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Fantasy Gun Control/Analysis: Difference between revisions
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So, in short, knightly charges were dead without needing firearms to kill them. Personal firearms (including cavalry pistols) were if anything more useful in ''countering'' the new styles of heavy infantry; before long, though, the musket meant the conversion of knights into cavalry (not necessarily noble, and taking orders from the general rather than acting largely on their own), and the relegation of pikes to uselessness except in defending against cavalry attack. (The Janissaries managed to fight with musketeers without using any pikemen at all.)
Although plate armour was worn up till the middle of the 17th century, improvements that led to increased muzzle velocity and higher bullet calibre rendered it pointless to have without making it thicker and heavier, which was just not practical. That's why you see pictures of 17th century troops in metal breastplates and helmets, whilst by the 18th they'd abandoned them, though the garish colours and tricorne hats are quite spiffing. Breastplates and helmets wouldn't return until [[World War I]], when the sheer quantity of shrapnel put out by modern artillery (plus the technique of indirect fire that allows one to deliver said shrapnel even if you can't see where the shell will land) brought both back (often based on medieval designs; compare the [
The use of mixed pikes and firearms (pike-and-shot) continued for quite a long time, but by the end of the 17th century the arrangement had more or less disappeared. The reason was the widespread adoption of an innovation that came from (according to legend) an ingenious blacksmith of Bayonne, France, who realized that a gun was basically a pike-staff that could shoot bullets. Attach a blade to the end of a gun (called a bayonet to this day), and ''voila!'' you have a serviceable spear. After some problems - like how to remove a blade that you inadvertently jammed in your gun - were ironed out, bayonets were more or less standard issue in European arsenals. They still remain in use today, though more as a utility knife and a training tool for aggression.
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