[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Small forces of longbow archers would certainly be effective. Reloading a musket is terribly difficult (doing it properly is, at any rate) but any imbecile can put another arrow on a bowstring.

After the battle of Gettysburg, thousands of Confederate muskets were found to be poorly loaded. The Confederates used recruited civilians as the backbone of their army, and this resulted in a massive lack of quality in fighting skills. Thousands of muskets were found to have two balls in their barrels. About two thousand had three balls. Several hundred had more, several dozen were found with over ten balls. One musket was loaded with 24 balls! Had its owner fired, he would certainly have killed someone - himself. The gun would have exploded in his face!

Had they used longbows, this would (possibly) be different. You can't fire 24 arrows at once, even an Epsilon-Minus Semi-Moron could have figured that out. (Well...) If longbows outrange muskets as well, then it would CERTAINLY be handy to use them; it would be like a Napoleonic assault rifle.

African Americans browsing this thread, you should be pretty glad longbows weren't used after the Middle Ages. If the Confederates had used longbows, there would be a good chance they would have won the Civil War, and then you would probably all be working on Texan sugar plantations now.

Just speculating... what if Napoleon had used one Longbow? Firing guns and anti-tank missiles from a kilometre away, he could have wiped out the combined British and Russian armies without them even knowing what was hitting them. (Bye bye 1812 Ouverture...) He would have conquered EVERYTHING between the East side of the international date line, and the West side of the international date line. (in order east to west) How would the world look like now if Napoleon had founded "La France de la Monde"?