Got a Real World Weapons or Armour Question? Mk XIII

[fusilier]

Continuing this, I thought I once heard that the switch from longbows to muskets in England was so the military could keep the peasants from revolting. Any schlub can make a bow of approximately good quality, but the secret recipe for powder made sure the cannon fodder stayed just that.

I think there is some truth that gunpowder led to a centralization of military control under nation-states, due to the production of gunpowder being tricky. Europe lacked good sources of saltpeter, and what sources there were were quickly brought under government control.

However, the switch, in England, to gunpowder was something of a hard fought battle, and the English came somewhat late to it, so in the 16th century they often had to import powder from the continent. This made them somewhat vulnerable during the Armada period, and they began serious projects to increase domestic production.

[Galloglaich]

So let me see if I've got this: due to very limited frequence of female frontliners, there's little-to-no historical evidence.


Actually, there is some. They seem to be quite rare, but not to the point of not being there. In some areas for certain periods they seem to have been fairly common. I can get more into this if necessary.



Based on reenactment, generally speaking a woman can just wear mail + gambeson, no special design needed. It'll work as both armor and support, unlike chainmail bikinis.

For plate, it may be possible to wear munitions grade plate, but the threshold before you'll need "tailor-made" armor is lower than for men. For particularly large-chested women, it might make sense to have armor done based on armor for girthy men.

In Historical fencing, and in Collegiate / Sport fencing, women often wear 'plastrons' which have some shape for the breasts. Like these:

http://www.leonpaul.com/acatalog/fencing_chest_protectors_59l.jpg

Men also wear (more flat versions of) these, I think in the UK clubs they wear them a lot.

G

[Galloglaich]

The issue of how fencing masters were perceived is actually a good question with a fairly subtle and nuanced answer. I'll riff off of Spiryt's reply.


All depends on time and place, but mostly:

Actual 'governments' around 1190 would actually depend mostly on their knightly/warband retinue, in many cases they would actually be very against 'peasant Robin' being particularly armed and in fighting mood.

Much better if he just plowed the field and collected honey instead.


While this is partly true, it's also true that even as early as 1190 there were urban and rural communities, literally "communes", which did practice self defense collectively and had militias and so on, in fact they were quite common, probably more common in places like England and France than they would later be.

And even in the Feudal zones the gentry did encourage (in some cases, force) the peasantry to be armed, to be ready to fight, and I think it's a reasonable assumption, to drill.

The thing is, this far back our records for training are fairly scant, and our records for individual training have to do mostly with judicial combat, which by the 12th Century was already becoming a looked-down-upon activity, both because of it's "barbarity", and because the original intent of an honor-duel had been sort of perverted by legal pressure into a system of sort of Gladiator champions. These were men, usually poor and rather desperate men, who would agree to take on the case of a litigant, usually involving swearing that their patron was in the right, for a fee of course. They would then fight it out, and if they lost, they were often subject to severe punishment.

I've seen documentation of some disputes between two monasteries and between a monastery and some peasants, if I remember correctly, which were fought by such champions.

These champions, I think Roland Warzecha called these guys Kemphe or something like that - they were also the same people who usually trained poorer litigants who actually had to fight their own battles. Not surprisingly they were looked-down on and considered disreputable.

By contrast, the war-training we do know of in the later Medieval period seems to be based on archery contests and some drills, at least initially, as opposed to individual fighter training. So we don't know if this means that individual combat training was only done for judicial combat and these disreputable gladiator type guys, (somewhat similar to English prize-players all the way into the 19th Century) and all military training was either based around contests or communal drills, or if there is other individual training we just don't know about yet.

The fencing manuals which emerge in the later 14th Century include both judicial combat stuff and a variety of other types of fighting (sport, tournaments, and formal and informal duels for the most part, but also some military contexts), but until the 16th century they almost all do seem to concentrate on one-on-one fighting. In the 16th we start to see some one vs. many scenarios in the fencing manuals, particularly in Spain.



Fencing masters in 1189 almost certainly didn't have much to do with Renaissance ones, different culture and social conditions.

Or late-medieval. By the 13th Century certain types of weapon-based societies seem to have become widespread in some areas, I know of examples in northern Italy, Flanders and Switzerland notably, but I suspect also in much of the rest of Europe. Initially these seemed to be pretty hard core combat oriented societies or fighting-guilds, what would be called 'paramilitary' organizations today, but then pretty soon you start to see sporting elements, as most European martial -training seemed to be organized around contests of some kind, which quickly turn into big parties. By the 14th Century these are organized into what you might call sports-leagues. They were associated with different Saints which could be a wide variety but most commonly the first were crossbow guilds organized around St. George or St. Maurice, archery guilds around St. Sebastian, sword or halberd guilds around St. Michael, and gun / cannon guilds around St. Barbara.

The biggest events for the nobility were obviously the knightly tournaments, which were also put on by towns sometimes, then you have longbow archery contests in England pretty early. On the continent for commoners the shooting contests (usually crossbow initially, later also guns) was a HUGE thing, and then you also got the fechtshule (fencing contests) which were often part of the shooting contest. This was similar to this all over Continental Europe, especially in the towns. This is kind of where the whole William Tell legend originates in Switzerland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%BCtzenfest#History


There was a very good wiki I found a while back on the Swiss Shutzenfest but I can't find it right now. I'll post it later when I do.

EDIT: Ok here is the wiki, I forgot it was in German. The google translation is a bit rough but if you read it, it outlines the creation of some of the paramilitary societies I was talking about starting in the 14th Century.

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidgen%25C3%25B6ssisches_Sch%25C3%25BCtzenfest&prev=/search%3Fq%3DEidgen%25C3%25B6ssisches%2BSch%25C3%2 5BCtzenfest%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D661

G

[Incanur]

So we don't know if this means that individual combat training was only done for judicial combat and these disreputable gladiator type guys, (somewhat similar to English prize-players all the way into the 19th Century) and all military training was either based around contests or communal drills, or if there is other individual training we just don't know about yet.

We do know that at least members of the military aristocracy trained individually during this period. The King's Mirror (http://www.mediumaevum.com/75years/mirror/sec2.html#XXXVII) details such training, for example. And of course the tournament served as a way to gain valuable martial experience; some tournaments included individual combat, depending on the period.

[Galloglaich]

We do know that at least members of the military aristocracy trained individually during this period. The King's Mirror (http://www.mediumaevum.com/75years/mirror/sec2.html#XXXVII) details such training, for example. And of course the tournament served as a way to gain valuable martial experience; some tournaments included individual combat, depending on the period.

Yes there are all kinds of tournaments and contests, but we don't see much about the individual training except in little hints, where they usually don't go into much (or any) detail. We see they did jousting contests, fought at the barriers, and practiced certain feats like jumping on a horse and climbing ladders in armor and so on, but we don't know much beyond that.

A lot of European military training seems to have been based on creating incentives based on contests, with cash prizes and significant social capital as the benefit, and a side-effect of creating comradery and political bonds (the shooting contests were often explicitly used to create alliances between towns, and the knightly tournaments contributed to all sorts of alliances as well) and even the fencing from the Liechtenauer tradition seems to be linked to the fechtschule (fencing tournament).

But how they trained fencing or one on one fighting on the day to day basis is still a little bit opaque for those earlier periods.

G

[Incanur]

But how they trained fencing or one on one fighting on the day to day basis is still a little bit opaque for those earlier periods.

Are you familiar with the text I just linked? It doesn't give specific techniques or anything, but it recommends essentially sparring in full kit one or twice a day (except holidays). It also counsels practicing riding and wielding a spear in full armor.

[Galloglaich]

Are you familiar with the text I just linked? It doesn't give specific techniques or anything, but it recommends essentially sparring in full kit one or twice a day (except holidays). It also counsels practicing riding and wielding a spear in full armor.

yes I am, quote from it often in this thread. :)

G

[Fortinbras]

A while back I asked about the inclusion of sword and buckler in the required war gear of Norwegian royal retainers and was told that it this combo was useful for boarding actions at sea.

Does anyone have a good source for this? Also, what is it about boarding actions, which are often described as land battles at sea, that makes sword and buckler more useful than it would normally be for similar sized confrontations on land.

My impression is that both fights could end up taking place in close quarters, but sword and buckler is not generally considered desirable for battle field use on land. What makes boarding actions different?

[Galloglaich]

A while back I asked about the inclusion of sword and buckler in the required war gear of Norwegian royal retainers and was told that it this combo was useful for boarding actions at sea.

Does anyone have a good source for this? Also, what is it about boarding actions, which are often described as land battles at sea, that makes sword and buckler more useful than it would normally be for similar sized confrontations on land.

My impression is that both fights could end up taking place in close quarters, but sword and buckler is not generally considered desirable for battle field use on land. What makes boarding actions different?

Well, first of all something maybe only a little larger than bucklers were used quite a bit even as front-line weapons (which is unusual for swords) in pitched battles in several documented cases going way back.

In the classical era you have the peltasts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peltast) and velites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velites), light skirmishers who use darts, slings, and javelins as their main weapons, and defended themselves with small wicker shields (the pelta) but who also fought at closer range and were an important, even critical (if often overlooked) part of some of the Classical - era armies.

Later in the early to high Medieval period you had the Almogavars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almogavars), also 'light' infantry mainly defended by small shields and principally armed with various types of javelins (including all-iron short range armor-piercing javelins) as well as swords and big hunting knives, and at their bloody peak in the 13th-14th Century they proved capable of handling both Turkish field armies and Frankish heavy cavalry.

In artwork from the 14th and 15th Centuries, when shields are a bit in decline on the battlefield arguably and two-handed weapons are on the rise, you still see shields quite often especially during sieges.

A bit later in the 15th and 16th Century you start seeing Rodeleros (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodeleros) in Spain who are sword and rotella guys - a rotella being a (relatively) small steel shield- who for a while were one of the critical elements of the Tercio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tercio).

All over the Middle East, from North Africa to the Turkish zone, fighting with a sword and a buckler, and later a saber and a buckler (sometimes with a dagger as well) was a common practice.

And in Scotland, I think all the way into the 17th or maybe 18th Century, Scottish highlanders and maybe some of the lowlanders used sword and Targe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targe), a type of small composite constructed shield of what you might call medium strength, in a manner remarkably similar to how the Arabs used them, with their strait basket-hilt swords. Apparently quite effectively.

Secondarily, sword and buckler was often carried as a sidearm by common infantry especially, I believe it was particularly common in the British Isles but also on the continent, definitely in Italy. So in this case they would be secondary weapons


The tactical front-line role seems to be for light infantry (peltasts and Velites) light-shock infantry (Almogavars, Rodeleros and Scottish targemen) fast moving, agile, and with good situational awareness. Not so much for the stand and deliver kind of fighting of heavy infantry or heavy cavalry.

In a one-on-one or small-group fight, the buckler or small to medium shield gives you a lot more protection than a single weapon, it also gives you some protection against missiles (particularly on the larger end of the scale and if the shield is a bit stronger, like those steel rotella) and on an individual one-on-one basis, it gives you some chance against the initial reach-advantage of a polearm, while at the same time allowing the fighter being a bit more agile than someone carrying a 9 or 12 foot spear. The latter is definitely a factor in boarding actions on ships where there are lines, ropes, sails, masts etc. all over the place. The boarding -pike, bill, and spear also played a role on the ship without a doubt, but it was a different strategy if you will and worked best in a group. The rotellero proved that the sword and shield could also contend with pike squares- it all depended on factors like speed and timing.

G

[snowblizz]

Indeed at Culloden in 1746 Highlanders were very much equipped for close combat.
Against poorly trained and unarmoured enemies that could be devastating. Against trained and motivated soldiers, such as at Culloden bringing a sword to a gunfight didn't work out so hot.

[Fortinbras]

As usual Galloglaich, thanks for the detailed response.

I should have been a little more clear. I'm aware that smallish round shields were popular with light infantry, although my understanding is that the target/rotela was considered to be rather different from the buckler, the former being better for the battle field and the later being preferred for the duel or street fight (Silver says something to this effect in Paradoxes.

What surprised me was seeing the buckler in the kit of aristocratic heavy infantry who were also supposed to be equipped with large shields, spears, mail, helmets, spaulders, and platepanzer (coats-of-plates). I was wondering if the buckler would be more advantageous than a larger shield for naval action, and if so, why?

[warty goblin]

What surprised me was seeing the buckler in the kit of aristocratic heavy infantry who were also supposed to be equipped with large shields, spears, mail, helmets, spaulders, and platepanzer (coats-of-plates). I was wondering if the buckler would be more advantageous than a larger shield for naval action, and if so, why?

I'd figure it's easier to store and use in extremely tight quarters, and also easier to control in a wind.

[Spiryt]

What surprised me was seeing the buckler in the kit of aristocratic heavy infantry who were also supposed to be equipped with large shields, spears, mail, helmets, spaulders, and platepanzer (coats-of-plates). I was wondering if the buckler would be more advantageous than a larger shield for naval action, and if so, why?

If you're armored that heavily, with mail and coat of plates, big shield isn't even quite as necessary, but really adds encumbrance...

While buckler was widely depicted as easy to wield even at the belt.

[Galloglaich]

Could be literally carried on the belt, so think of it like this, if you suddenly get outnumbered, or find yourself in a chaotic situation where you potentially COULD be outnumbered - or might suddenly run into somebody with a spear, having the buckler is very useful since it gives you a big ramp up in defensive capability. But if you are trying to jump around all over a ship (or just inside the barbican of a keep or in city streets or something) something you can hang on your belt for when you need it can be nice. Nice not to have to carry the bigger shield around all the time in other words.

G

[Galloglaich]

I think it's not really clear from most RPGs or genre fiction what a big defensive (hence, general) advantage a buckler is compared to just a sword (or axe, any other one-handed weapon) without a buckler. It's a lot more than that little +1 defense around the margins.

G

[Galloglaich]

also on a ship you may need both hands free to grab a rope line, climb over something or etc.

G

[Fortinbras]

I love bucklers. My first armoring project was a buckler, most of my training is with sword and buckler. I definitely appreciate what an advantage it gives vs single sword. That said, everything I've seen indicates that I would get hosed trying to take on spearman or billman if I used a sword and buckler. My impression is that I would have a much better chance, maybe an advantage even, if I had a heater or rotella instead of a buckler, hence my question about carrying one into battle.

Your answer about being able to carry it on the belt makes a lot of sense though.

[Animastryfe]

Speaking of heater shields, from popular culture I get the impression that they were definitely used by knights, or other heavily armoured cavalry. Were they used by knights on foot, or would knights switch to a two-handed weapon? Were heater shields used by 'common' infantry?

According to Wikipedia, the heater shield was relegated to almost only tournaments by the mid 1300s, while complete suits of plate armour came about in 1420. Thus, the famous imagery of a knight in full plate armour wielding a lance and heater shield is anachronistic.

Speaking of shields in general, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's section on weaponry has some good mini-pavise shields. Most of them have notches in one corner; were those meant to be used on horseback, so that the notches acted as lance rests? Or were they meant to help with visibility?

[Spiryt]

According to Wikipedia, the heater shield was relegated to almost only tournaments by the mid 1300s, while complete suits of plate armour came about in 1420. Thus, the famous imagery of a knight in full plate armour wielding a lance and heater shield is anachronistic.


http://manuscriptminiatures.com/search/?year=1380&year_end=1410&tags=&manuscript=

Heater shield wasn't really 'relegated' to tournaments, it just was going to normal 'evolution' changing into different forms of shield with new forms appearing etc.

Something that can easily be called 'full plate armor' appears as early as ~ 1380.

So, as you can see in period imagery, it's not 'anachronistic' at all.

[Animastryfe]

Thank you for that website! Most of the soldiers are wearing clothing over their armour. Are they likely wearing a breastplate?

This picture (http://manuscriptminiatures.com/4163/8804/) reminded me of something I noticed while watching A Knight's Tale, which is a fun but purposefully very historically inaccurate movie about jousting. In the film, I noticed a few knights that had shields strapped to their upper arm, apparently so that they could hold the reins of the horse while still having the protection of a shield. This was completely in the context of tournament jousting. Was such a configuration used in real jousts, or in real battles?

[Galloglaich]

In some cases just a surcoat, in others, essentially another gambeson. These may have served the purpose of both protecting the armor from damage, particularly from high-velocity missiles, and helping to prevent the armor being pierced.

Modern tests showing arrows having a tough time piercing plate or coat-of-plates armor also do show that the armor gets dented and / or small holes in it which would make it uncomfortable to wear, weakened, and messed up looking. A textile armor covering would help prevent this.

There have also been some experiments showing that gambeson over the armor (including mail) makes it much more resistant to certain types of arrows, particularly the very pointy bodkin types.

G

[Galloglaich]

I love bucklers. My first armoring project was a buckler, most of my training is with sword and buckler. I definitely appreciate what an advantage it gives vs single sword. That said, everything I've seen indicates that I would get hosed trying to take on spearman or billman if I used a sword and buckler. My impression is that I would have a much better chance, maybe an advantage even, if I had a heater or rotella instead of a buckler, hence my question about carrying one into battle.

Your answer about being able to carry it on the belt makes a lot of sense though.

I think it depends partly on the size of the buckler (which can range historically from as small as 4" to as wide as 20" or more) and partly on the technique / training. Have you ever tried using I.33 techniques against a spear or a bill? If you know how to parry effectively with the buckler and the sword together, it can hold it's own pretty well against a lot of other weapons.

I think more generally the tradeoff between the smaller (buckler-sized) and the larger (rotella on up to scutum etc.) sized shields is one of passive defense and defense against missiles or large weapons vs. agility and versatility. With more training and skill, I personally think the smaller shield is more effective, and in a one on one fight even more so - in fact many of the fencing masters say a sword and dagger is more effective than a sword and buckler - but this is obviously for a more skilled fighter.

A sword and dagger though is more hard - pressed to defend against a thrust let alone a cut from a bill or a spear though, and offers little to no defense against missiles.

There seems to be a sweet spot somewhere in the 12" - 16" range for bucklers which seems to be used a lot in martial arts and on the battlefield, and I think it's at the nexus between this versatility vs. enhanced inherent safety issue for individual and small group fights. For organized larger group fights, the larger shields are more optimal because you can more easily use them to defend against multiple attacks and to coordinate defense with allies.

G

[Spiryt]

Thank you for that website! Most of the soldiers are wearing clothing over their armour. Are they likely wearing a breastplate?

This picture (http://manuscriptminiatures.com/4163/8804/) reminded me of something I noticed while watching A Knight's Tale, which is a fun but purposefully very historically inaccurate movie about jousting. In the film, I noticed a few knights that had shields strapped to their upper arm, apparently so that they could hold the reins of the horse while still having the protection of a shield. This was completely in the context of tournament jousting. Was such a configuration used in real jousts, or in real battles?

I believe that shields where pretty frequently strapped that way, particularly in mounted use.

As far as breastplates going, it's hard to say, it can be as well mail, or coat of plates under those joupons.

But at least some would wear breastplates, sometimes even one piece, by the end of 1300s.

[Incanur]

That said, everything I've seen indicates that I would get hosed trying to take on spearman or billman if I used a sword and buckler. My impression is that I would have a much better chance, maybe an advantage even, if I had a heater or rotella instead of a buckler, hence my question about carrying one into battle.

According to George Silver, you'd be hosed against a staff weapon in either case in single combat. On the battlefield, at least a couple sixteenth-century military writers argued for the superiority of targetiers to halberdiers, though from what I recall in Matthew Sutcliffe this was mainly because he felt targetiers did as well in the melee but better against missile weapons and initially against pikes. Sir John Smythe, on the other hand, loved halberdiers. Fourquevaux at one point described his pikemen turned targetiers - they carried a shield on their backs - as being "rescued" by halberds in the melee.


I think more generally the tradeoff between the smaller (buckler-sized) and the larger (rotella on up to scutum etc.) sized shields is one of passive defense and defense against missiles or large weapons vs. agility and versatility. With more training and skill, I personally think the smaller shield is more effective, and in a one on one fight even more so - in fact many of the fencing masters say a sword and dagger is more effective than a sword and buckler - but this is obviously for a more skilled fighter.

Which masters? Nineteenth-century ones? I know Joseph Swetnam gave the rapier and dagger odds over the sword and buckler, but it's not completely clear that he favored the buckler over the dagger. Silver preferred the buckler over the target for single combat, but recommended target over buckler for the field. And he gave both buckler and target odds over the dagger.


A sword and dagger though is more hard - pressed to defend against a thrust let alone a cut from a bill or a spear though, and offers little to no defense against missiles.

Swetnam's technique (http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/swetnam2.htm) against staff weapons works pretty well.


Now the best guard with a Sword and Dagger, or Rapier and Dagger, against a Staffe, is this, put your Dagger on the in-side of your Rapier or Sword, and join them both together, making your cross with them within a foote or thereabouts of the hilt of your Rapier or Sword, and looking cleere with both your eyes under them, or betwixt both your weapons, and then if your enemy charge you with a blow at your head with his Staffe, beare them both double against the blow, and having defended it, turne your point and turne your knuckles inward of your right-hand, and so to goe in amaine upon him. But is he charge your with a thrust, then presently let fall the point of your Rapier down-ward, and force him downe the more stronger, and more quicker with your Dagger, for to that end I doe appoint you to put your Dagger in the in-side of your Rapier or Sword.

Of course, even Swetnam acknowledged that the skillful staff wielder has the odds.

[Fortinbras]

I think it depends partly on the size of the buckler (which can range historically from as small as 4" to as wide as 20" or more) and partly on the technique / training. Have you ever tried using I.33 techniques against a spear or a bill? If you know how to parry effectively with the buckler and the sword together, it can hold it's own pretty well against a lot of other weapons.

I think more generally the tradeoff between the smaller (buckler-sized) and the larger (rotella on up to scutum etc.) sized shields is one of passive defense and defense against missiles or large weapons vs. agility and versatility. With more training and skill, I personally think the smaller shield is more effective, and in a one on one fight even more so - in fact many of the fencing masters say a sword and dagger is more effective than a sword and buckler - but this is obviously for a more skilled fighter.

A sword and dagger though is more hard - pressed to defend against a thrust let alone a cut from a bill or a spear though, and offers little to no defense against missiles.

There seems to be a sweet spot somewhere in the 12" - 16" range for bucklers which seems to be used a lot in martial arts and on the battlefield, and I think it's at the nexus between this versatility vs. enhanced inherent safety issue for individual and small group fights. For organized larger group fights, the larger shields are more optimal because you can more easily use them to defend against multiple attacks and to coordinate defense with allies.

G

My instructor (who I've been with for a little under a year) is working mainly out of Morozzo, who I think has fairly similar parries to I.33. I've never done any fencing with non-sword and buckler fighters, so my impression of the combinations ineffectiveness against pole-arms comes from stuff my instructors have experienced, stuff Silver talks about in Paradoxes, and this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8RWLxlzTiM) video.

I did get some impression of the buckler's advantage over single sword when I fenced a guy who had a good deal of single sword practice and very little sword and buckler training. He kept forgetting to use the buckler and I got a lot of cuts on his arm as a result. One of my buddies also cut most of his re-enactment group to pieces using a buckler against their heater shields, so I know it can be very effective against other types of swordsmen.

[Galloglaich]

No Incanur, not 19th century masters. But I don't want to get into the debate between Silver and certain other folks he looked down on. I think they are both viable systems very broadly speaking. As for Swetnam, he's also arguably viable, but he's a bit of an outlier.

http://wiktenauer.com/images/thumb/9/96/Marozzo_29.png/275px-Marozzo_29.png

Marozzo does get into sword and rotella vs. polearms, (notice what may be a 'severed' spear in that image, incidentally) but Marozzo and the Bolognese masters do sword and buckler quite differently from I33. Both systems are good and probably equally effective in the overall level, but I33 system is much more defensive oriented I think and uses the sword and the buckler together a lot more.

Marozzo also distinguishes between the buckler and the 'large buckler' incidentally, and uses some other small shields (mazzo scudo etc.) as well as various sizes of large shields.

G

[Galloglaich]

Couple of images of sword & buckler fighters facing spears, from an old ARMA article.

http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/I33-guards_files/image087.jpg

http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/I33-guards_files/image118.jpg

http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/I33-guards_files/image146.jpg

My assessment of S&B (especially the I33 techniques) vs. longer weapons is simply based on what I've seen at events and observing sparring in my own club, nothing scientific there.


G

[Incanur]

No Incanur, not 19th century masters.

So which ones preferred the sword and dagger to sword and buckler? I'm always curious about how masters assigned odds.

[Mike_G]

According to George Silver, you'd be hosed against a staff weapon in either case in single combat.


I think Silver would say a guy with a Tommy gun or a hand grenade would be hosed against a guy with a staff.

Not saying Silver doesn't have some good techniques, but asking him about staff is like asking a Boston barroom about the Red Sox.

[Incanur]

I think Silver would say a guy with a Tommy gun or a hand grenade would be hosed against a guy with a staff.

Not saying Silver doesn't have some good techniques, but asking him about staff is like asking a Boston barroom about the Red Sox.

To the contrary, Silver's praise for the staff was quite specific. He considered the staff, forest bill/Welsh hook, and other similar light 8-9ft staff weapons as the best for small-scale combat in the open, but thought them inferior and out of place on the battlefield.


Yet understand, that in battles, and where variety of weapons are, among multitudes of men and horses, the sword and target, the two handed sword, battle axe, the black bill, and halberd, are better weapons, and more dangerous in their offense and forces, than is the sword and buckler, short staff, long staff, or forest bill. The sword and target leads upon shot, and in troops defends thrusts and blows given by battle axe, halberds, black bill, or two handed swords, far better than can the sword and buckler.

The morris pike defends the battle from both horse and man, much better[b] than can the short staff, long staff, or forest bill. Again the battle axe, the halberd, the black bill, the two handed sword, and sword & target, among armed men and troops, by reason of their weights, shortness, and great force, do much more offend the enemy, & are then [b]much better weapons, than is the short staff, the long staff, or the forest bill.

The idea that staff weapons in the 7-9ft range excel at small-scale combat in the open appears across time and space, so Silver hardly stands out here. Manciolino simply wrote that "[l]onger weapons are to be preferred to shorter ones," though unlike Silver he gave odds to 10+ft spears over shorter ones.

[Animastryfe]

Were there preferred heads for these 7-9 feet long pole weapons? Is "heads" the right term for the various metallic implements of death on pole weapons?

[Matthew]

http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/I33-guards_files/image118.jpg

Is that fellow on the right wearing a sword scabbard on his back?

[Brother Oni]

Were there preferred heads for these 7-9 feet long pole weapons? Is "heads" the right term for the various metallic implements of death on pole weapons?

Head is the right word to use.

As for the preference, not especially as pointed out earlier, changing the head of a pole weapon, changes its use significantly. Generally though, you'd try and use the right tool for the right job.



Is that fellow on the right wearing a sword scabbard on his back?

Possibly, but he appears to have a poleaxe resting over one shoulder, which doesn't really make sense if he has a sword in the other hand.

It's also hard to see who that bright orange pointy scabbard thing belongs to, making it even less likely for the thing on his back to be a scabbard (unless its some medieval version of being a bro and having two swords was the in thing).

It could be a quiver of some sort, but why would a ostensibly rank and file infantryman be carrying a bow/crossbow?

[GraaEminense]

Is that fellow on the right wearing a sword scabbard on his back?
It´s a curved shield, like a heater. Perspective isn´t all that good.

[Incanur]

Were there preferred heads for these 7-9 feet long pole weapons? Is "heads" the right term for the various metallic implements of death on pole weapons?

For small-scale combat in the open, Silver preferred the forest bill or Welsh hook above all else. We're not completely sure (http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14223) what that looked like (http://books.google.com/books?id=keDBwirOTQwC&pg=PA165&dq=welsh+hook+%2B+forest+bill&hl=en&sa=X&ei=X5CgUsyeIc_doASNyIK4DA&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=welsh%20hook%20%2B%20forest%20bill&f=false), but it was some sort of bill with a light head. Silver also listed the partisan and glaive in his list of weapons of perfect length (8-9ft). Manciolino specifically recommended choosing the partisan over the two-handed sword. Di Grassi liked the bill. Swetnam preferred a simple spear point.

[Galloglaich]

Of course it all depended on the place and the time, Silver wrote at the very end of the 16th Century (effectively, the 17th Century) which is well after the Medieval era and into the time of pike-and-shot warfare.

At various other times and places different weapons were preferred.

Complex polearms, meaning weapons with back-hooks and spikes and so on, seem to have originated in Europe around the end of the 13th Century. The first one to achieve real prominence was the Swiss halberd (overlapping with the simpler volgue), the English always liked the Bill a lot, and though England was something of a technological and economic backwater through most of the Medieval period, in Italy it was also popular (known as the Roncha). In Flanders the urban militias made the godendag (a kind of two-handed mace with a spear-point) famous at the Battle of Golden Spurs. In Germany volgues, morgenstern ('morning stars', sort of two-handed spiked maces), glaives (essentially a HUGE meat cleaver on the end of a pole, with more complex variants also having a hook and / or back-spike) bills and awl-pikes were popular. Glaives and bills were popular in France, though they mostly used Swiss mercenaries for heavy infantry so you saw a lot of halberds there. In artwork depicting battles in Central and Northern Europe from the 14th and 15th Century you see all these weapons more or less interchangeably used. The Czechs made the two handed flail (usually referred to by it's German name: flegel) famous in the early 15th Century for it's proven ability to kill well armored knights, the same weapon was apparently poplar in Spain as the mangual.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/98015679@N04/9257840832/in/set-72157634584454532

By the later 15th century all sorts of variants of the partisan and it's numerous ancestors like the spetum, ranceur etc. became popular all over Europe and widespread on the battlefield. The Halberd, in a more sophisticated form, for a long time became the symbol of authority for the town watch in a lot of places, though a paritisan or a bill might just as easily be substituted. Princes and kings also adopted this for their bodyguards.

And the whole time the basic spear, especially the "boar-spear" type with the cross-bar, remained popular, as did the long spear or pike.

All of the above-mentioned polearms tended to get lumped together as 'halberds' in the increasing trend toward pike and shot warfare in the 16th Century, at first in a roughly equal ratio with pikes and guns (and cannons of course), and then declining until infantry armies were mostly just pikes and guns by the 17th century, and then just guns with bayonets by the 18th. (And cannon, of course)

The knightly class adopted the pollaxe, which you could call a smaller variant of the halberd (though some would argue with that) in the 14th Century or thereabouts, and continued to use it into the 16th.

G

[snowblizz]

Been musing a bit about the spear, shield, etc etc. Naturally horribly simplified and very context dependant.
From a standpoint of decently sized units.

Defence first, then Offense (because a dead guy don't fight back and it speaks to our natural urge to not get stabbed to death). Range is important. Because doing unto the other works both offensively and defensively.

In that light.
Spear and shield + essentially light armour. Spear gives decent range and is able to hurt the other guy due to lots of "exposed" areas. The shield provides a significant upgrade in defence.

Armour gets better. Spear isn't as effective anymore, it won't penetrate plate the way it might mail (right?). Shield doesn't provide as much defensive improvement over your plate armour. So you bring in a two handed polearm for better offence to crack that armour.
Would it be accurate to assume that the polearmed guys would defeat spear/shield guys (both sides having the same, essentially plate, armour).

Stuff happens. Essentially firearms making armour less of a defence so it's brought less. So now again it makes sense to poke at the other dude from a bit further off. Enter pikes. Conveniently stops cavalry from running over your can openers (which now are guns and other shooters instead of a heavy weight on a long stick) as well.

How would a pike unit (and only pike) fare against the earlier polearm and plate guys? I'd assume not so well.
Warlord Games' Pike and Shot rules covering ca 1500-1700 period gives a substantial bonus for units wielding "two handed" weapons vs infantry, similarly swordsmen have a similar advantage. The former causes more casualties the latter gets a bonus to “win” a combat.

