunnes in formed units. This first occurred well into the 15th century, before that they were a novelty and mostly for sieges.

I always enjoy reading these threads each time this subject of comparison comes up!…

Ohhh wait… I think I see the point about having 100,000 muskets.
I believe point is that with mass-production of firearms and the ability to train large numbers of musketeers in a shorter period of time means that the deployment of the fire arm is more effective than the bow?

That`s a way of looking at it I guess, but as firearms` accuracy and rate of fire increased, the general trend (of the C19th and onwards) was for armies to adopt thinner and more extended formations.
When more efficient weapons are available, massed troops were simply not required to give the same volume of fire.
So by the time that firearms were beginning to match in terms of rate of fire, as anachronistic opponents their first line; troops from armies of the 1870`s – 1890`s would be in a skirmishing line.
At typical engagement ranges these "modern" armies would have to face massed fire effect from bows on a short frontage and therefore I believe, the men with firearms would be at no great immediate advantage.

…and the OP`s question was not asking when bows were replaced by firearms, but at which point firearms became more effective.

And ditto the above… tests and demonstrations of the effectiveness of arrows are often made on breastplate armour, which was probably the thickest part of knights` equipment, there were many other more vulnerable areas, including the horse – which although able to withstand more injuries may not have been so well-protected.

As to Japanese bows being weaker than the longbow, I'd bet that European armour of the xvth and early xvith cent. is more resistant and deflective than Japanese armour.

More deflective, perhaps, but the Japanese armor prior to the introduction of firearms in Japan in 1542 was designed to soak up arrow fire while not impeding the motions of a fighting man. Instead of bouncing the arrows off like European plate, arrows tended to get caught in the layers of Japanese armor without penetrating to the wearer.

And very shortly after the introduction of firearms, you started to see bullet-tested armor. By 1584, the Date clan issued every single trooper bullet-tested armor. A literal 'bullet-proof vest', much like the armor of the Conquistadors (well, it *was* based off a couple European sets).

@Lion & Daniel S. re: more arquebus in Japan than Europe at 1600, I was quoting from the author of the new book on Sekigahara.

For the life of me I can't find where he posted it now! Most of his information is updated on his Facebook page however.

Woulds this be the book by Chris Glenn?
He posted the following on his FB page about the battle at least.

It has been estimated that 25,000 matchlock guns, or 30% of all the guns in existence world wide in October of 1600 were used at Sekigahara. In all of Europe, only 30,000 guns were believed in use. Japan boasted a total of approximately 55,000 of the projectile weapons!

Given that the Swedish field army in Livonia alone had 27000 firearms in 1600 it is pretty obvious that this statment is not based on European sources on the subject.

Indeed that was the quote Daniel! Thank you for posting.

Numbers debate aside, it is interesting how quickly the arquebus supplanted the bow (and cavalry) in Japan in such a short time frame.