I have a question about the history of firearms.

[Occam Bandage]

It seems to me that up until the dawn of the socketed bayonet in the eighteenth century, firearms were inferior to crossbows in most every imaginable way. Guns were expensive, heavy, difficult to keep in good condition, difficult to transport without ruining the powder, difficult to load and fire, misfired frequently, were prone to accident, overheating, and breakdown, were hard to standardize in production, effectively blinded their own soldiers with smoke, all but removed the possibility of surprise, and had greatly inferior range, accuracy, and firing speed. The only advantages I can see are that guns were louder and that gun wounds are larger than crossbow wounds.

So why was it that the firearm had replaced the crossbow entirely by 1600, both in European warfare and in attempts to colonize the Americas? The only explanation I can come up with is that leaders chose to outfit their armies with guns simply because they were too expensive for civilians to maintain, providing an internal security benefit, but that doesn't hold for cases like the early days of the English colonization of the Americas, where the militia was the only means of defending the colonies in the near-constant wars with neighboring Native American tribes.

[rockymountaindem]

1. Probably because they could penetrate armor from longer range

and because the novelty effect likely had a psychological impact on the enemy, particularly if they didn't have firearms.

[Occam Bandage]

3. Crossbows could penetrate armor easily. That's why the crossbow/pike combination

dominated European militaries before guns replaced them. Guns certainly had an enormous psychological impact, but as American colonial history showed, that didn't survive past a few encounters.

Early battles between Native Americans and English colonists were something the opposite of the way people tend to perceive them: at range, the natives were superior with massed arrow fire, while in close combat, European steel and armor made Englishmen practically invulnerable. The chief advantage of the gun over the bow (and especially the longbow) wasn't range or killing power, but rather that anyone could learn to fire it in a matter of hours, instead of over a lifetime of training.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. I'm thinking they had evolved a little bit beyond your description

and that tactics for using them had been created that made firearms more effective. Plus when confronting stone age cultures, as the colonists did, a strange, noisy, and deadly weapon would have great psychological advantage.

[X_Digger]

4. Don't forget physical strength

An english bow was formidable in its range, but also in the draw required. A crossbow is easier to pull, but still not as easy as a mustket is to lift.

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. There was a distinct advantage from a military POV -

crossbows took far more physical strength to operate than even the earliest, clumsiest guns. A 20lb gun had equivalent penetration to a 10lb xbow, and they had similar rates of fire, but imagine the difference of coming off a 10 mile march, then having to 1) repeatedly draw or crank a bow with a 120lb pull, or 2) repeatedly load, prime, and fire a matchlock musket.

[Occam Bandage]

6. That seems reasonable. nt

[X_Digger]

7. Fewer skilled tradesman as well..

With a flintlock, all the skilled labor was up front.

Fletching is a skilled profession and a fletcher had to spend time with each round.

[benEzra]

9. Some medieval crossbows had over-700-pound pulls...

and even they would throw a 1.25-ounce bolt at roughly the same velocity that a 68-pound-pull longbow could throw a 2.5-ounce arrow. With pull weights that high, you needed a cranequin/windlass/somesuch to cock it, meaning rate of fire was abysmal compared to a longbow, and you are correct that it would have been a lot of work. Not to mention the much heavier weight of a crossbow compared to that of a firearm.

[benEzra]

8. Crossbows were inferior to longbows, as the French found out at Crecy.

and the primary military question was longbow vs. firearm, as I recall.

Arguably even early firearms were superior to crossbows. Crossbows are complex and delicate mechanisms, are even more susceptible to being ruined from bad weather than early matchlocks, and (given the limitations of medieval and Elizabethan elastic materials) had poor trajectory, performance, and stopping power. Rate of fire of crossbows was abysmal (even slower than a muzzleloader, and far slower than a longbow), and sighting was more problematic. Finally, manufacturing a crossbow was fiendishly expensive and complicated compared to manufacturing a matchlock rifle.

