+Michael Dean you would not get anywhere near a king wielding a crossbow but you are 90% correct it meant a common soldier/fighter could kill a noble knight, it was more battlefield orientated
One thing you didn't mention about a siege is this: Yes, accuracy when shooting at someone behind cover is important, but the crossbow is more useful for the defenders, because you don't need to expose yourself from cover much to fire it. With a longbow you need to stand up, draw it and loose, which gives people plenty of time to hurl sharp things in your general direction. With a crossbow you can loose the bolt crouching and accurately shoot it out of the tiniest castle slit, something you can't easily do with a bow. Richard the Lionheart was killed by a crossbow when besieging a castle, if you remember. :)
You're right that a crossbow would be good last line of defence as a close range weapon under Siege But they couldn't deliver the numbers of arrows to defeat an army marching towards the walls which you would need arches to thin down the army
One advantage I have heard for crossbows also deals with sieges, but more of a benefit to those being besieged. This had to do with the fact that as you highlighted, that you could keep a crossbow drawn and even loaded for a very long time. So while there might be only a handful of people trained in shooting the crossbow, they could press into service able bodied people around the castle to reload crossbows for the crossbowmen, giving them a ready supply of loaded crossbows to quickly switch between and loose bolts from. And thus being able to put up a tremendous amount of fire. Much more than if they had to load them by hand. I do not recall where I heard it, so I wonder if anyone has heard of this before.
I heard a similar thing. I also remember the evidence for this theory was something like that castles that had crossbows had way more crossbows than people qualified to operate them. This might also be where the "less training" thing comes in. In the same way anyone can operate a gun, but a trained soldier and/or gunsmith could use and maintain them better. In the video, he said he taught someone to use a bow at a basic level in an afternoon. For crossbows, you can do it in minutes. True, they won't be AS effective as a trained user, but they could at least compete, whereas using, say, a sword, a spear, or even a regular bow would mean random bloke wouldn't stand a chance.
Do not over estimate the size of a medieval siege. Unlike in Hollywood, maybe 20 weaponable men where in a castle and the evil enemy with all his relatives, squires and horseboys count also not more than 50 people ... if there someone dare a glance behind the battlement and getting hit - that was the highlight of the day...
It requires more strength than dex to use, the sniper crossbow for example needs 16 dex and 20 strength. Although the Avelyn is really the only viable Xbow.
The couch arrived in two boxes four days early, which was great because we'd just moved into a new house and needed places to sit. My son and I put it together pretty quickly ruclips.net/user/postUgkxitRzxya-XugamYgLwa_2G1gxPg4MCJHa . Another reviewer suggested inserting the seat into the side and I'm glad they did as the instructions weren't clear on that matter. It's incredibly light and slides easily across the wood floor, making it easy to move. It's firm, but comfortable. It will even be great to nap on. I got the gray, which definitely has strong blue undertones, but I'm okay with that.
There is a very good explanation why crossbows were more popular than bows : because sieges were actually way more frequent than open field battles during the Middle-Ages. Add pavises and all kind of defensive structures, you now have crossbowmen brillant in both attack and defense. Bows are spraying weapons and weapons of mass destruction : perfect for battles. Crossbows have accuracy and safety, perfect for sieges. Another point : bolts are much more deadly than arrows. Some were even designed so the bolt could be recovered easily from a wound but without the head. So you try to pull it out : you now have a wooden thing in your hand and the deadly iron thing still in your body. In other words, you're dead. Bolts have also much more variety than arrows. Some bolts were for example designed to kill horses (you just have to aim for the hocks and enjoy the spectacle of dying horses). At the end, firearms replaced the crossbows as they have roughly the same use in battle, plus the moral effect.
I feel the last comment was out of place. The Genoese were frighteningly good, and their sheer uselessness at Crecy was due to the absolute stupidity of their commanders. The battle was started abruptly, so they were forced to use their low-poundage bows rather than their heavy ones (which were back at the baggage train). It was raining, which rather spoiled their strings. And as if that wasn't enough, they were ordered to advance to the very foot of the hill occupied by the English. A crossbow has a flat sort of angle of fire. They were therefore unable to sight on the English archers, who happily poured arrows on them until they ran. I would hazard that under different circumstances, the result would be reversed.
I would argue that the poundage of the crossbows means little when fighting against longbowmen who are generally un or poorly armored. More armor penetration isn't really terribly useful against someone who has none anyway. For that matter, I would say that higher poundage bows would have been a liability rather than improving their situation (the fact that they would have been dry might, though) because they would be more difficult to draw and loose, further exacerbating the deficiency in shooting rate. A duel between a group of longbowmen and crossbowmen is a loosing prospect for the crossbowmen. Under different circumstances in the same battle, they may very well have fared better than they did, but this is just one of a large number of reasons why the French lost that battle.
