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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wilphe" data-source="post: 2303683" data-attributes="member: 8221">A longbow is a better weapon than a firearm at any point up to Waterloo.The drawback is that bows take training and strength to use and are only as deadly as the person using them.Pretty much any peasent can be trained to use a firearm, so large and effective armies become possible as opposed to small, relativly elite forces.Firearms also require complex drills to use effectively and are so connected with the rise of organised, regular forces with established structure.The most immediate real change to society that gunpowder made though wasn't with handheld firearms; it was with siege weapons.Cannon were complex and expensive and could only be financed by the richest states; building a castle and maintiaining a few mercenaries was easy for a dissident noble. However the king could now bring up some cannon and blast a way into your castle. The effect of this is to be greatly increase the power of central government. The central government can then raise taxes better, become more efficient and build better and more efficient cannon.This meant that there was a sorting out of the power structure in Europe - either you crushed your provincial nobility and formed the beginnings of a modern state or you got thrown onto the scrapheap of history.France and Spain won this race. Italy was one of the losers that remained fragmented and the independent states were essentially crushed as too small to compete.In the march on Naples French mobile artillery destroyed castles in days that had resisted sieges of years before.The next stage is to rebuild all your castles into forts; which again is complex and expensive and only the richest states can afford to do it.See a pattern here?It sorts out the "haves" from the "have nots" in the same ruthless way the A-Bomb did post 1945, either you had it or you didn't; and if you didn't, don't mess with anyone who does.</blockquote>

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