And if such a thing was possible, would perhaps a late 100YW English army be quite effective vs a similarly sized pike and shot unit? They be able to put out a frightfully massive amount of arrows quickly that would do a lot of damage to the less armoured early modern guys. I get the sense archers would rather quickly sweep away the shotte leaving the better armoured medieval guys to carve up the pike unit in close combat.

[Galloglaich]

Been musing a bit about the spear, shield, etc etc. Naturally horribly simplified and very context dependant.
From a standpoint of decently sized units.

Defence first, then Offense (because a dead guy don't fight back and it speaks to our natural urge to not get stabbed to death). Range is important. Because doing unto the other works both offensively and defensively.

In that light.
Spear and shield + essentially light armour. Spear gives decent range and is able to hurt the other guy due to lots of "exposed" areas. The shield provides a significant upgrade in defence.

Plus javelins and other missiles. Basically these spear and shield armies, a lot of the time, started out showering each other with javelins, darts, rocks, thrown axes, whatever, until one side breaks. Then the shields and spears come in, and if the formation falls apart or the spear breaks, the sidearm (sword or axe).



Armour gets better. Spear isn't as effective anymore, it won't penetrate plate the way it might mail (right?). Shield doesn't provide as much defensive improvement over your plate armour. So you bring in a two handed polearm for better offence to crack that armour.

This part is somewhat debatable. The truth is we aren't certain why shield use declined a little and two-handed pole-weapons increased, part of the reason may be as you alluded, the pole weapons were needed to deal with better armor. Another thing is dealing with cavalry which is the bane of infantry out in the open - a lot of those 'complex' pole-weapons had back-spikes which could pull men off of horses and the huge blades particularly on the early ones could kill or disable horses with a single strike. Two handed swords in China and Japan for example were called 'horse-killing swords'. The other ingredient may be higher velocity missiles, crossbows and longbows and recurve bows and guns, all of which became more prominent and lethal in the 13th - 14th centuries when armor was improving and "complex" polearms were showing up.



Would it be accurate to assume that the polearmed guys would defeat spear/shield guys (both sides having the same, essentially plate, armour).

Maybe.



Stuff happens. Essentially firearms making armour less of a defence so it's brought less.

Partially - the armor-piercing musket played a role but most firearms were not necessarily better at armor-piercing than crossbows. Personally I think this is due more to cannons, and to much more sophisticated firearms (matchlock arquebus) and powder allowing the use of less trained (thereby much more numerous and more disposable) troops.



So now again it makes sense to poke at the other dude from a bit further off. Enter pikes. Conveniently stops cavalry from running over your can openers (which now are guns and other shooters instead of a heavy weight on a long stick) as well.

Pikes being mainly, I think, for stopping cavalry charges, but also to protect a unit from another infantry group charging in. But it's cavalry that the infantry have to worry about. If they aren't in a fortification or some natural cover like a forest, they have to bring one with them, either as a pike-square or war wagons or what have you.



How would a pike unit (and only pike) fare against the earlier polearm and plate guys? I'd assume not so well.

yes there is some evidence this is the case, IIRC the Swiss lost some battles late in their career due to putting in too many pikes and not enough swordsmen and halberdiers. But it depends greatly on the terrain and so on - if there are enough cannon and massed heavy-firearms the more 'medieval' army might suffer badly. Some of the later era heavy-cavalry (i.e. Polish Hussars for example or some of the 16th Century French Cavalry) was also arguably little more dangerous than the Medieval type and could pose some serious problems.



And if such a thing was possible, would perhaps a late 100YW English army be quite effective vs a similarly sized pike and shot unit? They be able to put out a frightfully massive amount of arrows quickly that would do a lot of damage to the less armoured early modern guys. I get the sense archers would rather quickly sweep away the shotte leaving the better armoured medieval guys to carve up the pike unit in close combat.

See above regarding the terrain, cannons, massed firearms etc. Also the size. If you had 50,000 heavily armored 100 years war soldiers up against 50,000 pike and shot and they didn't have too much ground to cover to get at them, I think the pike and shot army would be decimated pretty quickly. In fact this is kind of what the Swiss did a few times in their heyday, tending as they did initially to stick to older types of kit.

But conversely, if you had a well-entrenched defensive position with cannon (as at Marignano (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marignano)) or if you simply had 200,000 cannon fodder armed with good arquebus and pikes vs. that 50,000 strong, highly skilled and well-protected medieval infantry army, the latter would probably be in trouble simply from the volume of bullets and pike-points. And armies in the 17th -18th Century tended to be a lot bigger than Medieval armies.

Another one to throw in the mix is the war-wagon army. These tend to get dismissed in western sources as a kind of Medieval aberration of the Czechs, but they were being used successfully by the Germans, then the Cossacks, the Russians, the Poles and others well into the 18th Century, and in modified form as I showed up-thread, all the way up to the beginning of WW II.

G

[Mike_G]

There are a lot of people who are trying to make tactics or weapons fit a "Rock, Paper, Scissors" kind of hierarchy. Guns beat pike beats cavalry kind of thing.

That really isn't accurate. The weapons and tactics and army composition is a lot more determined by factors or economy, society and terrain than by careful comparison of technique.

Terrain really isn't a choice. You live where you live. No point in building a complex naval tradition in Switzerland. The size of your army is limited by how many men you can afford to spare for military duty, and how many you can equip and train.

There isn't a clear evolution of tactics from primitive to better and better and more sophisticated. Tactics and gear do evolve, but to fit the specific challenges of that time and place. I think a company of Henry V's longbowmen would have been a bigger threat to Napoleon's Old Guard than the Rifle Regiment, but England just didn't have a lot of trained archers and bowyers in 1815.

[Galloglaich]

Yeah Payne-Gallway gets into that arquebuser vs. English longbowmen argument. I think given equal numbers 16th Century English longbowmen could give 17th Century pike and shot a real rough time.

We have one example of something similar which was the Turkish archers, they continued to use them in the naval context well into the gun era, in fact some military historians date their decline from the Battle of Lepanto to the massive loss of skilled archers, which kind of broke their archery tradition at least partly.

Medieval warfare and early-early modern can be looked at as a matter of mostly small armies comprised of "skilled labor", whereas 17th and 18th Century becomes larger armies with more cannon fodder, unskilled or semi-skilled labor (very roughly, they obviously did still have some very professional armies)

A typical Agincourt era soldier on either side probably had more training though, on balance, and better equipment, than a typical English Civil War soldier I suspect, let alone a Napoleonic era soldier.

G

[AgentPaper]

This goes a bit outside the realm of weapons and armor, but does anyone have any thoughts on the technology gap (or lack therof) between western european countries and the rest of the world?

I'm specifically speaking in the context of Europa Universalis 4, which spans the period of 1444-1821. The game separates the world into distinct "technology groups", consisting of Western (ie: France), Eastern (ie: Russia), Ottoman (aka Turkey), Muslim (ie: Mamluks), Indian (ie: Vijayanagar), Chinese (ie: China), Steppe Nomad (ie: Mongol Khanate), Sub-Saharan (ie: Mali), and New World (ie: Aztec).

The way the game currently works, there are large maluses to technology increases for countries the further away you are from western europe, so for example Russia has a 20% penalty to technology, Yemen has a 45% penalty, and so on.

As may be obvious, this has been brought up many times as reflecting a very Euro-Centric view of history, and something that should be changed, but there doesn't seem to be much consensus on what it should be changed to. It's fairly obvious that there were differences between, for example, France and China's way of fighting, but how large was the difference, when were they different, and why were they different?

The game also reflects "Westernization" during this time period, where a country can undergo a very painful process that has the end result of changing them to the Western technology group, removing the tech penalty and allowing them to use western troops. How often did this happen in this time period, and how difficult was it to do? What usually changed when this happened?

[Galloglaich]

I just found out there was a class of Medieval polearm in Germany Rossschinder, which means 'horse-slicer' or something similar. A google-image search reveals images of what looks like a bill or bill-guisarme.

https://encrypted.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=Rossschinder&tbs=imgo:1

G

[Galloglaich]

How often did this happen in this time period, and how difficult was it to do? What usually changed when this happened?

That is a HUGE question, I think they call this 'The Great Divergence' in history circles. Short answer is I don't think anybody knows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence

Jarred Diamond (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns%2C_Germs%2C_and_Steel) argues that it's basically an accident of geography which gave Europeans more pack animals, iron, and disease resistance. He had a lot of adherents for a while but I think his popularity is fading pretty rapidly.

Victor Davis Hansen (http://www.amazon.com/Carnage-Culture-Landmark-Battles-Western/dp/0385500521) argues that it's basically some mysterious element of "Western" Culture he seems to associate with instinctive (Genetic?) tendencies toward nascent Capitalist values and Science. His popularity peaked during the height of the Iraq war and the release of The 300 but has also faded a bit.

Another interesting theory by these people (http://www.amazon.com/Return-Guilds-International-History-Supplements/dp/0521737656/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1386284004&sr=1-1&keywords=return+of+the+guilds) that I kind of like proposes that it was really Guilds, apparently the Ottomans developed Guilds in the early 16th Century, and China and Japan both developed them in the 18th, and they kind of limped along in South Asia until the English took over when they began thriving, but they had started earliest and were most developed in Europe, probably due to weak governments which developed an early tolerance for bottom-up social organizations of this type. I might add to that the prevalence of Free Cities and urban republics which seem to where most of the key technologies emerged and / or were disseminated.

But the reality is nobody is really sure, it's definitely a very complex combination of things, the coincidences around the adventures of Cortez alone are mind-boggling. I think the best thing you could summarize it into is that the Christian Europeans were on a major upswing when they developed the technology to sail across the big oceans AND had an immense economic need for 'spices' and other substances that they were already used to importing from the far East which compelled them to exploit the new opportunity; whereas for example when the Chinese figured out how to sail across the big oceans maybe 100 years earlier, they didn't find much they were interested in*.

It's probably a combination of some cultural, social or political features, some accidents of geography, and some luck.

By the way is it a good game?

G

* and right around when the Vikings figured it out they were already becoming transformed politically and culturally into Romanized Christians and found their hands full and their energies somewhat diminished.

[AgentPaper]

That is a HUGE question, I think they call this 'The Great Divergence' in history circles. Short answer is I don't think anybody knows.

Yeah, I kinda suspected as much. So then, it is generally agreed that european countries were becoming more technologically advanced during this time period? It's OK if we don't know the specifics of why, since it'd probably need to be abstracted anyways (as it currently is), but it would be very useful to know more about how much faster the europeans were getting ahead, and when it started happening.


By the way is it a good game?

Very much. I would very much recommend trying it out, since it's much truer to history and the politics of the time than basically any other game out there. It's still definitely a game, but it does try to emulate the events of the time as faithfully as it can while staying fun.

I'd also suggest trying Crusader Kings 2, which represents an earlier time period (1066-1453, with an additional 867 start date if you buy an additional DLC focused on the vikings). It focuses more on people and families rather than countries, making for a very different feel to the game. While in EU4 you play as France or England, in CK2 you play as King Phillip or King William, even if you end up losing the throne due to a plot by your vassals.

Victoria 2 represents the time period of 1836-1936, with more of a focus on industry, economics, and influence rather than direct warfare (though there is still plenty of fighting, especially for some countries). It's a bit older than the other two games, with less fancy graphics and a bit rougher around the edges, but is very fun in its own way, and also worth picking up if you enjoyed the other two.

Hearts of Iron 3 represents the time period of 1936-1948, IE World War 2, though I know much less about this one since I haven't played it (yet).

[Joran]

That is a HUGE question, I think they call this 'The Great Divergence' in history circles. Short answer is I don't think anybody knows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence

Jarred Diamond (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns%2C_Germs%2C_and_Steel) argues that it's basically an accident of geography which gave Europeans more pack animals, iron, and disease resistance. He had a lot of adherents for a while but I think his popularity is fading pretty rapidly.


Well, Jarred Diamond argues why Eurasia (Europe/Asia) were ascendant vs. Africa/North America/South America/Australia. His basic arguments were two-fold: that Eurasia lucked into easily domesticated grains and pack animals and that Eurasia was oriented East to West, so that the climate was similar across the entire continent vs. North to South like the other continents. The easily domesticated grains lead to the rise of agriculture, food surpluses, and the ability to support artisans, inventors, and politicians. The pack animals lead to disease resistance and making agriculture easier.

The East to West orientation meant that climates were fairly similar and there were no impenetrable obstacles to trade. The Sahara made innovations in the Middle East unable to cross into the rest of Africa; the same was true of the jungles of Central America. So cultures and nations in Eurasia could benefit from the advances of previous and concurrent cultures, so none had to start from scratch, which was not true of the other continents.

He doesn't answer why Western Europe ended up ascendant over the rest of the World versus another region like China, only why Eurasia would end up on top of the other continents.

Two books that I remember that tried to answer the question were The Pursuit of Power by William McNeil and The Military Revolution by Geoffrey Parker. Unfortunately, it's been too long since I've read those books for me to adequately sum up the arguments.

[Incanur]

I'm skeptical of the commonly encountered claim that longbow would have done well on seventeenth-, eighteenth-, or nineteenth-century battlefields. They certainly wouldn't have been as useless as some assert, but we've just go so few examples of guns beating European guns. Napoleonic armies did in fact go against horse archers in Eastern Europe, and Marbot called them the least dangerous soldiers in the world despite receiving an arrow wound himself. From his description, their faults certainly exceed using an antiquated weapon - if I recall correctly Marbot described them as *only* having bows and arrows, no swords or anything else - but their bows did no particularly effective service. Some Spanish accounts into the eighteenth century note the advantages of the bow over the gun, but overall Spanish imperial policy treated gun access as huge military advantage and sought to limit gun sales to Native groups, etc. The Manchu was a potent weapon through at least seventeenth century and probably through the eighteenth as well, but it's a more efficient design and was used primarily on horseback. Mounted archers in the Great Plains could still kill U.S. soldiers in the latter part of the nineteenth century, so that's decent evidence in favor of the bow's utility, but Native groups there who used bows also used all the guns they could get.

Flodden Field 1513 cast doubt on the effectiveness of archers against armored pikemen. The archers may have done some good work toward the end of the battle with a close-ranged flanking attack according to the last book on the battle I read, but all contemporary accounts stress how the bow accomplished little and how billmen decided the affair. Even mediocre-quality harness makes troop all but immune to arrows. If massed archery had stuck around in Europe, more armor probably would have too.

I heartily agree with critiquing technological-determinist accounts of military history. Especially before potent gunpowder weapons but after too, skill, organization, and morale mattered as much as or more than equipment. The Frankish conquest of Constantinople strikes me as key example of this. While the Franks arguably had a few technological advantages over the Greeks - crossbows and maybe better boats and siege weapons, for example - this can hardly explain the course of the fighting as described by both Latin and Greek sources. Frankish prowess and Byzantine political and military disarray constitute the best explanation.

When it comes to close combat, skill and courage count in spades. Tenacity and aggressiveness mattered as much as organization and armor to Roman military success. English archers in the Hundred Years' War and on excelled not just because of their mighty bows but also their willing to fight up close when the situation called for it. The Swiss gained such a reputation not only for the pike and halberd but because of their iron discipline and bellicosity.

On on the other hand, I do think equipment and specific tactics matter. I agree we don't know exactly why shield and spear formations declined in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance eras - I'm particularly curious about how javelins turned marginal after 1400 or so - but I think improving heavy cavalry, armor, and heavy polearms had a lot to do with it. Metallurgy and armor in particular really did get better 1450 on. Pikes saw near-universal adoption in Western Europe in the sixteenth century significantly because of the threat from cavalry. I suspect men-at-arms from 1450 to 1575 or so would have crushed earlier infantry formation in an open field. No military theorist in sixteenth century could do away with the pike because of the power of cavalry. Machiavelli didn't even really like the pike but still kept pikemen in the front ranks of his ideal army. Machiavelli and others attempted to return to Roman-style infantry with sword and shields with only limited success. Targetiers could do well against pikes under the right circumstances but got squished by cavalry if caught alone.

I must admit I've got a bit of fascination with French heavy cavalry from Italian Wars and on. It's incredible what the gendarmes managed to accomplish against pikes, guns, difficult terrain, and their own tremendous arrogance. They could sometimes charge *through* pike formations, despite all the opposing points involved. Francis I and Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard stand out in this regard.

[fusilier]

As may be obvious, this has been brought up many times as reflecting a very Euro-Centric view of history, and something that should be changed, but there doesn't seem to be much consensus on what it should be changed to. It's fairly obvious that there were differences between, for example, France and China's way of fighting, but how large was the difference, when were they different, and why were they different?

Why different areas had differing levels of technology can be very difficult to answer. I think Jared Diamond does a decent job of looking at various causes and it would be worth reading Guns, Germs, and Steel if you haven't already.

When and how they were different is a good question to ask. In the 15th century the Ottoman Empire was pretty technologically advanced, in some ways more so than European nations, but it may already have been showing signs of decline. Their military began to show signs of "stagnation"(?) -- the Ottoman army continued to evolve and develop, but not as quickly as European military arts. Why, isn't entirely clear. One theory is basically that their system had other strengths that allowed it to work well for a long time, and as a result change occurred slowly and with great resistance. But there are probably other factors as well.

China built a large powerful fleet, with standardized ship designs, in the 15th century, and then just gave up on it.

At different times in history, certain nations had technological advantages over others. Some could be considered advanced in some kinds of technology, but backward in other kinds. So the question of when and how the technology (or fighting styles) differed can be very complicated, even though it should be answerable. Also, just because technologies are different, doesn't mean that one is necessarily superior/inferior. This is something of a pet peeve of mine, as often minor differences in weapons are extrapolated into reasons for victory/defeat, rather than the more difficult to compare systemic issues. (Perhaps most annoyingly, many seem to want to focus on "one" reason).

Europe went through the "scientific revolution" in the 17th century, it's origins beginning in the 16th century. Why, is difficult to answer. Europe's communications had been improving, the population was on the rise, but unlike China, it was fragmented into many nationalities (although there had been some centralization). Latin provided a common language for discussion. The Ancient Greeks had handed down their rationalism, and that may have ultimately laid the foundations for modern scientific inquiry -- but if that's the case it took a very long time to be felt. It's still possible as the Renaissance had been uncovering more of the "classics", but the influence of rationalism on western thought is clear before the Renaissance.

[fusilier]

I heartily agree with critiquing technological-determinist accounts of military history. Especially before potent gunpowder weapons but after too, skill, organization, and morale mattered as much as or more than equipment.
Well said.

[Incanur]

As far as Jarred Diamond goes, technological superiority only goes so far in explaining European success - or lack thereof - in the Americas. The Spanish did by all accounts have the advantage against all the Mesoamerican armies they faced unless completely outnumbered, but outnumbered they were without the Mesoamerican allies they made. The Spanish didn't defeat the Aztecs alone. And they didn't defeat the Mapuche and company in what's now known as Chile until *centuries* later. Mapuche armies defeated Spanish armies in the field many times, often via close combat with long spears, clubs, and swords. They did recognize the value of steel and adopted it as quickly as they could, but made limited use of gunpowder weapons.

More critically, and beyond the scope of this thread, neither geography nor technology explain *why* Europeans decided to invade the Americas for glory and profit. Diamond's analysis assumes and naturalizes the drive for domination.

[Mike_G]

I'm skeptical of the commonly encountered claim that longbow would have done well on seventeenth-, eighteenth-, or nineteenth-century battlefields.

I think there just weren't large numbers of trained longbowmen available that late. Bowmen clearly were effective against the French in the Hundred Years War, I don't see how they wouldn't have been against completely unarmored Frenchmen in Napoleon's day. The had a greater effective range and rate of fire than a muzzle loading smoothbore Brown Bess. I think a French column advancing under a sustained barrage of arrows over two hundred yards would fare worse than against one volley of musketry just before contact.

I don't the the longbow fell out of favor because it wasn't a good weapon compared to early guns. I think it fell out of favor because the culture of archery needed to produce good bowmen disappeared.

The Native Americans bows were weaker, and the guns much better by the time of the Plains Indian Wars compared to the English warbow versus 16th century muskets. And no bow on Earth is better than a lever action Winchester or a trapdoor Springfield.

Even a flintlock smoothbore like the Brown Bess could fire two or maybe three balls in a minute, and wasn't terribly accurate. A good archer shouldn't have any trouble matching that. But you can take a thousand poorly fed conscripts, press gang them into service and teach them to load and fire a volley. You can't make them into Prince Hal's Band of Brothers.

Wellington had over 60,000 men under his command at Waterloo, every one with at least a musket. I don't think England ever had that kind of number of Longbowmen. The highest number I've heard estimated for Agincourt were 9,000 men in total. If I had to choose my nation's army, I'd take the 60,000 men any day. But if I had to fight with 1,000 men drawn from either force, I'd take the bowmen.

[Incanur]

The problem the above analysis of the longbow's power is that it doesn't match late-16th-century English sources and ignores developments after the longbow's golden era. English success against the French in the Hundred Years' War came significantly from French incompetence and involved fierce hand-to-hand combat as much as archery regardless. And plate armor improved notably after Agincourt. Consider, as I mentioned earlier, the longbow's lackluster performance at Flodden Field 1513. Fourquevaux, an experienced commander, did recommend crossbows and bows over guns in the middle of the sixteenth century, so they've got that point in their favor. But because of the bow's ineffectiveness against armor, the gun was better weapon in the late-16th century for the skirmishing and siege warfare practiced then according to folks like Sir Roger Williams and Humphrey Barwick. How quickly Native peoples in eastern North America adopted the gun bolsters this notion that guns beat bows for skirmishing. As stated earlier, I think this was because guns were accurate enough within 80 yards, inflicted somewhat more dangerous wounds, blew through protective gear and minor obstacles (like brush, etc.), could be used from behind cover, and because bullets couldn't be dodged after leaving the barrel. With a bow, you've got stand up, draw the arrow back, aim, and release - an even once the arrow leaves the bow your target might be able to get out of the way because arrows are slow.

And again, Napoleonic cavalry encountered horse archers in Russia in the 1810s and considered them laughable. Honestly, I like the idea of English archers beating guns in the nineteenth century, but I just don't see the evidence for it. At most, the appearance of a bunch of longbowmen in Napoleonic times would have caused infantry to go back to wearing breastplates for a little while. But more likely they'd simply lose to artillery plus cavalry in an open field, and to infantry gunners in any broken terrain. I hope I'm wrong. :smallsmile:

[fusilier]

I think there just weren't large numbers of trained longbowmen available that late. Bowmen clearly were effective against the French in the Hundred Years War, I don't see how they wouldn't have been against completely unarmored Frenchmen in Napoleon's day. The had a greater effective range and rate of fire than a muzzle loading smoothbore Brown Bess. I think a French column advancing under a sustained barrage of arrows over two hundred yards would fare worse than against one volley of musketry just before contact.

Yeah, but by the time the remaining soldiers of that French column reached them the archers would probably be too exhausted to stand up to a bayonet charge. ;-) I'm not sure how much arc the longbow would have at 200 yards, but it wouldn't be as flat shooting as a musket. A French assault column was set up to deploy rapidly into line, linear tactics were standard anyway, and the steep angle of the shot would decrease the number of hits against a tight line only three ranks deep. It would advance more rapidly than a pike square, so the distance would be closed more quickly. Ultimately, would the rate of fire of longbows be more effective than muskets? Probably, but not as much as you might think.

Would armor have fallen out service if arrows were still a commonly encountered, effective, weapon? Spanish "soldados de cuera" on the Northern Interior Provinces (northern Mexico) continued to wear heavy leather armor into the 19th century.


The Native Americans bows were weaker, . . .

This may be true about 19th century Plains Indians, but is far from universally true. The Spanish accounts of their encounters with the natives of the South East US and Northern Mexico in the 16th century seem to be just as powerful, if not more so, than the contemporary English War bow. Especially reports of the Chichimecas, and the amount of armor the Spanish felt necessary to wear when fighting them.


Even a flintlock smoothbore like the Brown Bess could fire two or maybe three balls in a minute, and wasn't terribly accurate.

Or four to six (depending upon who you talk to). ;-) Not that I think that was likely but it is often claimed. It's not as fatiguing to fire as a bow though.

[Galloglaich]

To answer one of the questions up thread, there is no doubt that the technology of the European cultures advanced way beyond the rest of the world in the 17th Century. That is what that link I posted about the 'Great Divergence' is all about. Doesn't anybody click my links ;) ?



Europe went through the "scientific revolution" in the 17th century, it's origins beginning in the 16th century.

I don't think there is any doubt at all that the process you referred to originated much further back than that, more like the 12th-13th Century. There was an accelerating increase in secondary and tertiary industries inventing and building on new technological systems, with the corresponding cultural and social development that paralleled them.

Water wheels, saw mills, bloomery forges, blast furnaces, paper mills, mine machinery, alchemical techniques for ore processing, dye fixing, weaving, printing press, cannon forging, ship building. It all came together in one hot-spot after another, Spain, Lombardy, Flanders, Portugal, the Rhineland, the Baltic shore, Bohemia, England, Holland, France.

By the time you get the Strasbourg Cathedral finished in 1439, you are at a tipping point. It surpassed the pyramid at Giza as the tallest man-made structure in the world at 469 feet. The ships being developed by the Portuguese at that time were already capable of handling the Atlantic and were making their way down the African coast. The guns mounted on these ships, the astronomy and math behind the navigation, the lenses used in the sextant, eyeglasses, and looking glass on the ship, the clothing and armor worn by the sailors and marines, the preservation of their food, the military techniques developed by the armies... all these things were coming together at an accelerating rate which just kept going.

Diamond drastically oversimplified his vision but then, he's not a historian. The impact, of course, of the discovery of the "New" World and the alternative routes to Asia also wrought havoc on the Europeans themselves. They had no more immunity from the tropical diseases of the Amazon or Borneo than the indigenous people there did for their smallpox, (which also decimated Europe over and over until they figured out the milkmaids cure) and syphilis, especially, had a shattering impact on Europe and killed millions, both directly and indirectly, as well as changing the culture permanently, contributing to devastating religious wars and strengthening some of the most militaristic States (like Spain which by very odd coincidence was almost to the day, completing their 500 year war of reconquest just as their Genoese navigator made it across the Atlantic).

G

[Animastryfe]

Jared Diamond (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/theory#wiki_historians.27_views_of_jared_diamond.2 7s_.22guns.2C_germs.2C_and_steel.22) is not a professional historian, and his book Guns, Germs and Steel is not considered to be a good history book (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vd2u9/why_did_technology_advance_faster_in_europe_and/c53gp6a).

In that subreddit, any person with a flair is either a professional historian, or else at least very knowledgeable in that subject.

[fusilier]

I don't think there is any doubt at all that the process you referred to originated much further back than that, more like the 12th-13th Century. There was an accelerating increase in secondary and tertiary industries inventing and building on new technological systems, with the corresponding cultural and social development that paralleled them.

Just to be clear, there is a difference between "science" and "technology". While they often go hand-in-hand, that's not always the case. The scientific revolution really kicks off in the 16th century. There was science in the middle ages, the dynamics explained by the Mertonian scholars being an oft cited example, and of course what happened in the 16th century built upon what came before it -- but the application of that kind of logic means you just keep moving the starting point further back, as everything builds on something that came before it. :-)

From the scientific perspective, some interesting events started to happen in the 16th century which would eventually lead to the acceptance of experiments as proving science. It wasn't actually until the 17th century that it occurred, but it seems to have its roots in the some of the studies of mechanics that were going on during the 1500s. Combined with publications like the Copernicus's De Rev (which didn't rely upon experiment, but did challenge long established authority), the increasing inquiry into science led to the modern "scientific method". I think that it led to a fundamentally different way of thinking about science (and technology), and that spurred on the advancements even more.

Technologically speaking, I think you are correct in putting the roots of a technological revolution earlier.

[fusilier]

Jared Diamond (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/theory#wiki_historians.27_views_of_jared_diamond.2 7s_.22guns.2C_germs.2C_and_steel.22) is not a professional historian, and his book Guns, Germs and Steel is not considered to be a good history book (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vd2u9/why_did_technology_advance_faster_in_europe_and/c53gp6a).

In that subreddit, any person with a flair is either a professional historian, or else at least very knowledgeable in that subject.

--EDIT--
You may have meant to link to here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/theory#wiki_historians.27_views_of_jared_diamond.2 7s_.22guns.2C_germs.2C_and_steel.22

This has a few more discussions on the subject that are interesting. I'll only briefly weigh in, because I lack time to go into detail, and I'm still reading them.

The basic historian complaint seems to be that Jarred Diamond's approach ignores (more like unduly diminishes) human agency and is essentially deterministic. I'm not entirely sure why they consider that to be "bad". I can understand that it may be a different perspective, but so far I haven't heard why it's wrong. I get the sense that perhaps it's viewed as a moral justification -- e.g. it was inevitable so we can't blame the British for being a bunch of imperialist jerks. While it's been sometime since I've read Diamond's work, I don't recall entertaining such ideas, and certainly Diamond didn't seem to be justifying past human actions. [Also I don't really recall it coming across as that strongly deterministic, and Diamond has apparently denied claims that he is a ecological determinist] However, in hindsight, I can see how someone might be inclined interpret it that way.

Otherwise, I do seem to recall that his explanations for why some civilizations took off when others seem to have similar advantages was a bit weak, and more like a gloss.
--EDIT--

It seems like most of the historians only have minor quibbles with it, with only one (whose flair is for "Modern British" history) who seems to have a serious beef with the book.

Mostly, the complaints seem to be that it didn't address certain things satisfactorily -- like why did the Spanish feel the need to conquer other places? Ok, that's valid criticism.

But the original question was, "Why were the Europeans more technologically advanced?" -- to this Jarred Diamond's work seems to be useful. Caveat emptor. ;-) I think there are useful things to glean from Guns, Germs, and Steel. That doesn't mean you have to accept everything written in it, or that the book isn't deficient in some aspect. It's probably safe to use it as a good starting point for investigation, or as an introduction to the topic. See this interesting conversation about Delbruck's works, and how people still consider his works as starting points, even if they feel they must be cautious with them:
http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=319551

[Incanur]

Koxinga's defeat (http://books.google.com/books?id=p3D6a7bK_t0C&pg=PA67&dq=koxinga+%2B+taiwan+%2B+dutch+%2B+archers&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bOShUpa2Ds_hoASgx4GQCw&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=koxinga%20%2B%20taiwan%20%2B%20dutch%20%2B%20arc hers&f=false) of the Dutch in Tawain during the 17th century speaks to both the matter of European technology and bows versus guns. According to one Dutch account, Chinese archers performed competitively against Dutch musketeers; other accounts note Dutch soldiers routed and killed by arrows. (Here (http://books.google.com/books?id=Sf1OAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA165&dq=koxinga+%2B+archers&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YeuhUqvwB4L7oAS75YD4BA&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=koxinga%20%2B%20archers&f=false) is a longer translated Dutch account. I'm somewhat skeptical of the claim it makes about Chinese armor stopping rifle bullets - maybe at range.) Considering this was all during siege warfare, that's quite impressive and perhaps does lend support to the idea that English bows could have done the same - though Chinese bows were most likely better in terms of kinetic delivered per pound of draw weight, especially with lighter arrows. Dutch had the advantage in artillery, but the Chinese had cannons too. While the Dutch held out fairly well given the numbers against them, that's the advantage of defending fortifications. While Europe may had have some technological advantages during this period, they didn't matter enough to allow European military domination in China until over a century later.

Overall, it wasn't until the late nineteenth century that technological disparities in weaponry became truly overwhelming. The Battle of Omdurman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Omdurman) in 1898 would be an example of such an unequal confrontation.

[Brother Oni]

I'm somewhat skeptical of the claim it makes about Chinese armor stopping rifle bullets - maybe at range.

