Why did archers become obselete by the 1800s?

Factual Questions
1

The average gun in napoleonic time was pitiful - low rate of fire, very inaccurate, and troublesome in driving rain. Only real advantage is that it made a big bang. A good archer could probably release 3-4 x as many arrows, with greater accuracy and probably distance.

The only real advantage of a gun then possibly was that it made for a good secondary weopon with a bayonet. It may also be easier to mass produce and transport powder and shot than arrows.

Am I missing something, or were guns used then mainly because people thought they were modern, rather than being more effective?

2

Once you get to the matchlock stage of development a gun is a much better weapon than a bow. It’s much easier to train a musketeer than an archer, and the weapons and ammunition are actually cheaper and easier to produce, more uniform (and more or less interchangeable), and easier to store and transport in quantity. A gun also won’t tire the shooter out nearly as quickly as a bow will, so he could be more effective for a longer period of time. A gun is also much more powerful than a bow, and stands a better chance of penetrating armor.

Keep in mind, too, that the celebrated English Longbowman was the exception rather than the rule when it comes to European archery. Continental archers were typically less well fed and trained, and pressed weaker bows. They weren’t really all that decisive a force.

3

If arrows would have been better than guns, then forces with arrows would have have consistently defeated forces armed with guns. They didn’t.

Only the most incompetent general is going to go with an inferior weapon, and those that might would be most likely to stick with an old tried-and-true method than something newfangled like gunpowder. The fact that the switch was made is deeply indicative that guns were better.

4

What the Exgineer said. Guns, even early versions of guns, were extremely easy to use, and to teach people how to use. Once you spent about five minutes teaching the new recruit how to do the whole swabbing/loading/tamping routine, you’re all set, with one new musketeer. And you’re going to be firing volleys, so he doesn’t have to be a particularly good shot–all he has to do is point it in the general direction as everybody else and pull the curvy metal piece that sticks out.

Whereas using a bow takes a certain amount of practice just to make it “go” in the first place, just to keep the damn arrow from falling off the string while you’re standing there holding it.

Signed,

HATED ARCHERY CLASS IN P.E.

5

The most important factor, by far, was the difficulty and expense of training, combined with the enormous increase in the size of armies.

English longbowmen were professionals, trained from a very young age in the use of their weapon - which required considerable strength and skill to use at all, much less to use effectively. This meant that only relatively small numbers were available.

In contrast, muskets could be used by anyone, with a minimum of training. Most of the training used by gunpowder armies was not in the skilled use of weapons, but designed to keep the soldiers loading and firing to order even when being slaughtered (rather than flinging down the musket and running away, which would seem the sensible thing to do!). The army which could stand the pounding the longest would win.

What this meant was that armies could accept almost anyone as a soldier, train them with ferocious discipline not to run, and send them into battle. The result: a huge increase in the size of armies (which was also of course influenced by a host of other factors).

The point is, this increase could never have been sustained if the weapon required a lifetime of skill to use properly, like the Longbow. An army of professional longbowmen could probably have beaten an equal number of musketeers circa 1800 - but the numbers would not have been equal in reality.

6

Didn’t the development of the crossbow also contribute to the decline of the longbowmen. A crossbowman with two weeks of training could be as deadly as a longbowman with 10 years experience.

7

The longbowmen would still have far superior rate of fire on the crossbowmen.

So to summarize, guns were adopted because of:

  1. Ease of use. You do not need to train a soldier to use a gun for 10-20 years of his life before he gets good. You only need to spend 10-20 minutes.

  2. Cheaper, easier to make, better than arrows at piercing armor (early on).

  3. Helped increase the number of men on the battlfield (little skill required means generals could field more soldiers). Which ties in to number 2, since more men means more weapons, and the gun was the cheaper weapon to make.

8

…and, of course, the development of the cannon didn’t help much, either. Those things had a heck of a lot more range, accuracy, and power than an army of longbowmen, with the additional benefit that they can also be used for seiges against walls. IIRC, the canon was perfected earlier than the gun, and even had exploding shells.

9

How about speed of projectile? It looks like 200-250 ft/second is considered pretty fast for an arrow. I’m wondering if, at 100 - 150 yards (effective distance for a musket), you could actually see and attempt to dodge a volley of arrows.

By the early 1800’s, muskets were capable of firing 2-3 times a minute. Certainly not rapid fire, but not too shoddy, compared with the effort of firing arrows continuously.

One other possible consideration is that once the bayonet came along, musketeers could double as pikemen. Archers were pretty much toast once the enemy came to close quarters.

10

Since both bows and muskets were used massed together to fire volleys, accuracy (as distinct from range) wasn’t a primary issue. The goal of a group of battlefield archers was to pick a group of enemies and saturate them with fire, not pick off individual targets sniper-style.

11

I forgot to mention my other point.

1800 is leaving it 400 or so years too late.

12

Bows have been out of use for a long time when the bayonet came along.

By the way, I would point out that bows didn’t become obsolete around 1800, as the thread title seems to imply, but rather around 1450-1500.

13

As has been pointed out repeatedly, training and cost were key. I think, though, that the OP mixed apples and oranges by comparing “good” archers to “average” gunners. Scouts and skirmishers had access to more accurate, rifled, firearms from at least the 17th to 18th century. Those guns had lower rates of fire than both bows and smoothbore muskets, but were more accurate and had substantially greater range.

