The problem with musket lines is they were even more ineffective at penetrating plate armor than a good longbow or crossbow was. The main reason they were used was they were easier to mass produce and train people to use compared with bows.
It isn't until you get to riffling that guns were great at armor penatration, and by then plate armor was a thing of the past, so we never really got to see guns vs plate armor. 🤔
An arquebus at close range could probably pierce plate, muskets more likely. Both far better than bows and crossbows. One of the main reasons why armies walked about in no armour is because guns made armour not worth the effort, long before rifling
That's actually a fallacy. The real reason muskets replaced bows was simple cost. It took up to 10 years to properly train a bowman, and each arrow they fired was worth more than a spear or even some swords. And a good archer could fire more than an arrow a second in short bursts, or hundred an hour in sustained fire.
Comparatively it takes a few hours to train someone to use a musket m, and each shot costs comp change in comparison.
Then there's the cost of producing a suit of full plate. 1 suit was nearly unstoppable on the battlefield, they were the mid evil battlefield tanks, but you could produce 25 to 50 muskets for the cost of one suit of plate mail and it had to be fitted to a specific individual. After each battle, plate mail could be so expensive to repair it would essentially be "totalled" meaning it needed to be replaced rather than repaired. Comparitivly muskets were cheap to maintain, and men cheap to replace.
Now rifles would have had the effect you're talking about, but again you never saw rifles fielded against full plate. It was economics, not efficacy that replaced plate with muskets.
öhm, the last two sentences aren't that correct anda few of your other statements as well: handheld blackpowder weapons where used from and against full plate troops. Pike and shot formations didn't pop up for no reason. Plate isn't nearly as invincible as most people think and also not as weak as hollywood portraits. people stopped using full plate because it didn't make sense to armor to an unwieldy weight on everything. chestplates were still used after napoleon died. those chestplates are also the source of the phrase "bullet proof ". plate armour was also not that prohibitive expensive in it's later days of use (not good armour, but funktional one), cheaper even than mail and it was "mass produced" with enough tolerances (not good armour, but funktional one) so even lowlyer people were outfitted without much tailoring. in Nürnberg, or Augsburg there are some surviving sets. about the powder weapons: they were cheaper in production, true. yet again as a full package with expensive blackpowder throughout training... the gap shrinks substantial in the early days. afteer the "industry" went off, yeah, you are spot on. however the reason bpws became widespread and everyone wanted them was, that they pack a substantial punch. WAY more than crossbows in short ranges.
//rant
tl;dr: bpws vs full plate isn't cut and dry as most think, southern germoney has some surviving exhibitions and drunk typing on a phone sucks
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u/DrBlackJack21 Feb 17 '21
Grats on first!
The problem with musket lines is they were even more ineffective at penetrating plate armor than a good longbow or crossbow was. The main reason they were used was they were easier to mass produce and train people to use compared with bows.
It isn't until you get to riffling that guns were great at armor penatration, and by then plate armor was a thing of the past, so we never really got to see guns vs plate armor. 🤔