Good article in general, but I have some hairs to split.
First, since my D&D party's skin was saved in their last adventure by a lucky critical hit from our party's arqebus, I don't agree that (high) fantasy avoids gunpowder altogether. And we're the good guys, right? But on to more serious things.
> With a bow, or even a crossbow, skill and personal investment requirements are significant; by contrast, musket drill could be learned in weeks.
> ...
> Likewise, short bow, long bow and crossbow are tactically extremely similar.
Nonononono.
Longbows required extensive training (quoth one King Edward, "If you want to train a good longbowman, start with his grandfather."). Crossbows, once manufactured, could be taught to your average vassal in a day or so. This is one reason that the Catholic Church tried to ban them in 1096 [1], as an untrained peasant could take down a noble armoured knight (at least in mail rather than plate armor). While there were highly trained crossbow armies, such as Genoese mercenaries, the crossbow could greatly increase the deadliness of your average conscript - in less time than it takes to train someone on the musket. Whether you had the resources to outfit a large unit of crossbowmen was another matter, but if you could, training was not the bottleneck.
The average crossbow these days shoots something in the range of 60 yards, with high-end models getting "up to 100 yards" according to one manufacturer. If we allow for past war crossbows being beefier constructs - they had windlasses to help load them, after all - then maybe we can add a bit to the maximum and say 200 yards shooting in an arc, but the Book of the Crossbow [2] suggests an effective range of medieval crossbows of around 40 yards. After all, you want your shots to kill, not just go "plink" on someone's helmet.
Longbow range is generally given as something like 500-1000 feet, so 160 to 320 yards approximately - Encyclopaedia Britannica [3] gives an effective range of around 200 yards for the longbow (but this was presumably against massed targets, in the "rain arrows from the sky" style). That's more than double what you're getting from the crossbow.
So tactically, longbow and crossbow are very much not the same thing.
[1] https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/catholic-churc... (Note that I don't agree with the article's claim that crossbows had a greater _range_ than longbows. They generally had more kinetic energy on discharge (what we would today call "muzzle" energy) but _shorter_ effective range due to higher air resistance from thicker bolts. They were more handgun than sniper rifle, siege ballistas excepted. But they were very deadly at close distances.)
First, since my D&D party's skin was saved in their last adventure by a lucky critical hit from our party's arqebus, I don't agree that (high) fantasy avoids gunpowder altogether. And we're the good guys, right? But on to more serious things.
> With a bow, or even a crossbow, skill and personal investment requirements are significant; by contrast, musket drill could be learned in weeks. > ... > Likewise, short bow, long bow and crossbow are tactically extremely similar.
Nonononono.
Longbows required extensive training (quoth one King Edward, "If you want to train a good longbowman, start with his grandfather."). Crossbows, once manufactured, could be taught to your average vassal in a day or so. This is one reason that the Catholic Church tried to ban them in 1096 [1], as an untrained peasant could take down a noble armoured knight (at least in mail rather than plate armor). While there were highly trained crossbow armies, such as Genoese mercenaries, the crossbow could greatly increase the deadliness of your average conscript - in less time than it takes to train someone on the musket. Whether you had the resources to outfit a large unit of crossbowmen was another matter, but if you could, training was not the bottleneck.
The average crossbow these days shoots something in the range of 60 yards, with high-end models getting "up to 100 yards" according to one manufacturer. If we allow for past war crossbows being beefier constructs - they had windlasses to help load them, after all - then maybe we can add a bit to the maximum and say 200 yards shooting in an arc, but the Book of the Crossbow [2] suggests an effective range of medieval crossbows of around 40 yards. After all, you want your shots to kill, not just go "plink" on someone's helmet.
Longbow range is generally given as something like 500-1000 feet, so 160 to 320 yards approximately - Encyclopaedia Britannica [3] gives an effective range of around 200 yards for the longbow (but this was presumably against massed targets, in the "rain arrows from the sky" style). That's more than double what you're getting from the crossbow.
So tactically, longbow and crossbow are very much not the same thing.
[1] https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/catholic-churc... (Note that I don't agree with the article's claim that crossbows had a greater _range_ than longbows. They generally had more kinetic energy on discharge (what we would today call "muzzle" energy) but _shorter_ effective range due to higher air resistance from thicker bolts. They were more handgun than sniper rifle, siege ballistas excepted. But they were very deadly at close distances.)
[2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Crossbow-Military-History-Weap...
[3] https://www.britannica.com/technology/English-longbow