Are MUSKETS better than WARBOWS? Reply to Brandon F. 

Shad points out the biggest strength that nobody recognizes with a musket line over a group of archers. When you see a line of muskets fire, what happens on the other side? You see that first, sometimes second, line of troops drop dead and wounded. Think about that from the perspective of the 3rd or 4th lines. You are going to die if they fire again if you don’t move. And the further back in the lines you get, the more of this effect happens. Now, look at when a troop is getting shot with arrows. It’s still dangerous, don’t get me wrong, but it’s more random. Plenty of people still get hit, heck maybe even the same amount of people as the musket line in rare occasions, but it’s not the solid line of people directly in front of you getting hit and going down. That difference matters. It’s why, as guns became more and more advanced, the idea of troop deployment changed more and more into something unrecognizable to what it was before. Because people wanted less and less to be standing in the way of the shot. Which, I think we can all agree, is a fair opinion to have.

Oh wow! This is incredibly surreal for me to see. Shad, you were one of my main inspirations to start RU-vid in the first place! This is kind of making my own online presence hit home for me in a way it has never before. And I must say, I'm relieved to hear that you don't utterly disagree and hate my guts in the first minute of the video, which was what I immediately became paranoid about when I saw that title! I don't often have time to watch 40 minute plus videos these days (kind of ironic given how longwinded I am) but I am definitely taking the time for this one! I just had to have my fangirl moment and to say 'thanks' before watching. Off I go!

An argument I haven't seen yet is, that it's not only harder to train a proper bowman, but you also need to KEEP him trained. You can send a musketeer to a farm for harvesting season and he'd still shoot fairly accurate when he returns, but a bowman has to re-train his muscles for combat readiness. It's hard to believe, that he would put 2h of bow training in, after 8h of field work.

My favorite thing about this community is how polite y’all are to each other, it goes a long way to promoting professional and personable discourse.

Me: *about to skip the advert section* Shad: Let me advertise this by being a wholesome dad. Me, gritting my teeth: ...hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm DAMN YOU SHAD! *watches it*

As some mentions, it all comes down to training. After the Battle of Patay, it took the English years to retrain a sizable longbow force. If it have been a musket force of the same size, it could have taken months only or even weeks though at cost of being undertrained.

29:39 Fun fact: I'm actually "The guy" who was in the clip firing the bow and then shouldering it. I also edited the video. With the model of bow I had shouldering it is fairly easy so I guess I just got used to it and didn't really think if it was historical or not. One thing after another drove it from me mind as the saying goes. Kinda funny to hear Shad talk about me in a video.

"Can carry less arrows than the average musketeer"... thats debatable, but why is the musketeer carrying arrows to start?

7:25 Ammunition price! When you compare the amount of work the fletcher needs to produce a single arrow with the amount of work required for production of a lead ball and a bit of black powder, you can clearly see why the price of the ammunition was very different.

Of all the things I've learned and admired about Shad I think the fact that he got his kids to eat veggies just might be the most impressive. Well done sir.

The damage of a musketball is not only made by its large diameter ist is also done by its shape. An Arrowhead is rather sharp and edgy, so it will cut its way into the victims body while the musquet ball will simply smash it's way through the tissue and will do incredible damage while ripping it apart. It is like cutting someones heart out with a spoon.

An additional element to Shad's discussion of the psychological effect of musket volleys is the noise. A volley of bows is relatively silent compared to the sudden roar of a gun volley. When paired with the casualties Shad describes, this is a massive psychological blow. As David Grossman points out in On Combat, BANG beats Thwip any day of the week.

What I like about these "reply" videos is that Shad clearly and openly admits where his area of expertise is AND acknowledges the reality of history. If firearms weren't better, armies wouldn't have used them. Yes the very early firearms weren't great but once you get to flintlock muskets/pistols (with bayonets) and later advances in rifling, trigger mechanisms, etc...Then it was a no brainer to have the majority of your troops armed with firearms (even some of your cavalry). It was relatively easy to train a soldier how to use them, the effect of morale was devastating and most importantly I think, they basically negated most armour. Armour by the late medieval period had got to a level where arrows and bolts were becoming far less effective at penetrating them, to the point where many soldiers stopped using shields because they knew their armour would be able to protect from 99% of any incoming ranged damage.

"Shadlings" sounds like an invading horde of goblin-like creatures ... oh, wait!

Shad: "the one to two shots you can get in them off from a musket in one or two minutes..." Sir Henry Simmerson : What makes a good soldier, Sharpe? Richard Sharpe : The ability to fire three rounds a minute. In any weather, sir!