14

By the middle of the 1700s, a raw recruit in the British army was required to be able to fire at least four times a minute. Crack troops could nearly double this. Yes, things do fly at that rate, and one can see a ramrod going downrange (oops).

15

tx for the replies. I knew that archers were obselete well before the 1800s, but chose that period as it seemed to me a long bow was still superior in skilled hands. What brought on the question was a TV program, which showed that it was almost impossible to hit anything with the typical gun of the time even at 100 y, but a long bow could put 3 arrows straight through armour in the same time with great accuracy.

I guess you are right about the training. I have never tried to shoot a proper long bow, but would guess it is not easy

16

The maximum estimate I’ve seen of firing rate is 5 shots/minute. And that apparently drops in battlefield conditions once the barrel starts getting fouled with gunpowder residue. Although 4-5 rounds/minute is the optimum rate of fire, 2-3 rounds/minute is more realistic.

17

Bruce Catton, I think in A Stillness at Appomattox, wrote about the troops at the siege of Petersburg firing ramrods across the line just to relive the boredom.

In terms of military effectiveness, up until the development of flintlock ignition systems there was a combination of pikemen and musketeers in a military formation—the pikemen to hold the enemy at bay and to protect the musketeers while they reloaded their matchlocks or wheel locks. This was the situation during the English Civil War and the Wars of Dutch Independence and the Thirty Years War. Pikemen were replaced by giving the musketeers a plug bayonet that stuck right down the bore of the musket. The problem is that once a plug bayonet was fixed the musket could not be fired—no place for the bullet to get out. By the time of the Wars of Louis XIV (the Duke of Marlborough, Prince Eugene and that bunch) socket bayonets had greatly replaced plug bayonets. The socket bayonet allowed a musket armed infantryman to stab and shoot at the same time and made separately trained pikemen with their 12 foot long spears obsolete.

Once you had a large bore flintlock musket anyone with an intellect slightly above that of the village idiot could be trained to load, point and fire on command and by the numbers. Training an infantry man to move in formation on broken ground and to give fire in half company volleys was more than the work of a half hour of training but it sure wasn’t the 10 or 15 years of practice needed to produce a reliable archer.

Archery was the craft of the expert. Musketry was within the capability of nearly anybody. The flintlock large bore musket equipped with a socket bayonet facilitated mass national armies raised by conscription.

As far as rate of fire goes, a trained musketeer might get off four or five aimed shots in the first minute but fouling and misfires quickly took its toll on the rate of fire. After blowing off a few rounds the rate of fire probably dropped to two shots a minute. Still when you are dealing with 600 men firing by half companies on a front of 50 yards or so there is still a lot of lead going down range at any given moment.

18

As a former archer (and took state, back in high school – forgive the bragging), I can attest to the amount of training required. It wouldn’t take 10 years, but certainly not 2 weeks either. Of course, no one was shooting back at me either. :smiley:

The other advantage of guns was that it freed up time for golf:

19

As far as I can tell, the Georgain-era standard for sustained rate of fire (via the Duke of Wellington’s writings) for British infantry was 3 rounds per minute for a short engagement, which tells me that it would have dropped off considerably in a day-long battle. I suspect that the rate of fire from, say, Thirty Years War matchlocks (well after military archery consigned to the mists of history) was significantly worse. I’d be suprised if, after a full day off loading, firing, intermittently swabbing, and eventually scrounging water to pour down the barrels instead of drinking it, I’d be surprised if they managed a shot every three minutes.

That said, they could shoot all day, and we are talking about guns versus bows. I undestand Tokyo_Mann’s point about accuracy, because I tried archery myself when I was a kid, but there’s no way in hell I could press a real longbow as an adult even once, let alone for an extended period, but I can hit rifle targets just fine for as long as I have ammunition.

Which leads me to my last point concerning the superiority of the gun over the bow (and in the long run, everything else):

Aside from the fatigue factor (and I’m not saying that you won’t get tired shooting all day, you will) there’s another physiological advantage. For the first time in history, the effectiveness of a weapon did not depend on the physical strength of the user. A gun is just as deadly in the hands of a 90 pound weakling as it is in the hands of 240 pound linebacker. That’s not true of swords. Or bows.

Consider this: I’m a conscripted peasant who got about one day’s training with my musket, and I’ve just got it reloaded after a full day of marching, countermarching, shooting, reloading, etc. Here comes the enemy, Lord Schwartzenegger, who’s still mounted, fully armored, and equipped with a lance (maybe, it’s been a long day), a sword, maybe a mace if he’s extravagant, and a horse who’ll fight as hard as he will. He’s got to be fast, smart and able to survive, but I just have to get lucky.

And ther are ten more guys just like me right over there.

20

Ahhh! This is one of my pet peeves. Swordsmen in the middle ages or renaissance != Schwartzenegger like behmoth of muscle.

Strength and build of thta proportion were NOT needed to wield a sword effectively, in fact they would probably detrimental as you’d only offer a larger target to your enemy. Speed, accuracy, dexterity, these are qualities that will serve the swordsman infinately more.