The Last Samurai???

"Like, if there was a clan of farmer-warriors in Northern England, and every time the poop went down the king rode up to them and asked, "Can you help us out with some guerrila warfare?" And they said, "Sure, guv," did some stuff, trained some knights, and then went back to farming and practicing the occult. That's, I think, what it'd be like."

Robin Hood and his Merry men?

Hereward the wake, Waltheof and Edric the wild leading a guerilla movement against the Normans?

King Alfred leading a band of thieves whilst hiding from the Danes in the marshes?

Thats all i can think of for England. Also how about the Hashish or whatever they were called, who were the original assassins in the near east.

I also own this book.

Ronin, Saigo Takamori's rebellion DID use firearms and as above mentioned, these primitive matchlock rifles hadn't changed in several hundred years.

I find it facinating that the matchlock weapons actually had almost no major change in samurai warfare. They simply replaced that arrow.

"An analysis that I was just looking at
this morning, of documents reporting battlewounds, for example, shows that
between 1500 and 1560, out of some 620 casualties described, 368 were arrow
wounds, 124 were spear wounds, 96 were injuries from rocks (thrown by
slings or by hand), 18 were sword wounds, 7 were combined arrow and spear
wounds, 3 were combined arrow and sword wounds, 2 were combined rock and
spear wounds, and 2 were combined rock and arrow wounds. Between 1563
and 1600 (after the adoption of the gun) some 584 reported casualties break
down as follows: there were 263 gunshot victims, 126 arrow victims, 99
spear victims, 40 sword victims, 30 injured by rocks, and 26 injured by
combinations of the above (including one poor SOB who was shot by both guns
and arrows and stabbed by spears, and one who was speared, naginata-ed, and
cut with a sword). In other words, long distance weapons (arrows and
rocks) accounted for about 75% of the wounds received in the pre-gun era,
and about 72 % (arrows + guns + rocks) during the gunpowder era. Which is
to say that "traditional fighting" does not appear to have been heavily
centered on close-quarters clashes of swords or even of spears, except in
literary sources."

- Don J. Modesto, taken from the e-budo forum.

I've found some excellent knowledge over here:

http://www.e-budo.com/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=116

I can't really think of any European equivalent to ninjas--assassins certainly existed, but nothing that appears to be a total parallel, AFAIK. I'm thinking of the Italian low-life street thugs known as bravi, but they seem more like sword-wielding skinheads than Western ninjas...