The weirdest thing is that at the very moment that muskets replace longbows, the military writers of the 16th-early 17th century specifically don't mention at all is training being easier for musketeers. They do contrastingly mention repeatedly the vital importance of training for musketeers. Which makes a lot of sense when considering large groups of matchlock armed troops in close order.

Kinda unrelated, but Shad's Hello Fresh ads never fails to put a smile on my face

Interesting that the Total War games hit the nail on the head with their unit morale system. A unit in a prolonged melee will keep fighting as their numbers dwindle below 30%, but if the same unit is damaged to 50% health in a very short time period, they suffer a massive morale penalty and likely break. To an extent in other PVP games, burst damage is always preferable to sustained DPS because it allows less time for the opponent to react to what is happening to them.

Nice timing. Just finished the hidden blade video

"With arrows, you can re-shoot them" He says, displaying the one arrow that can't be re-shot.

I also posted this on Brandon's video, I figured I'll repost it here as well. A forum that I frequent used to discuss this subject quite often, with the occasional proponent of the bow popping up. One poster -- a veteran of the Canadian Army and an amateur military historian -- discussed the subject of bows vs. early firearms in a fairly in-depth and intriguing manner. I'll post his words here for those who are interested: "In any event in the late 16th century all these points of this thread were specifically brought up in England during the firearms debate. In 1590 Sir John Smythe, a proponent of the bow, published a book arguing for archery, stating the bow had a rate of fire four times greater, was more reliable (matchlocks of the time were hideously finicky) and that that although the bow might be weaker, it was more effective at terrifying the enemy with flights of arrows and wounded soldiers. In 1594 Captain Humphrey Barwick responded, stating that rate of fire on the battlefield was not as important as Smythe thought. Against charging cavalry neither archers nor muskets would get many shots, and against infantry both would have multiple chances to fire. And then the far greater lethality of the musket would be telling - Barwick considered Smythe's argument about the "terror" of the bow nonsense. Barwick also pointed out that while the musket was less reliable, it demanded little of the firer. The bow however required the archer to be in top physical condition for best performance. Given the condition of soldiers on military campaigns in the 16th century, Barwick pointed out that it was better to rely on the weapon than on the health of the soldier. Barwick finished by pointing out that muskets were the way of the future with many opportunities for improving the weapon, training and tactics - bows had peaked, but muskets were only going to get better. Barwick and his fellows won the debate, and the English abandoned archery, with the musket and pike ruling the battlefields of the English Civil War half a century later. The argument for the Natives converting from bows to muskets comes to us from the Europeans rather than the Natives themselves. The Europeans (who acknowledged the limitations of their weapons and still held a sort of romantic fascination for the bow) wondered why the Natives were so quick to adopt muskets when they were skilled archers, and muskets were loud, noisy, slow firing, harder to acquire ammunition for, and somewhat incompatible with their traditional "skulking." They felt it largely came down to a matter of firepower. An arrow could be deflected by leaves, scrub and bush, and could even be dodged by an alert warrior. In the skirmish warfare of the North American bush, being able to fire repeatedly didn't mean a great deal if your opponent had already sought cover - you had your best chance to kill with the first shot. And a musket would go right through the foliage, and would ensure a nasty wound on impact. Although a bow could be fired faster, a good musket shot or salvo would deliver a much more devastating blow. For warriors skilled in bounding overwatch (which they called fighting "blackbird fashion") and fire and maneuver (Native tactics more closely resembled those of modern infantry than the Europeans, and calling them merely 'hit-and-run' is simplistic) that ability to make the attack count was crucial, and provided a key military advantage that all the benefits of the bow could not overcome. On brief reflection, I see some parallels with what we saw in Afghanistan from the Taliban. The RPG-7 is less accurate, harder to carry and conceal, with less ammo and a lower rate of fire than the AK-47, and with old PG-7 warheads it's not even all that effective against even our lightest armoured vehicles - but what it has is much higher lethality against infantry. The rate of fire of the AK-47 gives it a higher potential kill rate, but in practice (save in the hands of a handful of marksmen) all it did was make lots of noise: once a firefight began, everyone sought cover and all that rapid fire just kicked up dust. After the opening shots, almost no one ever died to direct fire. Casualties were almost always suffered in the opening salvos, and there the RPG had a massive advantage. So the Europeans and Natives fought very differently in their wars, but both found reasons to consider the musket (and we're talking the deeply flawed matchlocks here too) superior." ------------ Not directly related to the subject of flintlock vs. English longbow, but I figure it's still tangentially relevant. If the comparatively crude arquebus still managed to dethrone the bow at a time when the latter had tons of institutional & cultural inertia behind it in both England and North American indigenous tribes... that says a lot about the premise of "those guys were so silly, they should have raised a corps of longbowmen out of thin air for Wellington!" (even putting aside the fact that that supposed request is almost certainly apocryphal).

