Alternative To Guns?

[Snake Featherston]

Why did knights reign so long then, when pike armies were just an evolution of the 3rd-century-BC Macedonian phalanx?
Not really, in fact the Parthians and Mongols relied primarily on horse archers armed with compound bows. The disadvantage of compound bows is that they were too easily damaged by wet weather, and were thus only usable by powers based in dry-climate regions of the world.

Because Medieval armies consisted of a hard core of trained knights, heavy cavalry, superimposed on a great majority of poorly-trained, illiterate, peasant levies. The emergence of the professional armies of the 17th Century, when guns were not as commonly used as one would think killed off the medieval knight. It was not the emergence of guns, or even of artillery.

The Macedonian phalanx was trained to fight in formation. When knights were opposed by unorganized peasant rabbles they could negate the disadvantage of the pike. OTOH Courtrai pitted knights against the more well-to-do Flemish citizens, so the result was for the pike-and-goedendag using Flemish.

And was in turn already obsolete when up against the Marian legions, let alone the ones of the height of the Megastate Empire.

... And grenadiers killed pikemen? Because masses of pikemen in close formation would be ideal targets for grenades.

That implies the grenadiers have to get past the blade on the stick first.

Guns scared the shit out of early horses, same with cannons. It was the Ottomans, I believe, that first used guns in massed formation against Hungarian cavalry.

True, they did. On the other hand, a blade on a stick can knock a knight off the horse, and then while medieval knights could be fast in armor, a single knight against a whole mass of pikemen.....

 

[Mauro Motta]

That implies the grenadiers have to get past the blade on the stick first.

No way. A grenadier could throw a grenade much further than
a pike's range. No need (or advisability) to get nearer.

 

[Catmo]

Aren't compound bows going to be a little difficult to produce with 15th C technology?

Not at all. All you need is cams made of hardwood and extra bowstring.

 

[tallwingedgoat]

No way. A grenadier could throw a grenade much further than
a pike's range. No need (or advisability) to get nearer.

How are the grenadiers going to get close with all those arrows?

 

[Catmo]

Oops -- what's the difference?

Compound bows have offset cams and rotors to reduce the amount of pull the archer feels at full draw. A seventy pound bow might require forty pounds to hold at full draw. Makes aiming easier and means archers do not have to be in as high physical condition.

Compound bows also accelerate the arrowmore smoothly so there's less arrow wobble in flight.

 

[Cook]

... And grenadiers killed pikemen? Because masses of pikemen in close formation would be ideal targets for grenades.

Grenades require gunpowder, if you have one you have the other.

 

[carlton_bach]

Not at all. All you need is cams made of hardwood and extra bowstring.

IIRC you also need high-strength steel axles (to stand pressures of 100 pounds and up, and still rotate at high speed), very small ball bearings and some pretty advanced maths. Thicker brass axles and self-lubricating wooden insets can probably stand in for that, but in inserting them, you are creating a weak point in the bow itself. I wouldn't want to have to think about the glue used on my (munitions-grade) cam inset every time I drew a 240lb compound to the ear. You could probably build a kind of compound bow with Renaissance technology, but I doubt you would get the same payoff you get with a modern one.

 

[Mauro Motta]

Grenades require gunpowder, if you have one you have the other.

Precisely. And given the relative abundance of the
ingredients of gunpowder, it will be unavoidably discovered... Unless you adopt one of the alternative PODs I proposed earlier.

 

[Mauro Motta]

How are the grenadiers going to get close with all those arrows?

If you have to use pikemen, then you don't have all those arrows either.

 

[tallwingedgoat]

If you have to use pikemen, then you don't have all those arrows either.

Pike squares are always mixed with crossbowmen and later replaced with musketeers. Pikes themselves were only made obsolete by the bayonet, which allowed every musketeer to double as a pike man.

 

[Flocculencio]

IIRC you also need high-strength steel axles (to stand pressures of 100 pounds and up, and still rotate at high speed), very small ball bearings and some pretty advanced maths. Thicker brass axles and self-lubricating wooden insets can probably stand in for that, but in inserting them, you are creating a weak point in the bow itself. I wouldn't want to have to think about the glue used on my (munitions-grade) cam inset every time I drew a 240lb compound to the ear. You could probably build a kind of compound bow with Renaissance technology, but I doubt you would get the same payoff you get with a modern one.

See, this is what I was thinking.

In the end, guns still beat everything else on cheapness.

