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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 5079153" data-attributes="member: 87792">Horses in general are expensive.  It was the archers that won Carrhae - the heavy cavalry couldn't break the Roman infantry on their own.  But could handle the Roman cavalry.  Heavy cavalry on their own would just have bounced off the disciplined heavy infantry the Romans liked using.  The heavy cavalry were the secondary element in slaughtering the Romans - without the heavy cavalry it would have been a minor roman defeat - but without the horse archers, the Romans wouldn't have been seriously threatened.Combined arms historically has been a good thing.  (Or are you advocating for no air force?)Depends how honest the armourer was.  And what period the test was.  Arquebusses normally couldn't.  But they developed over time and the heavier muskets normally could.  Not all longarms are the same.Smoothbore or rifled musket?  I'll accept that someone using a muzzle loading rifle was as accurate as a longbowman.  And even slower firing than a normal muzzle loader - which is why they were a specialist role.And no one is claiming that longbows are as effective as American Civil War firearms.  On the other hand, early-mid 17th century firearms as used in the thirty years war were mixed with pikemen to prevent the enemy closing and pikemen were still used effectively by professional armies such as the Swedes in the 1720s.  They simply were not used without melee support until a lot of development had been done.  And longbows could see off unarmoured infantry and most cavalry without too much trouble - it was heavily armoured infantry that they suffered against.  (Which is why there were proposals to bring them back in the Napoleonic wars - the better armour piercing of the bullets had removed the targets longbows were weak against.You appear to be working under the assumption that a breachloading rifle loaded with cartridges and a matchlock arquebus loaded using a powder horn are both firearms and that they are therefore equivalent.  There were hundreds of years of evolution before firearms came to completely dominate the battlefield.</blockquote>

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