It's rare to see someone with the humility to defend an argument that acknowledges the fault in something they love. That's why we love you Shad!

I think the argument about a single barrage of fire causing massive damage being superior to a more spread out constant rain of fire holds true in 20th century warfare too. It never really happened, but consider if in say the Korean war, instead of a constant artillery barrage on an enemy position, they used a single, small yield atomic bomb. If you're getting shelled, you think there's a chance they'll all miss you. If you see one of your positions disappear behind a 0.8kT mushroom cloud, you maybe think about going home now. Obviously there's logistical reasons why you don't want to use atomic weapons in a land war, but my point remains.

"I'm a medievalist so I like the bow more" But Shad, guns were a huge part of late medieval warfare as you yourself pointed out. Even at the battle of Agincourt and what the movie the King failed to show us King Henry had with him something like 7 cannons on campaign. So you can be a gun nut in the medieval age just fine. There's also the Hussite wars where guns started to take center stage as the the great equalizers they are.

Your point about the psychological impact of taking fire from a musket is I believe 100 percent on the nose. I think people vastly underestimate just how scary being shot at by that weapon is. (Which isn't very surprising when you think about it) that also makes it amazing that at one point standing your ground in the face of that was something people did in the 18th century, brave chaps. Edit: given the discussion in the replies I figure this video would be really helpful on explaining musket/napoleonic style warefare. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cl7ElFROgts.html

We need a collab between Brandon, Skallagrim, Metatron, Shad, and all reenactment channels, in all-out historical speedrun, similar to Operation Odysseus Like on the terms of Weaponry, Armour, Culture, Traditions, etc. would be pretty cool if they can pull it off!

The way Shad does replies to other people's content is great because even if he completely 100% agrees or disagrees with what a person is saying, he'll take the time to explain a bit about the other person and what they do, and if he disagrees, he'll make it as clear as humanly possible that he doesn't hate the person for their opinion, and that he doesn't want any of his subscribers attacking the person. Kudos to you.

Another point about ambushes: While you might hear the relative position of the musketeer once they've fired, the bowman's position is revealed, too, as there is an arrow pointing in their direction.

So Shad, on one of the points you made in the video: Are you saying that a long bow is a good type of bow... because it's essential just a curve STICK!!!!!

From my (admittedly layman's) understanding, muskets (and firearms in general) won out simply because they had more room to improve. Bows and archery has been around for thousands of years and by that point they'd pretty much been refined and improved as much as they could. There wasn't really much more that could be done with them. Firearms were a big new innovative technology though. Considering that even in their earliest stages they could hold their own alongside bows, as the technology improved they just kept pulling ahead even further up to today where they've evolved into the modern rifles used in the military. Bows just could keep up. Just compare modern military rifles against the most advanced bows used in sports and hunting with all the counter-weights and pulleys to improve accuracy and power. Bows are ultimately limited on the power they derive from their operator while the firearm only needs accuracy. (This is why I advocate in rpg's like D&D that bows should be strength-based weapons and crossbows/firearms should be dexterity-based)

Now we need Lindybeige to respond to this video to talk about the superiority of slings.

"What makes a good soldier, Sharpe?” “The ability to fire three rounds a minute. In any weather sir.”

I think it’s fair to say that at the end of the day, weapons are force multipliers and gunpowder is great at multiplying force. Much greater than what is possible with just steel, wood or straight up bare handed. I love bows but muskets absolutely out perform in the aspects that really matter.

The fact that his children are referred to as “Shadlings” is adorable

A terminology note: a bunch of firearms firing simultaneously is a "fusillade".

The biggest thing that is missed in these conversations is the fact that smoothbore muskets were not as inaccurate as pop culture says they are. At reasonable range, a soldier armed with a musket could hit their enemy. Also, you cannot dodge a musket ball. You most certainly can dodge an arrow shot from anything but point blank range.

the sponsor part was super wholesome, not gonna lie.

