Are MUSKETS better than WARBOWS? Reply to Brandon F.

[Music] greetings i'm shad and a great youtuber by the name of brandon f has recently made a video on why muskets are superior to longbows and it's a great video and i highly suggest you subscribe to brandon if you haven't especially if you're interested at all in napoleonic era warfare weapons and such brilliant brilliant stuff in fact one of my favorite videos he's made is actually on how to correctly pronounce huzzah which has a bit of obviously crossover with a medieval period because that's a word that's associated with the medieval period a lot so he makes brilliant content and this video is no exception and it of course crosses over into some areas where i am particularly interested in not only medieval period but i i shoot medieval longbow and uh you could imagine i i have a bit of interest in this subject now absolutely brandon's right okay and i want to explain uh the reasons why some of the things that i feel i actually missed but also come at this topic from my own perspective which is of course a medieval enthusiast and a medieval warbo archer because there's some interesting perspective and context that uh brandon isn't aware of because he's not a medieval enthusiast and he openly missed that in his video but he does come out it with the knowledge of an enthusiast and reenactor of napoleonic era style warfare and weapons so the reality is absolutely the musket is a superior weapon than compared to the longbow and we get the answer from that from history large-scale armies ended up using a musket instead of the longbow now it does need to be said that uh the longbow as a military weapon remained so well after the firearm was invented because the first types of firearms were very different to the kind of late 18th early 19th century and throughout those periods uh musket technology so the rifles there was quite a bit of development and advancement in that technology when they were first made there are a lot of issues with them and we actually have medieval art showing people using bows and firearm technology concurrently at the same time okay so the bow still stuck around for a while but by the time we get to like the napoleonic era absolutely it was phased out and history shows us that look they wouldn't have done that if the musket was not a superior weapon a lot of people throughout history were pragmatists they used what was effective especially in warfare not always but most of the time and that gives us the answer right there so to try and argue that the longbow is actually better than late 19th century musketry is utterly ridiculous no no but you might say are there certain advantages and disadvantages and i want to talk a bit a little bit about that the specifics as well as replying to some of the specific things that brandon mentions himself expounding a bit further on some things and i have to admit correcting one or two things uh about the medieval warbows you know just from my perspective because i've studied this stuff for a good while and brandon of course would be able to smash me in my understanding knowledge of musketry you know warfare firearms technology all that stuff we have our different areas of expertise but of course his ultimate conclusion isn't wrong it's absolutely correct muskets are better weapons than ongoes and i want to go through all the ins and outs now on the subject of comparing two interesting things one being clearly superior if you looked at it fairly objectively you took away your own bias because hey i i like the bow more than the musket i'm a medievalist right but if you look at it fairly the answer is obvious well there's another obvious thing that i think you should try for better nutrition better food better options and all that and that's the sponsor of this video hellofresh and to show you why it is superior than just going to the shops or buying your stuff all the way stuff like that i i'll i'll make some hello fresh with you in fact i'll get my own i'll 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yeah let's try this out this is good oh the cottage pie is great what do you think [Music] so i really recommend it this is something i legitimately use in my own life i love it and you can get an awesome deal right now if you go to hellofresh.com and use my code shadowversity14 to get 14 free meals plus free shipping that is an absolutely brilliant deal don't miss out and thank you to hellofresh for sponsoring this video before i get to all ins and outs i want to talk about the primary reasons okay instead of having to you know wait throughout the whole video until i get to the end where i say these are the biggest ones i'll actually start with the biggest ones right away so the first point is something brandon actually goes into a quite a bit of detail in his video towards the end which i i agree with for the most part except for one interesting point that he brings up now he talks about logistics okay the overall logistics of uh fielding and supplying a long woman being harder than that of a musketeer that one i'm not entirely convinced on uh i've certainly heard and you can propose arguments that actually say uh supplying um a medieval longbowman and also keeping him supplied for through the length of the journey or you know the campaign was just about as cost effective as uh a musketeer the big difference and this is where i absolutely agree on is the time it takes to train an effective soldier in a bow compared to a musket and that's the most significant