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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5078477" data-attributes="member: 58197">Call it what you like. The lancers would not have won without the archers. If archers are "mere" harassment, so is a modern air force, but good luck fighting a war without one.Originally, firearms were fielded the same way bows were, with ranks of pikemen to protect the gunners. Later, someone came up with a clever idea; unlike a bow, a gun is a long iron tube solid enough to serve as a melee weapon, so why not put something pointy on the end of it and dispense with the pikemen?Hence the invention of the bayonet. Guns no longer needed melee support because they were melee weapons themselves. You can be damn sure that without that, pikemen would have stuck around--when your ranged weapon takes upwards of 15 seconds to reload and has a maximum effective range of about 100 yards, you do not want to rely on it exclusively. Bayonets may seem like a curiosity nowadays, but back then they were an essential part of a soldier's gear. (Although even now, bayonets see use once in a while. In 2004, a Scottish unit deployed to Iraq was ambushed by insurgents; running low on ammo, they fixed bayonets and charged to great effect.)But specialized melee troops were still employed, specifically sabre-wielding cavalry. You know what they did? They charged in and slaughtered the disorganized foe after massed gunfire broke up the enemy formation. Sound familiar? It should, because it's exactly what cavalry working with archers did, centuries before. Mongol horse archers took on much larger armies that way; your own "Lance to Pistol" link describes tactics that could have come straight out of General Subutai's handbook, if he'd had a handbook.No one here is disputing that guns eventually became superior to bows. If they hadn't, we'd still be shooting arrows today. But early pistoliers and arquebusiers were deployed in exactly the same manner as archers, to perform exactly the same function--and not because the generals didn't know what they were doing, either.</blockquote>

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