I always love how throughout the years even in shads more bolder days he’s always been respectful and courteous in his opinions and statements. Much love

The japanese civil war of mid 19th century illustrate it perfectly. You see people using old version of guns, bows, sword and armor vs modern armies. In close combat modern armies are struggling against "traditionnal" weapons but the fire power at range is so devastating everyone quickly adopted it.

Also a point for lethality for muskets is that the bullets will deform, tumble, and fragment inside the body. Leaving more complex and larger wounds.

I love how polite Shad is to Brandon in this. Not that they were necessarily disagreeing, of course, but at every turn Shad is complimentary to Brandon and speaks highly of him and his knowledge set. Well done, Shad! Edit: Also, I use Hello Fresh, and I can say it is quite good. A bit pricey, and if you're not a very good cook (I'm certainly not), it can be a bit daunting at first, but 4-5 meals in I had a much better idea about what I'm doing, and the cards that have the instructions also have the ingredients and their proportions. So you can hang on to them, and buy the ingredients on your own if you wind up discontinuing the service. The only meal I've had so far that was "meh" was one that was essentially cheeseburgers, and anybody can pull those off.

The main advantage of Musket over bow is it took months of training to become accurate at range and years of training with medieval bows to condition yourself to be able to fire arrow after arrow without reaching exhaustion, meanwhile you can take some serf from a field, and give him an afternoon with a musket and her has a pretty good chance of laying low a knight in armor. It's a staggering force multiplier.

The earliest bayonets actually plugged the barrel, the bayonet we think of now though could affect the loading process more than sight or shooting which is why it would need to be affixed. It would become more regular, though not fully adopted, to keep the rifle bayonet affixed once muzzle loading was phased out.

Wonderful content all around, as always. As a museum educator I've had some correspondence with Brandon in the past, and his knowledge is highly appreciable. I've of course been a fan of yours as well, Shad, for ages. Glad to see respectful discourse between these two creators! One thing that I thought I'd briefly touch upon if I may, Shad, was your statements around the 24 minute mark regarding battlefield fatigue. While I certainly concur that a trained archer would be acclimated to the physical demands of operating a war bow, I am not as convinced that if a significantly less encumbering - even if less effective - option was made available to them, that they would not be tempted by it. Looking to more documented eras of combat logistics has shown that soldiers on the ground often prioritize convenience of use over sheer combat effectiveness. The renowned Bren gun of the WWII Allied campaigns comes to mind as a great example. I'm sure someone with a fuller knowledge of World War firearms could elaborate further, but to my understanding the Bren gun was initially developed as a sort of intermediary between the small arms carried by a rifleman and the larger stationary machine guns (sometimes referred to as "heavy machine guns") used in the previous World War, not as a replacement for the heavy machine gun - conceptually the Bren would have allowed for the sustained automatic fire of a stationary machine gun on a more mobile, shoulder-mountable and lower caliber firearm. Though sources I've browsed seem to suggest this was rarely how the Bren was actually used. More often than not, it seems the Bren was used in a similar capacity to a stationary machine gun, i.e. fired from a prone position utilizing a bipod, and soon became a preferred sort of general purpose machine gun despite being less suited to that sort of usage because of its lighter caliber, limited magazine capacity, and lack of barrel cooling (which meant that it could only be fired in shorter bursts than say, a water-cooled .50cal gun). In the eyes of the soldiers, however, this didn't make the Bren worse than previous machine guns; rather, it seems it was quite beloved for its lighter weight and its use of the smaller .303cal round which was shared with their rifles (ammunition they were already carrying). So, although in terms of lethality the Bren is theoretically lesser than a larger gun, in practice its lower physical demands upon machine gunners made the Bren a preferable alternative to stationary guns. So to your point, I suspect that a similar phenomenon could occur in any period of warfare in which a standard weapon system, be it longbow, musket, or otherwise, was fielded alongside a less fatiguing alternative, because ultimately it seems the average soldier is rightly more interested in preserving their energy on campaign than they are in inflicting casualties - and officers are inclined to recognize this in order to keep their troops operating with greater morale and physical vigor.

The ability to re-shoot arrows that you have scavenged is less important than one of the most overlooked advantages muskets have: arrows are much heavier than powder and shot. A musketeer can carry four times as many shots as an archer for the same weight.

