Remember that one time when handgunners rekt everyone? Oh wait that's every time they were deployed

> Guns were expensive
> Gunpowder was expensive
> They were however, very effective

> Crossbows are cheap
> Arrows are cheaper than gunpowder
> They were still effective for the small price
> Also, crossbow man didn't require that much training
> If it rains, your guns are useless, crossbows aren't

Crossbows weren't so good in the rain at Agincourt

Rain ruins crossbows, dude. One of the reasons the Genoese mercenaries at Crecy got wrecked (besides the fact that they were sent into battle without their pavises) was that it was raining and they couldn't unstring their crossbows in time to protect them from the moisture.

Didn't know that, thanks. But weat gunpowder is also useless

In terms of raw killing power

Muskets > Javelins > Crossbows > Longbows > Composite Bows > Slings > Self Bows > Rocks

Why couldn't they just invent a small cover for the string

this

remember that one time

...

Because they didn't have all the answers, unlike you.

Speaking of the superiority of early firearms, Battle of Brunkeberg m8. Fucking Christian 1 of Denmark was snipped so hard by Danish fire arms (which were not matchlock, really just a tiny hand cannon) he lead his remaining men (Mainly other swedes from uppland, scottish and german mercenaries and the original swedish royalty) into a booby trapped bridge, resulting in hundreds drowning and sweden leaving the kalmar union. Oh yeah and Christian lost all of his front teeth from the shot.

strv102r.tripod.com/battleof.htm

oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095532196

nordstjernan.com/news/sweden/5866/

shit i mean swedish firearms

yes

>the point was that they were cheap as chips
Firearms were pretty expensive compared to most other infantry weapons, in particular bows.

>you could teach joe the retarded farmer to use them, just as easily as you could teach him how to hold a big long stick
Not really. The users of early firearms were considered well-trained specialists. The military writer Humfrey Barwick commented in 1594 that a pikeman could be better trained in six days than a musketeer could in sixty.

A musket in the hands of a good shot can hit a target as wide as a man's torso every time up to about 70-80 yards. Beyond that distance they still have a good chance. They aren't sniper rifles but they aren't so innaccurate that they couldn't hit people standing a few feet in front of them. The biggest issue with accuracy was always that soldiers aren't very good shots under combat conditions.

Guns were much more expensive than bows but on a per-shot basis gunpowder and lead is cheaper than arrows.

This is a myth. The crossbowers at Crecy got wrecked because they were exhausted and outnumbered.

>A musket in the hands of a good shot can hit a target as wide as a man's torso every time up to about 70-80 yards

Source on that ? I'm really interested on the performances of early powder weapons

That's the consensus of people who shoot black powder weapons regularly.

Murphy's Muskets and Capandball have done videos demonstrating smoothbore accuracy.

youtu.be/Q5Fna96nxbU

Nice, thanks. Are there some vids like that about 16th century weapons ? I know the ottomans used really long rifles at that time

youtube.com/watch?v=Bk1oWUjS3UQ

There are extant rifles from 16th century military arsenals but in all of the reading I've done of sources from that time I've never seen anyone actually mention the existence of rifles, nor draw a distinction between rifles and smoothbores.

Cool, thanks. Yeah, from the little research I did there seems to be a real problem of definitions and vocabulary for that time. English is not my first language so it adds another layer of confusion but even in my native language there is the same problem

They aren't using authentic powder or musket balls though.

But still, the main reason muskets were so inaccurate wasn't the musket but the man shooting it. Soldiers were trained to level them and fire at a mass, not individual targets, they were given no training in actual marksmenship.
You can see the same today, give a gun to someone who doesn't know much about guns and they can't hit anything, usually they dont even line up the sights.

>that watermelon

Ok I think I'm starting to get an idea of what a short volley must have looked like back then

You have to look at antique gun auctions. You'll find lots of very old rifles, beautifully ornate and designed for hunting, from as early as the 16th century.

This

>They aren't using authentic powder or musket balls though.
What? They're certainly using real black powder. Substitutes work very poorly in old muzzleloader designs. I don't know how a lead musket ball can be inauthentic.

