European Archery/ Agincourt/crecy/etc

[Timo Nieminen]

Originally Posted by RDGAC

It's a funny thing, the way that missile combat seems to have been considered somehow "un-chivalrous" in the West for such a long time.

Bows, crossbows and, later, guns, were standard hunting weapons for Western nobles.

But not often allowed in tournaments, so not a military skill one could display in tournament. Get rich by captures in the melee, become a sporting superstar via jousting - what can archery offer in competition with these? Well, they can still go ahead and win archery competitions, and even kings (e.g., Henry VIII) were sometimes noted competitive archers. But that doesn't lead to William Marshal-like riches, or jousting stardom.

Sword and lance as THE weapons of the knight, mace as the symbol of authority push the bow to a lower status position.

I think at least some of the "un-chivalrous" idea is just modern. But lower status of missile weapons is a foundation for such ideas.

Originally Posted by RDGAC

Can we add simplicity of maintenance and storage to the list of the arquebus/musket's desirable attributes? (I know absolutely nothing about bows - my interest begins at the moment some bright spark worked out that you could propel things into other things with gunpowder, really, and was always given to understand that maintaining a bow in working order was a pretty simple affair. Don't get it too wet, keep the string dry, make sure you don't wrap it round your head, etc.)

Compared to a longbow, which doesn't have much in the way of storage/maintenance issues, I don't think a musket has any big advantage.

Compared to storing composite bows in a less-than-ideal climate, a musket is much better. Babur wrote (in Baburnama) that bows only lasted for a few seasons in India, due to the humidity. Not at all good if you want to stockpile them in your armoury - by the time you want to use them, they'll be useless. Muskets will store better. (As will steel bows.)

A musket might well have a much longer life than a longbow, when in use. Wood fails with time. Flight bows are sometimes only good for 2-3 shots; military bows are less optimised and last better. But they don't last forever.