point about the logistics thing but in terms of supply and stuff like that we just know from history that in many instances not at all but in most instances they brought enough equipment and stuff to do the jobs that they needed and for the most part archers had enough arrows for the warfare that they were engaging in now brandon talks about the types of ammunition and how easy to supply and stuff like that and i agree in terms of weight and overall encumbrance arrows are bigger and bulkier than just bullets and gunpowder but they certainly brought enough with him in many campaigns they would have full wagons loaded with just sheaths upon sheaths of arrows most military archers when they're given their sheaf of arrow have between 20 and 40 arrows uh that was plenty enough there's a big interesting logistical element that brendan doesn't bring up and again because different areas of expertise and stuff like that and it's that with arrows you can reshoot them once they're shot you can retrieve them oh this is my i broke this one one of the previous videos uh it didn't have an hour ahead let me get another ah it's got an hour ahead this one um you can reshoot them and so after the first engagement then the things happen and that armies separate back to their camps stuff like that a lot of the archers they'd just go and recollect whatever arrows were still usable and they could reshoot them and there's that and the other thing in the actual engagement in the war fighting and stuff the ashes could grab the arrows that were shot at them to shoot back at the enemy and so that would actually extend the uh ammunition utility of the bow and the difficulty in transporting yes they're bulkier but they they did it okay and so i actually don't feel the cost of uh supplying a longbowmen was necessarily orders of magnitude so different that made them completely irrelevant if they were still useful on the battlefield people would cut they would take the hit of the cost and still feel them in a battlefield because if they're effective they're effective and they weren't so much out of the orders of you know practicality to a supply compared to a musketeer in actual fact the musket is a much more um expensive weapon complex to make as well one of the interesting things why they're longbow and when i say along with the military level longboat longbow warbo uh was uh so prominent in the medieval battlefield is that it was cheap to make it was until easy to make okay it wasn't necessarily the best bow i know sack i love the longbow i'm gonna have a full dedicated video on that i'm excited to make it but it had very specific strengths which made it a very great cost effective and uh economically viable weapon to employ large-scale battles and one of the things when i say it's not the best bow it's one of the easiest ways to make in very high poundage that's why it's usually associated more with warfare warburg ranges and stuff like that but smaller bows especially root curves were absolutely used in warfare and had high draw weights in the warbler range absolutely it's a myth that it was only the longbow that was the military by the medieval period utter bull crap smaller recurs very common a whole video coming on that in contrast the musket is a far more complex thing to make with multiple components requiring more manufacturing things to take place in multiple areas that all need to be combined uh increasing the cost and so even though brandon says that because the longbowmen needs multiple weapons not just a bow to be a really effective you know combatant but usually all longbowmen or just bowman you know will have a sidearm a weapon for melee that doesn't mean that they are more costly to equip than a musket a musketeer who just needs that musket because i think the musket is a fairly complex thing to make i believe uh just on average if you really look up cost effectiveness in terms of equipping a medieval war bowman it's gonna be a bit mostly comparable i don't think it's nearly enough to justify to say this is a real valid point that explains why people stopped using bows on the battlefield they're like especially the longbow the long bows like i said are a far more it's a single piece of wood it's not laminated all right it's not multi-layer you're not doing glue you're not adding horn or anything like that it's actually a far simpler bow to make than a lot of other bows and the bigger the elevators is that it's simpler to make in higher poundage draw weights like really high ones which gives the longbow a unique edge in terms of its design over other ones so uh i'm actually not convinced by convinced by that argument but the point about time it takes to train that is a very significant argument to bring up because it's true and we have evidence for it by the very existence of the crossbow as a weapon that was used in the medieval period very prominently the crossbow doesn't necessarily shoot in higher poundages than a war bow not just longbow but also small recurves i just need to clarify something here because military crossbars actually got in much higher poundages in their draw weights but because of the length of the limbs and the shorter power strokes the overall speed and power of the projectiles they shoot are not necessarily any greater than that of military bows and it certainly doesn't shoot as fast so why was the crossbow even used ease of use and training okay you gotta give a you know a peasant boy a crossbow and give him a daze you know practice with it and he's going to be