A huge point many people forget that you can train a professional archer in a couple of months, years to master it. You can train a musketeers in a couple of hours. So for every dozen archers you field the musket army is fielding hundreds

Good points Shad, though a few corrections on why muskets (firearms in general) are more lethal than bows. Bullets don't need to be removed from wounds for the wound to heal up, even today they often leave the bullet in the wound as finding it can cause more damage then it prevents. Bullets curve through the body, often burying its self far from the main wound cavity where it acts as a plug where it is. The wound cavity left by the bullet is more dangerous than the remaining bullet. Bullets rip cavities into the body that resemble the shape of a gourd or squash, leaving a wound that will continue to bleed if only the opening is stitched up. The cavity left by the bullet needs to be closed and every damaged artery or organ pieced back together. In contrast arrows pierce a straight hole into the body, so when the arrow is removed, the wound can simply be cleaned and sutured. So because of the differences in wound type, arrows only damage what they pierce while bullets damage the areas around where they pierce. Also bullets often fragment themselves or shatter bones creating wounds branching off of the main cavity.

The sponsorship part is the most wholesome thing I have ever seen

Depending on the time period, you wouldn't even be able to fire your musket after fixing bayonets. Initially, bayonets were plug bayonets which were fixed to the musket by plugging the bayonet into the barrel of the gun making it impossible to fire (at least not without damaging the musket, bayonet, or both).

I believe that the musket being superior has more to do with training time then any other factor. You can train a man to march and reload a musket in a couple of weeks but it takes years to train a man to be able to use a heavy war bow and maintain the fitness required.

Shad looks more like a king when he's next to his kids. Someone make this man a custom crown please. And above his throne is the channel logo, that could also work as an actual family crest with a real sword and shield.

Shad, I'm surprised you didn't talk about how much the prominent use of SHIELDS on the battlefield impacted the matchup of warbows vs Muskets ^^

Actually the muskets are VERY well balanced. Mostly because you have a literal tube of steel running the whole length of the musket. If you held a medieval spear with the butt end planted in your shoulder as you would a musket it would also feel rather awkward. One thing you miss comparing medieval spears and muskets is the fact that the muskets were often quite a bit heavier. There are formations of men that very much preferred to keep their bayonets off until close combat couldn't be avoided, light infantry troops that Brandon mentions for example. However, other line formations of infantry were specifically trained and intended to fight with their bayonets attached at all times. The biggest factor when comparing medieval troops to 18th and early 19th century infantry is the training. If you only have to spend 3-4 weeks on firing drills, you can train your troops to much higher degrees of discipline when it comes to holding and moving in various formations. This makes very high attrition formations such as the Swedish Caroleans suddenly extremely effective and viable compared to other forms of infantry (especially if you give them a couple shots of gin before a battle). Really though, the ability to churn out such massive formations of generalist infantry in rapid time is the real reason bows died out. A combined formation of pikemen, bowmen, and cavalry could be replaced by a force of uniform infantry and a cavalry formation and achieve results at any range in a battle while reducing the unit complexity drastically and simultaneously increasing the types of formation maneuvers you could perform reliably. Assuming of course you actually gave your infantry equivalent time training as you did your medieval infantry units, which is a problem that many units and armies throughout time have had. Oh, we're gonna ignore artillery for now though. The evolution of field artillery is kind of complicated and greatly effects the uses and deployments of infantry and cavalry throughout the 18th and early 19th century. On an interesting note, Tsarist Russia retained the idea of bayonets being fixed at all times all the way up through to the first world war, which is why most Mosin Nagant rifles are considered to be inaccurate; the sights were calibrated from the factory assuming the troops would be shooting with their bayonets fixed.

The longbow being superior to 'late 19th century musketry' really makes me giggle. I know it was a mis-speaking and you meant late 18th century, but the idea of someone seriously arguing that a longbow is better than a smokeless powder bolt-action rifle is just too funny! 🤣 🤣 🤣

Accuracy maybe not..... but volume of fire and anti armor power yes.

Awe man it's nice seeing your growing army, you must be a hell of a happy dude.

Shad always mentions his kids, But damn, His wife is a MVP having that many kids. Like damn, Thats alot

There’s also 2 additional factors. 1. Trajectory, bullets tend to be fired along flatter trajectories at competitively longer ranges, so more chances to hit someone in an enemy formation. 2. Cover, a pavise may protect against an arrow/bolt but nowhere near as much against a musket shot.

One advantage of muskets is that wounds were much harder to treat. Amputation was often all that could be done after a musket ball had pulverized the bone in an arm or leg. Arrow wounds were more treatable with the medicine at the time.

Spoiler: Yes. Otherwise armies wouldn't have stopped using the bow.