Given that the standard armour in the early Qing period was brigandine, which was fabric with overlapping steel plates and thus has fairly different characteristics to a rigid breast plate, it may not too outlandish.

I definitely think range had something to do with it though.

[Mike_G]

Yeah, but by the time the remaining soldiers of that French column reached them the archers would probably be too exhausted to stand up to a bayonet charge. ;-) I'm not sure how much arc the longbow would have at 200 yards, but it wouldn't be as flat shooting as a musket. A French assault column was set up to deploy rapidly into line, linear tactics were standard anyway, and the steep angle of the shot would decrease the number of hits against a tight line only three ranks deep. It would advance more rapidly than a pike square, so the distance would be closed more quickly. Ultimately, would the rate of fire of longbows be more effective than muskets? Probably, but not as much as you might think.

Would armor have fallen out service if arrows were still a commonly encountered, effective, weapon? Spanish "soldados de cuera" on the Northern Interior Provinces (northern Mexico) continued to wear heavy leather armor into the 19th century.



Not really disagreeing with much of what you say. But I think the Longbow wasn't replaced because the musket was so much better when tested on the range. I mean the musket shot slower, wasn't used at as long a range, and wasn't very accurate or reliable. And while you do get tired shooting a bow, muskets get fouled with continued firing, so i don't think you put fifty rounds downrange without losing effectiveness from either weapon.

I think that the bow was a good weapon for a feudal society that had a large agrarian population of young men who did heavy farm work all week and practiced archery on Sunday. I think you could produce enough skilled archers or the relatively small armies of the middle ages that way.

I think a more industrialized society would be more able to produce lots of muskets and powder, and a large number of urban poor with no martial tradition or life of regular combat training could be recruited, taught to march in line, prime, load, level and shoot on command in a fairly short time (basic training can make you able to perform this ind of thing in two or three months) and thus raise a large, 18th century sized army who would be capable of close order drill and musketry drill.

So I think, in this case, the adoption of the musket fit the new reality of large armies of industrialized nations. I don't think 100 of Wellington's line infantry would score more hits in the three minutes it takes to march 200 yards than 100 of Henry's archers from Agincourt.

We know that longbowmen practiced clout shooting at distances that musketeers did not generally fire, so the ability to engage a formation at a distance is greater for the bowmen. We know that a bow can shoot faster. (I have a hard time swallowing a rate greater than 3 shots a minuet for a musket. 20 seconds seems pretty quick for an average soldier to ad and fire ten seconds seems insane. Not saying some people can't do it, but I doubt like hell you could train a whole regiment to do that.) I can't see how the warbow loses out when considered in a vacuum.

When you think of "what weapon can we reasonably deploy in the numbers we want?" the answer favors the musket. Because you can take a thousand poorly fed urban poor men who never trained with a weapon growing up, and even if they aren't healthy, they can load and fire.

You can't turn Oliver Twist into a deadly archer. Unless you have a few years to feed and train him so he can pull a heavy bow. You can take him and the rest of Fagin's apprentices and whip them into a thin red line of expendable infantrymen in a short time if you have the industry to clothe and arm them and a good supply of sergeants to scream at them.

Which is kind of the point I'm trying to make, that military tactics and tech don't always change based on what weapon is "better" in objective terms like range, accuracy, rate of fire and so on, but what weapon or tactic fits your needs and abilities at the time you need it.

[fusilier]

Not really disagreeing with much of what you say. But I think the Longbow wasn't replaced because the musket was so much better when tested on the range. I mean the musket shot slower, wasn't used at as long a range, and wasn't very accurate or reliable. And while you do get tired shooting a bow, muskets get fouled with continued firing, so i don't think you put fifty rounds downrange without losing effectiveness from either weapon.

I think we are mostly in agreement, I'm just giving you a hard time. ;-)

Fouling has some interesting aspects when it comes to muzzle-loading weapons. The first is that it gradually closes off the vent hole, making ignition more tricky -- although after 50 rounds it would probably be fine on most weapons. A vent-pick is usually all that's necessary if a hang-fire is noted. With a percussion lock weapon, it shouldn't be a problem. With a flintlock your primary concern will be the flint needing to be replaced, or re-knapped, during that time. The British army notoriously issued bad flints, that were expected to last only about 6 shots (so they issued lots of them). A quality flint could be expected to last 40-60 or even more shots.

The other aspect about fouling is that it makes the bore smaller, and therefore will make the shot *more* accurate, but it gradually increases loading times. Even with a minie-rifles, I know of many shooters who say that you throw away the first shot, the gun need some fouling to build up on it.


So I think, in this case, the adoption of the musket fit the new reality of large armies of industrialized nations. I don't think 100 of Wellington's line infantry would score more hits in the three minutes it takes to march 200 yards than 100 of Henry's archers from Agincourt.

I don't know about that, the narrow linear formations may make long range shots from bows less useful -- and a potential waste of strength and energy that might be better saved for rapid fire at close range. At close range, the musket's buck and ball had an increased spread and lethality (every single shot has four projectiles). If the loosing of arrows from the archers was properly managed, and concentrated at close range, it would probably be more effective. But opening up at 200 yards at max rate of fire might be a mistake.


We know that longbowmen practiced clout shooting at distances that musketeers did not generally fire, so the ability to engage a formation at a distance is greater for the bowmen. We know that a bow can shoot faster. (I have a hard time swallowing a rate greater than 3 shots a minuet for a musket. 20 seconds seems pretty quick for an average soldier to ad and fire ten seconds seems insane. Not saying some people can't do it, but I doubt like hell you could train a whole regiment to do that.) I can't see how the warbow loses out when considered in a vacuum.

Two things:
1. When "muskets" replaced longbows, their effective range was probably similar. A military musket from circa 1600, is quite a different weapon from one from circa 1800. Both in it's proportions and how it was handled. A trained musketeer from 1600 would have a farther shooting, harder hitting, and more accurate weapon. The last due primarily to the loading options available to the musketeer. A line infantryman from 1800 would be restricted to using a mass produced paper cartridge with a significantly undersized ball. Rate of fire had become more important than range/accuracy. (The 1600 musketeer would actually have options).

2. I'm in general agreement that 2-3 shots per minute was standard from the 18th century until the adoption of breechloading guns. Nonetheless, there are (and were) those who claimed much higher rates of fire. They were accomplished by "cheating" -- an oversized vent hole allows powder to escape from the breech into the priming pan, the standard undersized bullet could be seated without using the ramrod, but blowing/spitting down the barrel. So a well trained soldier could skip priming and ramming. This could bring the rate of fire up to about 6 rounds a minute. Indeed, a contemporary lament against the adoption of percussion weapons is that they were *slower* to load than a flintlock (which can only be true if you are skipping priming).


Which is kind of the point I'm trying to make, that military tactics and tech don't always change based on what weapon is "better" in objective terms like range, accuracy, rate of fire and so on, but what weapon or tactic fits your needs and abilities at the time you need it.

At the same time, what is "better" is very conditional. You can argue that a longbow has better rate of fire and accuracy. But a musket had better armor penetration, was flatter shooting, and didn't require the same amount of physical strength to use. Which meant it held up better in sustained combat. It was also a more consistent weapon, the range of the gun was not dependent on how fatigued the operator was.

Probably the most interesting thing about firearms, is that range and accuracy were generally sacrificed for rapidity of fire. In 1600 it could be a trade off that was essentially up to the individual soldier and could, in theory, be changed on his whim. But, by 1700 it was standard.

My point is: the bow fell out of favor to firearms in the 16th century. To compare the use of a 16th century bow, to firearms and tactics of the 18th/19th century is to take it out of its context. It may very well be the case that bows would have had more advantages in the context of late 18th century warfare and weaponry, than they did in the context of 16th century warfare weaponry. (Unfortunately, the evidence is usually sparse and/or is the result of two very different cultures coming into conflict)

[No brains]

...French incompetence...
lol
The conversation has been really good and intelligent! :) But I felt uncomfortable having no good input so I dragged it back down to my level. :P

[Brother Oni]

I don't know about that, the narrow linear formations may make long range shots from bows less useful -- and a potential waste of strength and energy that might be better saved for rapid fire at close range.

Depends on what period musketmen I think.

Early period (16th-17th Century) musketmen would have used the countermarch formation which was typically 6-8 ranks deep, while it's not until the 18th when they reduced down to three ranks and the British went to 2.

6-8 ranks deep is plenty deep enough for accurate high arc shooting while I agree 2/3 ranks would give some issues.

I'm also not sure about holding fire until close range though. One of the major advantages a company of bowmen has over musketmen, is that the entire company can loose at the same time when shooting with high arcs, while at best, only the first three ranks can for muskets (assuming the front rank kneels).

Waiting until the enemy gets close means the bowmen need a low trajectory solution, so the rearmost ranks can't loose for fear of hitting their fellows in front. A low trajectory solution does solve the issue of hitting a formation of only 2-3 ranks deep though.

[snowblizz]

My point is: the bow fell out of favor to firearms in the 16th century. To compare the use of a 16th century bow, to firearms and tactics of the 18th/19th century is to take it out of its context. It may very well be the case that bows would have had more advantages in the context of late 18th century warfare and weaponry, than they did in the context of 16th century warfare weaponry. (Unfortunately, the evidence is usually sparse and/or is the result of two very different cultures coming into conflict)
The only time/place I can think of for this would be Sengoku period Japan. Where they'd mix archers with matchlock men because archers provided firepower while the matchlocks reloaded. IIRC something like 50/50 or 60/40-2/3 in favour of the matchlock.

I've recently been playing TW:Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai where explicitly two very different "worlds" collided. If the "modern" musket and rifle men don't work hard those "backwards" speardudes totally curbstomp you, even if you have artillery and naval bombardments. Even though the latter make short work of fortifications having your bayonet guys trying to force the gates and climb walls and breaches against determined close-combat armed warriors is bloody work. If they have even some ranged threat left it's nearly impossible, at very least at horrendous cost to the attackers. As I found out, "first hand".
It's game naturally but it seems fairly accurate, and at least other parts of the series have been fairly well researched.

The other clash is usually in a colonial context, I was thinking about that earlier as well. It is kinda ironic that "modern" armies often found themselves having trouble with much more technologically inferior foes because at the end of the day and arrow and a bullet (or spear in the gut) will put you down the same when your ancestors gave up on armour centuries ago.

[Galloglaich]

In the earlier part of the Early Modern period (16th-early 17th Century), the muskets were more powerful, had a longer effective range, (at least potentially) and were potentially more accurate than muskets later (17th-19th Century). They were also shot by more highly skilled soldiers.

But back then muskets were somewhat rare, actually they were armor piercing weapons - and only formed a small percentage of a given army, in some battles there may have been 200 or 300 muskets among 10,000 or 15,000 gunners. Most soldiers were armed with the arquebus, smaller and less powerful than the musket and with an effective range of not much more than 30-50 meters in most cases* (and that is pretty generous) and later the similar caliver. Over time muskets got smaller and the arquebus / caliver got a little bigger, and all the designs became more efficient until you ended up with the musket becoming standard around 1650 or so, varying by region of course.

Also regarding urban poor as the source for cannon fodder, I don't think that is as much of a phenomenon until quite late in the game, second half of the 18th Century, maybe a little earlier in England (second half of the 17th Century). In most of Europe towns and cities were relatively small (under 100,000 in population) and relatively prosperous, literally walled off from the rural poor.

Prior to 1600 only a few of the larger Royal capitals like Paris and London had substantial slums (they were also rare among European cities in that they lacked municipal water systems or sewers, which were common in the Medieval period) Most of the poverty and starvation was out in the countryside until the enclosure system was put in place to drive the rural poor (and a lot of the not so poor rural people) into the cities to work in the mills.


G

* a really good marksman, with his own choice of bullets and powder and a gun he knew very well, could apparently do much better than this, maybe even up to 200 meters based on some of the shooting contests in Germany and in the Ottoman empire, but such marksmen were apparently rare on the battlefield.

[Spiryt]

Gustav II Adolf was apparently spotted and sharpshooted while he was observing the river ford with scope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dirschau#cite_note-FOOTNOTEPodhorodecki1978221-3

There aren't many details sadly, but we can suspect that those shots were from very decent distance, because otherwise it might have just been more sensible to try and capture the king...

[Galloglaich]

yes they seem to have had sharpshooters and some who could hit small targets consistently from 200 meters or more, even with smoothbore arquebus - there is proof of this from the records of shooting contests, plus a lot of anecdotes from the battlefield and from exhibitions by the Turks, Spanish and others. Rifled weapons were also, of course, around for a long time - there are regulations banning them from shooting contests in Augsburg dating back to the early 1400's.

I didn't know about the scope used to get Karl Gustov, that is pretty interesting, I wonder how far back scopes go. They certainly had lenses, telescopes, eyeglasses and spyglasses going back to the 13th Century in various forms, but another problem with any kind of aiming on guns was that the sparks from the priming pan on early firearms could burn your face or eyes when you shot the gun. maybe fusilier can give us more info.

G

[Spiryt]

Well, no, no no, Gustav had the scope/spyglass, as he was overseeing his troops preparing for river crossing.

Accurate or not, scope on 17th century musket would be pure abstraction. :smallbiggrin:

[Brother Oni]

The only time/place I can think of for this would be Sengoku period Japan. Where they'd mix archers with matchlock men because archers provided firepower while the matchlocks reloaded. IIRC something like 50/50 or 60/40-2/3 in favour of the matchlock.


As I understood it, the mix was because matchlocks were in limited supply and their worth on the battlefield was still unproven.

It wasn't until 1563 that the worth of matchlocks was proven and 1567 (100 years after the start of the war) when Takeda Shingen, one of the major warlords, declared that firearms would be the most important weapon and spears per unit would be reduced in favour of them, that they really took off.
The Battle of Nagashino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nagashino) in 1575 where the Takeda cavalry were smashed by matchlock equipped troops cemented it.



I've recently been playing TW:Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai where explicitly two very different "worlds" collided. If the "modern" musket and rifle men don't work hard those "backwards" speardudes totally curbstomp you, even if you have artillery and naval bombardments.

Having not played the game, how hard is it for melee infantry to attack a gatling gun set up in a fortified position?

Assuming it doesn't suffer a catastrophic malfunction or run out of ammunition, I'm inclined to think it would be a simple massacre.

[Mike_G]

In the earlier part of the Early Modern period (16th-early 17th Century), the muskets were more powerful, had a longer effective range, (at least potentially) and were potentially more accurate than muskets later (17th-19th Century). They were also shot by more highly skilled soldiers.

But back then muskets were somewhat rare, actually they were armor piercing weapons - and only formed a small percentage of a given army, in some battles there may have been 200 or 300 muskets among 10,000 or 15,000 gunners. Most soldiers were armed with the arquebus, smaller and less powerful than the musket and with an effective range of not much more than 30-50 meters in most cases* (and that is pretty generous) and later the similar caliver. Over time muskets got smaller and the arquebus / caliver got a little bigger, and all the designs became more efficient until you ended up with the musket becoming standard around 1650 or so, varying by region of course.

Also regarding urban poor as the source for cannon fodder, I don't think that is as much of a phenomenon until quite late in the game, second half of the 18th Century, maybe a little earlier in England (second half of the 17th Century). In most of Europe towns and cities were relatively small (under 100,000 in population) and relatively prosperous, literally walled off from the rural poor.

Prior to 1600 only a few of the larger Royal capitals like Paris and London had substantial slums (they were also rare among European cities in that they lacked municipal water systems or sewers, which were common in the Medieval period) Most of the poverty and starvation was out in the countryside until the enclosure system was put in place to drive the rural poor (and a lot of the not so poor rural people) into the cities to work in the mills.


G

* a really good marksman, with his own choice of bullets and powder and a gun he knew very well, could apparently do much better than this, maybe even up to 200 meters based on some of the shooting contests in Germany and in the Ottoman empire, but such marksmen were apparently rare on the battlefield.

This is kind of exactly my point. The English longbowmen at Agincourt were highly skilled experts. Like a good arquebusier. This was sustainable as a significant part of an army when it was a small army. You could find a few thousand highly skilled men, buy them good armor and weapons and ensure their loyalty with the promise of loot. This is a fine system if your society can support it

18th century England wasn't that nation any more. I don't think most of Europe was by that time. But it was a society that could mass produce acceptable muskets and drill large numbers of men who could get the job done, even if they weren't sharpshooters or knights or professional archers.

I'm trying to say that a small, professional army works for certain societies, times and challenges, and a large, basically trained conscript army works for a different society. And for one type of army, you'll get more bang out of a thousand warbows, and some will lend themselves to 50,000 Brown Bess, the bayonet and severe discipline.

[Rhynn]

Which type of armor is heavier (weight for covering the same amount of skin), scale or mail?

Which is more protective? How do they perform differently against e.g. spears, swords, axes, clubs, arrows?

Aside from mail (byrnie, haubergeon, hauberk), scale (the same sort of designs, I suppose?), Roman-style laminar, Ancient Greek-style panoplies, lamellar, and textile armor, what other types of armor existed in Europe and nearby regions in, say, Classical Antiquity through the High Middle Ages?

How would you rank laminar (lorica segmentata) and panoplies against mail and scale armor?

How common were arm greaves in Europe during the Early to High Middle Ages (say, 400-1200) ?

[Galloglaich]

Mike_G yeah I agree with all that, I think that is about right - very generally though of course it's risky to make such broad generalizations. It jibes with my current understanding of the overall trend.


Which type of armor is heavier (weight for covering the same amount of skin), scale or mail?

Scale, typically, though it depends very much on the type of both.

Scale though seems pretty rare historically, I'm not sure if it was really widespread after the Classical period (the Romans used two different types of scale armor). I think different types of lamellar are often confused for mail.



Which is more protective? How do they perform differently against e.g. spears, swords, axes, clubs, arrows?

Mail. Mail seems to work quite well against everything but arrows, it's basically totally immune to cuts, or at any rate I don't know of any modern tests where they can cut through decent quality riveted mail (i.e., similar to historical), I sure couldn't when I tried. I think lamellar works better for arrows and that is why it was used so much in the Steppe.

I think lamellar, scale, or any other armor which is strung together with organic / textile components (silk thread, leather thongs etc.) is vulnerable to cuts especially a lot of repeated cuts, and I think lamellar or at least some types of lamellar is vulnerable to thrusts from weapons like a dagger or a sword that go between the lames or scales.



Aside from mail (byrnie, haubergeon, hauberk), scale (the same sort of designs, I suppose?), Roman-style laminar, Ancient Greek-style panoplies, lamellar, and textile armor, what other types of armor existed in Europe and nearby regions in, say, Classical Antiquity through the High Middle Ages?

That is basically it. Various combinations of textile and plate, mail and plate, mail and lamellar, textile worn both over and under mail and etc.

The Romans had a type of scale armor, I can't remember of it's Lorica Plumata (bird plumage armor) or lorica squamata (fish scale armor) which is made of a pretty neat combination of scales bent 90 degrees on the top and wired-into mail. Worn by cavalry and / or signifiers and standard bearers if I remember correctly.

In the South Asian region they also used elephant skin, crockodile skin, and I think rhino or hippo skin for armor, partly because there was a religious rule against using leather for some people.



How would you rank laminar (lorica segmentata) and panoplies against mail and scale armor?

The Romans used the scale armor for specific troop types (cavalry and certain special troops), and not for the front-line troops. I'm not a Roman expert but if memory serves mail (lorica hamata) was issued to the front line troops and the segmentata, which was only in use for a specific period I believe, and mainly issued to auxiliaries.



How common were arm greaves in Europe during the Early to High Middle Ages (say, 400-1200) ?

Depends on the troop types. For heavy cavalry, Clibinari / Cataphract type, rigid metal limb armor was pretty common as part of the panoply. Roman Legionaires used gladiator arm armor which consisted of overlapping plates for a while in the Dacian wars because they were having trouble getting their arms lopped off by falxes. Russians (Rus) and Byzantines and others in the Balkans seem to have continued some pretty heavy armor including splints or plates through the Migration Era (ending depending on who you go by between 700 - 1000 AD) as did some of the Scandinavians (we see this in some Vendel era finds). There are probably many other examples, though the common armor panoply for the first millennia was just mail, and mostly just on the torso.

By around 1,100 AD armor is starting to include all kinds of additional pieces all over Europe and by 1,200 AD early transitional plate armor is starting appear more and more commonly.

G

[Matthew]

The Romans used the scale armor for specific troop types (cavalry and certain special troops), and not for the front-line troops. I'm not a Roman expert but if memory serves mail (lorica hamata) was issued to the front line troops and the segmentata, which was only in use for a specific period I believe, and mainly issued to auxiliaries.

The usual accepted dichotomy is that lorica hamata (mail) was issued to auxiliaries and lorica segmentata to legionaries in the early to mid principate, as that is what we see on famous monuments like Trajan's Column. However, there is evidence that this was not a clear cut divide, and there are also debates over which and in what periods were "front line" troops. Why lorica segmentata disappeared after the early to mid principate remains a mystery, but the most plausible theory remains that it was cheaper and easier to produce mail, which became a more important factor as the empire and military declined. As you say, scale armour was comparatively rare and may have just been a matter of personal choice.

[snowblizz]

I didn't know about the scope used to get Karl Gustov,

Nitpicking but Gustav 2 Adolf.
There's been two Karl Gustav/fs, one spanked the Danes in 1658 the other is the current reigning king (no relation).


As I understood it, the mix was because matchlocks were in limited supply and their worth on the battlefield was still unproven.

It wasn't until 1563 that the worth of matchlocks was proven and 1567 (100 years after the start of the war) when Takeda Shingen, one of the major warlords, declared that firearms would be the most important weapon and spears per unit would be reduced in favour of them, that they really took off.
The Battle of Nagashino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nagashino) in 1575 where the Takeda cavalry were smashed by matchlock equipped troops cemented it.
Very much helped by field "fortifications".
I was thinking about the later periods of the era, and admittedly forgot it technically probably ended earlier than I thought as I was also extending it until the final end of the unification(s) in 1615 and Osaka.
From what I've read it didn't sound as due to shortages.


Having not played the game, how hard is it for melee infantry to attack a gatling gun set up in a fortified position?

Assuming it doesn't suffer a catastrophic malfunction or run out of ammunition, I'm inclined to think it would be a simple massacre.
I was looking very much forward to gatling gunning peeps, but I never got that far in the tech-tree. I completed the short campaign in the name of the Emperor, may he live forever and the glory of clan Tosa and never even got my new Armstrong guns to the front. Next time it's for the Shogun or possibly myself and hopefully more gatling action.
Having looked at the stats though and the rate of fire, I'm inclined to agree. Though field battles are comparatively rare and I don't recall ever having seen any kind of field fortifications.

[Rhynn]

Thanks, y'all. I'm re-working Rolemaster/MERP combat tables for a mid-Third-Age Middle Earth campaign, and I definitely envision armor technology being no further than full hauberks, greaves, and Norman-style helms even at the end of the Third Age (forget thousands of Gondorian soldiers in obviously mass-produced full harness!), but I also feel like older Númenórean and Elven armor might include pieces in old Roman and Greek styles, respectively...

Rolemaster being what it is, I could absolutely model lamellar (which I suppose scale technically is?) and mail having different performance against e.g. arrows.

I'm trying to retain full compatibility with published modules, which means I pretty much need a full range of 20 Armor Types while removing the D&D armors ("leather coats" and "leather breastplates") and the plate armor. I think I've got enough armor types now, though, especially if I separate armor with leg greaves, armor with arm greaves, and armor with both...

Edit: Actually, if I make scale, mail, and Eastern lamellar "equal" in Armor Type, how should I adjust them for specific types of attack? Which ones would have an advantage or disadvantage vs. swords, axes/maces, spears, or arrows? Looks like mail would have an advantage against swords/axes/maces and a disadvantage against arrows, while lamellar/scale would be the opposite?

[Spiryt]

I've read plenty of opinions that segmentata was actually cheaper to produce than mail.

It's somehow short live in use is indeed interesting question.

I would guess that it's bulkiness - you can roll mail into pretty small, portable lump, somehow similar with scale - and fragility of all those hinges and buckles was important.

[Rhynn]

I've read plenty of opinions that segmentata was actually cheaper to produce than mail.

It's somehow short live in use is indeed interesting question.

I would guess that it's bulkiness - you can roll mail into pretty small, portable lump, somehow similar with scale - and fragility of all those hinges and buckles was important.

Well, segmentata was easy to take apart and store, too, wasn't it? Each "lame" was actually four parts tied together at the ends, right? Maybe those ties were enough of a weak point that eventually it fell out of use.

I've gotten the impression that mail is less skill-intensive to create: after all, any LARPer can make half-assed mail in their basement, and it doesn't take a skilled armorer to actually river it, but larger pieces of metal are harder to make and require a smithy, whereas mail just requires iron rod/wire of the right thickness?

Also, might it be a steel/iron thing? Iron was plenty good for mail, but would large iron plates/lames suffer more from the qualities of iron that are inferior to steel?

From what I understand, Rome had an enormous "cottage industry" of mail-making at certain times...

[Spiryt]

I've gotten the impression that mail is less skill-intensive to create: after all, any LARPer can make half-assed mail in their basement, and it doesn't take a skilled armorer to actually river it,

Well, yeah, quality of such mail is usually half-assed as well though.

Riveting right, takes a lot of skill and is extremely time consuming, seeing as even today any more authentic mail is really expensive.

Actually producing the wire and rivets, takes smithy anyway, even if one doesn't use it in riveting and doesn't heat treat the rings in any way.



Also, might it be a steel/iron thing? Iron was plenty good for mail, but would large iron plates/lames suffer more from the qualities of iron that are inferior to steel?

I'm pretty sure that every single piece of segmentata found so far is pretty much 'iron' as well - not very carbonized, relatively soft.


Well, segmentata was easy to take apart and store, too, wasn't it? Each "lame" was actually four parts tied together at the ends, right?

never took segmentata apart, but it still sounds like large amount of work compared to mail.

[GraaEminense]

Warning: speculation follows.

It would seem likely that making mail is less skill-intensive than segmentata. Even though making the links does take a reasonably skilled craftsman, I would expect the plate components of the segmentata to require more skill and a more advanced smithy.

Mail seems far more labour-intensive though, both making the components and putting them together.

However, labour is something an empire with a slave-based economy would not run short on, making mail a logical choice for large armies.

[warty goblin]

Warning: speculation follows.

It would seem likely that making mail is less skill-intensive than segmentata. Even though making the links does take a reasonably skilled craftsman, I would expect the plate components of the segmentata to require more skill and a more advanced smithy.

Mail seems far more labour-intensive though, both making the components and putting them together.

However, labour is something an empire with a slave-based economy would not run short on, making mail a logical choice for large armies.

My understanding is that the manufacture of either is hard. Making wire requires drawing or hammering metal through punched dies to thin it out. This requires a lot of grunt work, and a considerable amount of time for annealing, etc. Making the plates for the lorica requires beating a lump of metal into a sheet of metal, then bending and cutting to shape, polishing, fitting fasteners, etc.

You don't need big pieces of metal to make mail though, and you do for large plates of the stuff. Also I wonder how bespoke the lorica ends up being; that is can somebody wear a lorica not actually made for them? A mail shirt can fit a variety of sizes of people quite well, and isn't that hard to modify either. If the social class that did most of the fighting declined in wealth, I could easily see them opting for the materially cheaper mail over forking over for large and expensive pieces of metal.

Mail also doesn't have a lot of catastrophic failure points; if a link breaks or falls out you've got a hole there. Obviously that's bad news if somebody stabs you in that precise spot, but it doesn't render the entire armor nonfunctional. I don't know much about the attachment system for lorica segmenttata, but I could easily imagine it having problems with one or two ties breaking, and the whole thing going to pieces (literally!)

[Brother Oni]

From what I've read it didn't sound as due to shortages.


In the earlier years of the war, it was very much shortages as matchlocks were only introduced by the Portuguese in 1543 and the Shimazu who had first contact with these traders, were the first Japanese to start using them in the war.
They also started domestic production and obviously their distribution would be fairly limited since they were at war with various other clans.

It's not until other European traders show up (Dutch I think) that matchlocks became freely available to the other clans.


Well, yeah, quality of such mail is usually half-assed as well though.

Most mail made by LARPers is typically butted anyway, the historical authenticity of which is highly disputed.

Having never put together riveted mail, I can't say how hard it actually is to weave the links together.

[warty goblin]

Having never put together riveted mail, I can't say how hard it actually is to weave the links together.
I can't think actually assembling the links would be that bad. It's flattening, punching and riveting them all that would be a pain, to say nothing of the multiple stages of annealing this would require.

[Galloglaich]

The type of mail that they make at Ren Faires isn't armor and has no bearing on armor. Butted mail isn't historical and isn't effective. Making mail with very small links and rivets is no mean task. Try buying some decent quality mail from Erik Schmidt. Even the (not really functional) Indian stuff is pretty expensive.

Based on prices in medieval marketplaces, mail is definitely more expensive than lamellar or simple (munitions grade) plate armor, assuming you have sufficiently large pieces of iron (or bronze or whatever). Mail is just a lot more labor intensive, there is no getting around that even with automation (which they did use quite a bit). The main barrier for production of simple iron plates (such as for greaves) is simply making large enough pieces of iron that didn't have a lot of slag in it.

Mail is also most definitely superior armor to scale. As to lamellar, I think it's just different. I suspect lamellar is better against arrows, mail against everything else.

Scale and lamellar and coat of plates are definitely three very different types of armor.

Regarding storage, yes Lorica Segmentata could be taken apart in a few minutes probably (if you know what you are doing) but you can roll up a mail corselet into a very small bag in 3 seconds (and unroll and put it back on in about as much time)

A mail corselet cost double or sometimes triple what a breastplate and pauldrons cost in the 15th Century. Some mail armor is even listed as more expensive than the basic Milanese harness. The plate armor starts to get expensive when you are talking about a full (and therefore, usually custom) panoply and especially a 'proofed' panoply, and with steel as opposed to merely iron material.

The other big category you seem to kind of be glossing over is textile armor. Quite big in both the Classical era (Linothorax being the principle armor used by the armies of Alexander the Great) and in the Medieval (Jupon, Gambeson, Aketon et al), and even Early-Modern (Buff Coat etc.).

Also don't forget the various 'mail and plate' armor, yushman klibaion, bakhterets etc., which was so important in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This is kind of like reinforced mail.

http://www.xenophon-mil.org/rushistory/medievalarmor/russ32.jpg

http://armstreet.com/catalogue/full/slavic-xiii-century-combat-helm-helmet-armor-6.jpg

And then there is the Arab style armor (also popular in Central Asia) which is mail and textile* integrated together, jazerraint, Kazaghand etc..

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y110/Nephtys/Miscellaneous/Kazaghand_Ottoman_Mid-15th_C.jpg

G

* usually very high quality textile i.e. silk

[Galloglaich]

I realize of course sometimes when working with a game system you have to push a round peg into a square hole (or fit 10 different pegs into the same hole) but I just want to be clear as to the functional differences which if you are talking reality, you really can't paper over.

G

[Spiryt]

Mail is also most definitely superior armor to scale. As to lamellar, I think it's just different. I suspect lamellar is better against arrows, mail against everything else.


That sounds like too definite statement to be honest...

Especially that scale generally is very different than mail in characteristics.

While two garments of scale and lamellar could be extremely similar to each other - similarly shaped and sized plates, only with differences of connection to each other. That, for all we know, could not be very great at all.

[Galloglaich]

That sounds like too definite statement to be honest...

Especially that scale generally is very different than mail in characteristics.

While two garments of scale and lamellar could be extremely similar to each other - similarly shaped and sized plates, only with differences of connection to each other. That, for all we know, could not be very great at all.

Yeah but scale seems to have pretty quickly fallen out of favor, how much was scale even used? I'm really not aware of examples after the Iron Age.