aiming mostly in the right direction and still do lethal shots that's a huge factor and so of course crossbows were used very prominently they're look of course that's oversimplifying it there are other advantages of the crossbow okay i'm not trying to dedicate them completely but um there's an interesting thing to bring up about that but yeah absolutely training was a massive thing okay it took a long time not necessarily a full year but it to become super competent yeah more than a year's training uh in a bow to be really accurate and longbows are harder to shoot than a lot of other types of bows um and so even more training on top of that and so if you could get a weapon that could reach similar lethality for less training absolutely they would use it and the evidence is absolutely the crossbow but now we come to the next point brandon kind of talks about this but i don't think he went as far enough because this is really significant and also when we elaborate a bit further on it um i think we'll see some very prominent things and these are the two big reasons that first one is training this next one is huge and the archery fanboys that try and argue that a good heavy warbo that's a longbow or longer letter again people get because i see longbows are so great their penetration everything not all longbows are warbows and so saying all longbows will be out of penetrate armor is a stupid thing to say and this is again it's related to this other point but because bows varied in draw strength you could never guarantee that all the men in your army was shooting like at the same level of lethality a lot of shots were lower in poundage and draw weight and so they would have less penetrative power less lethal and just because you know warbows could and we have evidence of it go up to 200 pounds it's utterly incorrect and so to overemphasize and think that every medieval military arch was shooting in that range no most medieval you know military archers were not shooting 200 pounds that's the exception in fact the average is closer to 100 220 pounds and the more common higher poundage in the warbo range is about 160 pounds the 200 pound is the most exceptional high range and very few people would be shooting at that so we have differing levels of lethality whereas compared to the musket the musket most of them are shooting in a very comparable rate of lethality in terms of penetration range and all that stuff but ultimately this is the main point this is the biggest reason why absolutely i feel from my own perspective a musket is a superior weapon and totally transfer the bow and replace it you know in a military capacity and the bow was phased out and it is absolutely lethality damage potential okay anyone trying to argue that a boat is as deadly as a musket you know like a rifle you know musket no yeah i'm missing a lot of context a lot of it it's just not the case and to try and say that bows can penetrate armor as well as was no no it's not tested to be done multiple times the level of armor was different between periods okay arm was made to the best capacity of the medical period to resist the weapons of the day but when you shoot a late 18th century musket to medieval armor the musket destroys it okay yes there are certain breastplates made of that period that were able to resist muscovia because it's made to resist it but many of amazon majors is musket fire musket fire absolutely destroys medieval armor the lethality is huge now people then and brandon brings this up that try and argue well the adventures of the longbow outweigh um its disadvantages one being the rate of fire you could shoot what could we say like um i can i forgot the i have like tested now i've forgotten i think i got up to uh nearly 19 arrows in a minute myself but that's usually a lot higher rate um the averages were anything between six and 12 in a minute but anyway that's a lot more arrows shot for the one to two shots you can get in them off from a musket in one or two minutes even uh so muscular rate of fire is much slower and i think there's a very key point that people are missing to try and argue that therefore longbows are just as good and this is the biggest point if i was to say the most significant reason why muskets replace the long bone okay it's this like understanding of their lethality and we need to understand it like this let's pretend we had some figures that were we can actually even just make this analogy with pretend figures that were plucking out of the air and i don't even think this concession is accurate but let's just pretend that four even six volleys from a group of archers is as lethal as a single volley or shot what do you call like when a whole unit of musketman fire is it called a volley as well but that is a volley's relative see this is something i need brandon to help me out this is his area i don't know what fire it's a firing line firing line i uh but so when you shoot a whole range of us it's a firing or a i'm pretty sure if man you know what i'll just say volley let's just say that's napoleon yeah or brandon he wouldn't know um braden comments right now a lot of the longbow fanboys and by the way i am a longbow fanboy but i'm not so much that i'm going to be deluded and not see deficiencies problems in it and where other weapons have adventures and stuff like that but the real big puritans might say ah that's unfair shot easily if you say a single volley from archers are as lethal as a volley a single volley from muskafire you're deluded that's not the case to try