35:30 Total war: Warhammer 2, Thing here... the dwarves are a very great example of this. Even their ranged units are often equipped unusually well for melee as well as already being great ranged units (Being one of the few I've played with that does this, I've only played a handful though). Unusually being equipped with a *shield* as well as their melee and ranged weapon. Though not as armored they still do have some, unlike the usual archers having little to no armor. As well as normal dwarven infantry being some seriously hard nuts to crack with some insane defense.

It took years to train a longbowman it took a couple of months to train a musketeer

Mad Jack Churchill would disagree about the superiority of firearms to a longbow , but then again, he was mad

Also, in addition to the damage caused by a musket volley, the sound and smoke of a volley from massed muskets must have been absolutely terrifying...

The earliest musket bayonets were plugged into the barrel and couldn't be used while shooting since they literally blocked the barrel.

I think everyone is forgetting the true advantage of archery: Fire-arrows! (I’m kidding. I’m kidding! I watch Lindybeige too, you know.)

This was a pretty interesting video, thanks for putting it together. I never really thought about why muskets overtook bows as the main ranged weapon on European battlefields, I just took it for granted that they did. The open communication just added a lot of context to the transition.

Something worth pointing out in favour of longbows over muskets while on campaign is that of *_safety during transport_* . Bows and arrows are generally quite safe to handle and transport; unless the person is being a complete idiot. In contrast, black powder is easily combustible; meaning they have to be handled and transported with care. Also, in terms of logistics, maintaining arrows is much easier to do whilst on the road; with accompanying fletchers likely able to mend damaged arrows in order to be usable again; especially if the arrowhead itself is not too damaged (and that assumes there aren't any blacksmiths on hand, which there would be). In contrast, once the supply of black powder is used up, it is not easily replenished.

-Samurai: NOOO you cant train pesants to use a fire stick to kill a samurai who trained his whole life to master the sword and martial arts!!! -Musketeer peasant: haha musket goes BRBRBRBRBRBRBRB Yes, I stole that

"This truth remains accurate, consistent throughout." "War... war never changes...." Ok now that I got that out of the way, never forget that in a world of automatic weapons special forces are still using bows. Yes guns are vastly more effective, but bows still have their place.

Shad, I think the word you were looking for was "Salvo". One thing I would say in the war bow's favor, though I am not saying this changes the result, is that the upkeep for a war bow was significantly less than that of a musket. War bows can be used in almost any environment or weather, and shot as many times as you like, and all you really have to worry about is keeping the string waxed and making sure it is not frayed. The bow itself could last without very much care for a whole war, and if a bow cracked, warped, broke, or if the string snapped, it was fairly simple to get a new one. I believe many armies traveled with extra bows and strings in their supplies for this very purpose. The musket on the other hand, and in this case I am referring to the same kind Shad is, those used in the time of the Napoleonic wars, needed constant care. They needed to be cleaned out very often. Even firing a single shot meant that the user would have to clean it out to prevent jamming or rust. Black powder was not forgiving to the negligent soldier. They could also get clogged by mud, dirt, dust, and other waste collected on the march or in battle. If a musket misfired or blew up because the mechanism failed or something blocked the barrel, there was the distinct possibility that it would badly injure either the user or those around him, as well as destroying the gun. Replacing a musket was not so easy, though by Napoleon's time it wasn't the making of the musket itself that was the problem. By that time it was fairly quick, though still far more complicated than making a bow. It was more the cost of making one that made it inconvenient. Moving metal parts always cost a lot, and the more you have, the more it costs to make. While the musket is a very simple design compared to today's standards, it still cost a good bit of money to make the small parts that were its trigger mechanism. Thus, by comparison, I would argue that the war bow was far easier to keep in good condition or to replace than the musket. Again, this does not change the overall result. I just thought it was something worthy of note in this discussion. Now, I am no expert. What I have stated is merely my understanding of the use of war bows and muskets in warfare, as far as it goes. If I have stated something incorrect, or failed to include a vital fact, please tell me, so that I may learn more about this interesting part of history. Stay Awesome!

And officers didn’t choose to use swords and single shot pistols, they often had two or even more single shot, or double barreled pistols and a sword. Those were an officers weapons. As their job is to command men and the local battlefield, coordinate with other officers to win a battle. Not fight, not offensively. Those weapons are defensive in nature, as they are side arms. That was the role of them, to let him protect himself in close combat as he controlled his unit. They are also a symbol of who’s in charge. Officers still had swords all the way up to WWI, that they used, along with pistols as their weapons, and about a year or so into the war, was the normal thing.

