What is the latest possible time in which guns can become widespread in Europe?

I was wondering, how far can you delay the widespread usage of firearms in European armies? Not saying there will be no guns in the armies at all, but in the best cases it would be small professional units
 
If we can take a PoD as far back as the Mongols, it may be possible to push it forward by several centuries. China is either too divided (1200s) or too isolationist (Ming... pretty likely to be analogued) to give gunpowder to Europe on its own, and I don't think Europe will be too fussed about trying to invent it.

- BNC
 
If we can take a PoD as far back as the Mongols, it may be possible to push it forward by several centuries. China is either too divided (1200s) or too isolationist (Ming... pretty likely to be analogued) to give gunpowder to Europe on its own, and I don't think Europe will be too fussed about trying to invent it.

- BNC
Is there a specific time you can give me? Would any other major events be changed?
 
Is there a specific time you can give me? Would any other major events be changed?

The easiest way would be to have Temujin die as a baby or simply never be conceived by his mother, so 1161 or 1162. Major events certainly get changed, probably too many to mention, but I'll list a few:

  • No black death of that specific disease, but overpopulation still happens in the 14th century. Any number of possibilities exist here.
  • The Muslim empires (particularly the Abbasid remnant in Iraq) won't be dealt such a death blow (there might be another crusade, but it won't just kill everything). It is possible that an analogue of the Ottomans rises earlier (maybe 1350 instead of 1450).
  • However America's discovery (ignoring Vikings) is likely pushed back. The Mongols opened up a lot of trade with the east, but that got shut off by the Ottomans. In TTL, Europe hasn't had that trade and probably won't go out seeking it until later.
  • Russia stays a heap of feuding city-states. Cumania and the other nations like them in the area will probably continue light raiding.
Or in short, just expect a repeat of the 12th century in the 13th.

- BNC
 
The easiest way would be to have Temujin die as a baby or simply never be conceived by his mother, so 1161 or 1162. Major events certainly get changed, probably too many to mention, but I'll list a few:

  • No black death of that specific disease, but overpopulation still happens in the 14th century. Any number of possibilities exist here.
  • The Muslim empires (particularly the Abbasid remnant in Iraq) won't be dealt such a death blow (there might be another crusade, but it won't just kill everything). It is possible that an analogue of the Ottomans rises earlier (maybe 1350 instead of 1450).
  • However America's discovery (ignoring Vikings) is likely pushed back. The Mongols opened up a lot of trade with the east, but that got shut off by the Ottomans. In TTL, Europe hasn't had that trade and probably won't go out seeking it until later.
  • Russia stays a heap of feuding city-states. Cumania and the other nations like them in the area will probably continue light raiding.
Or in short, just expect a repeat of the 12th century in the 13th.

- BNC

Okay. What's the fastest they can become widespread in Europe. Mind you not the earliest, the fastest. By that I mean what series of events would lead to the shortest period in which guns are introduce. For example, Japan had been using guns in it's armies for centuries before the 1800s but they were always too slow. What's the quickest we can get rifles fast enough to replace swords for the most part into the hands of the majority of European armies?
 
Okay. What's the fastest they can become widespread in Europe. Mind you not the earliest, the fastest. By that I mean what series of events would lead to the shortest period in which guns are introduce. For example, Japan had been using guns in it's armies for centuries before the 1800s but they were always too slow. What's the quickest we can get rifles fast enough to replace swords for the most part into the hands of the majority of European armies?
As soon as someone invents an easy-to-use gun that can beat all the armour and stuff of the day that doesn't cost too much.

Some guy gets one of the rubbish Mongol hand gun things.
Takes it apart and studies it
Has a good idea and invents a good rifle
Tells his king about it
King adopts it for use in the army
That army beats someone big in a war
Someone in the enemy army captures enough for reverse-engineering.
A couple years later everyone will use them.

Works better if you have it happen in freer and richer countries like the Netherlands, these were much more open to change than say France.

- BNC
 
Okay. What's the fastest they can become widespread in Europe. Mind you not the earliest, the fastest. By that I mean what series of events would lead to the shortest period in which guns are introduce. For example, Japan had been using guns in it's armies for centuries before the 1800s but they were always too slow. What's the quickest we can get rifles fast enough to replace swords for the most part into the hands of the majority of European armies?
Guns or Rifles?

Guns, once the metallurgy gets good enough to make an effective one, a couple decades from discovery of an effective one, it takes time for ideas to spread over an area as big as Europe, and for people to replace existing equipment

Rifles? You need decent precision industry to issue them en masse, so a century or so after the start of your industrial revolution. Until that point rifles are too expensive to make for more than just relatively small units of specialists
 
Guns or Rifles?

