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Post by erdene on Dec 13, 2006 3:28:40 GMT 3
I have read somewhere that Mongolians fought against the Tsarist expansion in Lake Baikal region, in which it was the last time the bow prevailed against the gun. I remember there was no more detail on that article....watching the Nomad trailer just reminded me of it. Anyone have any clue as to what I just said???
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Post by Temüjin on Dec 13, 2006 21:54:18 GMT 3
until middle of 19th century an experienced bowman was more accurate and could shoot faster than an european infantryman with a muzzle-loading musket, but infantrymen in formation have much more stopping power than Steppe warriors.
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Dec 13, 2006 23:20:00 GMT 3
until middle of 19th century an experienced bowman was more accurate and could shoot faster than an european infantryman with a muzzle-loading musket, but infantrymen in formation have much more stopping power than Steppe warriors. I agree. European firearms became more reliable in individual use only in the late 19th century. However, it was the battle formations, combined arms and discipline which made European armies more advantageous against non-European armies before that time.
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Post by Atabeg on Dec 18, 2006 22:04:28 GMT 3
Before the guns with multiple bullets were invented the bow was faster and more accurate when the fire arms were first introduced the Ottomans imediatly adopted it. Exept for one group of elites the Sipahi(ottoman heavy cavalary) the bows were faster and accurate the Ottomans began using guns between 1444 and 1448 thats realy early so the Ottomans had the mounted archers like Sipahi & akinci(well they were scouts so they tried to keep it quite no blasts) and they had Süvari Topçu Neferi meaning mounted artillery but as I say you know who the elites were
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Post by Subu'atai on May 31, 2008 9:26:27 GMT 3
Firearms in my opinion prevail over the bow in most cases not just due to the confusion/frightening elements of the weapon, but it's trade factor. I'll explain below.
Samoan and Maoris told me of how their nations were taken by the British; despite 'primitive' weapons they held their ground quite well -> until firearms were traded for land. So the more guns they sold to the natives the more land the Brits gained - rather clever strategy.
I'm not sure whether this is what happened in Siberia but I know Buryatia was annexed by two treaties rather then by force. I don't know much about this however. When the Russians reached China, the Chinese already had firearms and cannons - thus lost their advantage and could not advance.
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Post by raven6 on Sept 10, 2008 18:31:55 GMT 3
I am more used to this discussion in terms of the long bow versus the musket.
As a blackpowder man, I will always be the first to admit that the long bow and in this case the mongol/steppe bow will always outshoot, and outrange a musket - but not modern firearms. I will not discuss modern firearms but the older blackpowder weapons.
The problem with the bow, is not its' effectiveness but the fact that the weapon itself is embedded in the culture. In the case of the long bow - successful victor at Crecy and Agincourt, 1 million arrows in a short amount of time - what is very rarely discussed is the size of the logistical tail that allowed that victory. 1 million arrows is 250 cart loads of arrows; 500,000 man hours making arrow heads and a similar length of time making shafts and fletching them, not to mention the 500,000 geese required for the fletchings. Then there was the wool industry in the east of England that provided the clothes for the archers and so on.
To make an archer you start with a boy of 6 or 7, train him everyday, or once a week at the very least, till at the age in which he can serve in the ranks he has shoulders like a Mountain gorilla, and has the strength to pull a long bow shaft and loose it time after time after time. But while he is doing he can't do anything else, he needs to stand at least three feet from his mate, so the arrow boys can run between the rows and replenish the stock of arrows. (Each archer only carried a sheaf of 24 - two minutes worth of ammunition) They could not move and depended on the French doing what they were expected to do - run straight into the arrow storm.
Once the powder gun came along - easier to make, AND less fragile, easier to teach the ordinary man to use, less range but when it hits - oh boy is it spectacular, and when it fires? what a shock. To the guys who ran the armies it was a bit of a no brainer, cheaper and much more cost effective than bows, so once the structure behind the archers fell apart it could not be revived easily.
I am guessing - because I don't know, I haven't studied this - that many similar things happened when firearms were introduced to the mounted nomads. A blackpowder gun can be loaded and kept unthingyed ready for use, unlike the fragile bow string. It's easier to use, ammunition is far less fragile than arrows and easier to carry, especially when mounted. A nomad bow takes months to make a proficient, blacksmith can make guns much more easily. You can also get smaller guns to carry mounted and in combat - the blunderbus gun was designed for in combat, where it acted like an oversized shot in the enemy's face.
So to summarise, bows are brilliant, long range and deadly rapid fire. But the support needed for them allowed guns to replace them.
