>The Double-armed Man, By the New Invention:By W. N. Archer. Wᵐ Neade>Hey guys what if like we attach a bow to our pikes and out volley the enemy but keeping our pike formation sound?Even in the age of gunpowder people were still proposing to use the bow but no one thought to make a hybrid unit capable of using archers while keeping cavalry at bay before this manuscript. Why did no one think to implement this?
>>18446389Also I don't mean removing gun units but simply giving your pikemen a small ottomon style bow and letting loose while your arquebus men fire at the enemy as well, their pikemen would take a moral hit and more casualties leading up to the pike clash.
Just give them a big bulletproof shield with an integrated mini bar/cooking niche on the inside and a triple pike-bow-nunchuko attached to it. Otherwise you could equip every soldier with an 6 ft swiss army knife and you would dominate the early modern battle field
>>18446389Are you asking why there were no pike & bow/crossbow units before the mass adoption of handheld firearms in Europe? If so then you should first ask why there were so few large and drilled infantry formations in the first place. The martial society in Europe prior to the 15th century was simply vastly different and focused more so on mounted combat, which was performed by knights and their retainers. Pure infantry of course existed but those were limited to cities (due to their militias) and the temporary levies of free men who were responsible for their own equipment and training. Large pike/polearm formations necessitate a large body of trained men and only in the late middle ages did the states have the capacity to raise such formations wholesale. This went hand in hand with the development of said states from feudal to more centralised systems of administration and economy. >>18446392By the time handheld firearms were adopted en masse bows were simply outclassed. Early pike formations were of course supported by bow/crossbowmen but by the early 16th century firearms reigned supreme. And pikemen have enough to do on their own. To be an effective formation every soldier must perform commands (changing face, charge pike, hold, advance, etc.) nearly simultaneously - they simply didn't have enough hands. Additionally the "morale damage" of bows wasn't that great compared to that of guns and by the 16th century some armor types were practically invincible to arrow fire. A good example of this is the Battle of Flodden, 1513 where scottish pikeman armored in the "german manner" shrugged off several volleys of english longbow fire. Only when the scots pursued the english into broken terrain were the english billmen to overcome the heavily armored (but out of formation) scottish pikemen. The english even concluded in a royal report, that this battle was won by their billmen within the broken ground and that their bowmen were useless.
>>18446389>archers still require far more training than a gunner>soldiers shooting volleys of arrows means no or fewer soldiers are reloading the guns>having to bring bow and arrows increases army expenses and logistical burdenIt doesn't make any sense. Guns were superior which is why they took over, paying more for soldiers to do more things but poorly is not efficient. Why not give each soldier a sling and some javelins why you're at it, more projectiles = more good, no?
But its not like there weren't "hybrid" units. Around the middle of the 17th century some states issued their musketeers a combination of musket rests and spear (see figure E3 in my previous post). In german those were called Schweinsfeder (swine feather) and the austrians equipped their musketeers with this weapon in order to content with the numerous ottoman cavalry. The german examples weren't that long but several Schweinsfedern could be assembled around a central beam to create a cheval de frise. But at an individual level every musketeer had a seperate spear - but this came with the aforementioned issue of having two large and relatively unwieldy weapons for one soldier to handle at the same time. When socket bayonets came about in the late 1680s/early 1690s those musket rest spears were discontinued too.
>>18446392Small Crab bows are very very expensive. Even in countries where bowyers were common such horn bows were only reserved for the elites and required delicate instructions for care. Most who couldn't afford such items relied on large siyah bows with basic bone and sinew reinforcements. Certain units did definitely have both shorter pole arms and bows but it wasn't especially common.>>18447165>By the time handheld firearms were adopted en masse bows were simply outclassedI would agree mostly with the outlier being horsemen. With many riders letting go of the mastery of the lance for braces of pistols (which had paltry energy compared to a musket), horse archers also took similar resurgence in glory competing in traditional heavy cavalry roles by dorning layered or proofed armors.
>>18446392Arquebus massively outranges and outguns bows and crossbows.Holy Roman Emperor literally banned bows/crossbows for his landsknechts>arm yourself with real weapon like arquebus or no pay ruleMaintaining pike formation order was already heavy task as it is. Adding ruckus with outdated weapons will hurt their primary role.
>>18447181>I would agree mostly with the outlier being horsemenIndeed among cavalry bow remained relevant weapon. Main advantages of firearm are accuracy and range and they can't be utilized from unstable platform like horse. So bows better rate of fire puts them in top here. Many counties (like Ottoman Empire and Moscovia) preserved bow armed cavalry while having arquebusers infantry. But here things to consider:1. Europe sucked at archery, they had only primitive self bows not very suited for horseback use and weak in general. They didn't have institutional knowledge and skills of horseback archery.2. Wirh rise of the arquebus balance shifted to infantry, missile combat of cavalry vs infantry became greatly tilted into infantry favor and role of missile cavalry overall reduced.
>>18447181>With many riders letting go of the mastery of the lance for braces of pistolsThe prevalance of the Caracole tactic is vastly overstated in our modern times. It was a situational tactic and the people in the 16th and 17th centuries knew this. The demise of the lance was partly due to the difficulty of learning this weapon, partly because it was tactically limited and partly due to a few losses of lancers against cuirassiers (here the Battle of Coutras, 1587 and the Battle of Nieuwpoort, 1600 come to mind - in both lancers were outfought in melee by cuirassiers).>horse archers also took similar resurgence in glory competing in traditional heavy cavalry roles by dorning layered or proofed armorsPerhaps in Central Asia. The only two european states that continued to partly field horse archers into the 17th and 18th centuries were the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Tsardom/Empire of Russia. Mainly because those two states already had an established tradition of horse archery and because they continued to face far eastern steppe horse archers on their eastern frontiers.
>>18446389>but no one thought to make a hybrid unit capable of using archers while keeping cavalry at bay before this manuscript.The Persian Achaemenid ImmortalsA frontline of spearmen with large shields supported by archers in the back ranks. All members of the Immortals were trained and equipped with spear, shield, bow, arrows and short melee weapons (short swords, axes, maces).
>>18447280>The prevalance of the Caracole tactic is vastly overstated in our modern times.I'm not referring to the caracole. I referenced horse archers very specifically because the preferred method of their kind were to fire into approach like pistolers and "mingle" (As Sir Roger puts it) into a Lancer depth.