Do you know of scale being used in the Medieval period or later?

EDIT: I think the big flaw with scale is it's durability - attaching metal scales directly to a cloth backing is too vulnerable to damage. Lames attached to each other, or small plates integrated into mail, or mail and / or plates sandwiched between layers of textile, these can all work. The other problem with scale is that if you insert a point "against the grain" so to speak (I.e., from below in most cases) what is to stop it? Lamellar is much better for this because you can have horizontal overlap for example in alternative directons. Coat of plates armor has gaps but you can't necessarily see where they are as an attacker.

G

[Spiryt]

Yeah but scale seems to have pretty quickly fallen out of favor, how much was scale even used? I'm really not aware of examples after the Iron Age.

Do you know of scale being used in the Medieval period or later?



That's pretty much good question, really (http://www.freha.pl/index.php?showtopic=17322)

Look at above scales, and tell me, without doubt, if it's lamellar or scale?

Proposed reconstructions suggest backing.

But also lames between each scale...


EDIT: I think the big flaw with scale is it's durability - attaching metal scales directly to a cloth backing is too vulnerable to damage. Lames attached to each other, or small plates integrated into mail, or mail and / or plates sandwiched between layers of textile, these can all work. The other problem with scale is that if you insert a point "against the grain" so to speak (I.e., from below in most cases) what is to stop it? Lamellar is much better for this because you can have horizontal overlap for example in alternative directons. Coat of plates armor has gaps but you can't necessarily see where they are as an attacker.

If something like that was ever the case, it would be mostly if scales were only fastened at upper rim...And without any pressure from other scales.

[Galloglaich]

That's pretty much good question, really (http://www.freha.pl/index.php?showtopic=17322)

Look at above scales, and tell me, without doubt, if it's lamellar or scale?

Proposed reconstructions suggest backing.

But also lames between each scale...

I can't read the Polish but to me the first one just looks like a simple lamellar system, the others are typical lamellar. But I agree that is the crux of the problem, we often have the metal pieces but not the organic or textile bindings, especially from pre-1500 finds.

G

[Mike_G]

Mike_G yeah I agree with all that, I think that is about right - very generally though of course it's risky to make such broad generalizations. It jibes with my current understanding of the overall trend.



G


We see similar stuff in EMS all the time. We start with very sophisticated equipment designed for doctors and adapted to the field. It's great stuff, but you have to be very familiar with it and skilled to use it correctly. That was fine when Paramedics were few and far between and mostly ran in hospital based services, with basic EMTs doing a lot of work and calling Medics for the Christer calls.

Then, as more and more services wanted their own medics, and started turning volunteer firefighters into medics, the equipment got easier to use, cheaper, and to be honest, not nearly as sophisticated.

The new equipment is objectively worse. No cardiologist wants the EKG machine from the ambulance. No anesthesiologist likes the combi tube or the EOA or any other "rescue" airways. But the guy who does three intubations a year can't miss with a combitube and can't hit a real endotracheal tube when he needs to.

So the "worse" equipment is "better" in the hands of a guy who works on call a few times a month, not as good in the hands of a guy who does this professionally in a busy system all day every day.

And dinosaurs like me with 14 years in the field, full time, busy urban system, always on the ambulance, no rotating to the ladder truck, lament the loss of skills and poor performance of the new and improved equipment. But, once we get past our "old guy yelling at the kids on the lawn" stage, we realize that the stuff works better for the current EMS system, and the old system we loved and grew up in ain't coming back.

[Knaight]

A mail corselet cost double or sometimes triple what a breastplate and pauldrons cost in the 15th Century. Some mail armor is even listed as more expensive than the basic Milanese harness. The plate armor starts to get expensive when you are talking about a full (and therefore, usually custom) panoply and especially a 'proofed' panoply, and with steel as opposed to merely iron material.

It's worth noting that labor prices were still substantially higher in the 15th century than they were in the earlier medieval period - plus, plates were generally cheaper, given how much easier they were to produce than in something like the 13th century. Prior to the black plague, it was a somewhat different matter.

[Galloglaich]

It's worth noting that labor prices were still substantially higher in the 15th century than they were in the earlier medieval period - plus, plates were generally cheaper, given how much easier they were to produce than in something like the 13th century. Prior to the black plague, it was a somewhat different matter.

Very true, and as someone else mentioned up-thread, for the Romans with a mostly slave-based economy, labor was pretty cheap. Late medieval is much more skilled labor oriented, with the advantages (higher technology and so on) and disadvantages (higher costs, more difficult labor management) that brings. Then by the 18th Century it becomes low - skill again, easy to manage like slave labor again. Not really so many literal slaves of course, outside of Russia, but people so poor and desperate they will work like slaves and for probably even less money than it costs to feed and house a slave.

Today once again we seem to be moving from a high skill system back into more like a low-skill system again.

A lot of military history can be mapped by economic / political history. I have a theory that armor and army sizes follow economic systems. Cannon fodder don't need armor. Smaller more professional armies tend to use it more - regardless of what the supposed technology ratio is between armor and armor-piercing weapons.

G

[Brother Oni]

There's a documentary on Channel 4 over here called New Secrets of the Terracotta Warriors (http://www.channel4.com/programmes/new-secrets-of-the-terracotta-warriors/4od).

It's got some interesting information and replicas on the weapons found with the Terracotta Army, which turn out to be real functional weapons not ceremonial ones.

It's got a penetration test with some replica cast bronze arrowheads (which were made with two different types of bronze, a harder higher tin content bronze for the head and a softer more flexible bronze for the tang which was inserted into a bamboo shaft) and the cast bronze crossbow trigger mechanism seems to work just fine in a replica bow.

There's also evidence that the crossbows were spanned by the soldiers lying on their back and drawing with their legs (their expert suggests at least a 200lb draw) and that their war crossbows had a even higher draw weight.

[Mike_G]

A lot of military history can be mapped by economic / political history. I have a theory that armor and army sizes follow economic systems. Cannon fodder don't need armor. Smaller more professional armies tend to use it more - regardless of what the supposed technology ratio is between armor and armor-piercing weapons.

G

I agree, and that's why I tend to twitch when I hear the "x wouldn't have been replaced by y if it was effective" arguments.

[Caustic Soda]

I agree, and that's why I tend to twitch when I hear the "x wouldn't have been replaced by y if it was effective" arguments.

How about "x wouldn't have been replaced by y if it was cost-effective", then? :smalltongue:

edit: jokes aside, the Wiki article on mail claims that butted mail was in use in Japan during the Edo period. A type called kusari. I can't tell the difference at a glance, but perhaps one of you would care to take a gander?

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

There's also evidence that the crossbows were spanned by the soldiers lying on their back and drawing with their legs (their expert suggests at least a 200lb draw) and that their war crossbows had a even higher draw weight.

... so exactly like in Hero then.

Huh.

And before everyone was criticizing the army in that movie as cool-looking but unrealistic. Wouldn't it still be difficult or impossible to aim, even in mass volley firing, or adjust for your later shots, firing from that position? That's the usual critique I've seen in the Hero context...

[AgentPaper]

... so exactly like in Hero then.

Huh.

And before everyone was criticizing the army in that movie as cool-looking but unrealistic. Wouldn't it still be difficult or impossible to aim, even in mass volley firing, or adjust for your later shots, firing from that position? That's the usual critique I've seen in the Hero context...

I think you're going to have trouble following your arrow to see where it lands out of the 1000+ other arrows blacking out the sky, no matter what position or weapon you're using.

[warty goblin]

I think you're going to have trouble following your arrow to see where it lands out of the 1000+ other arrows blacking out the sky, no matter what position or weapon you're using.

Which would suggest training your archers to shoot all at the same angle, then adjust trajectory at a group level. I have no idea if this was how it was done or not, mind, just thinking.

[fusilier]

This is kind of exactly my point. The English longbowmen at Agincourt were highly skilled experts. Like a good arquebusier. This was sustainable as a significant part of an army when it was a small army. You could find a few thousand highly skilled men, buy them good armor and weapons and ensure their loyalty with the promise of loot. This is a fine system if your society can support it

18th century England wasn't that nation any more. I don't think most of Europe was by that time. But it was a society that could mass produce acceptable muskets and drill large numbers of men who could get the job done, even if they weren't sharpshooters or knights or professional archers.

I'm trying to say that a small, professional army works for certain societies, times and challenges, and a large, basically trained conscript army works for a different society. And for one type of army, you'll get more bang out of a thousand warbows, and some will lend themselves to 50,000 Brown Bess, the bayonet and severe discipline.

While this could be seen as generally true -- although in the mid-18th century armies were relatively small and highly trained, compared to what would happen in the Napoleonic Wars -- is it the *only* reason why the longbow wasn't as effective? Is it fair to say that the *only* reason people stopped using the longbow was because of cost/training? Is it fair to say the *only* reason people stopped wearing armor was because of cost? Is it fair to say that the *only* reason gunpowder weapons were adopted is because they were cheaper?

I'm not arguing against the line of reasoning in its entirety, I'm arguing that promoting a single factor as being the decisive factor (or the only factor) for the abandonment of the longbow needs to address other facts -- such as the poor performance of archers against armored pikemen at the Battle of Flodden as Incanur has repeatedly pointed out. My opinion is that there were a combination of factors that led to the abandonment of the longbow, and not a single simple economic one.

[A reversed situation seems to take place at the beginning of gunpowder weapons, as gunpowder was very expensive until the 15th century -- why were handgonnes adopted during the 14th century, if gunpowder was almost prohibitively expensive?]

As far as objective performance is concerned, only certain aspects can be measured objectively, and how one weights those aspects will change the supposedly "objective" outcome of the comparison.

As an aside, while I believe that economics were a factor in the abandonment of armor, I believe that the gun's superior penetrating ability was also a factor. In the sense that the gun had more room to evolve than armor did. Over the course of the 16th century, from the arquebus developed the musket, and the musket evolved until around 1600, reaching calibers of .85-.95 with barrels around four feet long. Even the most expensive, well-made armor had limits, but the musket had evolved considerably to deal with it -- and from my perspective, the penetrating power of guns had increased more than the increase of the defensive ability of armor. [Note: at the same time the ratio of muskets to arquebuses/calivers was also getting fairly high, although there was a lot of local variation.] After 1600 muskets starting getting lighter because less armor was being used (the ratio of muskets/calivers continued to increase, but that's probably because muskets were evolving into a lighter weapon). The gun's ability to penetrate armor combined with the increase in costs led to the gradual abandonment of armor. The abandonment of armor, also affected the gun's evolutionary track.

[Joran]

A lot of military history can be mapped by economic / political history. I have a theory that armor and army sizes follow economic systems. Cannon fodder don't need armor. Smaller more professional armies tend to use it more - regardless of what the supposed technology ratio is between armor and armor-piercing weapons.
G

Very much so. My military history professor liked to say that the class was concerned with "Who fights and why? Who pays, how much, and why?" A key part of his class on early modern military history was on the Dutch system of finance.

I came in thinking I'd learn about battles and tactics and we instead learned about conscription and taxation. There was still stuff about tactics and technology, but very little detailed breakdowns of battles.

[Rephath]

How much would a full suit of knight's armor cost in, say, the 1300's. This suit would be nice and moderately ornamental, but of excellent quality. How long would it take to make the full suit of plate mail including chestplate, greaves, sabatons, helmet, the works, along with a few lances, a sword, an axe, and a mace? How many days/months/years wages of a peasant would it cost?

[No brains]

I suspect lamellar is better against arrows, mail against everything else.

How about flanged maces or any other kind of bludgeoning weapon? I would guess that a lame could redistribute weight better than maille and cushion a blow better, even if both had substantial padding beneath anyway.

Can you also answer the mechanical reasons for why maille is better against everything but arrows? I can understand that maille has fewer 'weak spots' for a blade or point to get between as lamellar does, but how does a cutting blow like an axe, guisarme, or sword defeat lamellar?

[Galloglaich]

The gun's ability to penetrate armor combined with the increase in costs led to the gradual abandonment of armor.

Yeah but they wear armor today don't they?

I think it was actually the cannon which first started to 'take the shine' off of armor but it was obviously a long process, and I think economics had more to do with it than anything else.


How much would a full suit of knight's armor cost in, say, the 1300's. This suit would be nice and moderately ornamental, but of excellent quality. How long would it take to make the full suit of plate mail including chestplate, greaves, sabatons, helmet, the works, along with a few lances, a sword, an axe, and a mace? How many days/months/years wages of a peasant would it cost?

Basic Milanese harness (including the helmet) was about 5 florins in the late 1300's. A florin is a gold coin worth (very, very roughly) about $200 today.

The weapons put together might be about 3 florins (or they could be a lot more)

A rich peasant (boor) could make about 30 florins annually in Poland in about 1400. Might be about half that in France.

So they could afford it, but that doesn't mean it was cheap. Imagine if your annual salary is $30,000 today, that would mean $8,000 for this kit. Big chunk of your income.

The warhorse, of course, would cost a lot more. Could be 50 florins, could be a lot more.


How about flanged maces or any other kind of bludgeoning weapon? I would guess that a lame could redistribute weight better than maille and cushion a blow better, even if both had substantial padding beneath anyway.

Can you also answer the mechanical reasons for why maille is better against everything but arrows? I can understand that maille has fewer 'weak spots' for a blade or point to get between as lamellar does, but how does a cutting blow like an axe, guisarme, or sword defeat lamellar?

I think the lamellar does distribute mace impacts because a lot of those guys who fight in Bohurt (battle of nations etc.) wear lamellar and they apparently allow flanged maces in that.

I think mail is better against cuts, because (and this is a theory I can't prove) I suspect armor laced together with silk threads or leather thongs would be prone to suffer damage over time and degrade if it was hit a lot. This is partly based on the fact that mostly cavalry used it and mostly cavalry that did hit-and-run attacks. Heavier cavalry in Asia tended to adopt the Yushman / Bakhterets type of armor which came out of Persia (mail integrated with metal plates) whereas in Europe of course, mail was king for a long time and then coat of plates and then plate harness.

G

G

[rrgg]

All and all I think mail and scale/lamellar would probably offer a pretty similar level of protection and with any really significant differences depending on the specific design and quality (as well as the amount of padding).

I seem to recall from somewhere (maybe I just made it up?) that solid plates would provide superior protection relative to weight than mail due to the mail links overlapping with each other. Although if that's the case then I would expect the exact same problem with overlapping scales or lamellar creating uneven weight distribution.

[rrgg]

Actually, that's a good question. How would different armors compare if you looked at their protection relative to how much they weighed? For instance a thin metal plate vs many layers of fabric?

[fusilier]

Yeah but they wear armor today don't they?

Yup. The reintroduction of armor started in WW1, and was a response to shrapnel (and usually limited to a helmet). Armor that could stop rifle bullets was tested, but was usually too heavy to be practical. Body armor, derived from flak armor, I believe started to be worn either late in WW2 or during Korea. Modern body armor, designed to stop bullets, didn't develop until full size rifle cartridges were no longer standard. There hasn't been a modern war where one or both sides have significant amounts of body armor, as far as I know, that wasn't an "asymmetrical" war.

Interestingly, an Anti-tank rifle weighs about as much as a 16th century musket.

[TuggyNE]

Modern body armor, designed to stop bullets, didn't develop until full size rifle cartridges were no longer standard.

That's not a connection I'd previously made, but it makes a whole lot of sense when you think about it.

Of course, that raises the question: if there's a larger-scale war between sides that are both/all using body armor, how long might it take for them to switch materiel and doctrine back to use of full-size AP rifle cartridges?

[rrgg]

Interestingly, an Anti-tank rifle weighs about as much as a 16th century musket.

I guess it makes sense if you think about it. After all it's a .50 caliber modern rifle compared to a .70 or so caliber olden tyme musket.

I think one of the things that really gets missed a lot in these "why was the bow replaced" debates is that there was a historically a huge amount of variety to even what could be called "muskets". Early guns included pistols, carbines, arquebuses, muskets, literal cannons, and every possible permeation in-between. In addition, contrary to the popular myth, the quality with which the weapon was made and the skill of it's operator actually did have a massive impact on it's effectiveness. Ill trained troops might only have a max range of about 100 yards just because that's about the range at which your bullet is going to hit the ground if you don't quite understand the ballistics of your invisible death machine and don't account for the drop.


That's not a connection I'd previously made, but it makes a whole lot of sense when you think about it.

Of course, that raises the question: if there's a larger-scale war between sides that are both/all using body armor, how long might it take for them to switch materiel and doctrine back to use of full-size AP rifle cartridges?
I think most modern assault rifles do pretty well against armor. At best a thick steel or ceramic plate might stop a couple of rounds with the downside of being really heavy.

[Hjolnai]

For the lamellar vs mail argument: Consider environmental factors.

If your coat of mail gets rusty on a long campaign, it still works. It'll be a bit weaker, and the higher friction may impede you, but it's still intact. On the other hand, if lacing on lamellar armour rots, it may significantly compromise the armour.

I'm just guessing, of course, and this may not be a factor at all. It would explain some of the popularity of lamellar in Eastern Europe, which I understand is somewhat drier than the West.

[Rhynn]

Thanks, everyone, for the input on armor. I'm working within the considerable contraints of simply re-"fluffing" an existing system, keeping full compatibility especially with published adventures (which is why I can't just cut out plate armor and rename a few of the other types, and be done with it), with limited ability to make changes (mostly, I can give different armor types bonuses or penalties against broad weapon types).

Right now, I've got the following "order of quality":

Clothes (AT 1)
Heavy clothes (AT 2): Robes, etc.

Leather jerkin (AT 5)
Leather coat (AT 6): Similar to buff coats, etc.
Padded jack (AT 7): Gambeson, aketon, linothorax.
Padded jack & greaves (AT 8)

Scale byrnie (AT 9)
Scale byrnie & greaves (AT 10)

Mail byrnie (AT 13): Neck to waist, short sleeves (shoulder to mid-bicep)
Mail byrnie & greaves (AT 14)
Mail habergeon (AT 15): Neck to hips, long sleeves (elbow to wrist)
Mail habergeon & greaves (AT 16)

Panoply (AT 17): Breastplate, arm & leg greaves (helmets are tracked separately), including laminar (segmentata-type armor; possibly with modifiers for performance)
Heavy Panoply (AT 18): E.g. the Dendra panoply (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendra_panoply); breastplate, greaves, pauldrons, faulds
Mail hauberk (AT 19): Neck to knee or ankle, long sleeves (elbow to wrist)
Mail hauberk & greaves (AT 20)

The missing ATs are reserved for animals and monsters (3 & 4 are typical animal hide, AT 11 & 12 are e.g. rhino hide, turtle shell, dragon scale).

This being Rolemaster, it's not a straightforward progression; armor was originally grouped in five sets of four, where the first two of a group are generally lighter than the last two of the previous one, but mostly protect the same... so AT 17 is lighter to wear than AT 16.

Several "points of reference" match up nicely right now: AT 13 and 14 are unchanged (they're "chain shirt" and "chain shirt with greaves" in RM). AT 5 & 6 are "clothing with incidental protection value" and AT 7 & 8 are "worn for protection from weapons." AT 9 & 10 went from being "rigid leather armor" to scale, but I'm not too bothered. (Although that does mean scale offers somewhat better protection from missiles than chain shirts, right now.)

It's rough, but I suppose it's functional, and ultimately it's mostly and esthetic thing: no rules really change.

Right now, I'm figuring lamellar will be "mail with +5/+10 vs. missiles" (looking at the RM attack tables, missiles are actually extremely effective against AT 13-16, which are mail in default RM).

[snowblizz]

Modern body armor, designed to stop bullets, didn't develop until full size rifle cartridges were no longer standard.
Harking back to the whole "not only one reason" I'd suggest there's also a connection to the value of a human life.

The further into modern times we come the less resistant to casualties society seems to become. Better spreading of information. Less emphasize on the society as the whole. Higher and broader standards of living. And others reasons as well most likely. All means getting shot at by some angry dudes seems less and less of interest. Sort of like how today's youth only want comfy well-paid jobs in the entertainment sector.

In an environment where you pay your soldiers more to keep helmets on because that cuts insurance premiums body armour makes a lot of sense.
(If this is actually true.)

They probably didn't have the technology to provide modern bodyarmour but I can't really see that they'd be motivated to do so anyway. Shooting from the hip here but Vietnam seems to be the watershed after which it becomes paramount to actually keep soldiers from harm.

[Brother Oni]

Which would suggest training your archers to shoot all at the same angle, then adjust trajectory at a group level. I have no idea if this was how it was done or not, mind, just thinking.

Considering how strict the Qin Empire was, that isn't too far fetched.

Each blade recovered from the Terracotta Army had the names of the artisans responsible for that blade engraved on it as a kind of quality control. If a particular group or artisan continued porduced substandard work, then it could easily traced back to them and they would be punished accordingly.

In Hero, the crossbowman had another guy loading while they spanned - they could easily operate as a team with the loader acting as a spotter (I believe they had some sort of string with marks at regular intervals on it, which helped them get the angle right).
In reality, given the effectiveness of the trigger mechanism recovered, I'm inclined to think they spanned on their back simply because they hadn't invented the belt hook yet (or other mechanical aid) and shooting was done either in a standing or kneeling position.


I think mail is better against cuts, because (and this is a theory I can't prove) I suspect armor laced together with silk threads or leather thongs would be prone to suffer damage over time and degrade if it was hit a lot.

You're correct - o-yoroi armour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoroi) worn by the samurai was laced together and the laces were prone to heavy wear and tear.



edit: jokes aside, the Wiki article on mail claims that butted mail was in use in Japan during the Edo period. A type called kusari. I can't tell the difference at a glance, but perhaps one of you would care to take a gander?

I'll have a proper look later as I don't have time at the moment, but one of the links indicate that the mail was hidden underneath clothing, which suggests it was intended for shinobi/ninja to give them additional protection when approaching an assassination target.

Edit: Some of that armour is very odd. While technically it's butted, some links are coiled round like a modern key chain so that it would be very hard to break the individual link.

It seems that butted mail is historically authentic, just that it's not authentic to the West.

[Matthew]

There's a documentary on Channel 4 over here called New Secrets of the Terracotta Warriors (http://www.channel4.com/programmes/new-secrets-of-the-terracotta-warriors/4od).

It's got some interesting information and replicas on the weapons found with the Terracotta Army, which turn out to be real functional weapons not ceremonial ones.

That is not really a secret. It is well known that many of the tombs were robbed out for the weapons during later wars. Ah, television history. :smallbiggrin:

[Incanur]

I don't know of any concrete evidence regarding the relative protective abilities of mail versus scale, lamellar, etc. The best historical armor tests come from The Knight and the Blast Furnace by Alan Williams, which only involve mail, plate, fabric defenses, and some leather. The historical and reproduction mail did perform reasonably well - 120 J to defeat with an arrow - but that's with a considerable linen jack that weighs nearly 1.1g per cm squared, or about 3lbs just to cover the same area as a breastplate. Williams doesn't give the mail's weight, but it's presumably just as much or more. By contrast, a 1mm breastplate of the best hardened steel plus much lighter padding would weigh under 3lbs and require 132 J to defeat. 2mm of wrought iron with padding would provide the same protection at around 3lbs, which probably still less than the mail plus jack. Additionally, plate requires more energy to defeat if attack at an angle. On the whole, Williams shows that plate offers notably more protection per lb than mail. I'd love to see similar tests on other armor types, but I don't know of any. I don't think it's necessarily wise to assume that mail protected better than lamellar or the various Chinese scale and so-called brigandine armors.

As far as Chinese crossbows go, I'm not sure a belt hook or whatnot would allow spanning a crossbow with as long as draw as the ancient Chinese ones seem to have had. I believe you see the prone loading position as late the Ming era, possibly for this reason.

[Galloglaich]

Yup. The reintroduction of armor started in WW1, and was a response to shrapnel (and usually limited to a helmet). Armor that could stop rifle bullets was tested, but was usually too heavy to be practical. Body armor, derived from flak armor, I believe started to be worn either late in WW2 or during Korea. Modern body armor, designed to stop bullets, didn't develop until full size rifle cartridges were no longer standard.

Beg to disagree, since most actual bullet hits on anybody in combat are (and have been since WW I) from machineguns, and the light / medium machine gun (PK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PK_machine_gun), M240 /FN_MAG (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_MAG) etc., still uses the same standard 7 to 8mm rifle cartridge they did in WW I, and personal body armor won't stop that bullet, generally. Let alone the ubiquitous heavy machine gun.

And the tests during WW II simply concluded that body armor was too expensive, not that it didn't work. In fact they did use it pretty extensively for airplane crews (the so called flak suit).

Nor is Kevlar any kind of miracle, actually. Silk is nearly as effective, it's just expensive (and the Japanese found that it got rotten in jungle conditions, when they tested silk-based armor in WW II).

The best (highest threat -level, i.e. rifle-proof) armor in the field today is still based on a combination of textiles tempered steel alloys, just like it was in the 14th Century. The principle issue is cost.

G

[Zadhadras]

Yeah Payne-Gallway gets into that arquebuser vs. English longbowmen argument. I think given equal numbers 16th Century English longbowmen could give 17th Century pike and shot a real rough time.


I would argue against this based on the experience of the Koreans in the Imjin wars. Korean armies were based around masses of bowmen. The Koreans used a very powerful recurve bow. The Japanese armies were combined arms pike and shot forces. In the initial engagements the Korean bow armies were beaten very badly by the Japanese armies. The Japanese armies would simply absorb the casualties, close rapidly, unleash a thunderous volley at close range then charge their pike men into the Koreans.

As the war went on the Koreans abandoned the bow and started adopting the arquebus in ever larger numbers, mimicking the Japanese and the Ming armies that arrived to assist the Koreans.

[Rhynn]

So how true is that old myth(?) that an arrow won't pierce a silk garment, just push it into the wound, making removing the arrow easier?

Has anyone made (historically or recently) gambeson-like silk armor from multiple layers, and how efficient would that be?

[Brother Oni]

I would argue against this based on the experience of the Koreans in the Imjin wars. Korean armies were based around masses of bowmen. The Koreans used a very powerful recurve bow. The Japanese armies were combined arms pike and shot forces. In the initial engagements the Korean bow armies were beaten very badly by the Japanese armies. The Japanese armies would simply absorb the casualties, close rapidly, unleash a thunderous volley at close range then charge their pike men into the Koreans.

According to a quote from the wiki page, the Japanese advanced so rapidly that the Korean bowmen were only able to shoot 2 arrows.

Assuming a range and rate of fire equivalent to an English longbow, this would indicate the Japanese infantry covered 200 yards in ~20 seconds in full armour and still had enough breath left to fight in melee.

It also begs the question, where were the Korean infantry to defend the archers?
Somehow I think there are other factors in play here rather than just the comparison between bows and muskets (which would have had only one shot in 20 seconds).


So how true is that old myth(?) that an arrow won't pierce a silk garment, just push it into the wound, making removing the arrow easier?

Has anyone made (historically or recently) gambeson-like silk armor from multiple layers, and how efficient would that be?

It seems to be very true and there are a number of sources testifying to its effectiveness with the Mongols.

Part of the quote indicates that they were especially effective in the removal of barbed arrows, since the typical method of removing these were pushing them through the limb or cutting them out.
Being able to just gently pull the arrow out along its wound tract would significantly reduce additional damage and reduce the chance of infection.

With regard to silk armour, I found this newspaper article (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Three_Grades_of_Fabric) from 1902 which indicates that it was indeed effective at stopping bullets from a .22 pistol up to a .44 revolver.
I'm not sure how stringent the conditions of the testing was, or how the armour would hold up compared to modern rounds or arrows though.

Some more digging indicates that kevlar originally started from the idea of a silk bulletproof vest.

[Spiryt]

According to a quote from the wiki page, the Japanese advanced so rapidly that the Korean bowmen were only able to shoot 2 arrows.

Assuming a range and rate of fire equivalent to an English longbow, this would indicate the Japanese infantry covered 200 yards in ~20 seconds in full armour and still had enough breath left to fight in melee.

It also begs the question, where were the Korean infantry to defend the archers?
Somehow I think there are other factors in play here rather than just the comparison between bows and muskets (which would have had only one shot in 20 seconds).

Of course there are many more variables, but the point is that, all in all, bows and crossbows weren't only replaced for the heck of it, but guns were in fact giving greater and greater possibilities.

I really like bows and all, but I gotta agree that all this 'could easily hold up to napoleonic wars if skill remained' seems like pure romanticism to me. :smallwink:


It also begs the question, where were the Korean infantry to defend the archers?

Routed by the pike charge as well?

I know absolutely no details, but coordinating infantry and archers in a way that one can shoot and the other, protect will usually get tricky.

[Animastryfe]

I would argue against this based on the experience of the Koreans in the Imjin wars. Korean armies were based around masses of bowmen. The Koreans used a very powerful recurve bow. The Japanese armies were combined arms pike and shot forces. In the initial engagements the Korean bow armies were beaten very badly by the Japanese armies. The Japanese armies would simply absorb the casualties, close rapidly, unleash a thunderous volley at close range then charge their pike men into the Koreans.

As the war went on the Koreans abandoned the bow and started adopting the arquebus in ever larger numbers, mimicking the Japanese and the Ming armies that arrived to assist the Koreans.

Could it be that the Koreans had never seen such tactics and weapons prior to the war, and after they were used to the Japanese pike and shot tactics, the Koreans lost too many skilled archers?

I have an unrelated armour question. Is it true that historically the heaviest armoured soldiers were mounted soldiers, at least until firearms became dominant? Was this mostly because cavalry tended to be the wealthiest soldiers, who could afford the best armour? Actually, this question should be restricted to after heavy cavalry became a thing; for example, is it true that classical Greek armies did not have heavy cavalry because their horses could not bear the mass of all that armour?

[Brother Oni]

I really like bows and all, but I gotta agree that all this 'could easily hold up to napoleonic wars if skill remained' seems like pure romanticism to me. :smallwink:


It was discussed in some detail over the past couple of pages how the training, equipment and professionalism of armies changed over time in response to the cultural, economic and political situation.

What we're doing is comparing a veteran force of well trained professional soldiers against a mostly conscript army with minimal training.
Add in the differences between equipment (bespoke bows, individually made for each archer, compared to a standardised mass produced musket) and things start looking a bit less romantic.

A bit before the Napoleonic era, there was some interest in bringing back bows and pikes for the American Revolutionary War (http://allthingsliberty.com/2013/09/bows-and-arrows-pikes-and-spears/). While Ben Franklin was the main proponent, even George Washington ordered that some pikes were made ready when besieging Boston in 1775 (probably to fend off cavalry).



I know absolutely no details, but coordinating infantry and archers in a way that one can shoot and the other, protect will usually get tricky.

I quite agree and other information on the wiki page indicates that both the Koreans were ill trained and had poor discipline, while the Japanese were fresh out of the Sengoku and thus battle hardened, which probably had more to do with their initial successes.

[Spiryt]

I have an unrelated armour question. Is it true that historically the heaviest armoured soldiers were mounted soldiers, at least until firearms became dominant? Was this mostly because cavalry tended to be the wealthiest soldiers, who could afford the best armour? Actually, this question should be restricted to after heavy cavalry became a thing; for example, is it true that classical Greek armies did not have heavy cavalry because their horses could not bear the mass of all that armour?

Yeah, heavy cavalry was usually best armored soldiers around.

The wealth etc. was one reason.

The other was that they obviously didn't have to carry it themselves.

Riders leg tend to be vulnerable to strikes as well, for example, and since mounted man doesn't have to use his legs nearly as much, he can as well armor them.

Wealthy cavalrymen would also usually have means to transport/care for his expensive armor, again, without carrying it himself.