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Post by Temüjin on Sept 10, 2008 20:29:11 GMT 3
Steppe Nomads never discarded the bow, they used muskets alongside them. your arguments that the training and use of a musket is easier than that of a bow are valid, but the inacuracy of the musket is not undone and Steppe warriors are brought up with archery anyways, so the training involved is not an issue. Steppe people have never fielded as much soldiers as urban empires therefore efficiency (accuracy) is necessary.
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Post by raven6 on Sept 10, 2008 20:54:16 GMT 3
Yes, you are correct - and I did say I hadn't studied this - I was just offering thoughts. The bow continues in use with steppe armies long after western armies abandon it, and again the reasons are in line with my arguments above, the bow is inherent in the culture. However unlike the longbow the system can sustain the bow for longer as the cultures didn't change that much as they did at the end of the 100 years war.
I only offer the mounted firearms into the discussion because we have many fine examples, especially weapons like jezzails - fired from horseback, which compensate from the innacuracy of firearms by being small bore guns and very long.
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mwe
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Post by mwe on Sept 10, 2008 22:17:16 GMT 3
Try reloading a musket on horseback.
Things like pistols might replace a lance as a shock weapon but could not really fill in for a bow in its roles; if said cavalry fought in the steppe style.
Different ways to use fire arms in that style of warfare of course, advance and discharge then retire, dismounted dragoons to support a charge or discharge and then charge, and using firearms to defend strong points/or assault them.
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Post by keaganjoelbrewer on Sept 11, 2008 2:00:13 GMT 3
A couple of possible critiques (?): 1) You misjudge the importance of an archer's training. In a battle context (cloud archery), you shoot just about anywhere and hope that it hits someone, and you don't have to aim so much as in target archery. This isn't to say they wouldn't have trained hard though. 2) Be careful with your numbers. 1 million arrows at Crecy? I don't know where you got that figure from, but a general lesson to be learnt is that statistics often cannot be trusted in history. It is very doubtful whether there would have been a guy on the battlefield writing a little tally every time he saw an arrow go past. And what's with the 500,000 geese lol? One goose makes only two arrows? Come on... 3) You have to be careful about attributing the victories of Crecy and Agincourt to the longbow. This is a traditional argument, and many historians have been revising this argument (A close friend of mine wrote a detailed essay on this last year; if you're interested I could see if he might let me publish it up on this forum). Some general observations of my own: 1) Archery, especially horse archery, was a massive part of steppe nomad culture. As such, it is quite understandable that it would take a long time before a technological change towards firearms would come about, if it happened at all. 2) The history of early firearms goes back to around the 13th or 14th centuries (not sure exactly). But it is important for us to remember that these guns were very poor in quality compared to what we think of when we say 'guns' today. One shot from an arquebusier (an early gunman) could see a skilled archer shoot probably about 5 times, and with less accuracy and range (as has already been noted above). 3) Has anyone heard of Logos Kassai? =D www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlQJzKwjKLY(ignore the interview, just watch the video bits) That video shows exactly why the steppe horse archers were such a devastating military force for such a long time.
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Sept 11, 2008 21:49:18 GMT 3
I am more used to this discussion in terms of the long bow versus the musket. As a blackpowder man, I will always be the first to admit that the long bow and in this case the mongol/steppe bow will always outshoot, and outrange a musket - but not modern firearms. I will not discuss modern firearms but the older blackpowder weapons. The problem with the bow, is not its' effectiveness but the fact that the weapon itself is embedded in the culture. In the case of the long bow - successful victor at Crecy and Agincourt, 1 million arrows in a short amount of time - what is very rarely discussed is the size of the logistical tail that allowed that victory. 1 million arrows is 250 cart loads of arrows; 500,000 man hours making arrow heads and a similar length of time making shafts and fletching them, not to mention the 500,000 geese required for the fletchings. Then there was the wool industry in the east of England that provided the clothes for the archers and so on. To make an archer you start with a boy of 6 or 7, train him everyday, or once a week at the very least, till at the age in which he can serve in the ranks he has shoulders like a Mountain gorilla, and has the strength to pull a long bow shaft and loose it time after time after time. But while he is doing he can't do anything else, he needs to stand at least three feet from his mate, so the arrow boys can run between the rows and replenish the stock of arrows. (Each archer only carried a sheaf of 24 - two minutes worth of ammunition) They could not move and depended on the French doing what they were expected to do - run straight into the arrow storm. Once the powder gun came along - easier to make, AND less fragile, easier to teach the ordinary man to use, less range but when it hits - oh boy is it spectacular, and when it fires? what a shock. To the guys who ran the armies it was a bit of a no brainer, cheaper and much more cost effective than bows, so once the structure behind the archers fell apart it could not be revived easily. I am guessing - because I don't know, I haven't studied this - that many similar things happened when firearms were introduced to the mounted nomads. A blackpowder gun can be loaded and kept unthingyed ready for use, unlike the fragile bow string. It's easier to use, ammunition is far less fragile than arrows and easier to carry, especially when mounted. A nomad bow takes months to make a proficient, blacksmith can make guns much more easily. You can also get smaller guns to carry mounted and in combat - the blunderbus gun was designed for in combat, where it acted like an oversized shot in the enemy's face. So to summarise, bows are brilliant, long range and deadly rapid fire. But the support needed for them allowed guns to replace them. Well, nice points indeed. But we should not forget the fact that unlike sedentary foot-archers, the nomadic riders were trained for the useage of a variety of weapons, including both melee and ranged. It is possible that a heavy melee-light ranged cavalry distinction was already made as early as the Sarmatian period, but we know that even the light riders carried melee weapons with them, just in case.
