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Given the tech and logistics of the period, it was far from dumb.
To the contrary, it actually made a lot of sense. The individual chance of any single soldier hitting his mark and having an effect was low, given the tech, so the most logical thing was to concentrate firepower. To prevent disorder, things like men in the rear accidentally shooting comrades in the back, and such, forming into close ranks made the most sense.
To maximize shock effect, preserve unit cohesion, to keep morale high (by falling back on muscle memory, command and routine), and for safety, firing in volleys made the most sense. Regards the last part, it had been found earlier with matchlocks that accidental discharges or "chain fires" could easily happen if another musket went off next to you when you were priming your own pan, or a wayward matchcord touched some other guy's cartridge, so loading and firing in unison made more sense and cut down on accidents.
So all put together, you end up with close ranks of men, giving fire on command, while standing, at relatively close range.
Just because things may sound reasonable in theory doesn't make them practical. It's the same reason not every guy in a modern rifle platoon has an HK grenade launcher, or every rifle has a high powered scope and a free float heavy barrel, and every rifleman is trained as a designated marksman.
The real world has "inconvenient" things like weight, flexibility, logistical friction, financial costs, training time, low average IQ and/or initiative of the average soldier, etc. Things need to be practical, not merely powerful or impervious to outmatching by enemy weapons.
Actually, positional (trench) warfare is very ancient. You see it with the Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans, for example. Positional warfare was far more common than field battles all throughout the Medieval ages, Early Modern and Modern periods.
The techniques and tactics with trenches in WWI were taken more or less directly from what manuals during the Crimean War, Franco-Prussian War, etc. instructed. Armor, gabions, and such like were very old, and in many cases were things that WWI forces had to reintroduce from the past. For example, the "trench armor" that was developed for WWI had already been seen in used by sappers in the 17th, 18th and 19th century sieges.
The big game changer in WWI was the use of large amounts of indirect fire with field artillery. This was even a larger factor, I would argue, than the machine gun or poison gas.
"Actually, positional (trench) warfare is very ancient. You see it with the Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans, for example. Positional warfare was far more common than field battles all throughout the Medieval ages, Early Modern and Modern periods."
My point exactly about how they seemed to get dumber during the early years of the gun. The US revolutionary war was a prime example of the effectiveness of using cover and not being all bundled together like a bunch of redcoat morons. In the case of the revolutionary war it made sense that the Americans didn't use bows because they were a ragtag guerrilla bunch for the most part. However I don't see any reason why soldiers couldn't be trained in both firing and reloading a gun and being able to knock and shoot an arrow with a bow, the ♥♥♥♥ ain't rocket science and if you are going to make a career out of being a soldier and your government is paying you to be a soldier and nothing else then I hardly see the training of both to be of major consequence.
The bunched together march up and shoot each other is the dumbest strategy ever. If you have a LOOSE formation you are going to take LESS damage from a volley of fire, there's no debating this. I don't see any advantage in having a wall of flesh for the enemy to fire at. It's like the difference of hitting a bunch of fence post or hitting the broad side of a barn.
The time of the Barry Lyndon story and the American War of Independence were not in the early years of the gun. The handgun had been a prominent weapon on the battlefield in the West since at least about 1480.
Regardless, like I said earlier, field works and covered fighting positions had been a feature of gunpowder warfare from the beginning, whether you look at something like Hussite war wagons in the 15th century, ramparts and revetements in the Italian Wars, or the mostly siege warfare of the Eighty Years War, all the way up through the 19th century.
The use of fieldworks increased with gunpowder, because it takes much heavier cover to protect from firearms than it does from bows, which is one of the reasons that the bow was dropped from widespread use.
As I said earlier, a lot of it comes down to practicality. Having every infantryman carry a bow and a musket at the same time, with sufficient ammunition for both, was not very practical on the battlefield, and would've been a quartermaster headache to boot, all for little to no advantage.
