Depending on the opponent. 18th century Austrian armies fighting most European opponents practiced standard volley-fire. But when fighting the Ottomans they apparently frequently abandoned that tactic in favor of free-firing, each soldier loading and firing as fast as they could.
The reason being that unlike the tightly drilled European armies that would stand in place and hammer each other at short range, the far more poorly disciplined ( but generally high morale, with a strong cultural and institutional emphasis on individual bravery ) Ottoman troops would often take the opportunity of any gap in fire to charge the lines. As a) the common Austrian soldier seems to have had an almost atavistic dread of their Ottoman counterparts and b) on the battlefield the undisciplined Ottoman soldiery were actually more dangerous in close combat where weight of numbers and personal ferocity could be brought more effectively to bear, it was thought better to do what it took to try to keep them at range as much as possible.
As you describe it, it means the Austrians (or Europe in general) had to adapt their tactics to “answer” the enemy (the Ottomans) tactics. Volley fire doesn’t work if the line breaks. In that case, repeaters would make a big difference. A repeater allows a person to keep firing on the move. The shooter doesn’t have to reload after each shot while in close quarters (at which point an arrow or a sword becomes the superior weapon).
Another thing that I’m not sure has been mentioned is that it’s difficult to put a big knife on the end of a bow and turn it into an ersatz pike. This was obviously more important for infantry men than it was for horse mounted troops, but I’d say the advent of the bayonet pretty much sealed the deal.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the rifled musket completed
the obsolescence of cavalry begun during Napoleon’s era. It took well-disciplined troops to hold square during a cavalry assault and the square was vulnerable as an artillery target.
By the American Civil war, average or even below-average disciplined infantrymen could break up a potential cavalry assault before it was even formed. The same infantrymen could shoot down the horses and men of any potentially threatening artillery battery. Furthermore, all this could be done from the comparative safety of the infantry line. By 1864, when elaborate trench systems began appearing on the battlefield, the infantry line was more-or-less invulnerable to direct attack.
Mention has been made upthread of using cannon to break up infantry formations. This might have been made obsolete when rifled muskets exceeded the range of smoothbore cannon. But what happened when modern field artillery regained comparable range? Were open infantry “formations” mostly a thing of the past by then?
Gustavus had his men so well drilled that they got by with three ranks of muskets, where the Imperial army was still using five. You don’t do something like that unless your individual rate of fire is greatly increased.
A musket has quite a lot of advantages over the bow in other respects, though :
It can reliably punch through basic armour. Yeah, yeah, I know all about the Agincourt myths of English longbowmen shooting right through plate mail like it was butter. I call BS.
Of course, the wide use of firearms meant that soldiers progressively ditched armour alltogether (except for horsemen, who got rid of them a bit later), which would have made bows useful again… until the enemy gets his cuirass back from storage, that is. And thanks to industrialization and machined tools, it would have been much easier to make good steel plate en masse in the late Renaissance than it had been in the high Middle Ages.
When it does hit, it does a whole lot more damage than an arrow.
It’s much easier to use and aim. English longbowmen weren’t born premier archers : every single yeoman was required, by law, to put in hours at the firing range every Sunday (and learned to shoot at a given range, rather than at a target). Other nations weren’t as enthusiastic about teaching their peasants the ways of war in peacetime - could have given them the wrong idea, you see ;).
By comparison, give a complete novice a musket or a crossbow, and by the end of the week he’ll be able to use it adequately. Load, point in enemy’s general direction, fire, repeat. No messing about with angles or ranges. Another week of shouting at them, and they might even grasp the gist of firing by ranks. They won’t be great soldiers, sure, but they’ll do.
Firearms can be carried already loaded. In the case of pistols and cavalry carbines, an individual could even carry a whole brace of them. By comparison, a bow is only strung right before a battle, and unless you’re The Hulk, you can’t keep it drawn very long either. Makes all the difference in the world in case of ambush while on the march.
In the context of a siege, firearms are simply superior : no need for high rate of fire (and if need be, again one man can prepare a dozen muskets beforehand) or even accuracy since only lucky shots are going to hit anyway, can be shot through a tiny murderhole, can be reloaded from cover with only a quick exposure to shoot (you can even shoot blind without even leaving cover)…
Unlike longbows which had to be individually crafted, muskets and crossbows could be made in bulk. Balls and powder even more so, compared to arrows.