Guns, once the metallurgy gets good enough to make an effective one, a couple decades from discovery of an effective one, it takes time for ideas to spread over an area as big as Europe, and for people to replace existing equipment

Rifles? You need decent precision industry to issue them en masse, so a century or so after the start of your industrial revolution. Until that point rifles are too expensive to make for more than just relatively small units of specialists

American revolution style weapons. Fast enough to make swords obsolete most of the time but you still need cavalry and bayonets
 
American revolution style weapons. Fast enough to make swords obsolete most of the time but you still need cavalry and bayonets
So "light" flintlock muskets

Probably 75 years or more. You see light rapid fire muskets only came about after armor started disappearing. Before then you had much heavier slower firing models braced on a stand that had a much longer effective range and were much better at piercing armor. Figure 30 years of armor just getting heavier as guns improve. Then another 30 years of armor being reduced to make the remainder heavier, then a 15+ year transition from the heavy musket to the light once armor is reduced to a helmet and back & breast or less

OTL this took about ~350 years
 
Okay. What's the fastest they can become widespread in Europe. Mind you not the earliest, the fastest. By that I mean what series of events would lead to the shortest period in which guns are introduce. For example, Japan had been using guns in it's armies for centuries before the 1800s but they were always too slow. What's the quickest we can get rifles fast enough to replace swords for the most part into the hands of the majority of European armies?

Im of the opinion that the fastest way would be for the Mongols to conqueor more of Europe then they did historically.

Why? The best way to overthrow the yoke of the Steppe people is by way of alot of undertrained peasants with alot of guns.
 
So "light" flintlock muskets

Probably 75 years or more. You see light rapid fire muskets only came about after armor started disappearing. Before then you had much heavier slower firing models braced on a stand that had a much longer effective range and were much better at piercing armor. Figure 30 years of armor just getting heavier as guns improve. Then another 30 years of armor being reduced to make the remainder heavier, then a 15+ year transition from the heavy musket to the light once armor is reduced to a helmet and back & breast or less

OTL this took about ~350 years

Would this be sudden enough to trigger a Satsuma esque revolt among the knights of Europe?
 
Would this be sudden enough to trigger a Satsuma esque revolt among the knights of Europe?
Probably not, Meiji restoration was even faster than this, about a decade, opposed to 75 years at minimum here, plus there is the fact that the power of knights as a class had been broken by ~1450 OTL anyways, replaced by professional armies, more or less, situation not simple (feudalism never is)
 
Probably not, Meiji restoration was even faster than this, about a decade, opposed to 75 years at minimum here, plus there is the fact that the power of knights as a class had been broken by ~1450 OTL anyways, replaced by professional armies, more or less, situation not simple (feudalism never is)

Not to mention that knighthood and nobility weren't the same thing at all and were frequently on opposing sides of civil conflicts. Neither were the nobles or the knights against guns at all in practice (a bit in rhetoric, and even that is depending on who you read).
 
Probably not, Meiji restoration was even faster than this, about a decade, opposed to 75 years at minimum here, plus there is the fact that the power of knights as a class had been broken by ~1450 OTL anyways, replaced by professional armies, more or less, situation not simple (feudalism never is)

Is there any possible way to get an event like that in some Eastern European country?
 
Is there any possible way to get an event like that in some Eastern European country?
Unlikely, Eastern Europe has a lot more unfriendly neighbors to keep their minds concentrated in this period. They also tend to not have one class with a near monopoly on military power, often relied on a mix of classes and peoples, harder to really get them all to agree
 
They also tend to not have one class with a near monopoly on military power, often relied on a mix of classes and peoples, harder to really get them all to agree

So much so that in both PLC and Russia even the great peasant/cossack rebellions had token amounts of gentry warriors/foreigners and their nobles/cossacks/arqueboussiers and other military classes on both sides.

Satsuma specifically is hard to replicate. On the other hand, generic rebellions involving firearms were already frequent OTL.
 
So much so that in both PLC and Russia even the great peasant/cossack rebellions had token amounts of gentry warriors/foreigners and their nobles/cossacks/arqueboussiers and other military classes on both sides.

Satsuma specifically is hard to replicate. On the other hand, generic rebellions involving firearms were already frequent OTL.

That sucks, I really wanted to right a story in which Winged Hussars fought a final battle Shiroyama style, oh well
 
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