and emphasize this okay muskets shoot with greater penetration they can leave larger wounds on the person which is harder which is more incapacitating harder for them to recover okay it has higher penetrative power and so if it actually goes through person there's two you know examples more blood loss and all that stuff um also on top of that um if a bullet gets lodged in someone's body it's very hard to retrieve and there's a high chance that'll incapacitate or kill someone because it's there and because if you can't get the bullet out the wound won't close and it'll keep bleeding and all that stuff and then internal bleeding so even if you start at the top uh arrows one they're more survivable because they're going to go don't go as deep there are more things you can put in the way to protect yourself from arrows like shields like other armor and stuff like that i was never a guaranteed fact that every single arrow shot from a warbow will go through armor no it depends on the draw way depends on the distance it depends on the angle that it hits but overall on balance more muskets will penetrate armor then arrows will penetrate the armor of the medieval period they're more just on average okay so they're already going to be inflicting more damage and then the damage they inflict is going to be more lethal because there's greater penetration the bulls can get stuck and if you get stuck with the arrow there's a good chance when you pull the arrow out depending on the arrowhead granted bob's runs about a lot of the arrowheads with bodkin heads which don't have barbs so you can be pulled out a lot easier when you pull it out the arrowhead usually comes with it and so it's a lot easier to survive infection is a problem later on but overall muskets are just way more lethal okay so don't even try and argue that they're not that's a ridiculous thing to try and say and so then we can try and make this comparison how many volleys of arrow fire would reach the same lethality of a single volley of musket fire let's pretend it's four or something like that and you might say well then hey this gives the bose the at an edge an advantage because you can shoot easily four volleys of arrow fire in the single in the length of time that it takes a musket round to reload this is missing a very significant point and again i think it's the most significant to why musket fire won out ultimately overall and it's this how do you win battles all right if you've studied warfare at any degree my experience is medieval warfare hasn't done as much in ebola but i'd say this truth remains accurate consistent throughout because it exists in multiple periods even for the period that i've looked at you rarely win a battle by killing every person on the opposing side okay most often they will break retreat or surrender people don't want to die it's a truism of reality and so when the morale loosens and one side gets up ahead they will break and retreat and certainly very unique exceptional circumstances when an army fights the last man of course it happened but those were the exceptions overall you win by breaking and retreating so if you can do a vastly more large amount of damage in an instant in short amount of time that has far greater chances of causing your opposing side the enemy to lose morale break and retreat and so if you could condense the amount of damage that you could do in a minute like remember with the longbow you have to do several volleys to try and reach a certain like lethality pressure and condense it to an instant and even if you still had to take longer to reload which on balance means you've done the same amount of damage than say archers could in a minute because they're doing multiple volleys because you can condense all that damage in a single big smacking head of all these bullets sitting think about the effect that has on the people receiving it when they're attacking and they get hit by all these bullets friends are falling down blood everywhere screaming in pain stuff like that that is going to have such a larger impact on the psychology and morale of the opponents than multiple volleys of arrows that do less amounts of damage but in in addition in culmination it ends up being the same on balance overall but because it hits harder and bigger in that one instance that is going to have a much greater effect in causing the opponent to break and leg it and that's how you win battles and so the musket because it can even if it's a slow rate of fire because it can hit like a hammer in that small instant of the first shot it is a vastly superior military weapon than the boat even with its slower rate of fire and so even with that and i think there are other things that you can uh talk about like the fact that bullets are mostly invisible you can't really see them and they travel faster usually um and uh arrows are more survivable you can see him coming you can't really dodge him but um but still there are small things here but if you were just thinking you can consider this one significant point and i think is that again i believe it's the most significant absolutely muskets smash the uh as bows as military weapons just for that fact but the thing is i actually think the lethality of muskets are far more significant more than just four volleys varus maybe even far greater because they're surprising the types of armor that can protect yourself against arrow fire of course this is the whole point about getting higher poundage bows to be able to punch through the armor okay but it wasn't