In 16th century, many heavy cavalry bulletproof armor could get massively heavy, in fact they are generally considered heaviest field armors in history.

http://www.muzeumwp.pl/emwpaedia/zbroja-krzysztofa-pioruna-radziwilla.php

[Zadhadras]

Of course the relative experience of the Japanese compared to the Koreans helped. But keep in mind..during the war the Arquebus replaced the bow in the Korean armies, was the mainstay of the Ming armies and also outcompeted the bow in the Japanese armies during the civil wars of the Sengoku era, and not just because its easier to train men to use it.

Musashi himself said

"From inside fortifications, the gun has no equal among weapons. It is the supreme weapon on the field before the ranks clash, but once swords are crossed the gun becomes inadequate."

[rrgg]

The fact that the rider didn't have to carry the weight himself I think was definitely a big factor in determining how much armor they wore.

Even once the battle begins an infantryman is going to be doing a heck of a lot of marching and running so any excess weight (especially any that acts as ankle weights) tended to be pretty unpopular. Despite all the amount of armor and equipment available to them, if you look at, say, Trajan's column, it seems that Marius' Mules in particular were not very big fans of the greave.


----

I think someone brought up Shogun II TW earlier, and if you're still interested in it I should warn you that the vanilla game seems to take some rather odd liberties when it comes to balancing the firearm units. It seems to go for the view of "guns = short range scary boom boom!" The maximum range at which gun troops will actually fire is set at only 100 meters compared to 150 meters for bows, but they are somehow able to reload super fast, if they gain enough experience they can actually reload faster than archers.

That said though the stats are pretty easy to tweak if you find a pack file manager and the game does let you play around to try and figure out interesting pike and shot tactics.

Here's a formation I used quite a bit:

Phase 1
Attacking Enemy Army
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
------------------- |
------------------- V


||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA My gunmen
----PPPP-----PPPP------PPPP------PPPP
----PPPP-----PPPP------PPPP------PPPP columns of my pikemen
----PPPP-----PPPP------PPPP------PPPP


Phase 2:
Attacking Enemy Army
-- EEEEE --- EEEEE ---- EEEEE --- EEEEE
EEEPPPPEEEEEPPPPEEEEEPPPPEEEEEPPPPEE
----PPPP-----PPPP------PPPP------PPPP
----PPPP-----PPPP------PPPP------PPPP

|||\\\ ///||||\\\ ///|||||\\\ ///|||||\\\ ///|||
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA My gunmen

Pikes rush forward, fixing the enemy in place and allowing the musketeers to continue blasting their way through the gaps.

Edit: fixed spacing

[Mike_G]

Of course there are many more variables, but the point is that, all in all, bows and crossbows weren't only replaced for the heck of it, but guns were in fact giving greater and greater possibilities.

I really like bows and all, but I gotta agree that all this 'could easily hold up to napoleonic wars if skill remained' seems like pure romanticism to me. :smallwink:




I disagree.

We know the longbow was effective against Scottish pike formations at Falkirk in 1298.

We know they were effective at Crecy in 1349, against a professional army of knights, men at arms and mercenary crossbowmen, all of whom would have had better armor and probably more training than Naploleon's line infantry.

We know they were effective at Agincourt in 1415, again, against professional mercenaries, men at arms and knights, both foot and mounted, with considerable armor.

They certainly were less effective in later years, but that could easily be because of a lack of trained archers. Nobody is suggesting that dropping off a truckload of bows to Wellington's men at Waterloo would have made them more effective. But I think that magically transporting a thousand of Henry V's Agincourt veteran longbowmen to Quartre Bras might have ruined Ney's day.

I certainly don't think magically exchanging their bows for 18 century muskets would have helped the English at Crecy or Agincourt.

[Berenger]

This request may stretch the intended purpose of this thread a little bit, but I couldn't think of a better place to ask.

I finally got a copy of Gordons The Physician to prepare for the upcoming movie and I am utterly devastated by the sheer amount of anachronistic medieval (and "medieval") stereotypes. It's an entertaining book, for sure, but the setting bears zero resemblance to the period it claims to depict.

In short, I need some recommendations of novels set in the (early) middle ages that don't require the little historian in my head to shut up and cry silently in his cage.

[Incanur]

Of course the relative experience of the Japanese compared to the Koreans helped. But keep in mind..during the war the Arquebus replaced the bow in the Korean armies, was the mainstay of the Ming armies and also outcompeted the bow in the Japanese armies during the civil wars of the Sengoku era, and not just because its easier to train men to use it.

And then the Manchus crushed the Ming with their big-eared bows, which they kept using even into the early twentieth century. Also note, as I showed above, the Ming-loyalist troops that expelled the Dutch from Taiwan included lots of archers, who nearly matched Dutch riflemen during siege fighting according to a Dutch source. I tend to agree with you overall, but it's complicated. The bow retained significant advantages until the middle of the nineteenth century or so, even if the gun's advantages generally mattered more. Guns excelled at defending fortification, penetrating armor, and skirmishing in rough terrain.


I certainly don't think magically exchanging their bows for 18 century muskets would have helped the English at Crecy or Agincourt.

Contemporary accounts vary, but at Agincourt one at least French source claimed English arrows did little if any damage because of French armor. Eighteen-century muskets would have blow through any French armor at close and perhaps medium range. I think the English very well might have done better or as well with guns, given their advantageous defensive position.


The best (highest threat -level, i.e. rifle-proof) armor in the field today is still based on a combination of textiles tempered steel alloys, just like it was in the 14th Century. The principle issue is cost.

I'd like to read more about this. The modern armors I know of use Kevlar and ceramic plates. Some armor-piercing 5.56mm NATO rounds can supposedly penetrate 12mm RHA at 100m (http://web.archive.org/web/20071111054712/http://www.nammo.com/templates/Product.aspx?id=206), so I don't really see how steel would be effective.

[Galloglaich]

Ah, ye of little faith...

For single-hit protection, they use ceramic. For multi-hit the go-to material is still steel alloys

http://internationalbodyarmor.com/8x10-single-curve-titanium-steel-hard-armor-rifle-plates-stand-alone/

http://www.argoasecurity.com/product_detail.aspx?productID=854

http://www.fleetsafety.com/rifle-body-armor-plates-bulletproof-ballistic-threat-level-iii-and-level-iv-triton-by-armor-express/

I am not convinced anything works against real armor - piercing rifle bullets but then again, they will also shoot through most APC's as well. Those aren't widely issued, for whatever reason.

G

[Brother Oni]

In short, I need some recommendations of novels set in the (early) middle ages that don't require the little historian in my head to shut up and cry silently in his cage.

Anything by Bernard Cornwell should fit the bill.

The Grail Quest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grail_Quest) series is set in the Late Middle Ages, so just a little bit past your time window.

I haven't read his The Saxon Stories series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saxon_Stories) yet, so can't offer any advice on how good or accurate they are (given the author, they should have at least a decent amount of research and authenticity). They are smack bang in the middle of the Early Middle Ages though.

I have Tim Severin's Viking series on a bookshelf that I haven't started yet that's set in the Early Middle Ages.
I've read another of his books on Ghengis Khan which was more factual and given some of his inaccuracies like his belief that Chinese words end in a vowel or 'n' - no, that's Japanese and there are several obvious examples that break it, like the capital of China which is Beijing/Peking, no matter which romanisation system you use, not to mention the colour 'yellow', huang/wong, and another thing *cough* sorry, yes. I don't have high hopes for accuracy, but they should be entertaining books.

Finally there's The Conqueror (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conqueror_%28book_series%29) series by Conn Iggulden about Ghengis Khan, so firmly in the Late Middle Ages.
I haven't gotten round to reading them yet, but based on his previous series on Julius Caesar, they're probably going to be historical fiction with the emphasis firmly on being good stories first, historical authenticity second.
It still has some authentic scenes, like an amputation of a crippled limb by a doctor, described in quite gruesome detail, then goes wandering off into fantasy with a 'wise man' having supernatural powers of prediction.



I am not convinced anything works against real armor - piercing rifle bullets but then again, they will also shoot through most APC's as well. Those aren't widely issued, for whatever reason.

Sorry, a clarification; by 'real armour' you mean gothic/maximilian plate or equivalent armour with a greater than 1.5-2mm thickness?

[fusilier]

Beg to disagree, since most actual bullet hits on anybody in combat are (and have been since WW I) from machineguns, and the light / medium machine gun (PK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PK_machine_gun), M240 /FN_MAG (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_MAG) etc., still uses the same standard 7 to 8mm rifle cartridge they did in WW I, and personal body armor won't stop that bullet, generally. Let alone the ubiquitous heavy machine gun.

Are most of the bullets fired by insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq coming from machine guns?

[fusilier]

I disagree.

We know the longbow was effective against Scottish pike formations at Falkirk in 1298.

We know they were effective at Crecy in 1349, against a professional army of knights, men at arms and mercenary crossbowmen, all of whom would have had better armor and probably more training than Naploleon's line infantry.

We know they were effective at Agincourt in 1415, again, against professional mercenaries, men at arms and knights, both foot and mounted, with considerable armor.

They certainly were less effective in later years, but that could easily be because of a lack of trained archers. Nobody is suggesting that dropping off a truckload of bows to Wellington's men at Waterloo would have made them more effective. But I think that magically transporting a thousand of Henry V's Agincourt veteran longbowmen to Quartre Bras might have ruined Ney's day.

Bows have advantages over guns, and guns have advantages over bows -- I disagree that the *only* advantage that guns have over bows is training/cost.

At the Battle of Verneuil (1424), and the Battle of Patay (1429), the longbow was less effective. At Flodden in 1513 it was generally considered ineffective. However, the last known use of the longbow in war was during the English Civil War in 1642 when militia used it effectively against a group of unarmored musketeers.

[warty goblin]

So a while ago I posted about my final stats project of predicting the center of mass of longswords. After a lot of debugging, figuring out how to do a two-parameter Metropolis-Hastings, rewriting the two parameter Metropolis-Hastings to use a different jump distribution, and fine tuning, I have preliminary results!

For the Albion swords, my 90% posterior credible intervals are capturing the true center of mass for 14 of the 22 longswords I'm analyzing. This isn't great, but the data I'm working with is limited enough I feel pretty decent about it.

[fusilier]

So a while ago I posted about my final stats project of predicting the center of mass of longswords. After a lot of debugging, figuring out how to do a two-parameter Metropolis-Hastings, rewriting the two parameter Metropolis-Hastings to use a different jump distribution, and fine tuning, I have preliminary results!

For the Albion swords, my 90% posterior credible intervals are capturing the true center of mass for 14 of the 22 longswords I'm analyzing. This isn't great, but the data I'm working with is limited enough I feel pretty decent about it.

Cool. It's too bad you can't get a larger sample to work with, but it sounds like you are doing well with what you have.

[Mike_G]

Contemporary accounts vary, but at Agincourt one at least French source claimed English arrows did little if any damage because of French armor.


I'm having a tough time believing that. Considering the fact that the bulk of the English army was archers, is anybody saying that all the French casualties were caused by a handful of dismounted men at arms?

I don't think arrows were punching through plate, but I think they probably killed a lot of horses and wounded a lot of men who might have been in older or incomplete armor.




Eighteen-century muskets would have blow through any French armor at close and perhaps medium range. I think the English very well might have done better or as well with guns, given their advantageous defensive position.



18th century muskets would not "blow through any French armor" especially not at range.

The 1815 French Cuirasiers' breatsplates could stop musket balls. Maybe not at close range. But I think a good plate harness from 1415 would stop a Brown Bess shot at medium range.

Using muskets of the Napoleonic era, the English would have fired one volley at the French cavalry charge at Agincourt. Doctrine in the 18-19th century was to hold the musket volley until the last instant against a cavalry charge. They may have fired three volleys at the approaching infantry if they started shooting at 100 yards, which troops in the Napoleonic Wars generally did not. Even at Waterloo, the Guards held their volley against the French infantry until point blank then charged with the bayonet. It worked, but I doubt it would inflict the same losses as a two minute rain of arrows.

[fusilier]

I'm having a tough time believing that. Considering the fact that the bulk of the English army was archers, is anybody saying that all the French casualties were caused by a handful of dismounted men at arms?

I don't think arrows were punching through plate, but I think they probably killed a lot of horses and wounded a lot of men who might have been in older or incomplete armor.



18th century muskets would not "blow through any French armor" especially not at range.

The 1815 French Cuirasiers' breatsplates could stop musket balls. Maybe not at close range. But I think a good plate harness from 1415 would stop a Brown Bess shot at medium range.

Using muskets of the Napoleonic era, the English would have fired one volley at the French cavalry charge at Agincourt. Doctrine in the 18-19th century was to hold the musket volley until the last instant against a cavalry charge. They may have fired three volleys at the approaching infantry if they started shooting at 100 yards, which troops in the Napoleonic Wars generally did not. Even at Waterloo, the Guards held their volley against the French infantry until point blank then charged with the bayonet. It worked, but I doubt it would inflict the same losses as a two minute rain of arrows.

The concentration of fire from an 18th century volley could be considerably denser. Held to the last moment, against mounted targets it could be quite horrific. Few mounted charges ever held up against a well timed volley. It's true that they had to be careful not to waste the volley at long range. At close range an 18th century musket would be considerably more effective than a 15th century hand-gonne (the barrels are much longer), even if not up to the power of a heavy 16th century musket. That probably wouldn't have looked too good for the armor of the time period. A wall of bayonets is usually enough to keep cavalry at bay.

Also, there's something about volley tactics that you are overlooking. Breaking up a charge is not merely an issue of number of casualties inflicted. The idea behind volley tactics seems to have been to inflict a large number of casualties at once -- this was more effective than inflicting a similar (or even greater) number of casualties spread out over time. The shock of the volley was supposed to do the trick, and break up the momentum of the charge, by causing the charging foe to hesitate and lose resolve.

Artillerist reenactors that I've spoken to have emphasized this fact with cannister tactics of the time period. The ideal range for cannister (a can filled with balls ranging from musket ball to about one inch) was actually a couple hundred yards. At that range, with hard ground, the cannister could be "bounced" one time. The bounce turned the cone shaped blast of death, into a wider flatter fan shape. This caused more hits but was less lethal; the point was to break up the charge, even if a glancing hit to the shin merely caused the soldier to stumble and leave a bruise, if it was enough to knock him out of position -- even temporarily -- and break up the cohesion of the attacking force.

I don't think an 18th century army at Agincourt would have fared much worse than the longbowmen did, and they may have even have done better, but it's hard to know because there are a lot of variables to consider.

[Incanur]

"The French were scarely harmed by the arrow fire of the English because they were all well armed." (http://books.google.com/books?id=H3V2Qv6E5cEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=anne+curry+agincourt&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0fqnUpS8LYaSqgHGuYGgBA&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=armed&f=false)

That account of the battle indicates that nearly all of the French deaths happened during the melee, which included English archers wielding lead mauls, axes, swords, daggers, etc.

Early fifteenth-century plate wasn't designed to stop bullets and generally wasn't nearly as thick cuirassier armor. At least some of the French wore full mail hauberks under the plate, and they were certainly heavily laden, but mail isn't particularly good at stopping bullets.

[fusilier]

"The French were scarely harmed by the arrow fire of the English because they were all well armed." (http://books.google.com/books?id=H3V2Qv6E5cEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=anne+curry+agincourt&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0fqnUpS8LYaSqgHGuYGgBA&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=armed&f=false)

That account of the battle indicates that nearly all of the French deaths happened during the melee, which included English archers wielding lead mauls, axes, swords, daggers, etc.

Early fifteenth-century plate wasn't designed to stop bullets and generally wasn't nearly as thick cuirassier armor. At least some of the French wore full mail hauberks under the plate, and they were certainly heavily laden, but mail isn't particularly good at stopping bullets.

Thank you for pointing out the other side of the story and their impressions of what happened and why. It is all too often we are left with a one-sided version of events and it's good to remember there are two sides to every story. :-)

[Brother Oni]

Bows have advantages over guns, and guns have advantages over bows -- I disagree that the *only* advantage that guns have over bows is training/cost.

I think Galloglaich's earlier comment that an arquebus is significantly different from a Brown Bess should be remembered. A longbow has less advantage over a more developed firearm than one of the older version.



However, the last known use of the longbow in war was during the English Civil War in 1642 when militia used it effectively against a group of unarmored musketeers.

Technically speaking, the last known use of a longbow in war was in 1940 by Lt. Col. Churchill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill). :smalltongue:



The 1815 French Cuirasiers' breatsplates could stop musket balls. Maybe not at close range. But I think a good plate harness from 1415 would stop a Brown Bess shot at medium range.

As Incanur said, not 15th Century plate, although I concede that it would probably stop long range fire dead. 16th Century plate is fairly resistant though and there's ample evidence of this as armour was typically sold with the bullet dent to indicate it's proofing. Some of the best examples of this are the tameshi gusoku (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofing_(armour)) (literally bullet tested') armour that samurai wore.

Much as I hate bringing it up, the Deadliest Warrior episode (don't hurt me!) where they had a pirate versus a knight, tested a flintlock pistol loaded with shot versus a breastplate and at close range, one or two pellets pentrated deeply enough to cause significant injury.
Now had they given the composition of the pellets, the amount and quality of powder used, test range, the thickness and composition of the armour and depth of pentration into the ballistic gel behind, it might have been a useful test.

[Knaight]

Much as I hate bringing it up, the Deadliest Warrior episode (don't hurt me!) where they had a pirate versus a knight, tested a flintlock pistol loaded with shot versus a breastplate and at close range, one or two pellets pentrated deeply enough to cause significant injury.
Now had they given the composition of the pellets, the amount and quality of powder used, test range, the thickness and composition of the armour and depth of pentration into the ballistic gel behind, it might have been a useful test.

Getting functional armor seems to be the thing that the Deadliest Warrior crew are outright worst at. They've put up more than enough ren-faire mail that I'm entirely willing to disregard any data they have on any other type of armor at this point.

[snowblizz]

As Incanur said, not 15th Century plate, although I concede that it would probably stop long range fire dead. 16th Century plate is fairly resistant though and there's ample evidence of this as armour was typically sold with the bullet dent to indicate it's proofing. Some of the best examples of this are the tameshi gusoku (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofing_(armour)) (literally bullet tested') armour that samurai wore.

Much as I hate bringing it up, the Deadliest Warrior episode (don't hurt me!) where they had a pirate versus a knight, tested a flintlock pistol loaded with shot versus a breastplate and at close range, one or two pellets pentrated deeply enough to cause significant injury.
Now had they given the composition of the pellets, the amount and quality of powder used, test range, the thickness and composition of the armour and depth of pentration into the ballistic gel behind, it might have been a useful test.
I've seen tests in a tv program where they tested a replication of 17th C ECW breastplate (a cuirass essentially) which would stop a musketball, and it did. And it was a very close range, point blank, the weapon IIRC was a matchlock so should be authentic of the heavier muskets of the period AFAICT. Though naturally open to all the was it an accurate replica, how much powder and so on.
The cuirass was some sort of triple plated version where earlier ones would have had 2 layers hammered together this had 3 in the xray.
This is a bit vague naturally because I don't remember all of it but maybe someone more knowledgeable can fill in the blanks.
17c plate could definitely be pistolproof essentially at any range. Basically if you wedged the muzzle in some kind of gap or the visor you might get at the guy inside the armour but otherwise a pistol was a fancy club as far as the armour was concerned.

Controversial but interesting topic though. Personally I have never understood how a Samurai armour could stop anything at all least of all bullets.

[snowblizz]

I think someone brought up Shogun II TW earlier, and if you're still interested in it I should warn you that the vanilla game seems to take some rather odd liberties when it comes to balancing the firearm units. It seems to go for the view of "guns = short range scary boom boom!" The maximum range at which gun troops will actually fire is set at only 100 meters compared to 150 meters for bows, but they are somehow able to reload super fast, if they gain enough experience they can actually reload faster than archers.

That said though the stats are pretty easy to tweak if you find a pack file manager and the game does let you play around to try and figure out interesting pike and shot tactics.

Here's a formation I used quite a bit:

Phase 1
Attacking Enemy Army
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
------------------- |
------------------- V


||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA My gunmen
----PPPP-----PPPP------PPPP------PPPP
----PPPP-----PPPP------PPPP------PPPP columns of my pikemen
----PPPP-----PPPP------PPPP------PPPP


Phase 2:
Attacking Enemy Army
-- EEEEE --- EEEEE ---- EEEEE --- EEEEE
EEEPPPPEEEEEPPPPEEEEEPPPPEEEEEPPPPEE
----PPPP-----PPPP------PPPP------PPPP
----PPPP-----PPPP------PPPP------PPPP

|||\\\ ///||||\\\ ///|||||\\\ ///|||||\\\ ///|||
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA My gunmen

Pikes rush forward, fixing the enemy in place and allowing the musketeers to continue blasting their way through the gaps.

Edit: fixed spacing
That was me. Thanks for the interesting information. I never could find a use for matchlocks in the vanilla game, short range, slow firing. Bows were superior and fire arrows clenched the deal since there was usually not many volleys loosed before H2H in my experience. The formation there is very interesting and not something I've ever thought off. I have to try that out. Been playing very linearly. I guess I'm as tactically astute as Tarquin and about as deluded:smallbiggrin:
I've always thought The TW:Shogun could be used as a good base for a pike and shot game, the only major period the developers have studiously ignored so far. There was a mod for 30YW for one of the series' games but for some unfathomable reason the developers insisted on doing it in German (they were Germans) instead of English so that everyone playing TW could benefit from their work. Why wouldn't you want as many as possible to benefit from your massive effort? That is after all why my doctoral thesis is in English. Not that I labour under any illusions of how interesting that is. But at least people won't have to learn Swedish first to read it.

[Matthew]

Anything by Bernard Cornwell should fit the bill.

Or not. His Azincourt is particularly egregious in its misinformation.

[Brother Oni]

Personally I have never understood how a Samurai armour could stop anything at all least of all bullets.

You wouldn't think that enough layers of cotton would be decent armour, but it is.

Much as there's different styles of western armour throughout the ages, there are different types of samurai armour.

O-yoroi armour is typically what you think of as 'samurai armour' and is heavy, bulky and generally used on horseback.
The boxy arrangement around the thighs and hips limits movement, making use of the spear more popular when dismounted.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Antique_Japanese_%28samurai%29_O-Yoroi_armor_2.jpg
The poor warrior's armour was the Do-maru, which more flexible and allowed better mobility and fighting on foot.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Dou_maru_gusoku.jpg
Both were phased out during the 16th Century in favour of Gusoku armour, which was much more lightweight and flexible (although do-maru stuck around for a while).
Note the mail underneath the plates (most easily seen on the sleeves).
http://creativeroots.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/japanese-gusoku-armor.jpg
After the Portugese landed, western style Nanban do armour also became popular among wealthier samurai (after all it was imported from overseas). It was this that was usually tameshi gusoku.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/NanbanDo.jpg


I've always thought The TW:Shogun could be used as a good base for a pike and shot game, the only major period the developers have studiously ignored so far.

You haven't played Empire: Total War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire:_Total_War)?
I believe one of the major complaints about it was a lack of unit variety, typical for the shot and pike era.


Or not. His Azincourt is particularly egregious in its misinformation.

I haven't read that one, so I defer to your judgement.

[Rhynn]

You haven't played Empire: Total War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire:_Total_War)?
I believe one of the major complaints about it was a lack of unit variety, typical for the shot and pike era.

Actually, Empire: Total War starts basically at the end of the pike & shot era. You may start with some pike units, but you'll be unable to recruit any new ones after just a few years, because they go obsolete. (I think many nations don't even start with pikes; the Ottoman Turks do, for instance, but their "thing" in the game is struggling ahead with units that largely use antiquated weapons and methods... they've got entire units of mail-armored swordsmen.)

Because pikemen don't play a real part in the game, there's no real pike & shot tactics available: no mixed formation squares, etc.

E:TW starts in 1700, and as I understand, that's usually considered the "end" of pike & shot (even if pikes didn't disappear entirely).

[snowblizz]

Actually, Empire: Total War starts basically at the end of the pike & shot era. You may start with some pike units, but you'll be unable to recruit any new ones after just a few years, because they go obsolete. (I think many nations don't even start with pikes; the Ottoman Turks do, for instance, but their "thing" in the game is struggling ahead with units that largely use antiquated weapons and methods... they've got entire units of mail-armored swordsmen.)

Because pikemen don't play a real part in the game, there's no real pike & shot tactics available: no mixed formation squares, etc.

E:TW starts in 1700, and as I understand, that's usually considered the "end" of pike & shot (even if pikes didn't disappear entirely).
This is exactly so. And yes I've played TW:Empire a fair bit. That's why my Ashigaru tends to end up in long lines with no space to fire between them. I'm too used to linear tactics! The mod I mentioned in passing is for TW:Empire. But since the game engine is really modelling the later "horse&musket" period I am unsure how well it works. It's quite true that some factions are fairly scare in modern units. My Indians have been walking all the way from Indian to Europe (conquering along the way) but having very good lance cavalry isn't very effective when a salvo from any line infantry unit will decimate most cavalry charges.
TW:Medieaval2 in the later stages might also be appropriated for pike and shot. It has the right units and everything. Both of the games do not allow to mimic the mutually supporting pike and shot combination AFAIK though. Any shot unit will be vulnerable to a cavalry charge and it will be almost impossible to properly screen them with pikes. Except in the physical way that stops them firing. Essentially what is lacking is something, like in some table top rules modelling pike&shot, which allowed the player to take any charge directed towards a shot unit to be redirected onto a supporting pike unit. Simulating the "hiding under the pikes". I have not seen that combines arms approach. Though I have never bothered to learn to use formations (because they don't appear to provide any particular benefit) so it might actually be possible.

[snowblizz]

You wouldn't think that enough layers of cotton would be decent armour, but it is.

Much as there's different styles of western armour throughout the ages, there are different types of samurai armour.

I should have been clearer, I didn't mean it literally. It's sort of the same feeling when the Mythbusters tested (Chinese) paper armour.
Just doesn't come across as feasible but stopped arrows well enough as the compared period armour (or whatever it was they used, it's a tv show not science and all that).

[rrgg]

This is exactly so. And yes I've played TW:Empire a fair bit. That's why my Ashigaru tends to end up in long lines with no space to fire between them. I'm too used to linear tactics! The mod I mentioned in passing is for TW:Empire. But since the game engine is really modelling the later "horse&musket" period I am unsure how well it works. It's quite true that some factions are fairly scare in modern units. My Indians have been walking all the way from Indian to Europe (conquering along the way) but having very good lance cavalry isn't very effective when a salvo from any line infantry unit will decimate most cavalry charges.
TW:Medieaval2 in the later stages might also be appropriated for pike and shot. It has the right units and everything. Both of the games do not allow to mimic the mutually supporting pike and shot combination AFAIK though. Any shot unit will be vulnerable to a cavalry charge and it will be almost impossible to properly screen them with pikes. Except in the physical way that stops them firing. Essentially what is lacking is something, like in some table top rules modelling pike&shot, which allowed the player to take any charge directed towards a shot unit to be redirected onto a supporting pike unit. Simulating the "hiding under the pikes". I have not seen that combines arms approach. Though I have never bothered to learn to use formations (because they don't appear to provide any particular benefit) so it might actually be possible.

The TW games have always been pretty bad when it comes to combined arms and flexibility. The really big problem I had with Empire is that there didn't really seem to be any sort of logic to try and prevent friendly fire, meaning that if you ever tried any formations even remotely complex (like the one above) you'd just lose your entire army due to being shot in the back.

Even in Shogun 2 though the lack of combined arms and the sheer inflexibility of musket troops is still extremely frustrating, especially how it made gun troops nearly useless during sieges. This was especially apparent in Fall of the Samurai whenever my fully modern army full of rifle-armed, well-trained line infantry came across an enemy castle filled with spear levy. All I could really do was sit there and say "well, ****".

[Galloglaich]

@Fusilier yes I believe they are, at least bullets that actually hit anything. The AK's are notoriously inaccurate in those theaters for whatever reason. Most of the casualties are of course from IED's but the ones where US and NATO troops are killed by bullets come in two main types 1) 'fraggings' / friendly fire incidents where their supposed ally shoots them in the back and 2) prepared ambushes in which the machine gun in one form or another is the primary weapon (PK machineguns are extremely ubiquitous in Afghanistan especially and you'll see one in almost every image or video clip of Taliban troops. Heavy machine guns of 12 -15mm caliber are also popular but obviously much less portable)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/Northernalliance2002_crop.jpg/656px-Northernalliance2002_crop.jpg

http://i1.tribune.com.pk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/287015-AfghanTalibanAFP-1320315671-151-640x480.jpg

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/07/28/article-0-14424A6F000005DC-791_634x546.jpg


As for the other debate...

Keep in mind the Ottomans were still using bows successfully in naval warfare (despite their arguable technological superiority in firearms) as their preferred and main missile weapon (other than cannon) until Lepanto in 1571, and they only declined (slowly) after that apparently due to so many of their archers being killed in Lepanto.

I think the Mughals were still using horse-archers successfully in India as well into the 18th Century.

G

[Incanur]

I should have been clearer, I didn't mean it literally. It's sort of the same feeling when the Mythbusters tested (Chinese) paper armour.
Just doesn't come across as feasible but stopped arrows well enough as the compared period armour (or whatever it was they used, it's a tv show not science and all that).

Much samurai/bushi armor was steel lamellar, so I don't understand what seems infeasible about it. It's a bunch of lacquered steel plates laced together. Iron/steel and leather lamellar armor saw use all over Asia and the Middle East for centuries. Lamellar has its downsides - for example, the lacing could absorb moisture, becoming heavier and a breeding group for vermin - but its widespread and enduring presence suggests it got the job done.

[Brother Oni]

Much samurai/bushi armor was steel lamellar, so I don't understand what seems infeasible about it.

To be fair, the extremely decorative nature of surviving specimens is very off putting, so you end up with the same situation in the west where an impractically heavy decorative sword (since the actual fighting weapons are battered rusted lumps of steel) is donated to a museum and thus people think that was actually used.

[Zadhadras]

I'm having a tough time believing that. Considering the fact that the bulk of the English army was archers, is anybody saying that all the French casualties were caused by a handful of dismounted men at arms?

I don't think arrows were punching through plate, but I think they probably killed a lot of horses and wounded a lot of men who might have been in older or incomplete armor.

The French were slaughtered in melee. They were exhausted after trudging for a few hundred yards in ankle deep mud into what was in effect, a funnel.


Using muskets of the Napoleonic era, the English would have fired one volley at the French cavalry charge at Agincourt. Doctrine in the 18-19th century was to hold the musket volley until the last instant against a cavalry charge. They may have fired three volleys at the approaching infantry if they started shooting at 100 yards, which troops in the Napoleonic Wars generally did not. Even at Waterloo, the Guards held their volley against the French infantry until point blank then charged with the bayonet. It worked, but I doubt it would inflict the same losses as a two minute rain of arrows.

One musket volley would have inflicted considerable casualties, enough to disrupt the charge. Then British would have also been in good order, with bayonets fixed and in position to absorb the charge.

Bows are not machine guns. I think people are vastly overstating the killing power of bows vs. an arquebus or musket. There is very nice treatise called "A Brief Discourse, Concerning the force and effect of all manuall weapons of fire" written in 1594 by a man named Humphrey Barwick. Mr. Barwick fought in many battles, and saw bows and arquebuses in action.

In his treatise he specifically lays out the superiority of the arquebus in battle and chastises his countryman for holding onto the longbow. He says the French were not at all intimidated by bowfire, but were frightened by the Arquebus. He also points out that the difference in fire rates is not as high as we think..an archer can flurry at a higher rate, but will get very tired very quickly.

This man already knew what happens when you pit the bow against the arquebus, because he saw it first hand..as the Japanese and Koreans did.

