Weapons Question: Crossbows vs. Early Firearms

[Jacob]

[crazy canuck]

I find it hard to believe that there was such a thing as a run of the mill knight.

Don Quixote.

Oh wait... he was a run at the mill knight.

[Berkut]

One thing that really sealed to dominance of the musket was the invention of the simple socket-bayonet. That turned the musketman into the modern infantryman, and saw the end of "specialized" infantry troops as the bulk of formations - now everyone was an infantryman, and could fight at range with mass volley and close and fight shock as well.

Obviously, once you start lining up your infantry and using volley musket fire to soften up the opponent and then charge and give them the bayonet, there is no real place for anyone with something as cumbersome as crossbow.

Also, I don't think the cost of powder/shot per soldier was necessarily more expensive than quarrels. Rather the advent of massed musket bearing infantry meant that you had to have some way to supply a lot them with a LOT of powder, which was very expensive. In other words, if you could manufacture crossbows and quarrels in the same numbers as muskets and powder/shot, you would likely have the same problem. But nobody was putting thousands of crossbowmen into the field.

But I rather doubt you can mass produce crossbows and quarrels in that manner anyway. Poweder might be problematic for a lot of reasons, but it seems much more conducive to mass manufacture than quarrels.

[Razgovory]

I don't think crossbows were in much use by the time of socket-bayonet.  I wonder how much a Renaissance age crossbow weighted vs an early firearm.  The earliest firearms were looked pretty heavy (being essentially a mini cannon attached to a pole), and even the original muskets had a portable rest to put the gun on when firing.  Late model crossbows often had winches to pull back the string, so they might be fairly heavy as well.  Since soldiers marched more then they fought, even a few pounds of weight might one weapon preferable to another.

[jimmy olsen]

I find it hard to believe that there was such a thing as a run of the mill knight.

Don Quixote.

Oh wait... he was a run at the mill knight.

Nice

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't think the consensus is that gunpowder was cheap, but rather that it wasn't that expensive.

If I were to guess I would say that the cost of a crossbow bolt may not have been that much different from the cost of ball and powder. The powder probably gained more from mass production than the bolt, and the balls could be manufactured trivially easy by the gunner himself (no skill required). I don't know the price of lead.

Yeah, and given that I've read that the opposite was true, I wonder what people are basing this idea on.

Complete speculation . . .

Powder might not be cheap, but it would be amenable to centralized production. If you were say an early modern state with some ambition and the desire to create a rudimentary standing army, you probably wouldn't start training up crossbowmen, because the Genoese (and other mercenaries) already had that market cornered.  But gunnery was new and the technology upgrading pretty regularly, so provided the cash and will were there, it wouldn't take that long to train up and field whatever passed for state of the art troops - and the arms could be built in state sponsored or financed facilities, with the side benefit of nice opportunities for patronage, monopolies, etc.  Hence the Three Musketeers and not the Three Crossbowmen.

[The Brain]

I find it hard to believe that there was such a thing as a run of the mill knight.

Don Quixote.

Oh wait... he was a run at the mill knight.

[Queequeg]

Adoption of the firearm as a means of centralizing violence by early modern states.  Very interesting.  Read that somewhere, Minsky? It's novel enough that a book could probably be written on it.

[Queequeg]

Anyone know what the ratio of crossbow to firearm in the old tericos was? I bet there'd be differences in using them en masse.

[The Brain]

Adoption of the firearm as a means of centralizing violence by early modern states.  Very interesting.  Read that somewhere, Minsky? It's novel enough that a book could probably be written on it.

Ouch.

[Queequeg]

Adoption of the firearm as a means of centralizing violence by early modern states.  Very interesting.  Read that somewhere, Minsky? It's novel enough that a book could probably be written on it.

Ouch.

Most certainly not meant as an insult.

[Viking]

Anyone know what the ratio of crossbow to firearm in the old tericos was? I bet there'd be differences in using them en masse.

To the best of my knowledge tercios didn't use crossbows. I don't really know much about the proto-tercio evolving deep within the reconquista of andalucia so I'm not going to suggest I do. However, the tercio as experienced by non-spanish europeans the hard way started out as a formation of unarmored pike supported by arquebusiers to a formation of arquebusiers with mixed armored and unarmored pikemen in support over about 100 years after Charles V inheritance.

[dps]

Anyone know what the ratio of crossbow to firearm in the old tericos was? I bet there'd be differences in using them en masse.

To the best of my knowledge tercios didn't use crossbows. I don't really know much about the proto-tercio evolving deep within the reconquista of andalucia so I'm not going to suggest I do. However, the tercio as experienced by non-spanish europeans the hard way started out as a formation of unarmored pike supported by arquebusiers to a formation of arquebusiers with mixed armored and unarmored pikemen in support over about 100 years after Charles V inheritance.

Yes, my understanding has always been that the tercio was developed as a formation that allowed the arquebusiers to have a decent field of fire while still enjoying the protection of the pikemen.  I've never come across any reference to tercios using crossbowmen instead of, or supplementary to, the arquebusiers, either.  But I also haven't studied the history of the formation in detail, and most of the general reference works deal mostly with its usage after the reconquista.

[Viking]

Anyone know what the ratio of crossbow to firearm in the old tericos was? I bet there'd be differences in using them en masse.

To the best of my knowledge tercios didn't use crossbows. I don't really know much about the proto-tercio evolving deep within the reconquista of andalucia so I'm not going to suggest I do. However, the tercio as experienced by non-spanish europeans the hard way started out as a formation of unarmored pike supported by arquebusiers to a formation of arquebusiers with mixed armored and unarmored pikemen in support over about 100 years after Charles V inheritance.

Yes, my understanding has always been that the tercio was developed as a formation that allowed the arquebusiers to have a decent field of fire while still enjoying the protection of the pikemen.  I've never come across any reference to tercios using crossbowmen instead of, or supplementary to, the arquebusiers, either.  But I also haven't studied the history of the formation in detail, and most of the general reference works deal mostly with its usage after the reconquista.

Payroll records of the tercios (they had a doppelsöldner type shock troop as well) show that early tercios consist of about 2/3 pikemen without doppelsöldners while late tercios have about 1/3 pikemen of which 1/2 are doppelsöldners.

To me this suggests a move from defensive to exceptionally aggressive tactics.

[Iormlund]

An early text quoted in Spanish wiki specifically mentions crossbowmen (and espingarderos) as the ranged component of the proto-Tercio shortly after the Reconquista ended.