a universal factor not every archer could shoot up to that high level range so now i want to talk about that's the main thing okay and if you were to take anything from this video i appreciate thank you for watching those are the main two points i really want to talk about of course go into a lot of detail here if you're familiar with my content as i like but because this is what i'm like i like to go into further detail i want to talk about specific things that brandon brings up that i either want to elaborate on or share a different perhaps more accurate perspective from a medieval you know historical standpoint based on my own research and experience and things like that but it's not going to change the ultimate point okay uh based on the two main things i've just raised the musket is gonna be a superior weapon but there are a couple of things that uh i'd like to talk about brandon brings up the idea of fatigue and it's absolutely true that a bow is a more physical weapon than a musket but i think he is uh putting too much stock in that point especially to try and justify bows would be phased out no no if bows were just as effective lethally just because they can be more difficult and more physically intensive to shoot they would definitely still use them for the benefit that they're achieving if they can win battles with them absolutely and the other thing is they are not as fatiguing as branded things um i shoot or bow range 100 pound is my average and i can easily shoot like in a shooting session up to 100 arrows before my arms are really starting to uh get really tired and again that's when i'm like doing it very actively and stuff so that is more than enough to shoot your full range of ammunition on average you're gonna have 20 to 40 arrows uh for the long women but other you know uh warboy archers reenactors and stuff like joe gibbs um famous one he's actually in the video that uh brandon shows from by the way i was happy to see that even i appeared in brendan's videos already um showing you know rate of fire and stuff like that uh that was a pleasant surprise joey has said that you know 200 pounds is up it is max but if he goes down to something like 160 pound he can shoot all day without a problem and so that's actually not an issue especially because we don't see i haven't seen any accounts in history where an army was defeated because the archers were so fatigued they couldn't shoot their bows anymore fatigue certainly plays a part overall marching and things like that but in terms of the actual battle engagement i've never come across a single instance where the archers were unable to keep shooting when they needed to so i don't think that's a really strong point uh to bring up they're great absolutely more physically intensive than a musket but again training and stuff like that you condition you get used to it and that's not knowing near as much of a problem one of the other points brendan talks about is ammunition that um a medieval archer is going to be able to carry less arrows with him than the average late 19th century musketeer yes and no it's a little more complicated than that on their person yes but remember those wagons i talked about how they'd be you have heaps of sheaths of arrows i mean you would have people ready to deliver the more arrows on hand depending on like you would probably if you really you'd grab two sheaves so you've got 40 arrows on you but in the heat of the battle if you lose if you shoot all those you can still get more arrows if there's more in the supply and usually they'll bring heap so i told you they would bring so many arrows on these campaigns okay and then again you can grab your arrows that you already shot or grab the ones the enemies shot at you and then brandon that kind of theorizes something where he says because of that they would lessen their rate of fire because of limited ammunition no i i really disagree with that but there is times when you would lower your rate of fire as an archer and it depends on the shooting window that the enemy presents toward to it to you also you know when an enemy say charging their line for the amount of time it takes to you know cross the range and then close that distance they're not going to shoot 20 or 40 hours in that right in that small time frame in the charge like in azure core you know if they slow down absolutely when the opportunity is available you will offload as many arrows as possible to defeat your enemy and you're not going to say well we might need the arrows later so i'm not going to shoot all of them or shoot as fast i don't know if you could win the battle by shooting as many as you humanly can in that instance they will absolutely do it that's what i personally they did in agincourt especially when the uh the charge from the fringe got stalled and slowed down because of the boggy train and things like that that's like golden opportunity that's like enemy stalled almost some stationary right in front of me freaking shoot as many bloody arrows as you can um and so yeah the idea of slowing down rate of fire to conserve ammunition i think ah no no no they might slow down in other instances to um all right there's they're kind of vulnerable but they're not it's not a perfect thing let's just see if we can get a couple of shots in you know yeah but when those golden moments happen like at agincourt where you have the chance to win you're going to be shooting as damn fast as you humanly can um regardless of ammunition because the other thing is again you can reuse