[BigandScary]

It does seem that we are confusing the issue, as well as the meaning of professional. I have been mostly refering to them as the career mercenaries of that time, but it also applys to the very system of large standing armies of paid troops. The technalogical advances of gunpowder weapons did allow inferior warriors to kill knights, but it also allowed a govornment to raise larger armies, armies made of peasant levies and career troops, that could never be acheived by knights. A heavy-cavalryman could don thick enough armor to stop a bullet and still outmaneuver a pike block, but it would still end up with ten thousand knights against one hundred thousand infantry, and the knights would lose. So, while I still think that you underestimate the tactical impact of professional soldiers, it is a valid point that technology led to the end of battlefield knights.