Really loved the intro..... so cute and wholesome getting da fam in on things with the kids. Really is nice seeing a family man with their kids just having a fun time while also working. GGs

Reading the title without watching the video: Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yes because almost everyone can achieve decent accuracy and handling in a short manner of time and on top of that even the earlier ball type ammunition renders armour instantly obsolete.

Awesome video! I need to watch more of your content but I almost got teary eyed during the ad. I remembered you talking about your kids with Carl and that convo really stuck with me. Keep up the great work my man!

Hi Shad! Love your work. History teacher here. Whilst there is a lot of variance from weapon to weapon, a good heuristic is that musket balls from a smooth-bore musket in good condition will veer off about 4cm every 10m of distance, if the shooter is sandbag-vice perfect. Using this, you can reasonably estimate that a good shooter will hit a man-sized target at 50m almost every time, and will also have a reasonable chance at 100m. How does this compare with the longbow?

The fatigue argument should just be rolled into the training argument. It takes a long time to train an Archer. Part of that is building the muscle and stamina, so.

both videos are excellent. Shade points out one interesting thing about supplying the bowmen on the front line, saying that they got a sheaf of arrows numbering about 20-40 arrows. That's the exact same number of rounds that could be carried in most common cartridge boxes/pouches in the 18th century by the fusilier.

We love these types of Shadiversity Videos!! We actually use them in our homeschool curriculum

"a scared guy with a bow going thwak thwak has no better chance than an equally scared guy with a musket going BANG BANG" -Simon Whistler

Re: accuracy I don't know how much this applied to bowmen, but for musketry, one of the early Kings in Prussia experimented with volleyed musket fire vs company-sized cloth sheets. He found that musket fire was accurate enough it should be inflicting as much as 20 times the casualties actually found in battle. The discrepancy is that actual musketmen would often deliberately (if perhaps subconsciously) fire high rather than shoot to kill. The idea runs something like "As long as I'm loading and firing in time with my buddies, no-one knows that I'm not killing. If I participate in making enough scary noise and smoke, maybe the bad men will just go away." Artillery winds up being an outsized killer because of the enhanced range. It may not be mechanically accurate at long range, but if the target is just "dots on the horizon" that's easier to actually aim at mentally than humans. If you are using mortars or howitzers with explosive shells and indirect fire, this effect grows even more pronounced. "I'm not killing anyone. I can't even see the enemy. My job is just to cut the fuses to the lengths called out by the spotter / My job is just to swab the bore between shots / my job is just to set the angle as ordered my job is just to..." Trying to land hits in difficult circumstances will land more hits than trying _not_ to land hits in easy circumstances. And the King in Prussia found that that is exactly what the majority of musketmen were doing in battle.

“A Longbow in the hands of a master archer is a great asset to his allies, and a Musket in the hands of a simpleton is a great asset to the foes of his regiment.” - My great Grandfather

Everyone knows that it doesn't matter what weapons you have, as long as you stack enough discipline and morale modifiers!

The large rectangular cooking surface was really interesting to me during your Hello Fresh portion of your video. This topic is very interesting to me and it makes me wonder how battles would have played out in more modern times if the bow was still the dominant choice. Imagine the Napoleon conflict, or the American Revolution using archery as the main weapon? Also, I think about the conflicts in the USA vs the Native Americans, and the Russians vs the Mongols, and wonder how the lower poundages of those types of bows worked in favor of the bowmen vs the armies using firearms in certain conflicts.

one thing that both you and Brandon missed is that the bow actually faced the musket in combat. During the napoleonic wars the french faced troops from all over Russia and some of them came from eastern Russia specifically Mongolia. At first the french laughed at them but soon they realized that the nomads with their compound bows could shoot faster, more accurately and compared to the french light cavalry pistols farther. And since the french did not wear armor (except heavy cavalry) penetration was mostly not a problem.

So on your point about logistics, there are contemporary sources from the Tudor period complaining about how hard it is to supply arrows on the continent. However, there are also reports of Wellington in the Nepolionic period wanting to field bows against since most armor had been done away with by that point and they could easily take down the tightly packed musket formations with concentrated arrow fire. However as far as I know there are no records definitively saying Wellington said this, it is just an oft called upon thing that people claim he said so it could go either way. But yes you are absolutely right on the training issue, proper Engish longbowmen for instance warped their skeletons from practice, you can see the damage in their bones on their draw arms. Longbows are also not really easy or cheap to make, at least not good ones, the Yew tree was nearly driven to extinction in some areas for the production of longbows and a single period longbow would take years to construct, well the musket might be more complex mechanically the actual time to create it is significantly shorter.