like archery ammunition that's a huge advantage absolutely massive there is a large point that brandon talks about in his video that um i want to dive into quite a bit and it is his assumption that the medieval uh bowman would be a less effective melee combatant than say the late 19th century musketman that is interesting the reasons he gives is he i feel is assuming that the uh bayoneted musket rifle is a superior weapon then uh the weapons that the average bo war bowman would have and there's a demonstration he gives which i feel is almost comical in its um exaggeration where the bowman needs to switch from shooting their bow to drawing their sword out getting ready for melee and the demonstration they have the guy is trying to put the boat on his back barely anyone in the medieval period i've seen no evidence for it at all so i'd almost go fast no one actually wore the bow over the shoulder like this like we see uh robin hood do and things um often times the brave site isn't high enough and you have to stretch it out i've done this and i'll try and do it now it's it's really not good oh crap this is a hundred and twenty hundred thirty pound bow the amount of pressure on my chest here is extremely uncomfortable it's like no freaking way would you do that it's ridiculous and honestly when someone is charging at you and your life is at risk the well-being of your bow keeping on your person is a complete non-issue okay and so honestly the speed in like you've just shot your last arrow they're getting to get too close shoot another one and you want to switch this is how quick it would be shoot drop draw you're there it's that quick okay we are not talking about an excessive amount of time and yeah you would just drop your bow your life is at risk you pick it up later okay i want to show you again because this point brandon kind of emphasizes a bit that that amount of time loss was a significant point to bring up in the comparison between um muskets and and bows but seriously you shoot your last one you drop you draw you're good okay that's not long at all granted with a musket you shoot and it has a bayonet you're ready to um fight but i brandon will need to correct me on this again this is his area my understanding is that bayonets weren't always fixed to muskets when they were shooting even in battle okay um but the musket on the end made it more difficult to uh to aim and so at times they had their full volleys they were shooting without the muskets again i don't know if it was a universal standard to always have the bayonetta fixed in warfare with a musket rifle or it was optional some would have some or not or they were told specifically and then when the enemy is getting too close that's when they ought to be given fixed bayonets that fix bayonets and charge if they needed to fix the bayonet because if a charging enemy is getting too close that motion would just logically be take much longer than drawing a sword because you have to draw the bayonet and then fix it that's two actions this you can draw the bow sorry you can drop the bow and draw the sword in one motion together so that if you actually want to talk about speed in switching to melee if the bayonets aren't fixed the speed is actually in the realm of the archer but honestly it would be so small that i don't think it's significant to give you know weight to one argument or the other the one that i do want to talk about is who would be the superior melee combatant once they have their weapons in their hands and brandon makes the comparison that uh a bayoneted musket is essentially a spear i personally uh disagree it is it's a type of spear but it's a short awkwardly made ill balanced spear with very limited handholds it doesn't make it as good as a regular spear of that of that size and it definitely isn't as good as a full-length spear it's an effective weapon don't get me wrong but it's nowhere near as fair comparison to just a role of pikeman or or a spearman and the actual medieval archer okay most of them will be wearing armor where it seems like most uh musketmen aren't wearing armor and so if you just want to talk about combative effectiveness melee between a medieval archer and a musketman most many archers use one-handed swords not all of them but most did because they're most convenient they wouldn't get in the way of the bow when you're shooting the hand getting this it's just more convenient stuff like that but a single sword against an opponent where with a single musket a bayonetted musket is actually a very more it's a closer comparison in terms of which weapon has the edge than just giving the advantage spears on average usually always have the advantage but this musket isn't really a true spear it's a shorter one or more awkward ill-balanced and other things uh and i think this is shown by the fact that i believe you know there were certain um officers or just men in the napoleonic times who opted to use a sword over a bayoneted musket when that went into melee and had to charge certain ranks and stuff like that if the musket bayonet musket was a universally superior weapon no one would still be using the sword if they had the option of picking up a muscular habit that might be explained by the fact that they didn't have one and the sword was the only thing but i believe some had swords on there as a sidearm while i had the musket and i brandon could greet me this is his area but i think even some would drop it and still opt to use a sword because the sword still has unique advantages that a