[Incanur]

Again, we've got conflicting accounts of the gun versus bow debate across time and space. The Manchu conquered Ming China significantly through their ability to shoot bows from the saddle. They incorporated gunpowder weapons but continued to rely on their mounted archers. The diary of seventeenth-century Manchu soldier gives firsthand testimony to the effectiveness of the Manchu bow against opponents equipped with firearms. Around the same time, the Ming-loyalist army that drove the Dutch from Taiwan relied on their archers, who apparently approximately matched Dutch riflemen. As mentioned earlier, the Qing dynasty continued to value archery throughout its existence. On the whole, the evidence indicates that bows - at least composite ones - could and did compete with guns through the seventeenth century. I don't think this means England would have been better off if its armies continued using the longbow, but they might not have been dramatically worse off.

Barwick is a solid source, though I recommend reading his work alongside other late-sixteenth-century English military authors. His biggest point in favor the gun is that it blows through armor, though he also claimed guns are more accurate than crossbows, which are in turn more accurate than bows. I suspect this applied particularly to carefully and expertly loaded period firearms, and that it was difficult if not impossible to manage this standard in combat. But Barwick does show that sixteenth-century guns could be used a considerable distance, even if that wasn't necessarily the best tactic depending on the circumstancing. As I've written before, I'm convinced the gun surpassed the bow for skirmishing in rough terrain or defending fortifications, because in such situations the bows advantage of quick reloading time matters less.

[rrgg]

18th century muskets would not "blow through any French armor" especially not at range.

The 1815 French Cuirasiers' breatsplates could stop musket balls. Maybe not at close range. But I think a good plate harness from 1415 would stop a Brown Bess shot at medium range.

Medieval armor was designed to counter contemporary weapons such as arrows and was not nearly as thick as later pike and shot cuirasses got. 18th century muskets would have been devastating against the French, not even counting the morale effect of having never seen these weapons before.

[rrgg]

I've always found the claim that bows are more accurate than muskets somewhat suspect. Sure an expert archer could probably do better than a conscript with a shoddy-built musket with an over-sized barrel. But the idea that bows are inherently more accurate seems a bit suspicious.

I mean sure, with a smooth bore you are going to have problems with the ball bouncing around the barrel (which can be countered by making the barrel longer or using fabric to make the ball fit more snugly.) Although when shooting a bow you have to account for this. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOJMYMHVLt8) Not to mention the impact of wind or any imperfections in the arrow/fletching/bow/etc.

[Fortinbras]

Or not. His Azincourt is particularly egregious in its misinformation.

That's interesting, I was under the impression that it was pretty good. What misinformation are you referring to?

[Brother Oni]

I mean sure, with a smooth bore you are going to have problems with the ball bouncing around the barrel (which can be countered by making the barrel longer or using fabric to make the ball fit more snugly.)

Actually the proper fix to stop the ball bouncing around was to use the correctly size lead ball for the bore. However, this made the weapon hard to load, especially in the heat of combat, thus they tended to use undersized balls for ease of loading at the cost of accuracy and precision.



Although when shooting a bow you have to account for this. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOJMYMHVLt8) Not to mention the impact of wind or any imperfections in the arrow/fletching/bow/etc.

The arrow flexing around the riser is the explanation to the issue known as the Archer's paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer%27s_paradox) and archers have long known how to adjust for it by choosing arrows of the correct spine (stiffness).
Modern recurve and compound bows even have a pressure button or plunger which help tune the arrow as it curves past the riser.

Wind also affects the trajectory of the ball, and as for imperfections in the arrow/bow/fletching, how about barrel straightness, how aerodynamic the ball is (not very if you've had to hammer a right size one down the barrel with a ramrod) and powder quality?

That said, there are advantages a musket has over the bow in terms of shooting. Aside from the mechanical advantages to aiming (you can shoot from prone or resting on a surface), a musket has the advantage of consistent power being put behind the projectile (an advantage it has with the crossbow), assuming the same amount and quality of powder.

This makes the shots more precise, although not necessarily more accurate.
Bows have the issue of consistent draw length, resulting in different power being supplied to the arrow, which affects both precision and accuracy.

However ill fitting balls will have an erratic flight putting paid to any mechanical or precision advantage the musket has over the bow.
Assuming the archer has learnt to shoot properly, he already knows how his arrows will fly, thus it's not that a bow is inherently more accurate, it's that an archer would have learnt his weapon better during the course of his training.

In my opinion, a good musketeer with a well tuned, personalised weapon, proper shot and good quality powder will easily out shoot any archer. It's when you compared a standardised, mass produced musket in the hands of a conscript soldier barely out of basic training to a decent archer, that you get the 'bows are inherently more accurate' spiel.

[Zadhadras]

Again, we've got conflicting accounts of the gun versus bow debate across time and space. The Manchu conquered Ming China significantly through their ability to shoot bows from the saddle. They incorporated gunpowder weapons but continued to rely on their mounted archers. The diary of seventeenth-century Manchu soldier gives firsthand testimony to the effectiveness of the Manchu bow against opponents equipped with firearms.

The Manchu armies did not conquer the Ming just from Horseback. The initial Manchu thrust into China exploited the weakness of the Ming and overran poorly defended regional areas. The later manchu thrust into China used large numbers of infantry recruited from their conquered lands and vassals including turncoat chinese and koreans and a siege train of cannon.
Like the Mongols, they used the wealth and manpower of the northern chinese lands to conquer the southern chinese lands. While the Manchu cavalry continued to use bows, the infantry made extensive use of firearms.

[Galloglaich]

Medieval armor was designed to counter contemporary weapons such as arrows and was not nearly as thick as later pike and shot cuirasses got. 18th century muskets would have been devastating against the French, not even counting the morale effect of having never seen these weapons before.

By the time of Agincourt though, armor was starting to be made of steel, then within another 20 years or so, tempered steel. Good quality tempered steel armor of 2mm is stronger than iron armor of 5mm.

The armor in the pike and shot era was just wrought-iron, or in some cases wrought-iron with a small steel plate inside it, which is why it was so thick.

G

[Mike_G]

I've always found the claim that bows are more accurate than muskets somewhat suspect. Sure an expert archer could probably do better than a conscript with a shoddy-built musket with an over-sized barrel. But the idea that bows are inherently more accurate seems a bit suspicious.

I mean sure, with a smooth bore you are going to have problems with the ball bouncing around the barrel (which can be countered by making the barrel longer or using fabric to make the ball fit more snugly.) Although when shooting a bow you have to account for this. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOJMYMHVLt8) Not to mention the impact of wind or any imperfections in the arrow/fletching/bow/etc.

Bows are not more accurate simply by virtue of being bows. I never argued that.

A guy who has been shooting as required by law every week at ranges of 200 yards with his longbow will outshoot a conscript with a mass produced Brown Bess firing an undersized ball.

If you had been training the musketeer from boyhood to shoot, I'd give him odds. Nobody is debating that Henry V's archers had spent a lifetime training, and the average line infantryman who followed Wellington likely had not.

According to records, longbows were often shot at long range, while 18th century musketry was usually saved for the volley at close range. So, in keeping with practices then various soldiers had been taught, I would expect the archers to start launching flights of arrows while the advancing French were over a hundred yards away, and get many more shots off, and the musketeers to hold fire for the point blank volley and get few shots off. The math supports more hits on a unit advancing against archers. Now, if we're talking sending a column of the Old Guard in, armor penetration won't matter. A musket ball or arrow will likely take a man out of combat.

And I haven't tried to reply to everything, but people have argued that the archers would be too exhausted to fight off Napoleon's troops after shooting rapidly for two minutes, then insisted that the archers inflicted casualties on the armored French men at arm in melee at Agincourt. This seems to be trying to have it both ways.

And that the archers fought with lead mallets, which are terrible weapons to use against a guy who can fight back, but fine for bashing a wounded or downed man, like, say, a guy whose horse you shot. This suggests to me that they inflicted casualties with their bows, and finished off the survivors in melee.

[warty goblin]

And I haven't tried to reply to everything, but people have argued that the archers would be too exhausted to fight off Napoleon's troops after shooting rapidly for two minutes, then insisted that the archers inflicted casualties on the armored French men at arm in melee at Agincourt. This seems to be trying to have it both ways.

And that the archers fought with lead mallets, which are terrible weapons to use against a guy who can fight back, but fine for bashing a wounded or downed man, like, say, a guy whose horse you shot. This suggests to me that they inflicted casualties with their bows, and finished off the survivors in melee.
I'm not going to put a dog in this fight, but I think it worth noting that the French infantry had just marched through a lot of mud, and were probably more tired than the archers.

[Galloglaich]

Yeah the way they used the longbows at long range, really anything more than about 50 meters (unless it was a really extraordinary marksman) was shooting into an area. To train for it they used to put like a 10 or 20 meter sheet out somewhere and shoot at it. This type of shooting was effective out to 250 meters or more. It's something like the use of a light mortar in a way, more than a rifle. This is apparently how the Ottomans also used them in naval combat, the goal was to simply pour arrows into the enemy ships, one of the advantages over guns was apparently to plunge over the side of the ship people are hiding behind.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/122413/clout-shooting

this article above says they practiced at 180 to 240 yards at a 48 foot target.

I do not necessarily think medieval archers could defeat Napoleonic musketeers - the original discussion was I think comparing them to English Civil War soldiers- but the very fact that it's debatable is interesting and helps lend some perspective perhaps.

G

[shamgar001]

Non-bow question:

Have bladed gauntlets every been used in a real military context, or are they impractical? Specifically, I'm thinking of something like the Tigerclaw Gauntlets from the 4e Adventurer's vault.

http://i492.photobucket.com/albums/rr290/shamgar001/tiger_zps824a4928.png

[warty goblin]

Non-bow question:

Have bladed gauntlets every been used in a real military context, or are they impractical? Specifically, I'm thinking of something like the Tigerclaw Gauntlets from the 4e Adventurer's vault.

http://i492.photobucket.com/albums/rr290/shamgar001/tiger_zps824a4928.png

Try taking a pee wearing those. You might find the experience... cut short.

(sorry)

I believe there were weapons with integrated gauntlets, though I think they're quite rare. I don't think you'll see much in the way of gauntlet plus enormous spike though, since generally you want to be able to use your wrist to direct the attack. Plus a regular gauntlet with some studs on the knuckles is quite capable of ruining a person's day, and is somewhat less likely to cut your face off when you try to scratch your nose.

[fusilier]

Actually the proper fix to stop the ball bouncing around was to use the correctly size lead ball for the bore. However, this made the weapon hard to load, especially in the heat of combat, thus they tended to use undersized balls for ease of loading at the cost of accuracy and precision.

Some research on the internet revealed that sometimes they were referred to an undersized ball as a "rolling" gauge ball. They might say something like, a 10 gauge musket, or 12 rolling gauge. This meant it was so small it simply "rolled" down the barrel, and the ramrod was not necessary (De Gheyn's manual of arms hints at this, where the section on using the ramrod is conditional). A tight-fitting ball or a ball with a patch will make a smoothbore weapon more accurate than what is usually reported.

In the early days it was up to the shooter, when the enemy was far he could take his time and use proper fitting ball, gaining better range and accuracy. When the enemy got close he could switch to a loose ball, and maybe a little extra powder to make up for the loss due to windage, gaining speed and sacrificing accuracy.

In the latter half of the 17th century pre-made paper cartridges started to be issued, becoming standard around the beginning of the 18th century. By this time tactics had shifted toward volleys, and, for line infantry at least, pre-made cartridges used undersize bullets to ensure fast loading. Also around this time the rear-sight disappears from most smoothbore weapons (part of that may have been evolving barrel shape).

In the 19th century with the introduction of the minie-ball for rifles, came the short-lived Nessler ball for smoothbores. This was basically an expanding shotgun slug. It increased effective range and accuracy so much that rear-sights were added to the smoothbore muskets that were using them. The Americans never adopted it, and as far as I can tell neither did the British so there's precious little about it in English language sources.

[fusilier]

@Fusilier yes I believe they are, at least bullets that actually hit anything. The AK's are notoriously inaccurate in those theaters for whatever reason.

I asked because I've heard it reported before (that in modern warfare machine guns do most of the gunshot wounds), but I was skeptical that would be the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, due to the proliferation of AK-47s and the general nature of the warfare.

However, I discovered that information concerning different types of bullet wounds isn't immediately available, and claims that most gunshots wounds were caused by machine guns in WW1 were simply asserted. The only thing I found, which was a power point presentation on combat wounds, seemed to be statistics for WW2 in the South Pacific. It was the only collection of statistics that separated machine guns from rifles, and 25% of wounds were caused by rifles, and 8% by machine guns.

There was no information about how this data was gathered, and, the problem with gathering such information from the World Wars, if studying wounds, how would one know if it came from a machine gun or a rifle -- as most used the same ammo. I figured Vietnam would be a better test case (given the proliferation of AK-47s by then), but could find no statistics that broke down different types of gunshot wounds.

[Mike_G]

I asked because I've heard it reported before (that in modern warfare machine guns do most of the gunshot wounds), but I was skeptical that would be the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, due to the proliferation of AK-47s and the general nature of the warfare.

However, I discovered that information concerning different types of bullet wounds isn't immediately available, and claims that most gunshots wounds were caused by machine guns in WW1 were simply asserted. The only thing I found, which was a power point presentation on combat wounds, seemed to be statistics for WW2 in the South Pacific. It was the only collection of statistics that separated machine guns from rifles, and 25% of wounds were caused by rifles, and 8% by machine guns.

There was no information about how this data was gathered, and, the problem with gathering such information from the World Wars, if studying wounds, how would one know if it came from a machine gun or a rifle -- as most used the same ammo. I figured Vietnam would be a better test case (given the proliferation of AK-47s by then), but could find no statistics that broke down different types of gunshot wounds.

Not sure how they could tell. As you say, most machine guns used the same rounds as rifles in WWII. You could tell bullet wounds from shrapnel or fragments, but how you can tell a guy was hit by a bullet from an Arisaka rifle or a Nambu machinegun is beyond me.

I have seen statistics from the Pacific theater in WWII that bullets caused about the same number of total casualties as artillery, but proportionately more fatalities. Fragments are good at wounding, but lack the total energy of a big, heavy bullet moving at higher speed.

[fusilier]

Not sure how they could tell. As you say, most machine guns used the same rounds as rifles in WWII. You could tell bullet wounds from shrapnel or fragments, but how you can tell a guy was hit by a bullet from an Arisaka rifle or a Nambu machinegun is beyond me.

I have seen statistics from the Pacific theater in WWII that bullets caused about the same number of total casualties as artillery, but proportionately more fatalities. Fragments are good at wounding, but lack the total energy of a big, heavy bullet moving at higher speed.

I read that somewhere too. I think that artillery was still considered the big killer (generally, not always), but you were more likely to survive an artillery wound than a gunshot. It's just that usually artillery caused so many more hits than guns did.

As for telling whether or not somebody was hit by a machine gun or a rifle -- the only thing that I could think of would be polling survivors and asking what they think they were shot with. If the sample is big enough that might just work, but I'm speculating, as the statistics came with no explanation.

[Incanur]

The Manchu armies did not conquer the Ming just from Horseback. The initial Manchu thrust into China exploited the weakness of the Ming and overran poorly defended regional areas. The later manchu thrust into China used large numbers of infantry recruited from their conquered lands and vassals including turncoat chinese and koreans and a siege train of cannon.
Like the Mongols, they used the wealth and manpower of the northern chinese lands to conquer the southern chinese lands. While the Manchu cavalry continued to use bows, the infantry made extensive use of firearms.

That's all true enough, but it doesn't change the fact that mounted archers were absolutely central to Manchu/Qing armies. The Manchu constitutes a ruling warrior elite significantly defined by their ability to draw a heavy bow and shoot well from the saddle. See The Manchu Way (http://books.google.com/books?id=_qtgoTIAiKUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=eight+banners+manchu&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Hx6pUue-DMbioASDg4LQDA&ved=0CEQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=eight%20banners%20manchu&f=false) and Dzengseo's diary (http://www.deepsky.com/~merovech/voynich/voynich_manchu_reference_materials/PDFs/sqsjzgygmzsbdrj.pdf) for further details on the both military and cultural importance of archery in Qing China.


Good quality tempered steel armor of 2mm is stronger than iron armor of 5mm.

This is actually quite wrong. According The Knight and the Blast Furnace (http://books.google.com/books?id=GpVbnsqAzxIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+knight+and+the+blast+furnace&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4yCpUrrBNoPqoAT4iYGgCw&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=bullet&f=false), the energy required to defeat plate with an edged or pointed weapon increases according to the increase in thickness to the power of approximately 1.6, while **** metal (tempered medium-carbon steel) protects three times better than * metal (wrought iron). 2mm **** plate requires about 263 J to defeat with arrow, while 5mm * plate requires about 360 J. Thickness matters much more for against spheres such as historical bullets. The tables in the book don't go up to 5mm, but from them 2mm **** plate would take 1125 J to defeat with a spherical bullet while 4mm wrought iron would take 1700 J. So 5mm wrought iron would do much better against bullets than 2mm hardened steel.


And I haven't tried to reply to everything, but people have argued that the archers would be too exhausted to fight off Napoleon's troops after shooting rapidly for two minutes, then insisted that the archers inflicted casualties on the armored French men at arm in melee at Agincourt. This seems to be trying to have it both ways.

English archers fought well up close after shooting their sheaves in many battles, so I find the idea that shooting a warbow is exceptionally tiring rather silly. Indeed, I'd say the willingness and ability of English archers to pick up a leaden maul or sword and maintain the fight at hand strokes go a long way toward explaining the success of English armies in the fifteenth century. Remember that the English actually won the Battle of Verneuil, despite the fact that armored cavalry successfully charged through some of the English archers at one point.


And that the archers fought with lead mallets, which are terrible weapons to use against a guy who can fight back, but fine for bashing a wounded or downed man, like, say, a guy whose horse you shot. This suggests to me that they inflicted casualties with their bows, and finished off the survivors in melee.

To the contrary, lead mauls or mallets appear to have been effective weapons. A mid-sixteenth-century version was described as having a 5ft handle with a 6in spike on on stop. I interpret this a budget pollaxe and doubt it weight more than 8lbs based on the weights of surviving heavy polearms. Various fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sources - including armory records - mention lead mauls as weapons of war.

While some Agincourt sources attribute greater direct impact to the English volleys than the one I quoted earlier, multiple accounts say that the archers fought in the melee with deadly effect. You don't need many deaths or even wounds from arrows to explain the results of the battle. In this interpretation, English archery goaded the French into a trap. Honestly, wading through deep mud in heavy armor is one of the stupidest things you can do in medieval warfare, even with a numerical advantage. The English position forced exhausted French men-at-arms to engage in an unequal contest with their opposing peers. The archers stepped in to seal the deal.

[warty goblin]

To the contrary, lead mauls or mallets appear to have been effective weapons. A mid-sixteenth-century version was described as having a 5ft handle with a 6in spike on on stop. I interpret this a budget pollaxe and doubt it weight more than 8lbs based on the weights of surviving heavy polearms. Various fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sources - including armory records - mention lead mauls as weapons of war.

I've used a nine pound splitting maul a fair bit. Fighting with something like that would take some serious arm muscles; it accelerates so slowly I have to put rather a lot of back into it just to get the thing moving. It wouldn't be my first choice of weapon, though given what it does to whatever it hits, it's certainly an effective one.

[Incanur]

I've used a nine pound splitting maul a fair bit. Fighting with something like that would take some serious arm muscles; it accelerates so slowly I have to put rather a lot of back into it just to get the thing moving. It wouldn't be my first choice of weapon, though given what it does to whatever it hits, it's certainly an effective one.

I suspect lead mauls designed for combat were considerably more manageable splitting mauls, but we don't have any hard evidence that I know of. I base my interpretation on the weapon described by Henry Barrett (http://willscommonplacebook.blogspot.com/2010/01/archers-mauls.html) and the weights of surviving heavy staff weapons like halberds and pollaxes, which tend to be in the 5-7lb range.

[warty goblin]

Cool. It's too bad you can't get a larger sample to work with, but it sounds like you are doing well with what you have.

Thanks.
The project is now complete, except for proof reading. I said I'd get it done today, and I made it with .... 40 minutes to spare.

Final tally: my model could capture 14/22 of the Albion longswords' centers of mass in a somewhat unusual 90% credible interval. The average interval width is about 3.5 inches, which isn't as good as I was hoping. But the model seems to work fairly well, and doesn't blow up when I give it different prior distributions. It does succeed at its goal, which is to provide at least decent estimates based on very poor information using a simple function. All you need is the total length, blade length, and total weight, and 400,000 samples from a posterior distribution.

(The function I'm using in case anybody is interested is (h/2 + b/3 + h)/w, where h is the hilt length, b the blade length, w the weight. It's sort of justified by modeling a sword as a bar stuck to the base of an isosceles triangle.)

The biggest improvement that could be made is really something like a measure of pommel size, or maybe blade taper. But those are hard to get, so I'll hand it what I've got.

[Knaight]

(The function I'm using in case anybody is interested is (h/2 + b/3 + h)/w, where h is the hilt length, b the blade length, w the weight. It's sort of justified by modeling a sword as a bar stuck to the base of an isosceles triangle.)


Do you have a way to refine those numbers for more accuracy (via some sort of algorithm or whatever) then test it on a different set of swords? Along with the time and inclination to do this, of course.

[warty goblin]

Do you have a way to refine those numbers for more accuracy (via some sort of algorithm or whatever) then test it on a different set of swords? Along with the time and inclination to do this, of course.

The 1/2 and 1/3? I could actually do that with the data I have at hand, by giving each a prior distribution, cranking through the sampling, and calculating the posterior. That makes analysis and estimation slightly more complicated, but not critically so.

The reason I didn't is that it requires rather more computation. Since part of the project was writing my own Gibbs/Metropolis-Hastings MCMC function, and time was at a serious premium, I thought it worthwhile to keep matters simple. Also because I had such a small dataset, adding more bits to the model often hurts more than it helps. There's only so much information in the data to go around

I did consider a model of the form (alpha*h/2 + (1 - alpha)*b/3)/w, where alpha represents a sort of ratio of hilt to blade mass. It performed extremely badly in early analysis though, so I scrapped it. I think with a bit of retooling I could probably get it to work fairly well - maybe even better than what I have - but that's a project for later. Tomorrow I need to estimate bobcats eating turkeys.

[Incanur]

As far as 18th- and 19th-century musket armor penetration ability goes, the paper "A Detailed Study of the Effectiveness and Capabilities of 18th Century Musketry on the Battlefield" argues that 18th-century Brown Bess muskets reached muzzle velocities of 1,500 fps according period ballistics studies. Because modern powder failed to produce such high velocities, the paper argues that 18th-century powder actually worked better in muskets than modern powder does. Assuming the paper is correct, a Brown Bess ball would have had about 2,960 J at the muzzle, about 2,030 J at 75 yards, and about 1,310 J at 150 yards. I doubt even the best torso protection at Agincourt would have required more than 2000 J to defeat. Of course, there are lots of variables involved and black-powder firearm kinetic energy varies greatly depending amount of powder used (charge weight). I'm pretty convinced 18th- and early-nineteenth-century muskets could have gotten up 2000-3000 J at the muzzle with a heavy enough charge, though.

[Bug-a-Boo]

re: the guns bow debate

Let me throw in my two cents as I have not seen them mentioned yet:

1) Old battle manuals considered the gun a better weapon than a bow. Japanese manuals set the effective range for archery at 50 yards and the effective range for guns at 80 yards, and the Japanese yumi was as powerful a weapon as the longbow. Turkish manuals also put the bow's effective range at 50 yards. From what I can see, the gun was universally considered a better weapon as it developed.

2) In many places it was actually the crossbow, not the gun, that had already supplanted the bow. One of the reasons that guns were better weapons than crossbows is power: The power of a gun could be improved without affecting its loading time. The strongest crossbows need complex windlass systems that take a significant amount of time to use. But a stronger gun only needs a larger barrel and more powder.

[Brother Oni]

1) Old battle manuals considered the gun a better weapon than a bow. Japanese manuals set the effective range for archery at 50 yards and the effective range for guns at 80 yards, and the Japanese yumi was as powerful a weapon as the longbow.

Which indicates to me that the Japanese never used the bow for indirect fire (ie clout) shooting like the English did.

Can I ask how old are these manuals? I'd be very careful about taking Edo period weapon manuals as gospel due to the stagnation induced by the self imposed isolation of that period.

[Bug-a-Boo]

Which indicates to me that the Japanese never used the bow for indirect fire (ie clout) shooting like the English did.

Can I ask how old are these manuals? I'd be very careful about taking Edo period weapon manuals as gospel due to the stagnation induced by the self imposed isolation of that period.

The japanese did not bother with clout shooting indeed. The Turks, who did use indirect fire, also considered 50 meters to be the bow's effective range. IIRC, so did the chinese. The koreans considered their bows more powerful than those of the japanese*, but their reports state that they were out-ranged by the japanese guns.

Of course effective range does not mean max range, and clout shooting is done way outside effective range.

And no, of course not edo period no :P I'm terribly allergic to edo period texts, arms and armour. [edit] can't check the dates for you now though, sorry



*More than any other nation, the japanese had a focus on aiming at and taking down individuals with accurate fire rather than mass fire tactics. Their arrows are longer and often made heavier then those of their contemporaries. In the period, long range shooting was not relevant at all to the japanese way of fighting.

[Mike_G]

If anybody's German is better than mine, they may be able to shed some light on this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1K2DZ7NUoM

It shows test firing of several different black powder weapons against replica breastplates.

My German isn't up to the task, so I'm not sure what the specifics are, but they don't look to be more than 20-30 yards away, and none of the balls penetrate. The armor is clearly modern reconstruction, but, again not sure about the specifics. I did hear the phrase "4 mm" which I assume is the thickness of the breastplate. There's a scene where they show an antique breastplate next to one of the ones they use. I assume they are discussing the differences.

Again, I'd love to know what they're saying, what the range and charge and composition of the armor is. But it looks like it would do a good job against musket balls.

[Zadhadras]

English archers fought well up close after shooting their sheaves in many battles, so I find the idea that shooting a warbow is exceptionally tiring rather silly. Indeed, I'd say the willingness and ability of English archers to pick up a leaden maul or sword and maintain the fight at hand strokes go a long way toward explaining the success of English armies in the fifteenth century. Remember that the English actually won the Battle of Verneuil, despite the fact that armored cavalry successfully charged through some of the English archers at one point.


It is tiring..which is why archers know to pace themselves. Yes, as the legend goes perhaps an English longbowman could have 6 arrows in the air at once. But they could not maintain this rate without exhausting themselves. The actual rates of fire for an archer would be much slower so as to conserve their strength.

[Mike_G]

A few more videos.

"Speed firing" by not using the ramrod, but "tapping" the gun on the ground. they got six round off in two minutes, so "rapid" is relative, but all shots did go off, did hit the area target (6 feet x18 feet) at 100 yards, and the ball did penetrate a piece of plywood, so it would easily kill you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvc86ggLUY4

So, three rounds a minute, even "cheating" on the loading drill. With practice, I'm willing to believe you could get four rounds off. And they all hit (an area target, but that's what they'd have been shooting at) which I didn't expect. A later test shows 17 of twenty hits. Now, that doesn't account for the gaps between enemy soldiers, and the stress of actual combat, but 85% of shots in the right area is pretty darn good.

Thee was another video, using 1860's rifled muskets on a double line of silhouettes (not a solid rectangle of a target, so a better judge of actual hits on a man) and they got off 2 rounds per minute (using the ramrod) with 50% hits at 80 yards. Can't find that one though.

[Incanur]

It is tiring..which is why archers know to pace themselves. Yes, as the legend goes perhaps an English longbowman could have 6 arrows in the air at once. But they could not maintain this rate without exhausting themselves. The actual rates of fire for an archer would be much slower so as to conserve their strength.

I'd like to see some historical evidence for this notion. I think an archer who gets exhausted from shooting rapidly has too strong a bow. (Various sources, especially Chinese ones, note the importance of the military archers wielding bows they completely mater.) Period accounts often describe English archers as shooting furiously and then closing for hand-to-hand combat. No account claims the archers fared poorly in the melee because they were tired! One of the best seventeenth-century Japanese archers supposedly managed to maintain an average of 9 arrows per minute over a period of 24 hours (http://books.google.com/books?id=u2DKesPhsxgC&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=Wasa+Daihachiro+arrows+per+minute&source=bl&ots=MmOmzEPG3F&sig=PzAo-l0UufvY5ZMq8h_Yh4iBy3U&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-9GpUrWTD4ntoAS3sIDICQ&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Wasa%20Daihachiro%20arrows%20per%20minute&f=false). Obviously that's not military archery, but the details of the contest require a reasonably strong bow. English archers at war would often only have 24 or so arrows each, so even shooting all the arrows they had wouldn't have taken very long. At Towton, the Yorkists supposedly shot all their arrows and then many of the arrows the Lancastrians had shot at them, because the Lancastrian volleys all fell short from the wind. (It's a special situation, but at Towton the Lancastrian archers literally failed to hit an entire army. That tells you something about the difficulty of long-range shooting in adverse conditions. The fact that the many Yorkist volleys failed to break the Lancastrians also suggests that such long-range volleys didn't necessarily inflict huge causalities.) The two forces then closed, with the archers surely fighting in the long and bloody melee.

Sir Roger Williams didn't claim that archery exhausted men in the short term, but that few archers could maintain strong shooting during the hardship that can come with extended military service (lack of nourishing food, lack of rest, etc.). That's fair enough, but presumably applies to applies to pikemen, halberdiers, lancers, and company as well, because they also need as much strength as they can get to perform the best service.

[Deremir]

So in requards to arms and armor about what percent of the price would be work and what percent the actual materials?

[Brother Oni]

If anybody's German is better than mine, they may be able to shed some light on this clip.

Well for starters, it's Swedish not German. :smalltongue:

There are a couple of Swedes on the forum (Asta Kask (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/member.php?u=43305) off the top of my head) who may be able to help.


I'd like to see some historical evidence for this notion. I think an archer who gets exhausted from shooting rapidly has too strong a bow.

I'm inclined to agree - if you're used to drawing a strong bow and are only using the muscles for a drawing (probably less than a second) with a ~9 second 'rest' inbetween, it's likely you can keep up the pace for a while (long enough for you to exhaust your quiver anyway).

Of course if you're shooting movie style and are holding at full draw, then you'd get tired quickly.

[endoperez]

Non-bow question:

Have bladed gauntlets every been used in a real military context, or are they impractical? Specifically, I'm thinking of something like the Tigerclaw Gauntlets from the 4e Adventurer's vault.

http://i492.photobucket.com/albums/rr290/shamgar001/tiger_zps824a4928.png



There are gauntlet-swords in India, called gauntlet-sword, pata-swords, pata-gauntlets, pata, dandpatta or daand patta. There seem to be some variations where the blade is claws or something. They also had Katars, which you might already know about - daggers that are held like knuckle-dusters. I don't know how much use they saw, some warriors might have used them but I don't know of them being used in any great numbers.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_O8z4MZYE2Hs/R1ki7FD8U1I/AAAAAAAAAac/HA1XyHFr240/s1600-h/DSCN4762.JPG
http://webprojects.prm.ox.ac.uk/arms-and-armour/600/1932.89.119.jpg


There are some African tribes that used "wrist knives" in some sort of (possibly ritual) combat. It looks like there's a bit of blood in one of the pictures - shows how little I know of actual combat, when I can't tell if it's real or not. The image I put in the spoiler box probably won't work.

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?p=124852
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=74690&stc=1

[BWR]

If anybody's German is better than mine, they may be able to shed some light on this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1K2DZ7NUoM

It shows test firing of several different black powder weapons against replica breastplates.

My German isn't up to the task, so I'm not sure what the specifics are, but they don't look to be more than 20-30 yards away, and none of the balls penetrate. The armor is clearly modern reconstruction, but, again not sure about the specifics. I did hear the phrase "4 mm" which I assume is the thickness of the breastplate. There's a scene where they show an antique breastplate next to one of the ones they use. I assume they are discussing the differences.