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Post by sarmat on Sept 14, 2008 0:53:52 GMT 3
I recently read a book about Imjin war in Korea where among the other things the use of a composite bow against a musket was discussed. It was noted by Korean and Chinese generals that musket was much more effective and accurate than the bow. There also was a description that usually in combat Japanese musket fire outranged Korean archers. Even the famous Korean admiral Yi Sun-Sin, an expert archer, who in one battle even shot down a Japanese admiral with his own arrow wrote that the musket was "the best weapon ever invented."
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mwe
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Post by mwe on Sept 14, 2008 6:45:49 GMT 3
It will also hit harder, but it fit awkwardly with horse archers.
I have read some book awhile back on Mughal warfare and it put the musket as more accurate then a bow (in sub continent experience) - an issue not to be forgotten is who is firing each, and the issue of aiming with a musket and a bow, and most important who they are shooting at.
Between the gun and bow, it should not be forgotten that steppe states acquired guns and even in inter steppe warfare they played a role (Kalmyks sought out guns and they fought steppe armies which had guns). So while in the juke and weave the bow is arguably better to fire off a horse, the musket was obviously found to be very useful which is why they brought them in.
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Post by Bor Chono on Sept 14, 2008 9:07:52 GMT 3
Bows don`t make noise. Modern iron bows can be deadly assassin weapon.
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Post by mongol194 on Sept 16, 2008 11:32:38 GMT 3
Composite or nomad bows actually outranged all amuskets until the ninteenth century. I have many bows. My Favourtite bow is the mongol/turkic composite recurve. I can hit a dummy at 500 yards with it no problem and that for me is easy, 800 yards is what i would say was a tough shot! ;D Until 19 century the most reliable musket was the British brown bess but it had a limited range.I am a very good marksman but i cannot hit targets beyond 100 yards and even at 100 yards its no easy shot! Even the kentucky or baker rifle which has an accurate range of 250-300 yards is no match for the quicker loading composite bow. Not until the Martini henry or Mauser 1898 did we have a breech loading rifle which was faster to reload and had an accurate range to match the bow. However today i have a Barrart 107 sniper rifle and a drugunov svd in my arsenal they have a range of 2 miles or more. However i also have a modern compound bow which converts power using a pulley system so it has 350lbs of force per shot! Although it has a limited range i have special high impact explosive arrowheads which are far cheaper for taking out tanks and bunkers than depleted uranium shells. The bow today is also easier to repair than the rifle and it still has very good power its not something i would ignore. The crossbow is even better although slow to reload the folding crossbow is a dealy assasin weapon becuase i can fire it from a prone position like a sniper i cant do that with my compound bow. Until they make depleeted uranium bullets cheaper or sniper rifles easier to repair i will still use my Bow becuase it is far more destructive and much cheaper. Anyone who says bows are obsolete learns nothing about the vietnam war where they were used with incendiary and poison arrows which made hell for the poor US soldiers whose armour was bulletproof but not arrow proof! At the end of the day a bow in the hands of a true warrior is probably better than a lot of guns becuase it's like carrying a mini cannon. to a modern soldier its nothing more than aprimitive and difficuilt weapon. I mastered my fire arms training in thirty days. I'm still improving by bowyer skills and am currently making a replica of a chinese cho ku ne repeating crossbow when its finished it will be as fit for modern warefare as an m4 rifle!
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