bayonetted musket doesn't and so it's not all just a complete cut thing that um a bayoneted musketman is better in melee than a bowman who was armed with a sword because the other thing most of them will actually see this armor i'm wearing it's actually a very historically plausible kind of outfit of a medieval moment of say a 15th century brigandine usually just a tunic or something underneath uh or mail but a lot of them they didn't wear anything just to brigade and that's it short shirt like and i'm even wearing fairly accurate shoes this time usually i'm just wearing my regular shoes uh and and sword so it's actually really comparison and uh it's still armor okay this would stop obeying it so bowman absolutely were employed in me late a lot throughout the medieval period it wasn't their primary thing but when push come to shove and they need to drop their bows they could switch to very quickly not a problem and they could still fight very effectively and so to give the edge to a musketeer because there's an assumption that they're better in melee combat i think that's incorrect personally understand where it's coming from and where his thought comes from um you know his analysis here but this is me looking at it from my experience as a medieval enthusiast but also an archer um and you know having experienced all that and of course i've studied just melee combat generally uh overall uh for a long time i absolutely will acknowledge that a bayoneted musket by their design is superior against cavalry absolutely that's it that's a definite advantage especially with the formations that they could adopt to try and repel cavalry charges and things like that uh definitely and uh medieval war bowmen were uniquely vulnerable to cavalry and they usually had to have um either the support troops back up cavalry or infantry to protect them you can still fight but um a musket because it is a type of imperfect spear but a type you have certain adventures to try and ward off those cavalry charges but the thing is absolutely bowman did fight cavalry uh and agincourt is the prime example again more unique circumstances but the archers were getting into melee heavy okay uh in agincourt brandon brings up a comparison about who would have the advantage in ambushes and i completely agree with him i don't think the bow has a unique advantage at all in ambushes even if they're more silent because there's a small amount of time after you shoot where the arrows hit and the enemy is then going to be alerted to your presence um you can actually shoot kneeling down with a longbow i've done it myself but for me files like this go like this and let's see what drawer i could reach even angling it like this full draw but you can't shoot it when you're lying down so brand is cracked in that part but not the the kneeling and because you can shoot lying down that does give you a unique advantage to hide in certain circumstances better and be out of shoot at the same time while hiding in such in a prone lying down position they can't really do with a bow advantage to the musket but overall um no uh because as soon as you get that first shot off enemy's gonna know where you're here you are and look you can point out the high rate of fire which i've already addressed because if you can reach the same damage in a shorter you know single shot even if you have to reload longer then there's a huge massive advantage to that all that damage done delivered instantly um smoke you know isn't too much of an issue yes it existed it's not a game changer we see that in history they still used it okay and it didn't all like yeah so that's not a one and their style like the fact that bose is quieter again these aren't good arguments they don't make a bow better than a musket overall on balance no okay again go back to those first big reasons the next and last point that i want to talk about is the comparison of accuracy and i i feel i can uh add more i guess perspective on this because i've had direct experience shooting uh longbows and warbows and i do archery so of course i actually don't know how accurate or inaccurate muskets are of course i've heard that there are less accurate than modern firearms and things but i'd like to know what their uh uh grouping is the average grouping of like you know at certain ranges and stuff uh i'd love a video on a brainerd honestly this would be a great point of comparison because there is also miss a lot of misconceptions i'm misunderstanding about the accuracy in archery generally but also not just with warbows but longbows longbows are a bit of a different beast uh when it comes to accuracy depends on how thick the shafts are but also their brace side affects accuracy a bit but overall long bows are a harder bow to shoot than a lot of types of recurves okay uh they have other strengths i'm gonna do whole videos on this to go into it but there's that uh you'll never get as accurate uh and if you can you're a superhuman but most people will never get as accurate with a traditional bow whether it's a longbow or even ricoh just traditional one without a shelf without you know stabilizers and all these things a traditional bow will never be as accurate as a modern bow and this includes uh modern uh compound bows and things that have a special cut out the arrows scented and all those things they have stabilizers and stuff modern bows are obviously superior opposed that's why they're made the way they are we've been doing it for a very long time being out of perfect designs and you know that give