Can’t horses be trained to ignore that? I would think that there would be a lot of things that a horse would have to be trained to ignore in order to be effective on a battlefield. It couldn’t be startled by screams, for one, and it tould have to get over its natural reticence not to step on people. (Not because horses are innately kind but because people are squishy, and the horse would be afraid of losing its footing.)
Just thought after I posted, why not guns? Why not something else? The Europeans had a vested interest in new technologies that would keep them ahead of each other, why wouldn’t they try guns?
Yes, horses can be trained to ignore gun fire (unless it hits them of course). Otherwise they wouldn’t have still be in use up to WWI. They can also be trained to step on people and attack on their own…something they generally wouldn’t do naturally…and to stand still if they lose their rider. I assume Martini Enfield was refering to the initial introduction of gun powder when trained war horses wouldn’t have been trained to ignore the smoke and noise of gun fire. I imagine that rather quickly the Euro’s figured this flaw out though and began training war horses to ignore the smoke and fire.
-XT
Especially considering that you also had guys firing while riding one. If a horse is spooked by a loud bang a hundred yards thataway, how is he going to react to a bang right at his ear?
Well obviously that wasn’t an issue at the beginning, since the last thing you wanted to be doing was messing around with a sack full of gunpowder and a heavy stick on a galloping horse, but yes of course horses could be trained to ignore anything. They’re curious creatures by nature and can be taught to get comfortable with just about anything if handled skillfully. Let’s consider the fact that show horses have been trained to leap through hoops of fire, a more obvious and direct threat to life and limb than some big bang, by simple trust that their rider isn’t going to let them get hurt.
As for guns, I have to agree the main reason always comes down to packing the battlefield. If you’ve got a whole bunch of pikes and a whole bunch of guns, you can get a whole bunch of schlubs to use 'em. So what if they can’t hit the broad side of a barn most of the time? If you’ve got 3 guns for every bow, you don’t need to be very accurate, just as quick as possible. The phrase “quantity has a quality all of it’s own” comes into play here.
I think it could also be viewed as a long term power play, since it allows you to circumvent, more and more, the lifelong soldiers we call knights in favor of the middle and lower classes who have more loyalty to the one that raised them high in the land. Consider for a moment if Louis XIV, the man who inscribed his cannons with “ultima ratio regum”, could’ve been the Sun King without those cannons to knock down castle walls and musketeers to hold them. This piece is something I need to consider more, and I’d love feedback and corrections.
I think this is part of it as well, although perhaps more of an effect than a cause. When musketeers are so easy to train (relative to the years of training for a knight or bowman of course,) it reduces the importance of old-school bowmen and politically powerful knights.
Oh yes, I doubt most kings in the first days of European gunpowder use thought of things in those terms, but I think it could be both effect and cause. Once the person at the top realized the phenomenon, they’re going to be more willing to invest in improving and accelerating gun usage within their borders.
And that is precisely the reason the Shogun decided to ban guns, because he realized that peasant musketeer armies would mean the end of the Samurai caste.