Musketeers were taught to aim. This article is about the 18th century but soldiers were being trained in marksmanship as early as the 16th. allthingsliberty.com/2013/08/the-aim-of-british-soldiers/

But you're right, it seems that under combat conditions they would forget all their training and resort to shooting at random.

I mean that I've never seen mentioned in written period sources, not even once, and I've read every military manual written up until the English Civil War.

M8, what period are we talking? Because if it's 1600-1700's your average musket isn't rifled. Hence why they were massed formation, they might be inaccurate alone but together they're a massive wall of fire. You really can't be accurate individually. So since the average farmer didn't have the money to buy a rifled weapon it would be hard for him to actually ever be a meanicing individual with it since the accrue you is all over the place. Even then they are way to loud and simply take to long to reload.

>What? They're certainly using real black powder. Substitutes work very poorly in old muzzleloader designs. I don't know how a lead musket ball can be inauthentic.
The powder would have been of inferior quality and the ball would have been less well cast with knobbly bits.

The fact that it goes Make Ready, PRESENT, fire and only later becomes AIM says a lot

>I mean that I've never seen mentioned in written period sources, not even once, and I've read every military manual written up until the English Civil War
Then read about the English civil war, you find Dutch marksmen using rifles getting hired. The reason rifles arent mentioned much before is because they were used in hunting not war.

How effective were napoleonic handbombs?

Depends from country to country.

French ones were known to be packed really heavy althought this wasn't from the powder but the lead they used

Russian ones were light so grenadiers could carry a fuckton of them and throw that shit way further,

>Nagashino
>In retrospect, Cerignola (1503) It is considered to be the first major battle won largely through the use of firearms, comparable to what was to occur in Japan seven decades later in the Battle of Nagashino in 1575.

>a few feet
Just stop fucking posting.

>take unrifled mossberg 500
>shoot 5 inch groups at 50 yards with a rest

Yes. Smoothbore firearms can be very, very accurate.

>a few feet
Could you pull shit out of your ass somewhere else?

>replying to the same post twice with the same degree of mad

>>> They were however, very effective
no, they weren't.
they were sluggish, clunky, very prone to malfunction and you couldn't hit a barn at 10m with that shit

arquebus and similar tech were pretty useless when compared to other weapons in the same category at the time and the only effect they had was the moral shock they provided during the initial encounters

Nice bait.

>The powder would have been of inferior quality
Why do you think the powder would be of inferior quality? Plenty of people handmake their own powders and do fine.

>the ball would have been less well cast with knobbly bits.
All musket balls larger than .50 caliber are individually hand-made just as they were historically. There are no machined musket balls larger than .50 caliber commercially available.

>The fact that it goes Make Ready, PRESENT, fire and only later becomes AIM says a lot
How?

>Then read about the English civil war, you find Dutch marksmen using rifles getting hired.
What is your source for this?

>The reason rifles arent mentioned much before is because they were used in hunting not war.
There are a lot of rifled cavalry pistols. Certainly not intended for hunting.

They werent even fucking deployed you shitnut

>longbows vs composite bows vs selfbows
stupid. Any one could be more deadly than the other depending on the poundage of the bow, how they are deployed, and what armor the target is wearing.
Youre worse than the history channel

Yes you can, I've tried.

Maybe I don't know shit, but didn't shot towers make some pretty decent, round musket balls?

hao tho

>the point was that they were cheap as chips and you could teach joe the retarded farmer to use them
The problem is that Joe the retarded farmer would be both deaf and retarded after his first battle.

Shot towers weren't invented until 1782. Modern commerical musket balls are not made with shot towers. Small bullets sufficient for a muzzleloading rifle can be made perfectly round with a process called swagging, but so far as I know all musket balls for true musket calibers are hand-cast.

kek

>handgunners

thats a rifle retard

Only rifled muskets. Unrifled muskets not so much. Rifled muskets werent around for a long ass time.

But wouldn't a Napoleonic musket have been a world apart from a 15th century arquebus?