Again, I'd love to know what they're saying, what the range and charge and composition of the armor is. But it looks like it would do a good job against musket balls.

In short, the armor worked. They'd made a mistake on the new armor, the lack of the outward facing bit at the neck, which would have prevented lead from bouncing into the wearer's face, and arms and hands would need to be covered in thick leather to protect from ricochets.

[rrgg]

The Knight and the Blast Furnace (http://books.google.com/books?id=GpVbnsqAzxIC&printsec=copyright#v=onepage&q&f=false) Does have a lot of interesting and relevant data.
http://i.imgur.com/VUY4KXd.png

Arrows are much more efficient than bullets at penetrating, however given that the energy of an arrow was generally little more than 100 J and that the energy of a musket shot could generally range between 1000-3000 the musket is still going to be far more effective at penetrating.


Also, this article I came across seems to indicate that the range "musket-shot" is in fact much farther than most people seem to think:
http://allthingsliberty.com/2013/08/how-far-is-musket-shot-farther-than-you-think/

[Galloglaich]

There are a couple of other useful charts in there which aren't in the google preview unfortunately. But I have the book at home I'll post them later tonight.

G

[fusilier]

A few more videos.

"Speed firing" by not using the ramrod, but "tapping" the gun on the ground. they got six round off in two minutes, so "rapid" is relative, but all shots did go off, did hit the area target (6 feet x18 feet) at 100 yards, and the ball did penetrate a piece of plywood, so it would easily kill you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvc86ggLUY4

So, three rounds a minute, even "cheating" on the loading drill. With practice, I'm willing to believe you could get four rounds off. And they all hit (an area target, but that's what they'd have been shooting at) which I didn't expect. A later test shows 17 of twenty hits. Now, that doesn't account for the gaps between enemy soldiers, and the stress of actual combat, but 85% of shots in the right area is pretty darn good.

Thee was another video, using 1860's rifled muskets on a double line of silhouettes (not a solid rectangle of a target, so a better judge of actual hits on a man) and they got off 2 rounds per minute (using the ramrod) with 50% hits at 80 yards. Can't find that one though.

I've seen people in real life (with 1860s rifled muskets), load and fire four rounds a minute, using the ramrod. I think one person almost had five rounds.

I'm not really sure what you are arguing, 3 rounds a minute was expected in the mid 19th century from a well trained soldier (not skipping any steps). Most agree that 1-2 rounds were more common, and that as the rate of fire increased, the accuracy generally decreased (there are several reasons for that). The ranges at which they engaged seemed to make a difference. During the American Civil War when they tended to engage at around 100 yards, those units with a slower rate of fire were (at least sometimes) noted as getting more hits. In the instances where they were blasting away at each other around 30 yards, it was a different story.

If you're volleying you're not "aiming", the gun was simply leveled in the direction of the enemy, the commands came too quickly to allow for serious aiming. They didn't always volley, especially when they got into a shooting match (which was certainly common in the ACW). Then it was typically a fire at will situation, but speed was still considered important. There were a variety of methods that a regiment used to conduct its fire.

Watching the video, I noticed that the reenactor picked up speed considerably as he went along. He went from one shot in about 30 seconds to one in 15 seconds. With practice he may have been getting close to five shots a minute with that method. He spent way too much time aiming in the early shots -- behaving more like the light infantry skirmisher that he was portraying. ;-)

[Rhynn]

Indirect information, but in Dave Grossman's On Killing, he cites a hit rate of 60% at 75 yards (at 100' by 6' volley targets) for Prussian soldiers with smoothbore muskets, and four shots a minute.

Of course, he also describes pretty strong evidence for the notion that (just as up to WWII) most soldiers didn't shoot at the enemy, or in some cases at all: at Gettysburg, for instance, of the 27,000 muskets recovered from the battlefield (of a battle with 160,000 total combatants), over 12,000 were loaded more than once, 6,000 between three and ten times! The procedure for clearing a double-load was to, well, fire, so this was obviously being caused by many soldiers consistently going through all the drilled motions except firing.

[fusilier]

Indirect information, but in Dave Grossman's On Killing, he cites a hit rate of 60% at 75 yards (at 100' by 6' volley targets) for Prussian soldiers with smoothbore muskets, and four shots a minute.

Of course, he also describes pretty strong evidence for the notion that (just as up to WWII) most soldiers didn't shoot at the enemy, or in some cases at all: at Gettysburg, for instance, of the 27,000 muskets recovered from the battlefield (of a battle with 160,000 total combatants), over 12,000 were loaded more than once, 6,000 between three and ten times! The procedure for clearing a double-load was to, well, fire, so this was obviously being caused by many soldiers consistently going through all the drilled motions except firing.

Uhh. Firing a musket with multiple imposed loads would probably result in an explosion, which would be very uncomfortable for all those around. It would, however, clear the gun! If you had double loaded the powder, you could probably fire the gun safely, but a powder | bullet | powder | bullet, is a very unsafe situation.

It has been theorized that many soldiers were so nervous they just went through the motions of loading repeatedly, without ever firing. However, it's also possible that the nipple or drum had fouled and the gun was simply misfiring. Not noticing the misfire (which is actually pretty understandable), the soldier would keep loading, and "firing" not realizing that the gun was not going off.

Once multiple loads are in the gun, the proper way to clear it is to draw the rounds. This requires a ball screw, a screw that can be affixed to the threaded end of the ramrod and will screw into the lead ball, allowing it to be pulled loose. This may not be practical, especially if the barrel is fouled, in which case it may need to go to an armorer and have breech plug removed.

[Mike_G]

I've seen people in real life (with 1860s rifled muskets), load and fire four rounds a minute, using the ramrod. I think one person almost had five rounds.

I'm not really sure what you are arguing, 3 rounds a minute was expected in the mid 19th century from a well trained soldier (not skipping any steps).


I'm not really arguing at all. I just found a video with the "sped up" drill and wanted to share it.

It does show that you can fire 3-4 rounds in a minute fairly accurately, by linear warfare standards.

[Mathis]

Fusilier, is it actually possible to not notice a musket misfiring? I thought the gunpowder would provide quite a kick which absence would be hard to miss even in the middle of all that noise and smoke.

[Knaight]

Fusilier, is it actually possible to not notice a musket misfiring? I thought the gunpowder would provide quite a kick which absence would be hard to miss even in the middle of all that noise and smoke.

It would, but there's the noise, the smoke, the general chaos, the extreme fear, the adrenaline, etc. I find it entirely believable that someone might not notice under those conditions, even though they would in some sort of drill.

[fusilier]

Fusilier, is it actually possible to not notice a musket misfiring? I thought the gunpowder would provide quite a kick which absence would be hard to miss even in the middle of all that noise and smoke.

The old smoothbores with lots of windage, kicked quite a bit, but a .58 caliber minie-rifle has more of a gentle push (I know that from personal experience). I imagine it would easy to miss in the heat of battle, certainly in a volley, but even when firing independently the noise and confusion would be pretty distracting. For that matter, even with a smoothbore, it may be possible under those tense and somewhat chaotic situations to be so distracted to not notice the lack of recoil -- training kicks in and the soldier just keeps loading and firing as taught.

Keep in mind, there was very little target practice at the time, and many soldiers only fired a few shots before their first battle. So they often had little experience of how the gun should behave. Battle was a rare event too, so the experience of being in the firing line, loading and firing as fast as possible, while being shot at was pretty rare.

The most noticeable thing should be the ramrod sticking halfway out of the barrel when you have half-a-dozen or so rounds in the thing! How that was overlooked is perhaps more mind-boggling. This may be one of the reasons that rushed shooting was not always as effective as slower shooting.

Pulling the ball was not a practical thing to do under fire, so perhaps soldiers did notice a double load, but were too embarrassed to do anything about it in the heat of combat. So they just kept loading like their comrades around them. I know that sounds silly, but a lot of the volunteers in the Civil War expressed concern about "appearing" to let their friends down, or being perceived as cowardly -- if your gun has a serious problem you have to step out of the ranks, and usually get the assistance of a file closer. --EDIT-- While I think there may have been some literature on how to properly clear, what is essentially a jam, it probably was rarely taught to the rank-and-file. So they had no training to tell them what to do in those circumstances. --EDIT--

If skirmishing, in open order, then there really is no excuse for not noticing a misfire, as the smoke and flame should be very obvious.

[fusilier]

I'm not really arguing at all. I just found a video with the "sped up" drill and wanted to share it.

It does show that you can fire 3-4 rounds in a minute fairly accurately, by linear warfare standards.

That's fair. It only used "one" of the cheats. Notice that priming took a fair amount of time -- it's a somewhat more delicate operation than dumping powder down the muzzle. If priming could be skipped, that would also have sped things up. I've seen people skip priming on other muskets and it work very well -- but I've never seen it with the military style, only read descriptions of how it was supposed to work.

[Mathis]

I can imagine that it's possible, it's just hard to believe that someone who is a soldier and probably fires a weapon more than a couple of times a month would miss it. I find it easier to believe that someone is not firing their weapon to avoid killing someone. But definitely possible in the middle of all the chaos of a battle I suppose.

For those who are familiar and have possibly fired something similar to the muskets recovered from the battle at Gettysburg, how does the kick of the weapon compare to calibers we use today? I'm only personally familiar with firing weapons using 7.62 NATOs, 22. long rifles, and what I suppose translates to a 12 gauge shotgun shell (12/70 steel shot, metric system). It's been about 6 years since I last fired a weapon so I'm becoming hazy on the details and terminology so please excuse any mistakes I've made.

[Rhynn]

I can imagine that it's possible, it's just hard to believe that someone who is a soldier and probably fires a weapon more than a couple of times a month would miss it. I find it easier to believe that someone is not firing their weapon to avoid killing someone.

Especially given that we know this specifically happened later on. In WWII, General S.L.A. Marshall actually questioned soldiers after engagements, and determined a 15 to 20 % rate of firing; the rest of the soldiers were reloading weapons, getting ammo, running messages, helping the wounded, or just plain not being useful, and accounts of e.g. American Civil War battles suggest the same was being done...

[Matthew]

That's interesting, I was under the impression that it was pretty good. What misinformation are you referring to?

For one he has the archbishop of Canterbury fighting and dying in the battle with a mace to avoid shedding blood. Nothing about that sentence is historically supported.

[Brother Oni]

But definitely possible in the middle of all the chaos of a battle I suppose.

Think of it this way, you're standing in line with your fellows side to side of you, the enemy about 100 yards away. You have no cover, you're standing upright and every 20 seconds there's a massive burst of smoke and noise from in front of you, coupled with screams of the dying and wounded from either side of you.

The only things stopping you from joining them is pure luck, so do you either break and run (a sensible choice) or try and blank it all out and concentrate on loading your weapon when someone bellows out "PRIME AND LOAD"?

There's a clip of the film The Revolution with Al Pacino that does a very good job in my opinion of replicating how terrifying musket combat must have been and also does a good job explaining why discipline was so harsh. I'll find the link again when I get home tonight.

Edit: Here it is (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY5yPGYTMJk).


For one he has the archbishop of Canterbury fighting and dying in the battle with a mace to avoid shedding blood. Nothing about that sentence is historically supported.

I suspect that he was inspired by Henry le Despenser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_le_Despenser), the Bishop of Norwich who personally led his men into combat during the Peasant's Revolt (and was involved in a Crusade later).

I think Galloglaich found another 'fighting bishop', complete with action figure, although I forget his name.

[Matthew]

I suspect that he was inspired by Henry le Despenser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_le_Despenser), the Bishop of Norwich who personally led his men into combat during the Peasant's Revolt (and was involved in a Crusade later).

I think Galloglaich found another 'fighting bishop', complete with action figure, although I forget his name.

There is no lack of fighting bishops in medieval history to draw inspiration from! Cornwall was more likely drawing his inspiration from generalities, not to forget Odo of Clairvaux and the infamous nonsense about maces and clerics.

[Rhynn]

The only things stopping you from joining them is pure luck, so do you either break and run (a sensible choice) or try and blank it all out and concentrate on loading your weapon when someone bellows out "PRIME AND LOAD"?

Apparently, one technique was to just throw yourself on the ground during a salvo and lay there. Even better if your company is advancing...

[Berenger]

Thanks for those reading suggestions. :)

I'm already a fan of Bernard Cornwell, I read The Fort and the Starbuck Chronicles this year. They struck me as fairly authentic, albeit those "modern" wars have never been my focus for studies.

I also own the german version of the Grail Quest novels and was rather satisfied, so I look forward to reading the Saxon Stories and the Warlord Chronicles.

Out of interest, are there any obvious "mistakes" in the books I read (other than the artistic liberties pointed out in the afterword)?

[Mathis]

Thanks for all the answers from everyone. I still find it hard to believe that a lot of soldiers were so shocked from the combat that they didn't realize they were not firing their weapons between 3 and ten times, assuming Rhynn's numbers are correct. I find it a terribly interesting subject, that so many rifles were shown not to have been fired. I'm not really arguing anything here though, just airing my thoughts I suppose.

[fusilier]

There's a clip of the film The Revolution with Al Pacino that does a very good job in my opinion of replicating how terrifying musket combat must have been and also does a good job explaining why discipline was so harsh. I'll find the link again when I get home tonight.

Edit: Here it is (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY5yPGYTMJk).

I'll admit that I'm not that familiar with Revolutionary War tactics, but I don't think there should be huge gaps between the British ranks like that. (Something like that would be done for inspection, but not fighting.) Typically they jammed them together, with about a pace (27 inches or so) between ranks, possibly a little bit closer. Volleying in three ranks, the front rank would kneel, the rear two ranks stand, the rear rank aims and fires over the shoulder of the center-rank. All would stand to reload.

By the way, I'm not saying that some soldiers didn't simply just keep loading their weapons and not fire them, under the stresses of combat. I'm just pointing out that there is another potential explanation for why they found so many guns with multiple loads.

I'm reminded of another story from the 1850s, where some Inspectors-General were on a tour of the army outposts in the West. I forget exactly where they were, I think somewhere on the Santa Fe Trail. Anyway, the unit they were visiting received new muskets which gave the inspectors a chance to study the state of the old muskets that were being discarded. They found many of muskets (possibly a majority, I would have to double check) had been misloaded: the ball had been inserted first and then the powder dumped on top of it! They would not have fired, and could not be fired until the charge was drawn. This gives us some idea of the quality of recruits and training in the US Regular army in the early 1850s.

[Rhynn]

Thanks for all the answers from everyone. I still find it hard to believe that a lot of soldiers were so shocked from the combat that they didn't realize they were not firing their weapons between 3 and ten times, assuming Rhynn's numbers are correct.

Not mine, Dave Grossman's. On Killing isn't an academical thesis, so there's not footnotes on sources, and I can't speak to his reputation or credibility.

And his contention is not that it's shock or daze, it's that - as has been fairly firmly (AFAIK) established was the case in WWII and even Vietnam - most soldiers didn't shoot to kill, which often meant not shooting at all, until the military started specifically training them with an eye to the psychology of killing. They performed the loading drill because they were standing in lines and couldn't be seen not to do it, but when "everyone" fired, many didn't fire (and others no doubt fired low or high of the enemy).

[Galloglaich]

Ok so I finally found my copy of Knight and the Blast Furnace. Took me a couple of days to track it down but I'm glad I found it, it's a useful resource.



This is actually quite wrong. According The Knight and the Blast Furnace (http://books.google.com/books?id=GpVbnsqAzxIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+knight+and+the+blast+furnace&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4yCpUrrBNoPqoAT4iYGgCw&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=bullet&f=false), the energy required to defeat plate with an edged or pointed weapon increases according to the increase in thickness to the power of approximately 1.6, while **** metal (tempered medium-carbon steel) protects three times better than * metal (wrought iron). 2mm **** plate requires about 263 J to defeat with arrow, while 5mm * plate requires about 360 J. Thickness matters much more for against spheres such as historical bullets. The tables in the book don't go up to 5mm, but from them 2mm **** plate would take 1125 J to defeat with a spherical bullet while 4mm wrought iron would take 1700 J. So 5mm wrought iron would do much better against bullets than 2mm hardened steel.


But that only works because his ratio jumps dramatically from the 2mm (at 750 Joules to penetrate) to the 3mm plate (at 1700 Joules).

If you compare a 3mm (max thickness) tempered steel plate it's 2550 Joules according to his chart on page 946, but on page 947 he says that a 3mm **** steel (medium carbon tempered steel, such as they were already making in Augsburg in the 15th Century) would take 3000 Joules. I guess he's including the shape and / or padding.

By comparison, on page 948 he has the thicker (4mm) 17th Century cavalry armor made of * steel (i.e, wrought iron) only requiring 2000 Joules to penetrate.

So this is my basic point. Just to compare like for like, using this calculator (http://www.portlandbolt.com/tools/plate-weight-calculator/), if I take a 3mm tempered steel plate 15" x 15", it weighs 7.53 lbs and is pretty bullet proof.

A 4mm wrought iron plate the same size weighs 10.04 lbs and only offers 2/3 the protection.

A 5mm plate which as you noted, he doesn't list but we could extrapolate arguably the equivalent protection as the 3mm steel, (or at least close to it) weighs 12.55 lbs or almost double the weight.

This is the dilemma of armor in the period. It got much thicker and therefore a great deal heavier, but that didn't actually make it any better because they used wrought iron. Yes you can improve protection at a rate of 1.6 per mm but each mm of thickness makes the armor another 20% heavier. Making tempered steel armor 'only' increases the effectiveness by a factor of 1.5 but it doesn't increase the weight at all, just the cost (and requiring 3000 joules to penetrate means that you are safe from all smoothbore pistols, arquebus or carbines, - and actually almost all modern pistols too I think- and a musket would have to be damn close to kill you - Williams statistics on page 923 bear this out). So if you were lucky enough to own an early 16th Century Augsburg harness in the 17th Century, you could have as good protection as the other cavalry but at a little more than half the weight. The other guys are undoubtedly chafing in their armor and can't wait to take it off, because it's so damn heavy.

Alan Williams notes that armor with 1.5 to 3mm thickness is a 'comfortable weight' (on page 916) with 3mm being on the front of the breast plate and helmet, and thinner armor on the sides, the limbs etc., the whole armor averages, he says, rarely more than 15kg. He says by the 17th Century armor is averaging close to 6mm thick which is heavy beyond belief (average 25 kg), but that is because it's wrought iron. This is too heavy for most infantry as he notes, and even cavalry don't want to put it on until the last minute. But the 3mm maximum thickness for armor which you already saw by 1520 would still protect you pretty well from most firearms in the 30 Years War a century later.

We can't say for sure the reason they didn't make tempered steel armor much after the 16th Century but it wasn't quality - Alan Williams clearly supports the fact that tempered steel armor is much more effective. The real change may simply have been that armies were being supplied by Princes and Kings rather than their own members. In the late 15th Century the very complex armor making industry moved from city-states Milan and Augsburg to Royal armories like at Innsbruck and Greenwich, and then disappeared altogether not too long after. This was a reflection of the changing power dynamics of a Europe where the biggest kingdoms on the Atlantic were sucking up the worlds wealth and the old Mediterranean and North Sea trade routes once dominated by the cities were no longer as important.


G

[Brother Oni]

I'll admit that I'm not that familiar with Revolutionary War tactics, but I don't think there should be huge gaps between the British ranks like that.

I know there are flaws in it, but I was just using it to emphasise the situation line infantry would have found themselves in and how stressful combat would have been back in the day.

One little thing that I noticed during the advance - as the front ranks take casualties, the back ranks are stepping up to take their place. Given their formation spacing of ~1 pace, there's no way they couldn't have stepped on or over the fallen. The amount of discipline they needed must have been immense.

[fusilier]

Ok so I finally found my copy of Knight and the Blast Furnace. Took me a couple of days to track it down but I'm glad I found it, it's a useful resource.



But that only works because his ratio jumps dramatically from the 2mm (at 750 Joules to penetrate) to the 3mm plate (at 1700 Joules).

If you compare a 3mm (max thickness) tempered steel plate it's 2550 Joules according to his chart on page 946, but on page 947 he says that a 3mm **** steel (medium carbon tempered steel, such as they were already making in Augsburg in the 15th Century) would take 3000 Joules. I guess he's including the shape and / or padding.
. . .


Just going to through in a little bit of data about muskets that I found in a footnote:

In tests conducted at the H. P. White Laboratory, Eel Aire, Maryland, on 1 July 1970, an 85 caliber lead ball of 890 grains (about 2.3 ounces), driven by 215 grains of black powder (0.49 ounces), typically produced a muzzle velocity of about 1,100 feet per second. Sixteenth century Spanish musketeers almost certainly used a considerably larger powder charge, as heavy as the weight of the ball according to Jorge Vigon, Historia de la Artilleria Española (Madrid, 1947), Vol. I, p. 236.

If I have done the conversions correctly, an 890 grain ball travelling at 1,100 feet per second would have about 6,500 J [EDIT-- it's half that amount, I knew that number sounded wrong] of Energy. That's muzzle velocity and a round ball would lose velocity fairly quickly. Nonetheless, that's a pretty impressive figure.

By the way, there was a study where they performed destructive testing on a pair of 17th century iron breastplates. See here:
http://www.tudelft.nl/en/research/knowledge-centres/delft-research-centres/delft-centre-for-materials/young-wild-ideas/projects/individual-project-pages/sylvia-leever-seventeenth-century-breastplates-for-show-or-for-safety-2004/

It was pretty interesting, and they generated some formulas which explained details like surface area to force. A larger ball creates a larger hole, a larger hole requires more force to be created -- however, given that surface area is related to diameter by square, and the volume by cube, a larger ball probably more than made up for it with mass.

One of the breastplates had thickness ranging from around 4mm to 7mm. They used a 16mm barrel (about .63 caliber) for their tests. A little over 2500 J pierced the 7mm thickness plate.

They then presented some data on the testing of historical weapons (originals from a museum), and argued that over the course of the 17th century muskets became more powerful. However, their conclusions are skewed by the rather small collection they had access to. Almost all of their late 16th/early 17th century "muskets" seem to have been light civilian weapons, the late 17th early/18th century muskets were military weapons, that uniformly generated over 3000 J at the muzzle, but none as impressive as the stats for an .85 caliber musket mentioned above.

If you can find a copy of the study it's an interesting read -- and while it has its short comings, it's the only destructive testing on period armor that I'm aware of.

[Galloglaich]

Yeah but based on Alan Williams tests and a wide variety of others I've seen the higher end muskets that were actually carried around by troops were in the 3000 - 3500 joules range for muzzle velocity, and that falls of very fast after 20 meters.

The only guns I'm aware of that showed something like a 6,000 joules muzzle velocity were the big wall-guns which are essentially small artillery pieces. Even 3,000 joules is kind of a high point from what I understand which declined over the years for various reasons.

Meanwhile the more common arquebus et al were closer to the 1,000 - 1,500 joules range.

To put it into perspective, an Ak-47 only generates about 2,000 joules of energy, a modern .308 / .30-06 rifle is about 3,700 at the muzzle (with a much smaller bullet than a musket ball obviously)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_energy

Of course modern bullets retain their energy longer and penetrate easier than old smoothbore bullets. But it's still striking how powerful those early muskets were. 3,000 Joules of energy is a hard hit.

And it's equally striking how effective 3mm of tempered steel armor is.

G

[fusilier]

Yeah but based on Alan Williams tests and a wide variety of others I've seen the higher end muskets that were actually carried around by troops were in the 3000 - 3500 joules range for muzzle velocity, and that falls of very fast after 20 meters.

The roughly .70 caliber muskets that are reported in Leever's paper, develop between 3200-3800 J at the muzzle.

That paper also presents data on Energy at 30 meters and 100 meters. At 30 meters (for all of the muskets), the data is consistently around 75% of muzzle energy. At 100 meters it ranges between about 35%-40%.

So if the muzzle energy of 6,500 J for a .85 caliber musket is accurate, and it behaves similarly to the other muskets, it would have around 4,900 J of energy at 30 m, and between 2300 J and 2600 J at 100 m. [EDIT--See above, I failed to divide by two] I think the aerodynamics of a larger ball are better (greater mass to surface area ratio), so those estimates are probably a bit conservative. Especially if, historically, they used more powder.

[Incanur]

If I have done the conversions correctly, an 890 grain ball travelling at 1,100 feet per second would have about 6,500 J of Energy.

You forgot to divide by two. 3250 J is still impressive, but late 16th-century muskets likely delivered even more energy if we believe period military writers. Sir John Smythe, Humphrey Barwick, and Sir Roger Williams all claimed the musket thoroughly beat armor. Barwick and Williams wrote that musket balls would pierce most or all armors of proof at 100 yards. Given how much energy round shot loses at even that range, 3000 J is not enough. Note that these were all men who would have had access to the best Greenwich armors, most of which used tempered steel. Smythe personally owned at least one Greenwich armor. Writing about half a century earlier, Fourquevaux thought arquebuses - which may have included muskets - could defeat any armor at close range.

Williams wrote that muskets got only 8-12 shots from a pound of powder, which would mean 37.8-56.8g of powder per shot. That's much more than was used in even the giant guns in the Graz armory tests, and the gun loaded with 20g managed nearly 7000 J. Given how quickly round shot loses speed, Williams's muskets would have had to manage even more than that to pierce most armors at 200-240 yards.


One of the breastplates had thickness ranging from around 4mm to 7mm. They used a 16mm barrel (about .63 caliber) for their tests. A little over 2500 J pierced the 7mm thickness plate.

Interesting. That roughly aligns with Alan Williams's numbers, though with a lead ball. Williams includes a test in which 1.9mm Swedish wrought iron required 1500 J to defeat with a lead bullet. Based on other tests like the one you mention, that must have been a very big bullet! In the Graz tests a lead pistol bullet at 900 J penetrated about 3mm of cold-worked steel, though without enough force to pierce the linen behind.

[Galloglaich]

So in other words, based on the best available experimental data, even the most powerful 16th Century muskets wouldn't be able to penetrate 3mm Augsburg / Innsbruck armor at 100 meters, probably not even at 50 meters.

All you are going on is someone claiming this or that could shoot through armor, but we have numerous claims and counter-claims of that from period sources, I could provide quite a few claiming the opposite about arquebus especially.

G

[No brains]

A while back I saw a comment that claimed that the muskets of the past were as big as anti-tank guns today. It blew me away to think of the astronomical advances that made guns so much more efficient.

Then it got me thinking about what the biggest weapons a person could carry with them could be. What are the upper limits of anti-material rifles and light machine guns humans could carry and fire without mounting, both by size of the gun and the round fired?

I have one more question piquing my curiosity. The smartguns in Aliens are MG-42 light machine guns supported by a stedicam harness. While it allowed the actors to heft the weapons around, would this be feasible in any real world scenario? I would imagine it would be too bulky to make up for the heavy firepower one soldier could carry...

[Incanur]

So in other words, based on the best available experimental data, even the most powerful 16th Century muskets wouldn't be able to penetrate 3mm Augsburg / Innsbruck armor at 100 meters, probably not even at 50 meters.

By Alan Williams's numbers, a musket delivering 3000 J at the muzzle would not dangerously penetrate except at close range and if striking at exactly the correct angle. It would have around half or less of that energy at 100 meters.


All you are going on is someone claiming this or that could shoot through armor, but we have numerous claims and counter-claims of that from period sources, I could provide quite a few claiming the opposite about arquebus especially.

All I am going on are period military manuals, yes. As I just posted, Sir Roger Williams wrote that muskets only shot 8-12 times per lb of gunpowder, suggesting charges much higher than in any test I have read. I'm not sure that either guns or humans could endure such charges, but it would make for an interesting test. Niccolo Tartaglia also recommended a charge of about 50g.

[fusilier]

You forgot to divide by two. . . .
Thank you.
I was rushing, and I knew something didn't sound right about those numbers. The fact that they may have used considerably more powder historically, and that smaller muskets delivered more muzzle energy would imply that they may have gotten over 4000 joules at the muzzle, but we lack the experimental data to say so. (It seems likely, if a 70 caliber musket can deliver almost 3800 J).

[snowblizz]

By the way, there was a study where they performed destructive testing on a pair of 17th century iron breastplates. See here:
http://www.tudelft.nl/en/research/knowledge-centres/delft-research-centres/delft-centre-for-materials/young-wild-ideas/projects/individual-project-pages/sylvia-leever-seventeenth-century-breastplates-for-show-or-for-safety-2004/


There's some vids of the testing on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGj0M-NJDGA

I have access to the following article by the author. It's way too technical for my understanding though if anyone wants it.
"An archaeometallurgical study of two harquebusier breastplates using time-of-flight neutron diffraction" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921452606011677)

Apparently the MSc thesis itself is not available online that I can find, but the author's comment on youtube says to contact her if one wants a copy.
And right after typing that I finally find it on Scribd though that seems not to be free access.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/159410775/For-Show-or-Safety

[fusilier]

You forgot to divide by two. 3250 J is still impressive, but late 16th-century muskets likely delivered even more energy if we believe period military writers. Sir John Smythe, Humphrey Barwick, and Sir Roger Williams all claimed the musket thoroughly beat armor. Barwick and Williams wrote that musket balls would pierce most or all armors of proof at 100 yards. Given how much energy round shot loses at even that range, 3000 J is not enough. Note that these were all men who would have had access to the best Greenwich armors, most of which used tempered steel. Smythe personally owned at least one Greenwich armor. Writing about half a century earlier, Fourquevaux thought arquebuses - which may have included muskets - could defeat any armor at close range.
That conforms with most of what I have read on the subject too.

The largest gun reported in Leever, was a 17.8 mm (.70 in) weapon firing a 34.25 gram ball. It developed 3735 J at the muzzle, 2823 J at 30 meters, and 1541 J at 100 meters. A slightly older, and smaller weapon (17.5 mm), actually developed a little more muzzle energy, but lost it a little more quickly at range. Still, it's not too far from 3000 J at 30 meters -- not bad for a .70 caliber line infantry weapon from circa 1700.


Williams wrote that muskets got only 8-12 shots from a pound of powder, which would mean 37.8-56.8g of powder per shot. That's much more than was used in even the giant guns in the Graz armory tests, and the gun loaded with 20g managed nearly 7000 J. Given how quickly round shot loses speed, Williams's muskets would have had to manage even more than that to pierce most armors at 200-240 yards.

Which gun was that that was loaded to 20g? I don't have direct access to the Graz tests (I think those are the tests that Leever used for the data set).

The source I quoted above about the .85 caliber test, noted a Spanish source that claimed, historically, they used considerably more powder than the test, up to the weight of the ball. The ball weighed 890 grains (more than four times the amount of powder in the modern test), and that works out to just around 58 grams of powder. Which also fits at the upper end of your range. I suspect, that they overcharged the guns. This is not a problem if the gun can take the pressure -- it will be a waste of powder, but will insure that you get the maximum pressure possible (or close to it). Unless it's being so overcharged that it has a dramatic effect on the effective length of the barrel which isn't likely with long musket barrels, and the numbers we've been given. Unfortunately, I do not know of any simple way of calculating the effect of extra powder -- I suspect it is logarithmic. Given that tests on other guns (also being "undercharged" by historic standards) were reaching almost 3800 Joules, would 4000-4500 Joules not be unreasonable?

Firearms of the 16th century, often had very thick breeches, something not seen on many replica (modern) black powder barrels. The breeches were so thick they actually had to dovetail the priming pan into the barrel.


Interesting. That roughly aligns with Alan Williams's numbers, though with a lead ball. Williams includes a test in which 1.9mm Swedish wrought iron required 1500 J to defeat with a lead bullet. Based on other tests like the one you mention, that must have been a very big bullet! In the Graz tests a lead pistol bullet at 900 J penetrated about 3mm of cold-worked steel, though without enough force to pierce the linen behind.