Having bows would not have given any real tactical advantage, at least in pitched battle. Bows had less effective range than muskets, could not deal with armor as effectively, could be countered by much lighter cover, and required more of each man physically to repeatedly draw in combat conditions.
The Japanese also found the firearm to be superior. By the middle of the Imjin War, firearms had almost totally supplanted bows in the Japanese forces, because they were found to be at least as good as bows in most areas, and superior in others. The Japanese matchlocks outranged the Korean bows facing them, for example.
Some powers emphasized the bow for much longer, namely the Ottoman Empire. However, they did this to their detriment when facing firearm heavy forces, as late 16th century battles such as Rhodes and Lepanto demonstrate.
There was definitely advantages to be had in using more open order, and that is what skirmishing troops or "pickets" did, hugging cover, using concealment, and choosing their shots.
Again though, this gets back to practicality. Fighting effectively in open order as light infantry took greater individual initiative, discipline, marksmanship and discernment than operating as regular line infantry. It also required very good NCOs and officers.
For large numbers of troops, especially with the advent of the huge, standing state armies in the West by around the middle of the 17th century, you have to account for the fact that your average soldier is, well, average, in terms of weapon proficiency, initiative and discipline, that is to say, relatively mediocre. It wouldn't have been realistic to try and train up whole armies of light infantry, especially as most campaign objectives consisted in siege operations and garrisoning.
Field battles were relatively very rare during the age of gunpowder (black powder). War consisted in mostly skirmishes, probes or raids, and sieges. Lighter troops and cavalry were used for most of the first two types of operations, and regular infantry undertook the brunt of the work for sieges, which consisted of a lot of manual labor, guard duty, and taking pot shots at enemy positions.
When a significant field battle did happen, the best way to bring your average soldier's musket to bear on the fight was to concentrate his fire with those of his comrades, where he could also enjoy greater unit cohesion and less incentive or opportunity to hang back, run away, avoid fighting, etc.
It should be pointed out too, that when bows were dominant and firearms weren't a thing yet, they were used the same way as the firearms when in the line: the men were in close order, shooting at enemies who were also in close order. Pitched battle with linear tactics is essentially impossible If everyone is too open and doing their own thing, picking their individual ground, whether they're using bows or firearms.
This holds true today as well. To bring any practical weight of fire to bear, not to mention maintain cohesion and maneuver, a unit must be relatively concentrated.
Does this present a target for enemy? Of course. The idea is that they are doing essentially the same thing.
If everyone is most concerned with minimizing the chances of being hit, if that is the only imperative, then the logical thing is to simply not engage in a pitched fight to begin with.
All pitched combat is by definition a risk calculation: if you can strike the enemy with your sword or spear at arms length, he is necessarily also within strike distance of you; if you concentrate muskets in a battle line to put a base of fire down, then you are necessarily presenting a target to the enemy as well.
Another key factor here is that having men in open order or skirmishing formation in the black powder age did not allow for positions to be held in most conditions.
Because everyone is spread out, that means there are by definition going to be less men per breadth of ground compared to an oncoming enemy who is not spread out. In other words, the looser the order, by definition that means there are less men for the same frontage as compared to the opposing force who is in tighter order.
So skirmishing order could harass and slow opposition from taking ground, but not prevent it, all other things equal. To halt the enemy from taking ground, you had to present a base of fire and/or a "push of bayonet" threat that was economical relative to the opposing element, which meant concentrating fires and bayonets. Likewise, if you were the one trying to take ground, you had to have the economy of force relative to the concentrated ranks of the enemy. The result is that both sides in a pitched combat relied on formed infantry in close order to be their main elements.
In reality, western factions never used the longbow, that was the English and the rest of Europe used few longbows and adopted the crossbow asap.
