Crossbows wouldn't offer any real advantage over muskets. Well-drilled musketeers can load and fire in about 20 seconds, and a crossbowman will be hard-pressed to match that speed. Add to that the greater range of the musket, and the greater point-blank range, and the greater damage done by musket balls, and it's easy to see why the musket replaced the crossbow.

The bow would allow a hire rate of fire, with an arrow every 10 seconds if shooting quickly, or possibly even faster. The bow was used by infantry in some battles alongside the musket (in North America, and in India), but the greater range and damage of the musket usually made it the preferred weapon. The bow was still effective enough to be used on the battlefield, but was by this time usually only used when not enough guns were available.

Even then, it was usually only used by peoples who still used the bow for hunting, or regularly used it for warfare. If Napoleon had decided to convert half of his infantry to archers, he would have been faced with two problems: getting enough bows and arrows, and training enough archers. Training is necessary - it isn't enough to put a bow in a soldier's hands and tell him to use it on the battlefield. Once a system is in place to train musketeers, and there is no longer a supply of trained archers, it's easier to just stick with the musket. Given that when people had the choice of musket or bow, they usually chose the musket, there is very little motivation to train military archers once enough guns are usually available. So, if on some occasion, not enough guns are available, there also aren't enough bows or archers available either.

In East Asia and Central Asia, the bow persisted for a long time as a military weapon, alongside the gun. First, many of the peoples who continued to use the bow as a military weapon still used it for hunting, bow were commonly owned, and archery practiced. Second, they usually used the bow as a cavalry weapon. Third, the pistol was not in common use. The difficulty of reloaded a musket quickly on horseback meant that the rate of fire of a bow was still useful for cavalry (and might still have been useful if the muzzle-loading pistol was in use). Cavalry in the region sometimes carried both bow and musket - the value of the musket was still appreciated, even if it was effectively a one-shot weapon, with the rider switching to his bow after firing his musket.

Some is some relevant past discussion in:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bfm47x/were_composite_bows_effective_on_the/

Notably, in that question, u/GenghisKazoo mentioned the low opinion expressed by Marbot about Bashkir archers in the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. There is more discussion about this by u/Georgy_K_Zhukov and u/dandan_noodles in

• https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7rsrep/why_is_there_an_asian_warrior_depicted_on_the/

North America provides a relatively well-documented case of the relative merits of guns and bows on the battlefield. For more on this, see

• Bohr, Roland, Gifts from the Thunder Beings: Indigenous Archery and European Firearms in the Northern Plains and Central Subarctic, 1670-1870, University of Nebraska Press, 2014.

For an interesting American case of bows and guns used together, see:

• http://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=NMNH-154064B_08510630

(see https://sova.si.edu/details/NAA.MS154064B for more on the source of this drawing). Bohr (2014) suggests that the archers could protect the musketeers while they were reloading. The high rate of fire of the bow would be useful, and it would be used at short range where it was most effective.

This question appears here with some regularity, so you might be interested in previous responses, such as:

Why were primitive firearms used when bows and crossbows were better in every way? by u/Valkine

Why was the musket used instead of the bow and arrow during colonial times? The bow was much faster, much more accurate, and much cheaper. by u/hborrgg

During the American Civil War, why were soldiers using rifles instead of bows and arrows? by u/SwampGentleman and u/rocketsocks

English Longbow: Is it true that the English Army fielded at Agincourt could have potentially defeated any army fielded at any battle anywhere, up until the invention of long-range rifles (mid 19th Century)? by u/nusensei

Bow and Arrow vs. Musket in the Revolutionary War by u/WritingPromptsAccy and u/hborrgg

Additionally, there was one important factor that I don't think has been covered in the aforementioned responses, namely the capacity of the soldiers. Please note that even the best archers available, e.g. medieval English archers armed with heaviest longbows with the pull strength reaching 100-120 lbs were woefully inferior to 18th or 19th century firearms in terms of power and range. But these would need to be operated by the strong and tall archers to provide necessary strength and draw length. This was feasible in 13th to 15th century, when the climatic conditions facilitated crop growth and size of the armies was pretty low, meaning that any king could muster few thousand of the best archers with relative ease.

Come late 18th century, this is no longer feasible. Although the influence of climatic conditions on the availability of crops is debatable, the armies became far bigger than the medieval ones and to fight any other power, one needed not thousands, but hundreds of thousands. The forces fighting at Agincourt in 1415 comprised of roughly 9.000 English troops and 15.000 French combatants. Russian campaign of 1812 saw the mobilization of roughly 650.000 soldiers under Napoleon, and 490.000 in the Russian Army. That's two orders of magnitude more manpower. Now, in the Middle Ages people were usually quite well fed, and the skeletons of commoners and nobles do not show much disparities, especially in case of English archers. On the other hand, records from early 19th century clearly show that the physical differences between well-off and poor people were absolutely staggering. According to records of Maritime Society, an average height of 14-years old sailor recruit was 4'5", while an average height of Sandhurst Academy cadet of the same age was 5'1" or full 8 inches more. Height below 5 feet was not uncommon among young adult sailors, usually recruiting from the lowest strata off the society and thus plagued with undernourishment and associated conditions such as rather prevalent rickets. Given that 19th century soldiers generally shared background with sailors, one can easily see why it would be very hard to find hundreds of thousands prospective archers capable of operating even a light hunting bow, that would be essentially useless on the battlefield, not to mention a heavy longbow.

Pietsch, R., The Real Jim Hawkins: Ships' Boys in the Georgian Navy. Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley 2011.

Hey there,

Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.

If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!