The second breastplate used in Leever's study was a wrought-iron Dutch one from about 1645. It had a more uniform thickness. 1.85mm was perforated with 900 joules of energy from a lead ball of about 20 grams. I should point out that, given the way that the test was conducted, the number (900 joules) should be treated as an upper limit, as we don't actually know precisely how many joules were required to pierce the armor at the spot, we just know that 900 joules did perforate the armor at that thickness.

[fusilier]

There's some vids of the testing on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGj0M-NJDGA

I have access to the following article by the author. It's way too technical for my understanding though if anyone wants it.
"An archaeometallurgical study of two harquebusier breastplates using time-of-flight neutron diffraction" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921452606011677)

Apparently the MSc thesis itself is not available online that I can find, but the author's comment on youtube says to contact her if one wants a copy.
And right after typing that I finally find it on Scribd though that seems not to be free access.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/159410775/For-Show-or-Safety

Interesting. That video claims that the second breastplate was from the English Civil War (circa 1645), but they suspected it may have been a 19th century replica. However, the paper that I have, which is from 2006 and is not the Master's Thesis but is derived from it, claims that it is Dutch (again from 1645), and there doesn't seem to be any concern that it's not from the 17th century.

I wonder which is the more recent opinion? Clearly at some point is was reappraised . . .

Cool find.

[fusilier]

All you are going on is someone claiming this or that could shoot through armor, but we have numerous claims and counter-claims of that from period sources, I could provide quite a few claiming the opposite about arquebus especially.

The variation in the claims of the time period, is probably due to the variation in the weapons and armors themselves. Poor powder, sloppy handling, and bad windage can make the most powerful of muskets seem pretty pathetic. But correct all of those factors and it's a very different story. This probably a bit difficult for us to get our heads around, in the age of machine made cartridges, that give incredibly consistent performance, where the only real variable is the ability of the shooter to aim.

Then we have the question of how consistent the armor is made -- what irregularities may exist within the metal.

What Incanur is pointing out, is what the military experts of the day had to say about the effectiveness of firearms. Not simply anecdotes. I'll admit, some of those experts, especially the English ones, may have had an agenda (trying to encourage the English to use more firearms). But there does seem to be general agreement across all of them on the effectiveness of firearms.

It would be interesting to see if there were experts who claimed the opposite, that the best armor was a match for musketry and arquebuses, at least at range, if not close up. I'm sure there must be some that implored their readers to invest in the best armor as protection. But that's not the same as claiming that it would guarantee protection.

[Brother Oni]

This probably a bit difficult for us to get our heads around, in the age of machine made cartridges, that give incredibly consistent performance, where the only real variable is the ability of the shooter to aim.

Well to a degree. Sniper ammunition is still specially made (typically by an experienced operator and a single press) and prior to that, they had the old green/black spot system.

I guess burning stuff to go boom is still comparatively variable at the tolerances needed at top end shooting. I wonder when/if DEWs come down to the personal weapons level, the same thing would still occur, only with things like battery discharge performance or lens focusing?

[snowblizz]

I wonder which is the more recent opinion? Clearly at some point is was reappraised . . .

Cool find.
The video and comment was added in August this year so I'd hazard the guess the video represents the more recent information.

[Incanur]

Comparing across different guns in the Graz tests, G 358 loaded with 20g of powder produces more than double the energy of RG 33 with 11g of powder. Of course, it has has a longer barrel and higher caliber.

As far variability goes, Sir Roger Williams and Humphrey Barwick both often qualify their range and/or penetration claims with phrases like "with skillful handling and tested powder." However, even with massive charges, piercing armor at all at 200 yards and beyond - much less good armor - seems dubious given the ballistics of round shot. I mean, maybe if muskets were managing 10,000 J at the muzzle! That's not completely out of the question with 40-50g of powder, but still seems unlikely. I want to see tests.

I don't know of any period source that asserts that practical field armor could be proof against the musket. Certainly armor existed that could stop a musket ball - suits of at least partially hardened steel could exceed 3mm, as with the reinforcing plates you see on Greenwich armors - but military writers consider it unfit for service because of weight. Smythe specifically wrote that no wearable armor could resist the musket.

We should also consider the difficulty of producing tempered steel armor. Alan Williams shows how quality varied at even the best armories and how heat-treatment techniques could die with the masters who practiced them. It is fascinating and curious how much/most/all? 17th-century armor was simple wrought iron, and dramatically less protective per pound than the best harness from the previous two centuries. (Did medium-carbon steel really become so expensive that they stopped making armor out of it? I guess so.)

[Galloglaich]

In his recently published Medieval Handgonnes (http://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Handgonnes-powder-infantry-weapons-ebook/dp/B004M5H9O4), Sean McLachlan lists the results and technical specs of several firearms tests ranging from primitive 5"-10" barrel hand-gonnes to late 16th Century arquebuses, including antiques. He describes Alan Williams tests in the 70's plus some others in the 80's, and tests by Royal Armouries in the 90's, and at least one using an antique harness (actually a piece of barding from 1575) which was 2.8-3mm thick. That one was shot by a late 16th Century Spanish musket of about 50 caliber, using modern black powder. The barding was wrought iron and it was laying on a sandbag with some textile underneath to simulate clothing. The bullet penetrated but was 'dead' in velocity and didn't penetrate the textile beneath.

He also notes that steel or iron shot (which he says there is little evidence for the use of) does penetrate much better as Alan Williams noted but the energy falls off even faster at range.

McLachlan, who is clearly a gun-enthusiast, argues that the niche firearms had was that they could often penetrate armor at very close range (under 50 meters or less) but not much further away than that. He posits this as an explanation why longbows, recurves, and crossbows remained in use alongside firearms for so long, but firearms were increasing in popularity (and also, very generally speaking, barrel length). It kind of makes sense to me for that particular reason though of course, it's still very speculative at this point.

I still think iron shot shouldn't be dismissed since we know they used it for cannons, and there was such a gray area between cannons and firearms anyway, and we know they were still using all kinds of experimental ammunition (including springels / arrows) all the way to the 16th Century at least. That might explain penetration of armor at 'medium' ranges.

G

Edit: I should mention that the test on the barding armor was done at a distance of 8.5 meters, the caliber was 12.3mm (just under .50 caliber) and the muzzle velocity was a respectable 438 meters per second.

[Galloglaich]

He also makes a good point that most of these tests were made with modern black powder

There were some interesting contrasts in certain tests where they did make powder (using Roger Bacons early formula) and did it both as dry mixed and wet mixed... I have also seem some other tests of 14th-15th Century handgonnes showing actually very superior performance using a 14th Century Liber Ignium gunpowder formula which though it technically is inferior to modern black powder performed much better in that gun (which was an exact replica, made from a cast mold of a 14th Century Bronze Danzig hand-gonne) because the gun barrel was shaped internally in such a way that the older, differently burning powder-formula worked better.

I think the precise composition of the powder for each gun is one of the missing factors in these experiments, and also one of the areas where skill of the shooter played a major role. This is also hinted at quite a bit in Shutzenfest (shooting contest) records from Augsburg, Strasbourg and Berne from the 15th and 16th Centuries.

G

[Incanur]

and at least one using an antique harness (actually a piece of barding from 1575) which was 2.8-3mm thick. That one was shot by a late 16th Century Spanish musket of about 50 caliber, using modern black powder. The barding was wrought iron and it was laying on a sandbag with some textile underneath to simulate clothing. The bullet penetrated but was 'dead' in velocity and didn't penetrate the textile beneath.

This is from the Graz tests, and it was an early-17th-century wheel-lock pistol, not a musket. Also, the authors identify the barding metal as cold-worked mild steel, not wrought iron. The lead bullet completely penetrated with only about 900 J, but didn't get through the linen. That's rather better performance than Alan Williams's numbers suggest, but it was a relatively small bullet.

[Galloglaich]

This is from the Graz tests, and it was an early-17th-century wheel-lock pistol, not a musket. Also, the authors identify the barding metal as cold-worked mild steel, not wrought iron. The lead bullet completely penetrated with only about 900 J, but didn't get through the linen. That's rather better performance than Alan Williams's numbers suggest, but it was a relatively small bullet.

You are right it was a pistol, I should have read it more carefully - he mentioned a wheel-lock musket of the exact same caliber (12.3 mm) a paragraph earlier,. It doesn't make much difference though since it had roughly the same muzzle velocity as the other guns in the test he mentioned of Spanish 'Dopplehacken' heavy muskets (20mm caliber down to 12.3mm) from 1571 - 1593 (482 m/s, 533, 456, and 427 ) so I assumed it was just another musket. He also noted that by 100 meters the velocities of all these guns had diminished substantially (to 305,349, 287 and 238 m/s). He noted these heavy muskets (which I assume are about as heavy as a hangun got at this time) managed to penetrate 2mm mild steel at 100 meters, one of the 20mm guns managed to penetrate 4mm mild steel, the 12.3 mm could only penetrate 1mm.

Based on those numbers none of these would be able to penetrate 3mm tempered steel and these are late 16th Century guns of about the largest size that you would still call a gun as opposed to a cannon (actually right on the cusp).

My understanding was that mild steel is equivalent to wrought iron, they seem to be used interchangeably in a lot of tests.

G

[Incanur]

Modern mild steel makes much better armor than period wrought iron, primarily because of slag. Slaggy iron is Alan Williams lowest grade (*) and requires only half the energy of modern mild steel to penetrate. The piece of horse armor tested at Graz was hardened by cold-working to 290 HB and thus probably somewhere in-between Williams's ** and *** grades.

There's no reason whatsoever to take the pistol's performance as indicative of what a musket's would be. The pistol delivered around 900 J, while period muskets delivered way more than that. The heavy muskets tested at Graz both weighed significantly more than 20lbs and thus strikes me probably mounted pieces. While huge, they shot somewhat lighter balls than muskets described in 16th-century texts, with much less powder than described in these texts.

Additionally, we've got very little information about the steel targets they shot each gun against. The authors give penetration depth but nothing else. They don't say what kind of steel it is. Because it's presumably a big thick piece of modern (mild?) steel, penetration depths may not perfectly reflect performance against armor of that thickness. The pistol that pierced the 2.8-3mm cold-worked horse armor only managed 2mm in the steel target at 30m.

The 20mm gun that managed about 7000 J with a 20g charge penetrated the steel target 4mm at 100m. Assuming mild steel, that suggests by Williams's numbers it could defeat 3mm ****. 4mm mild steel by his table requires 3400 J, while 3mm tempered medium-carbon steel requires 2550 J. Given that period muskets used twice the powder or more, it's possible they performed as well or better. I want more tests.

[Galloglaich]

Modern mild steel makes much better armor than period wrought iron, primarily because of slag. Slaggy iron is Alan Williams lowest grade (*) and requires only half the energy of modern mild steel to penetrate. The piece of horse armor tested at Graz was hardened by cold-working to 290 HB and thus probably somewhere in-between Williams's ** and *** grades.

He just calls it "iron munition armor" vs. "low-carbon steel armor of moderate quality" which is definitely the highest you could rate 'mild steel'.



There's no reason whatsoever to take the pistol's performance as indicative of what a musket's would be.

yes there is. I'm surprised you don't see it. Let me reiterate it for you: it was the same caliber ball going at almost the exact same velocity.


they shot somewhat lighter balls than muskets described in 16th-century texts, with much less powder than described in these texts.

You speak authoritatively about "the 16th century texts" as if you have read a sufficiently large sample of extant texts from the 16th Century that address firearms that you can have a definitive opinion on their consensus. I find that highly unlikely.


The pistol that pierced the 2.8-3mm cold-worked horse armor only managed 2mm in the steel target at 30m.

That could very easily be because the 2.8-3mm armor was shot at only 8.5 meters and energy falls of very rapidly from ball ammunition.



The 20mm gun that managed about 7000 J with a 20g charge penetrated the steel target 4mm at 100m. Assuming mild steel, that suggests by Williams's numbers it could defeat 3mm ****. 4mm mild steel by his table requires 3400 J, while 3mm tempered medium-carbon steel requires 2550 J. Given that period muskets used twice the powder or more, it's possible they performed as well or better. I want more tests.

Au contraire mon frere, that is not what Alan Williams concluded. On page 947 (item 5) he notes that Greenwich armor of **** steel needed 3,000 Joules "to be defeated". Which according to all of these tests is more than most of these guns would produce at more than 50 meters or so, and these are much more powerful than the typical arquebus or caliver which made up the vast majority of firearms until the late 17th Century.

**** just means medium carbon steel which would also apply to Augsburg or Innsbruck armor since they were making that in Augsburg in the early 15h Century.

G

[Galloglaich]

If you don't like what the tests say in the book that you brought into the discussion then maybe you need to get some antique firearms, some antique armor, and do some of your own tests to debunk them.

G

[Incanur]

He just calls it "iron munition armor" vs. "low-carbon steel armor of moderate quality" which is definitely the highest you could rate 'mild steel'.

Have you honestly not read the book? Testing with modern mild steel, which is virtually slag free, is the basis for his numbers and the quality coefficients: 0.5 for *, 0.75 for **, 1.1 for ***, and 1.5 for ****. See page 934. He specifies slag content as key for armor performance, and period steel beats period iron partially because of its lower slag content.


I'm surprised you don't see it. Let me reiterate it for you: it was the same caliber ball going at almost the exact same velocity.

16th-century musket balls weighed six times what the tested pistol ball weighed. The Graz tests don't include any other 12.3mm-caliber guns, though it does include a 13.2mm-caliber gun shooting a 12.3mm-diameter ball labeled a musket. I don't know why they label it a musket, as such a gun wouldn't have counted as a musket in the 16th-century Spanish sense. It weighs 2.9kg (6.38lbs) and has a 25.4-inch barrel. It's barely more than a pistol.


You speak authoritatively about "the 16th century texts" as if you have read a sufficiently large sample of extant texts from the 16th Century that address firearms that you can have a definitive opinion on their consensus. I find that highly unlikely.

I've read a bunch the English 16th-century military texts directly as well as various historical treatments. Mainly I main Sir John Smythe, Sir Roger Williams, and Humphrey Barwick. What are the sources that claim wearable armour resisted muskets? I'm not saying there necessarily aren't any out there, but I don't know of them.


Au contraire mon frere, that is not what Alan Williams concluded. On page 947 (item 5) he notes that Greenwich armor of **** steel needed 3,000 Joules "to be defeated".

That's because of the angle, though it should be about 3500 J according to the formula. 2300 for 3mm mild steel at 45 degrees times 1.5 equals 3450. I think he likes the round number. Fair enough, but I don't see how a keeled shape would make a projectile always strike at 45 degrees away from the perpendicular. By my understanding, a shooter at the correct angle to the armor wearer could strike the plate perpendicularly. Then it's just 1700 times 1.5 for 2550 J. Of course, as Williams says, this is all approximate.


**** just means medium carbon steel

It means hardened medium-carbon steel.

[fusilier]

He also makes a good point that most of these tests were made with modern black powder

There were some interesting contrasts in certain tests where they did make powder (using Roger Bacons early formula) and did it both as dry mixed and wet mixed... I have also seem some other tests of 14th-15th Century handgonnes showing actually very superior performance using a 14th Century Liber Ignium gunpowder formula which though it technically is inferior to modern black powder performed much better in that gun (which was an exact replica, made from a cast mold of a 14th Century Bronze Danzig hand-gonne) because the gun barrel was shaped internally in such a way that the older, differently burning powder-formula worked better.

Yeah, most of the early handgonnes had chambered breeches, and I have heard that tests have shown the use of meal powder gives superior results than corned powder in those guns. I think the modern formula of gunpowder had been figured out pretty early, and the recipe is fairly robust to variation.

Here's a website that lists some recipes:
http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~dispater/handgonnes.htm

[Galloglaich]

Have you honestly not read the book?

Yes indeed I have, and more recently quite carefully, I believe I introduced this book to this particular thread about 8 incarnations ago.


16th-century musket balls weighed six times what the tested pistol ball weighed. The Graz tests don't include any other 12.3mm-caliber guns, though it does include a 13.2mm-caliber gun shooting a 12.3mm-diameter ball labeled a musket. I don't know why they label it a musket, as such a gun wouldn't have counted as a musket in the 16th-century Spanish sense. It weighs 2.9kg (6.38lbs) and has a 25.4-inch barrel. It's barely more than a pistol.

Homeboy, your argument is with the Graz test and their record of it, not with me. He listed a musket shooting a 12.3mm ball and a pistol shooting a 12.3mm ball, both at about the same velocity. That is all I said. Whether you think it's unfair that they called that a musket because you like muskets and want them to perform better on tests against armor is your problem, your deal, your issue. Like I said before, if you think their test in b.s. conduct your own.


I've read a bunch the English 16th-century military texts directly as well as various historical treatments.

Yes and what I'm suggesting is that as you often do in other discussions, you are taking one (i.e. a specific group of people within the English 16th Century context) point of view and extrapolating it to cover European warfare more generally. Which is a pretty basic mistake.

I know there are other examples of both opinions and anecdotes about plate armor, for that matter there are numerous authorities, including English authorities, who claim that buff-coats and other comparatively ephemeral textile armors found among various (from their perspective) foreign people could stop bullets at certain distances. We take that with a grain of salt. I could go dig up a bunch of quotes to drive the point home but I really don't care enough about this discussion. It's enough to point out what the sources actually said.



That's because of the angle, though it should be about 3500 J according to the formula. 2300 for 3mm mild steel at 45 degrees times 1.5 equals 3450. I think he likes the round number.

Now you are really fishing for things. Again, if you have a problem with Alan Williams make your own tests. All I was referring to is what Alan Williams said and what was reported in the other tests I listed. You are the one who brought The Knight and the Blast Furnace into the conversation.



Fair enough, but I don't see how a keeled shape would make a projectile always strike at 45 degrees away from the perpendicular. By my understanding, a shooter at the correct angle to the armor wearer could strike the plate perpendicularly. Then it's just 1700 times 1.5 for 2550 J. Of course, as Williams says, this is all approximate.

Actually, if you 'read the book' he also adds joules for textile padding under the armor, for the shape of the armor, etc. Or who knows maybe like you are suggesting here, Alan Williams made a mistake. The fact is though that Williams, the Graz tests and the Royal Armouries tests seem to all support one another to a large extent.


G

[fusilier]

16th-century musket balls weighed six times what the tested pistol ball weighed. The Graz tests don't include any other 12.3mm-caliber guns, though it does include a 13.2mm-caliber gun shooting a 12.3mm-diameter ball labeled a musket. I don't know why they label it a musket, as such a gun wouldn't have counted as a musket in the 16th-century Spanish sense. It weighs 2.9kg (6.38lbs) and has a 25.4-inch barrel. It's barely more than a pistol.

In short, they call everything a musket if it's not obviously a pistol.

If this is a late 16th century weapon, there were these light guns with a two-foot barrel. The Spanish called it something like an "arcabucillo(?)", the Italians called it a "terzaruolo" -- they were popular in places where pistols were illegal. Some of the ones I have seen have telescoping buttstocks.

[fusilier]

A while back I saw a comment that claimed that the muskets of the past were as big as anti-tank guns today. It blew me away to think of the astronomical advances that made guns so much more efficient.

Then it got me thinking about what the biggest weapons a person could carry with them could be. What are the upper limits of anti-material rifles and light machine guns humans could carry and fire without mounting, both by size of the gun and the round fired?

I have one more question piquing my curiosity. The smartguns in Aliens are MG-42 light machine guns supported by a stedicam harness. While it allowed the actors to heft the weapons around, would this be feasible in any real world scenario? I would imagine it would be too bulky to make up for the heavy firepower one soldier could carry...

Well, there were techniques for carrying water cooled machine guns and using them on the move. The MG08/15 was a water cooled "light machine gun" -- I think it weighed around 50 lbs when fully loaded. It was primarily used with the bipod. Sometimes they would unmount the standard water cooled machine gun, and just lay it down on the ground when they wanted to fire it. This was generally do to a lack of light machine guns.

The Austrians and Italians had water cooled mg's that had a back carrying rig. In an emergency the bearer could lie down, and some one else could fire the gun without removing it from the carrying rig.

There are also recoilless rifles -- which are really more like cannons, up to around 90mm can be carried by an infantryman. They are used like a bazooka.

[Incanur]

This argument is a good example of hot blood allows humans to continue fighting despite many wounds, oblivious to or unconcerned by the long-term consequences. :smallsmile:

For the record, I am certainly not claiming 16th-century guns always pierced armor. There is no question whatsoever that the quality harness could stop many types of bullets under various circumstances - especially pistol bullets. Breastplates and other thicker parts were often proof against the pistol.

When talking about muskets as described by period sources, it is essential to use the term as they meant it. A 2ft gun charged with 5g of powder is a very different animal from Sir Roger Williams's musket charged with 40-50g of powder and probably having a 4+ft barrel. Until we have tests of these muskets and other period guns as described, conclusions about their performance strike me as shaky. Also note that Alan Williams does not actually test tempered steel, but extrapolates its performance from other data. We know a lot than we used to thanks to Williams, but more testing would continue to be helpful.

[Galloglaich]

There is absolutely no doubt that the next major experiment will change our perception of all this again. I've seen that happen dozens of time already with the fencing manuals over the last 12 years.

The best we can do is resist the urge to make statements too definitive based on the limited dataset we do currently have. In answering questions, we can present the data available, and opinions are ok too, as long as we make it clear that is all they are-opinions.

G

[Galloglaich]

Sorry, a clarification; by 'real armour' you mean gothic/maximilian plate or equivalent armour with a greater than 1.5-2mm thickness?

Brother Oni, sorry I missed this earlier amidst the little debate. You mis-parsed my sentence, I wasn't very clear.

What I was saying is that no personal body armor, or even most light armored personnel carriers (such as a BMP or M113) is safe against a real armor piercing rifle bullet. Steel core bullets. Armor which will stop a regular bullet seems to fail against a 'real' armor piercing bullet. But for some reason I was never precisely clear on, they don't issue those that much ,maybe because they don't perform as well at range?

There are some real interesting videos on youtube of tests with different kinds of ammunition against both modern steel alloy and ceramic armor plates ... I was going to post some but don't have time to wade through a bunch of them. Worth checking out though some are very interesting.


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[Brother Oni]

Brother Oni, sorry I missed this earlier amidst the little debate.

No worries. The debate was very informative - I believe the energy values quoted are solely for musket balls rather than universal?

I'm inclined to think the former since arrows have different energy values for penetration, so branching out into more exotic weapons would require fresh testing (DEWs for example).



But for some reason I was never precisely clear on, they don't issue those that much ,maybe because they don't perform as well at range?

From Sniper One (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sniper-One-Blistering-British-Battle/dp/0141029013) the given reason is that they're VERY expensive.

Cost may not be an issue for some military forces, but it is for others.

[Fuzzy McCoy]

On the subject of armor, what advances have been made in using non newtonian fluids as modern body armor? If they exist (and a quick google search seems to say they do), why haven't they replaced current body armors? Is it cost? Effectiveness?

[Galloglaich]

No worries. The debate was very informative - I believe the energy values quoted are solely for musket balls rather than universal?

I'm inclined to think the former since arrows have different energy values for penetration, so branching out into more exotic weapons would require fresh testing (DEWs for example).

It's different (much lower) energy requirements for arrowheads or spear or lance-points. Alan Williams tested (simulated and real) arrows, spear points etc. against armor and posted statistics in that same section of his book linked upthread (around pages 920-950)




From Sniper One (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sniper-One-Blistering-British-Battle/dp/0141029013) the given reason is that they're VERY expensive.

Cost may not be an issue for some military forces, but it is for others.

Interesting.

G

[Storm Bringer]

I think another issues are:

a. the bullet causes less disabling wounds (because it keeps together and keeps its KE, it doesn't cause as much harm to the target). I know in the novel version of black hawk down*, a Delta operator, who is using 5.56 AP rounds, notes that his shots seem to lack killing power and several of the people he hits get back up again.

b. their just isn't much of a need, as most of the time your targets are not wearing body armour. I am sure that if in a future war we go up against someone who also issues body armour as standard, then AP rounds will get pushed out a general issue.


*not in any way sure if how accurate the book is on little details like this.

[Mike_G]

I think another issues are:

a. the bullet causes less disabling wounds (because it keeps together and keeps its KE, it doesn't cause as much harm to the target). I know in the novel version of black hawk down*, a Delta operator, who is using 5.56 AP rounds, notes that his shots seem to lack killing power and several of the people he hits get back up again.


*not in any way sure if how accurate the book is on little details like this.

It's accurate that soldiers have reported it. I know people who have verifiably hit somebody with a 5.56 round and watched the target keep on running. Now the guy may die of blood loss or organ failure from the damage down the road, but they may live long enough to shoot back at you, whci is undesirable.

But it's anecdotal evidence. Shooting a guy and watching him not fall over tends to give you a lasting negative opinion of a weapon. Seeing the guy next to you shoot a guy with his different weapon and drop him immediately isn't scientific at all (he could have gotten a lucky hit on a very vital spot, where you could have missed everything important) but "Screw this Mattel toy, give me my M14 back" is an understandable reaction.

There are a ton of variables in injures, but AP rounds do make a small wound channel. The theory is that the round has lots of energy, but doesn't transfer much to the target, maintaining lots of its energy and "wasting" it by penetrating and continuing past, rather than dumping it all into the poor bugger you hit. Soft lead projectiles do deform and fragment and make a messier wound.

Now, we don't have (that I'm aware of) any good studies that prove that a guy hit by a larger round, or a slower or softer round is x% more likely to be immediately incapacitated. The military did some trials in slaughterhouses on cattle back around 1900 when they could do such things, and that helped lead to the adoption of the .45 pistol over the .38, but the tests weren't very rigorously scientific.

I think a lot does come down to cost and supply issues. If it's easier and cheaper to send a lot of standard ammo, unless the enemy has a lot of armor that's a better option than a smaller, more expensive supply of AP ammo.

[Yora]

For an upcomming campaign, I plan to include a large scale battle in which an army of experienced warriors is going to face a horde of undead, knowing that they the undead are coming and confident that they will be able to win the battle.

However, everything I know about battlefield tactics is either based on phalanx combat or modern tank and gun battles, which doesn't really help me much in coming up with a plausible battlefield scenario of an organized army standing up to a chaotic horde.

One case I do know, that might be somewhat fitting, is the major battle the Romans faught against the uprising in Brittain. It seems to be a good example of an outnumbered army completely obliterating an overconfident and disorganized foe.
I think Hannibal also won his three battles in the Italian campaign with similar tactics.

Does it really come down to maintaining a solid shield wall and luring the enemy into a position where they can not move back when pushed? Or are there more factors to keep in mind?

[Berenger]

@Yora: tech-level, preferred fighting style of those warriors, type of undead?

[Brother Oni]

For an upcomming campaign, I plan to include a large scale battle in which an army of experienced warriors is going to face a horde of undead, knowing that they the undead are coming and confident that they will be able to win the battle.

[Snip]

Does it really come down to maintaining a solid shield wall and luring the enemy into a position where they can not move back when pushed? Or are there more factors to keep in mind?

Generally it involved breaking the enemy up into smaller groups that can't support each other then eliminating them in detail. Having your heavy cavalry crash into their rear or flanks is a great way of doing this, as normal opposition will typically rout and even if they don't, the unit is split in two and you can bring more force to bear.

This may be an issue with zombies or other supernatural critters that aren't affected by morale, but these are generally stupid enough to lead into easily prepared ambushes (eg hidden pits with casks of oil and bundles of wood) or too slow to react to sudden events (eg cavalry constantly harassing their flanks with skirmishing attacks).

With the Gauls, the Romans often held up their shield wall long enough for the barbarians to lose their momentum, at which point the more disciplined troops advanced up and crushed them.

[Spiryt]

We have no clear idea how and why exactly Romans and their enemies fought so differently, but we may guess that it was just somehow simple, yet important difference in basic discipline and coordination.

While Roman stood in drilled formation, and particular decanii (?) and centurions knew roughly what their men are doing, and what they should be doing.

While opponents just formed bands of fellows who tried to fight as valiantly as they could in chaos, and mob emotions.

On average, roman soldiers were probably also way better equipped and battle hardened, as well.

[Jeivar]

Okay, I'm going to be a total nerd and post a dual-wielding question.
(I'm guessing it's not the first one posted. Sorry about that. :smallsmile:)

I'm writing a fantasy novel and it occurred to me to give the hero twin kukris.
I'm going to be completely honest here: I want to do this purely for the cool factor, BUT I don't want to go with something that makes no sense. Can a skilled warrior make two big chopping knives work, or is it a totally flawed concept?

[Spiryt]

I'm writing a fantasy novel and it occurred to me to give the hero twin kukris.
I'm going to be completely honest here: I want to do this purely for the cool factor, BUT I don't want to go with something that makes no sense. Can a skilled warrior make two big chopping knives work, or is it a totally flawed concept?

It may not be totally flawed, two short(ish) sticks are important part of all kind of all kind of eskrima Filipino arts.

But if one actually tried to arm himself for any sort of combat, two short, mainly chopping blades would make really little sense...

With two sticks, or other similar weapons those stick can represent(?) I guess, one can try to intercept and redirect enemy attacks to create opening.

With really short, bulky knives it sounds like good idea to loose hand though.

[Jeivar]

It may not be totally flawed, two short(ish) sticks are important part of all kind of all kind of eskrima Filipino arts.

But if one actually tried to arm himself for any sort of combat, two short, mainly chopping blades would make really little sense...

Well, the idea is to have them as backup and situational weapons. She does carry a sword as a main weapon.



With really short, bulky knives it sounds like good idea to loose hand though.

Kukris do vary in size. Some are large machetes.

[Brother Oni]

Kukris do vary in size. Some are large machetes.

The khukri isn't technically a fighting knife though, it's a jack of all trades blade that can can fight, chop down undergrowth, dig a trench, prepare food or open cans with.

The balance of a khukri is sub-optimal for fighting and the reach isn't amazing. As an emergency weapon or against unarmed opponents, it's fine. Against armed fighters, they're at a significant disadvantage.

As Spiryt says, escrima likes using twin sticks which can easily be substituted for two short knives, but I think the khukri is a bit oddly shaped for the style.

[Yora]

Generally it involved breaking the enemy up into smaller groups that can't support each other then eliminating them in detail. Having your heavy cavalry crash into their rear or flanks is a great way of doing this, as normal opposition will typically rout and even if they don't, the unit is split in two and you can bring more force to bear.

This may be an issue with zombies or other supernatural critters that aren't affected by morale, but these are generally stupid enough to lead into easily prepared ambushes (eg hidden pits with casks of oil and bundles of wood) or too slow to react to sudden events (eg cavalry constantly harassing their flanks with skirmishing attacks).

With the Gauls, the Romans often held up their shield wall long enough for the barbarians to lose their momentum, at which point the more disciplined troops advanced up and crushed them.
So it still comes down to discipline and shields being the single most descisive factor?

How do you make the most efficient use of choke points in such a scenario? Meet the enemy at the most narrow point, as in the Termophylae, or position your troupes in a semicircle just outside the chokepoint so you have the maximum number of your people having a go at the enemies coming through in a narrow stream?

[Spiryt]

Well, the idea is to have them as backup and situational weapons. She does carry a sword as a main weapon.



Kukris do vary in size. Some are large machetes.

Well, the problem would be that sword, unless very large two handed, generally wasn't 'main weapon' either.

And large kukris kinda are swords anyway, like you mentioned.

But at the and of the day, size of the kukri won't change much here, it's still awkward to try wave two short blades around against all the dangers, clubs, spears, arrows, shields...

no real reach, authority or control.

Kukri is really short range, for situations that get really 'personal'.

So, carrying two kukris,'for backup' makes perfect sense, it's using them at the same time that kinda doesn't.