As has already been said, muskets double as crude mêlée weapons, even more so with the advent of the bayonet (but even before that, a solid hit with a rifle butt or weighed pistol grip would seriously ruin your day).
So you see, it’s not all about the noise and smoke.
Call BS if you want, and I’ve made no magical claims of arrows from long or composite bows slicing through platemail like butter. I’d have to object to plate mail being described as anything close to ‘basic armor’ however. It wasn’t, basic armor would at best have been leather and padding. Plate had its own disadvantages of weight, and horses were rarely well protected even if the rider was in the case of cavalry. Warning, pdf file but from here on actual testing of the longbow vs various armors:
Mass production of ***anything * **wasn’t going to happen in the late Renaissance. It also took until quite a bit later for horsemen to give up their armor, old habits die hard. The cuirass continued in use among horseman for a very, very long time; through the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and even into WW1
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It’s much easier to use and aim. English longbowmen weren’t born premier archers : every single yeoman was required, by law, to put in hours at the firing range every Sunday (and learned to shoot at a given range, rather than at a target). Other nations weren’t as enthusiastic about teaching their peasants the ways of war in peacetime - could have given them the wrong idea, you see ;).
By comparison, give a complete novice a musket or a crossbow, and by the end of the week he’ll be able to use it adequately. Load, point in enemy’s general direction, fire, repeat. No messing about with angles or ranges. Another week of shouting at them, and they might even grasp the gist of firing by ranks. They won’t be great soldiers, sure, but they’ll do.
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This is of course the advantage of easier training that a musket had over a bow, which I have never disputed at all. I’d also note that ‘load, point in the enemy’s general direction, fire (or not), repeat,’ is what happened and the effect was as much if not more psychological than physical. Had everyone in opposing infantry regiments with even smoothbore much less rifled muskets actually aimed to kill rather than fire in the enemy’s general direction opposing lines should have practically annihilated each other in very short order.
Wearing a brace of loaded pistols 24/7 in case of sudden ambush, much less keeping a shot rammed down the barrel of a muzzle loading musket with powder behind it and in the pan and was neither feasible nor safe. Aside from the dangers of keeping a firearm with a round chambered at all times, ramming the shot down after emptying (almost) all of the powder charge down the barrel was done to put the shot in contact with the powder at the bottom of the barrel. The rest of the powder went in the flash pan. Keeping this type of firearm in this state unless one is expecting to fire it very soon is well - something that wasn’t done while on the march. An arrow could be notched and fired much, much faster than a musket could be loaded.
Which again only reinforces what I’ve said. Accuracy doesn’t really matter since only lucky shots are going to hit anyway, and you can just shoot blind: the moral and psychological effect of fire and noise that firearms have whether they are actually hitting anyone or not.
Which I have never claimed. Nowhere have I said the advantage of firearms was all about smoke and noise. I was noting that easier training wasn’t the sole reason firearms replaced bows, all of that smoke and noise had a distinct psychological advantage to it whether early firearms were more lethal than bows or not.
I give you Battle_of_Chaldiran, 1514. We’re talking about a battle in the heartland of Turkish-Iranian horse archery here. Also, notable that the winners had relied on horse archery before. Of course, artillery playd an important role too.
Yeah, that was reaching, agreed. But I didn’t mean 24/7 though, I meant when soldiers were expecting trouble (as in, scouts have reported possible enemy activity, but don’t know how much or exactly where. You know, military intelligence :p). Besides, as I said before, bows weren’t carried strung, as it wore down the bow itself, and exposed the string to the elements.
I still remain doubtful about that. In the 14th century, when firearms were first introduced, yeah, noise and smoke might have had an effect. In the 17th century however, that is to say around the time musket Regiments of the Line became the norm, I daresay people had become used to the concept, at least in Europe. What morale effect firearms had was more about seeing 30 men fall at once from an enemy volley than just the loud noise.
Besides, morale effect or not, the noise and smoke were more hindrance than anything : the noise meant it was harder to carry orders above the din, and the smoke made it hard to see, both for the soldiers who just fired and the generals watching the battle from afar. Hence the eventual move to smokeless powder.
That’s the traditional starting point used for the rise to dominance of “gunpowder armies” in the Near East. But some authors have argued that Bashkent ( Otlukbeli in wikipedia ) in 1473 was in fact the better bellwether. Uzun Hassan’s traditional Turkmen tribal army was shattered by the Ottoman field artillery in particular with losses reported in the range of 10 to 1 ( 10,000 to 1,000 in this case).