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Comment by t-3 | Hacker News Reader

Nostalgic - Mongols using silk shirts to make removing arrows easier was a favorite anecdote of my World History teacher in High School. Movies and stories always make pre-gunpowder war seem like a face-to-face battle between warriors, but arrows were always the biggest killer, both in battle and through attrition due to infections and laming. Another anecdote I always remembered was that the lead balls fired by early muskets were often more deadly than modern firearms because they were so slow and heavy that when they got into the body they wouldn't pass through but instead roll around along the bones and mess up the insides, similar to the modern street lore about .22 pistols being the worst to get shot with. Cannonballs also rolled and bounced through the battlefield, taking out limbs and crushing people rather than exploding like modern artillery.

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> but arrows were always the biggest killer

Do you remember your source for this? It doesn't sound right. I thought most death/injury occurred when the losing army fled, and the victorious army hunted them down. Also, just mechanically, even moderately sized armies were at least a mile long across their front; there's no way that massed volleys could've been used across the whole front, or even, really, more than a small fraction of it.

> lead balls fired by early muskets were often more deadly than modern firearms

If slow lead balls are deadlier than fast jacketed bullets, then modern armies would use slow lead balls. Maybe slow lead balls are more dangerous when they hit, but less dangerous overall?

WRT arrows, I remember reading some analyses of medieval battlefield records a long time ago, and I've heard it said many times by historians, but I can't point you to a definitive source.

WRT muskets, they are slow to load and fire, inaccurate, low-range, the bullets move slow enough that you can see and dodge them - good for massed warfare during the transition from cold weapons to hot, but not at all for the modern battlefield. IIRC it was in battles during the US Civil War that rifles which were accurate over long distances and allowed a small number of soldiers to defend a position came to the forefront.

Deadliness also doesn't seem to be the selection criteria for modern weaponry. If it were, militaries would all be using chemical weapons, firebombing, nuclear bombs, hollow-tips, poisoning water supplies, etc., but they aren't. Killing soldiers can be a part of strategy, but from what I see usually more of the strategy is about controlling key locations and resources, and winning through logistics and politics, while destruction is largely strategic or symbolic.

Civil war era muskets fired 14.7mm caliber bullets, and revolutionary war era: 19-20mm, which, bullet-for-bullet probably accounts for the increased danger. Something I read said they have similar energies as modern ammunition--a few thousand joules--but smaller, faster ammo means reduced recoil.

My uncle was career officer in the Army and told me once that the M16, with its smaller faster bullet would wound the enemy, compared to the AK47 with its large slow bullet would kill, and that a wounded enemy was more expensive than a dead solider because you had to extract and care for the wounded.

Not sure if there was any factual evidence behind his theory, but I found this idea fascinating when I heard it.

Short-term, perhaps, but overall the cost of replacing a dead soldier is higher (like 15 years of schooling and parenting and all the other costs). A wounded soldier might be back on the battlefield half a year later.

I agree with the skepticism, I always thought the biggest killer in ancient wars were:

* Infections

* Getting stabbed as you routed

But I don’t understand your logic about the arrows. The width of the line shouldn’t cause some sort of scaling issues. I mean, the army of archers would be limited in the sense that training a ton of archers and making a ton of arrows is expensive, but assuming it is possible to produce and supply that many archers, there’s no reason to think they couldn’t all carry their arrows to the front, right?

Eventually your guys run out of arrows of course, but getting them resupplied after the battle is the same logistics problem that you solved before the battle.

Massed volley requires putting all of your archers in one (or a few) places. The effective maximum range of an archer is something like 500'. If you put your archers at the "wings", they can cover at most 1000' of line; but, even a modest sized army (I'm thinking of a standard Roman Republic field army) will have a mile wide front.

Secondarily, you need to use your (very expensive!) arrows effectively, and it's hard to see over the people in front of you to shoot someone in the distance. That means, practically, archers are just shooting the soldiers in front of them — soldiers in the nearest 100' or so. That'd only cover 3–500' of line. (This practical consideration was noted by my Military History teacher from his direct observation of battles in Africa.)

> similar to the modern street lore about .22 pistols being the worst to get shot with

Where on Earth did you hear this?

Gangsters. I've heard several anecdotes about how they get into, but don't easily come out of the body and tend to bounce around inside, leaving the victim to die slowly in agonizing pain.

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