You don't have to be a master to be competent enough to have an effect though right? Were most long bowmen really sniping people several hundred yards away when they aimed their bow up in the air at 45 degree angle for maximum range? Or were they just showering arrows more or less in the general area where there was a crowd of people, hoping to land a shot but if it didn't they knew someone else's arrow did. I'm not saying that it wouldn't take years to become elite but I'm sure in a few weeks or maybe months they could become competent enough at least have a not insignificant effect on the battlefield. Also this whole expense/weight thing seems a little silly, I mean in some cases, sure, I could see that being a factor. However a well funded army should have no problem affording bows and arrows and the weight of a long bow with a quiver of 20 arrows can't weigh that much. Compare what these guys had to carry to what kind of weight marines carry today. Soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan routinely carry between 60 and 100 pounds of gear including body armor, weapons and batteries. What did the soldier back then have to carry? A musket which weighs 20lbs and is the majority of the weight they have to carry as they didn't use any kind of armor.
Also, it took incredible strength and daily training to draw a warbow. They can tell from the skeletons if medieval warriors were English longbowmen because the shoulders and spines are all deformed! Guns were much much more convenient all round.
The idea was to fire the arrows until you ran out and then switch to your gun when the enemy was in range of the muskets. However 20 wasn't like some concrete answer they could carry 30, 40, or 60 arrows, it doesn't really matter because 1 arrow is better than no arrow.
2. matchlocks had no rifling yet, so are highly inaccurate. Maybe you could hit what you aimed at from a range of 50 meters.
3. firing a longbow with accuracy is hard, takes years of training. Firing a matchlock is easy and requires no training at all
4. Horses were pretty rare in Japan and all the extra weight from carrying a bow and gun would make the army far to slow.
So they don't have to only carry 20 but it was never meant as a suggestion for long term use as I said before they could carry a bow and a gun. I would have my "elite" troops that were trained in long bow in the front firing arrows at the enemy until they were close to being in range to use their muskets and then I'd have them retreat behind my 2nd row of musket men at the same time as my musket men advanced and readied for the assault.
I don't understand this idea that it took such great training for longbow men to be developed. It's a bow and arrow guys and the way it's utilized is in a swarm that rains from the sky. Nobody is meant to hit the exact spot they are aiming for it's just meant to land in the general vicinity. According to the numerous articles I've read the longbow is actually the easiest for a beginner to be competent with. Here's a way though of separating the cream from the crop.
So you wanna build and train an army and you want to have a small portion of that army trained in the use of both the longbow and the musket. You have a sort of try outs for this elite group in which you take the top performing half and advance them to the next day of tryouts and you keep doing this day after day until you get down to the number of units you want to actually train in this particular skill say 6% so 4 days of trails (50>25>12.5>6) and then you train these men every day for X amount of hours for however many days it takes for them to be competent enough to be of use in the field of battle before sending them to battle (8 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, whatever). I don't see any reason they can't train in both firing a musket and shooting a longbow because a person is only going to be able to train in the use of a long bow for maybe a couple hours a day anyway as nobody is going to be able to pull the 150 lbs draw weight all day long and when they are done they can move onto musket training which is much less fatiguing. They can be paid slightly more for being in this elite group and having to train longer and harder and they can also be incentivized by knowing they will be protected by the rest of the troop as they are rotated back as they are more valuable to the army.
And I'm not sure about carrying a musket and a bow at once. It's not the extra weight, it's that a bow is actually quite a delicate thing, when it is strung it is constantly on the verge of snapping, so you string it before you start shooting and then knock off when you are finished. So do your men just drop their bows when it's time to switch and hope they arent ruined when they come to pick them up? Or do they take the time to knock off and give the first volleys of musket fire to the enemy? And do they drop them on the grass beside them where everyone will stand on them during the gunfight?
Sure, why not, they would be the last stand units anyways since they are the most valuable due to the proficiency they possess and the time spent training them. They would always end at the back row and if they were ever have to fire their muskets then ♥♥♥♥ probably really hit the fan at that point and they need to make a stand or retreat.