Muskets vs. cuirass

[bigdummy]

Yes agreed. And horses can never be completely armored, they never had armor on their legs at all as far as I know.

Somehow the Polish Hussars were still pulling off cavalry charges into arquebusiers and musketeers as late as the 1680s, how exactly they did it is a mystery, a lot of it was apparently their formations, since as you imply there is no way to make cavalry completely bullet proof. But I can't seem to find out much about it.

Bottom line is though clearly if heavy cavalry is exposed to concentrated fire they are vulnerable to high-energy missiles, whether that's Longbows at Agincourt or Recurves at Leignitz or Arquebuses at Pavia, and no cavalry anywhere ever (at least until the Industrial Age) was safe against cannonfire. It's a separate issue from how effective armor was vis a vis hand guns. So I guess in one sense it doesn't matter I'd just like to know more about it.

BD

[Fab]

Yes agreed. And horses can never be completely armored, they never had armor on their legs at all as far as I know.

Apparently some attempts were made - see ffoulkes page 9. But too rare to be taken in account.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19025405/Ffoulkes-C-The-Armourer-and-His-Craft-Read-in-Fullscreen

[bigdummy]

Yes agreed. And horses can never be completely armored, they never had armor on their legs at all as far as I know.

Apparently some attempts were made - see ffoulkes page 9. But too rare to be taken in account.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19025405/Ffoulkes-C-The-Armourer-and-His-Craft-Read-in-Fullscreen

Wow that is freaky, looks like a horse robot Thanks for the link I didn't realize Ffoulkes was available online.

BD

[admin]

Useful link! Shame about the helmet on the front cover LOL

BD, I think a lot of it is to do with rates of fire. Mussle-loading firearms seem to have a best (massed) rate of fire of 3 rounds per minute. They are effective usually at not more than about 150 yards, so basically a unit of gunmen will only get one effective volley at a charging unit of cavalry and the front rank will take the majority of the casualties (human shields). Arrows are a bit more complicated to calculate of course, because the trajectory of arrows means that the missiles can hit a greater percentage of the cavalry force (coming downwards rather than directly to the front) and of course bows have a higher rate of fire (though not crossbows). But the arrows themselves are less fatal. I suspect that in a gun volley against cavalry, at least some of the shots will pass through their first victim and wound a second (depending of course what the shot hits first precisely).

[bigdummy]

Do you think they achieved 3 rounds per minute? I wonder how common really disciplined troops were in the 15th - 16th Century? I always figured the volleys would come rank by rank, in the time of dealing with say a cavalry charge, there wouldn't be time to reload. I know really professional musketeers achieved high rates of fire in the 17th-18th century of course.

It's an interesting point about the trajectory of crossbows and firearms vs. bows. At closer range bows can also be used both ways I remember an account of the Romans being slaughtered by Attila's Huns that way, they would fire high shots, then when the Romans raised their shields they would shoot directly at them.

I imagine a close-range volley of arquebus has a more intimidating effect on horses from the sound and flash and smoke as well.

There are also stories of lances piercing more than one person. I imagine that would make them hard to hold on to. And of course a lot of heavy cavalry in the 16th - 17th Century carried pistols, Polish Hussars carried both pistols and lances. I wonder how that played out.

BD

[bigdummy]

Another thought... I don't think armor ever made anybody completely invulnerable did it? I mean, the Roman Legions clearly derived a lot of benefit from their armor but it didn't even cover them completely. It's just a matter of a tradeoff between mobility and expense vs. protection, which is never complete.

The waxing and waning of the use of armor on European battlefields over the centuries I think often boiled down to economic / social / political factors. But I think cannon is ultimately what made that equation break, because armor offered no protection whatsoever against cannonballs.

BD

[Dan Howard]

Do you think they achieved 3 rounds per minute? I wonder how common really disciplined troops were in the 15th - 16th Century?

3 rounds per minute seems a reasonable average for 17-18th century muzzle loaders. British veterans could manage up to 4 rounds per minute while green recruits could do around 2 rounds per minute after basic training. 2 rounds per minute might be optimistic for earlier firearms.

[bigdummy]

Interesting test with a hussite style handgonne, looks like penetration at about 5 or 10', then it bounced off at about 20'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdXy0IfsWsE

[bigdummy]

Leo from Todds stuff did some informal tests with an 850 lb draw crossbow made for a client who is going to be doing some more scientific testing. Photos here:

http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic ... 856#194856

[admin]

Very interesting. Tod will be at FightCamp and I hope he brings a crossbow or two for people to fawn over .

[bigdummy]

It would be very nice to do some tests. He says he has another 700 lb draw crossbow. Please share your observations if you get to play with it.

BD

[bigdummy]

Anybody got a reference for the use of steel shot in muskets other than knight and the blast furnace (in which the relevant pages seem to be unavailable on Google books right now for some really annoying reason.) ?

BD