 

[dgharis]

Butterflies and gunpowder

Sorry, fellows, but getting rid of guns involves more than getting rid of gunpowder; even if you butterfly away sulfur (*cough* ASB *cough*) other substances, such as nitrocellulose, can be used as propellants. And as long as there is a propellant someone somewhere will use it to propel something; guns are virtually inevitable. Guns are cheap to make, cheap to use, and easy to use; just point and shoot. No other weapon system has all three of those advantages; that's why guns dominate land warfare today.

 

[Oba]

It may possibly mean martial arts were developed in the west as they were in the far east. Also no guns generally would drastically alter the course of imperialist history.

Interesting idea; without guns in Europe (or do you mean the entire world?) the Iberians would have few advantages over the highly organized and militarily efficient Inka while the Songhai would not fall to the Moroccans, who would be completely disadvantaged without guns.

Back to my sling idea: Slings are among the cheapest, if not the cheapest, ranged weapons to make and have some other advantages: Their ammo can be most anything, from darts to clay pellets, metal shot and river pebbles; they are very compact, as one can roll them up into one's pocket or wrap them around the forehead to carry. They also have a greater rate of fire than bows. Thus, I think slings could do well as the general replacement for the gun in areas where light weight and low cost were key until airgun technology took off.

 

[carlton_bach]

Back to my sling idea: Slings are among the cheapest, if not the cheapest, ranged weapons to make and have some other advantages: Their ammo can be most anything, from darts to clay pellets, metal shot and river pebbles; they are very compact, as one can roll them up into one's pocket or wrap them around the forehead to carry. They also have a greater rate of fire than bows. Thus, I think slings could do well as the general replacement for the gun in areas where light weight and low cost were key until airgun technology took off.

Slings are great, if you have the time to spend on training. That is why, whenever they played a significant military role, they were used by professionals or people for whom they were part of their culture. I can attest to the fact that building a sling is extremely easy, finding ammunition is a doozy, and getting to the point qwhere you can be sure a stone will fly in a general direction already takes a few days of practice.

Like bows and dart throwers, slings are weapons where skill is paramount. The kung fu of ranged weaponry.

 

[Hyperbolus]

Also, the space required to rotate each sling meant that large numbers of slingers could not fight in close formation.
As for earlier compound bows, wouldn't that hinge on high-quality tempered spring steel, which was somewhat beyond Renaissance metallurgy?

 

[carlton_bach]

As for earlier compound bows, wouldn't that hinge on high-quality tempered spring steel, which was somewhat beyond Renaissance metallurgy?

I don't think so. Modern designs use steel or fiberglass AFAIK, but there is no technical reason you couldn't use laminate wood or a composite material.

Still, it's not going to be easy to build these things. The tolerances will be low, and material fatigue will be a bitch.

 

[tallwingedgoat]

Tempered spring steel is another way to describe sword blades. There's no reason steel bows couldn't be made in the middle ages. But I agree, it wouldn't be cheap, unless the Chinese proto-Bessemer process was more widespread.

Here's an India steel bow, obviously made for a nobleman, but there were also munitions grade versions.

More on Indian steel bows

http://margo.student.utwente.nl/sagi/artikel/steelbow/steel2.html

 

[TheGingerninja41]

I had an idea once about an alien race who's home planet was full of magnetic material so they had an understanding of magnetism very early on in their society. This led to all of their weapons being propelled by electromagnets.

 

[Mauro Motta]

Sorry, fellows, but getting rid of guns involves more than getting rid of gunpowder; even if you butterfly away sulfur (*cough* ASB *cough*)

You don't have to butterfly away sulfur.
What was suggested was making elemental sulfur scarce, and that
would be enough all right. Sulfur as sulphates (and other combinations) could well remain as abundant as OTL.

other substances, such as nitrocellulose, can be used as propellants.

Nitrocellulose is far more difficult to prepare than black powder. That is why it was only prepared OTL on the 19th century, when there was already a fairly sophisticated chemistry, and even so, it was only much later (though still on the 19th century), that was found a way to stabilize and turn it into a practical explosive. Besides that, when we found Nitrocellulose OTL, we already had black powder to show us the usefulness of explosives as weapons.Without the experience with Black Powder, Nitrocellulose could well remain a laboratory curiosity for a century or more...

 

[mailinutile2]

I think the whole point of a gun is that it makes a poorly trained man a deadly peril.
If you try to substitute it with something requiring hard training (composite bow, crossow, etc), you sort of spoil the whole point