Seeing shad being a dad just makes me so happy for some reason

this is why i love Shad and Brandon so much as a history nerd to get this high level of education i am so blessed love to you guys from a random S.Korean

I would add to Shad's comments regarding the importance of morale (see: "shock effect") by pointing to Brandon's video a few months ago on the effect of grapeshot against a formation. Musket volleys had a similar, if less pronounced, effect. If you could break the enemy's formation, you could chase them down and rout or slaughter them with far less danger to your own troops, and firing en masse was both an effective means of stabilizing your own unit's morale as well as impacting your opponents' morale. I would also like to recommend a book to both Shad and Brandon (and to everyone else, as well): "The Art of War in the Western World" by Archer Jones. It covers everything from the classical Greeks to the 1980s, and focuses not just on tactics, but heavily upon logistics, the operational arts, and even economics and culture as decisive factors in warfare throughout history. It also has some of the best depiction that I've seen of the rock-paper-scissors-like relationship between the different combat branches over the centuries and the nuances that are almost never covered in fiction or games.

From my understanding on musket accuracy, it varied widely based on the ability of the soldier, the quality of the gun (as most were hand crafted), and even the kind of shot. Specifically, muskets fired much more accurately when the musket ball closely fitted the barrel. However, such shots weren't always used because of how long it took to load them (you really had to hammer them in) so soldiers would more often use a looser shot which was easier to load, but rattled around in the barrel causing reduced accuracy.

liking the responding to more obscure historical things(tm) channels trend you have been doing lately finding good youtubers this way

Now we have a question for Metatron, did the Romans standardized their bows draw weight?

during the main time when bows vs muskets happened 2 significant things had yet to be invented. 1. rifling to spin the musketball for increased accuracy. without it hitting the broadside of a barn becomes hard. 2. smokeless gunpowder, meaning the battlefield is smoked out after the 1st volley pretty much forcing a charge. these 2 factor significantly impact the bows vs musket debate.

Having watched the two videos, I think the more interesting question is: "At what point did muskets become better than longbows?" I imagine a number of people holding the view that bows are the superior weapon are probably thinking of earlier muskets with a matchlock or a plug bayonet. Obviously by the late 18th century no one was using bows anymore, at least not on a large scale.

I think it needs to be said that arming swords( and later sabers ) were still in use up until the 1850's so if you didn't have a bayonet, you could drop the musket and draw your sword just as quickly.

Shad, you mentioned you can't fire a bow laying down but what if you laid on your side? Know it's extremely unpractical but surely it's worth trying to see just how hard it is ? FOR SCIENCE!

The first three minutes of this video applies to so many weapons Shad has bashed, like nunchuks. "What did armies use?" is a great way to determine the efficacy of weapons. The fact that bayonets could be attached to muskets and rifles mostly put an end to swords in combat. They stuck around with officers, more for tradition and recognition for some time.

Another factor I loved in Brandon's videos is he covered how accurate muskets can be, vs what is believed! Even if most shots miss, the ones that hit wither your enemy down! Say you start at 1,000, one volley you lost 50 or 100, next volley you lose slightly more! Closer you get the more casualties gained. Given the range of a bow, even at their best average, that musket can consistently shoot greater distance than a bow! Playing into that shock and awe effect mentioned if the two forces clashed, those bullets hit like hammers and hit fast! That and maybe already told you, most of the time armies went into battle bayonets already on! For a decent time in the American army, the bayonet was at one point, WELDED ON! That was changed sometime later. As for the wieldy quality of a musket with bayonet, they are actually VERY easy to use, more handy than you think, there is a great video I found covering later mid-1800s Canadian troops, armed with yes, breechloading single-shot rifles, the effectiveness of bayonets is sharply displayed! Video in question: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-p9Gq8vUGIUI.html

I do think that the one thing that's been missed with Shad saying that a Musket is more of a short spear is that due to lack of specialty in the field of muskets is their length and the length of bayonets. Most with the exception of cavalry carbines easily reach the length of a spear, granted that it's an unbalanced spear, but it's a spear nonetheless that can potentially be fired just before the whole infantry charges the enemy which can cause a massive psychological to the enemu

1:56 Just a correction here, Shad. The muskets of the late 18th - early 19th century weren't rifles. Sure there were some rifles, like for example the Jager rifle, but most muskets were smoothbore and didn't have rifling. So no, those were not rifles.