[Iktomiwicasa]

12. You are correct

As an avid archer and pretty skilled bowyer, I have worked with both extensively. A moderately heavy longbow has twice the effective range of the most powerful crossbow. The reason that crossbows were so damn heavy in draw weight is because of their inherent inefficiency. With short limbs and a very short power stroke as compared to a longbow, they fired their bolt at a slower speed, and the short bolt of a crossbow had less physical mass than an English war arrow. The ONLY advantage that a crossbow ( and early firearms for that matter) had over a longbow was its ability to be used effectively by troops with relatively little training.

[ejbrush]

10. Compared to crossbows, firearms are much easier.

A crossbow is about equal to a musket in terms of the damage caused by a single shot, at close range.

Once you mix in tactics and logistics, the singular advantage departs very quickly. Firstly, a crossbow powerful enough to do real damage in battle was a deceptively complex and fragile piece of equipment. Crossbows were made by artisans. The bow itself was either spring steel or layered bone/hardwood composite; the release mechanism was made of bone for durability; the string hundreds of strands of either fine silk or catgut. Changes in humidity and temperature were detrimental to performance. The bow had to be un-strung whenever the device was not in use, and it could not be stored loaded for any lenght of time. Crossbow bolts were by necessity precise pieces of equiment, fletched carefully to guarentee accuracy bolt to bolt. And they are slow. A fairly powerful crossbow circa 1600 required a hand-cranked winch to draw, limiting rate of fire to maybe 1 shot per minute. All this complexity required trained, dedicated soldiers. Longbows were simpler by far, but required a lot more training for effective use.

When firearms matured as a weapon, around 1640 or so, they posessed positives where archery was lacking. First, a musket is really just a plain iron tube on a woooden stock. Blacksmithing and woodcarving, common basic trades. The flint lock itself is much simpler than it looks, and the parts can be produced in quantity by semi-skilled labor, and later assembled by dedicated armorers. Casting balls out of lead is a much faster and brainless operation than turning and fletching bolts, and a supply wagon can carry a lot more in a smaller space. By 1600, powder was refined to the point where it was stable in transport (corned powder), and coopers made powder kegs by the thousands to keep it dry and potent. Water powered mills could produce tons at a time. DuPont got their start with one powder mill in the Colonial days. All of this is very well suited to naicent industrial practices.

Contrary to a lot of imagination, muskets were easy to use and pretty reliable. By the time a recruit was actually sent out, they were generally able to fire three shots per minute, as per this Youtube videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJMbxZ1k9NQ&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho-QCmnNMl8&feature=related. Singularily, not much, but when you adopt the tactic of three ranks firing and loading in sucession, you looking at a volley of shots every six seconds. Smoke or no, accuracy or no, that's a lot of lead going downrange. Sure, and individual musket may not reliably hit a horse at 100 yards when you aim at it, but a fifty musket volley every six seconds against a platoon of cavalry, well that changes the odds a little. Finally, maintenance is much easier, really, because once you've fired the musket, all you have to do is clean out the powder fouling, oil the lock and check or replace the flint. No bone release nuts, catgut strings, detensioning bows or refletching bolts.

In the New World, the musket also had advantages over archery for people pushing into the frontier. Versitility. The musket that you were issued for the militia could come home and put meat on the table, ball for big game, small shot for fowl and small game. It could be left loaded and unprimed on the wall to be ready at a moments notice to keep the preadators out of the cowpen or brigands out of the stable. Big and awkward compared to a modern weapon sure, but anybody from 12 years up could use it effectively, if need be.

Probably missed the whole point of your initial post, but it is Friday night and, boy, we brew some good ales in Wisconsin. Cheers.

[Endangered Specie]

11. also, aside from the reasons already mentioned... a musket

can also function as a spear, and that was 100% reliable. You cannot attach a bayonet to a bow.