greater capacity for accuracy and so you're not you're rarely ever going to get uh i won't say universally because again superhumans rarely ever gonna get um olympic level accuracy with a traditional bow so it's near impossible i won't outright you know say it is but there's another massive problem with traditional archery especially medieval warfare archery and it's that the arrows were supplied to them okay remember they came in those sheets from those wagons that means they weren't weighted it was random you didn't know which arrows were going to which bow when you made them and so the arrows were never balanced to take advantage of the archer's paradox so it would curve around the shaft that means in a medieval context heaps of arrows are going to be wobbling more on release hit the shaft and that wobbling okay uh is going to really affect accuracy and so the highest level accuracy on average for medieval style archery is like groupings of around yeah big and this is at a good distance okay and you can get a grouping of around here around i'll get all your arrows within this kind of diameter at a good distance say like 50 meters that's insanely good for in a medieval context especially if you're shooting unbalanced arrows on a friggin warbo warbows are hard to aim you know why they're hard to draw okay to get really accurate you need a very clean consistent release you need to hold the bow steady okay and when you're trying to hold back a heavy bow it's really hard to not shake it's really hard to keep it steady it's really hard to get a consistent clean release and so absolutely on average most many vouchers will nowhere near be as accurate as you can achieve in a modern context uh you'll have the prodigies that can get really really good and there are examples of like standards that um if you could shoot within a you know uh was it it was like a ladies kind of brooch or something like that um at a certain pace that was kind of a standard but to be able to shoot like say a coin consistently at um a target of a moderate distance in a medieval context you would only ever get an archer like that or a couple a few every generation and that's kind of what we see in the modern day so to say that medieval actually is all on balance universally more accurate then musketry you know um i don't know i don't know what they're how inaccurate they are i know that they're not medieval archery is not pinpoint accurate not like always like all the archers being out here to coin at 30 meters or something there's no no warboys aren't like that so just on a rough kind of uh comparison on what i have seen and talked about you know and referenced from musketry and stuff the accuracy seems a bit comparable honestly um i don't know how wide a field the musket balls can you know curve distance and stuff uh so if there could be wider variants in mustache fire because again it's not my area of expertise but i certainly know the accuracy levels of medieval archery can be blown out of proportion because it's a spectrum you'd have some guys that are just insanely talented but on average most of all the best you could achieve like i said is probably a grouping of about yay big and if you can get that at 50 meters that's flipping phenomenal but that means you could hit a human-sized target consistently at about 50 meters or so even further right um if you're trained enough in a medieval context and that's perfectly enough but to say that someone could you know see a night an hour night on horseback at 50 meters and say i'll get them through the icelit that's superhuman granted sometimes we see people like that but not really marriage okay so i think the discussion on accuracy doesn't necessarily go universally on the side of archery and medieval warfare and we've kind of come to the end of all the things that i wanted to address in brandon's honestly great video i i loved it even though those obviously one or two things i disagreed with because i'm coming from my own perspective but i've probably got things wrong with uh you know napoleonic style warfare and mustard fire and stuff and i'd love to be corrected if i got anything wrong and brandon is an awesome creator and if you have any interest in napoleonic warfare also late 18th century early 19th century musketry all that stuff it's one of the best creators i've seen doing this type of content go check him out please subscribe and thank you for making a video brandon and of course thank you very much for watching i hope you've enjoyed and of course i hope to see you again here on shadowversity so until that time farewell delicious but it's surprisingly good isn't it delicious it's incredible delicious delicious delicious delicious nathan what do you think that actually looked put on you look like you're faking it there really yes because i never put it on you know this is this is uh the behind the scene like after we actually film the thing we just we just eat the rest of the food and uh it's actually it's pretty like we wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't good mum do you want to be on the thing no oh look it's my mum she joined us for cooking hello fresh what do you think some really good food and honestly i can't believe it's cooked on a campfire i i'd go camping with you chad oh hey yeah yummy [Music] you

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 410,231

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Id: DdX47jEBn-k

Length: 45min 49sec (2749 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 09 2021