Ferretsnarf With the higher poundage bows, wouldn't the range also be increased? Potentially to a range greater then that of an average 100 pound yew bow? I assumed the larger crossbows would have allowed them to stay out of range and force the English to advance rather than vice versa.
wanadeena I recall seeing Mike Loades talking about this on one of his "Weapons that Made Britain" shows. I think the issue with the Genoese mercenaries not having their shields was that they were easy targets for the English archers, and thus were sitting ducks being out front.
badnewsBH That's where I got the info too, the targets were in a bad position thus the reason they lost. Also being murdered by their own comrades hurts them too.
A few things to point out. The reason the genoese crossbowmen lost to the english longbowmen was because they got killed by the french knights. And the reason the english longbowmen beat the french knights was the same reason that the french knights attacked their own allied genoese crossbowmen. Namely that the french king was an idiot. One large advantage of the crossbow is that you can fire it from a crouched position, such as from behind a large shield. And you can load it and store the energy in the weapon, meaning the loader and the shooter can be two different people. One common crossbow tactic was to have a team of three. One carrying a large shield, called a pavise, then a master of the team, who was the crossbowman who fired the crossbow. And then a third man, whose job it was to load the crossbow. And they had two crossbows, so while the crossbowman was using one, his loader was readying the other one and they passed them back and forth. Why didn't this work against the english longbows? Because the french king was an idiot. The pavises were still on the baggage train because the french king thought it would be stupid to actually form up his units properly and ready them for battle with all of their gear instead of just going straight at it. Skillful tactics and smart techniques count for nothing if you don't use them. The english commander on the other hand did a bunch of clever things, such as picking a good battlefield, readying his troops, deploying them properly, preparing obstacles and so on and so forth. All the things someone who is a competent military leader would do. And which the french king did not. Since he was an incompetent moron.
This could be a medieval ballad of some kind. The King's Army was on the field; But still packed were the shields; O, the Englishmen drawed The Frenchknight were awed... Because the King was a moron
If it's Crécy we're speaking of, king Philippe VI, following the advice by knight Le Moine de Bazeilles who came back from reconnaissance of English lines, ordered his troops to stand still and planned to postpone the battle to the next day. The morons and idiots were the French corps leaders who disobeyed and charged the English lines. The main source for Crécy is Froissart. www.dhi.ac.uk/onlinefroissart/browsey.jsp?pb0=BookI-Translation_137v&img0=&div0=ms.f.transl.BookI-Translation&panes=1&GlobalMode=facsimile&img0=&disp0=pb&GlobalWord=0&GlobalShf=&pb0=BookI-Translation_137r
I put this question to you (another potential 'point about' video) HOW do horses pull carriages/wagons down hills without the wagon hitting them in the bum? Yes I could google this, but I'm not practical like that.
Lloyd, you are right about the case of linen bowstrings being unaffected by moisture. The case with the Genoese crossbowmen at Crecy was they were wielding composite crossbows. In doing my reading, composite bows and prods are very moisture sensitive and are generally at home in the drier Mediterranean and Asian steppes. It is therefore more likely that it was the bows themselves were weakened by the French damp than the strings. An English/Welsh longbow is also more stable in a wetter environment and they were likely given a finish of linseed oil and beeswax.
Very likely - Although the weather may have been wetter in Iberia back in the day. Before they deforested the entire subcontinent and all that for ships.
A lot of things went bad in the rain, it was always generally unfavourable to attack during a wet spell. However, you can almost always hold a siege off for a few hours and wait, there were larger factors determining the success of a siege such as terrain, of which in Southern Spain is almost guaranteed to be hilly and rocky, whereas most of England is virtually a swamp yet to be drained by industrious Dutchmen.
Fun game effect: Dwarfs in Eon use the crossbows almost exclusively. The designers figured a person with above-average strength but of short stature and arm length might be more comfortable sliding a crossbow crank or lever back and forth than giving a big long bow a long pull. Eon, also home of the heavy repeating crossbow. Their fantastic extrapolation of a mix between a cho-ko-nu casette crossbow and a heavy crossbow. A three-crew-served stationary monster of a machine.
Missing one rather important point...the time needed to train someone to be decent with the crossbow (one week, being generous) is incredibly shorter than training someone with a longbow (one...life?). Not strong enough? Not going to be even able to draw a longbow. Not strong enough? Use a lever/windlass/cranequin/your whole body... it takes too long to reload? Hide behind the walls or the huge pavise shield. Your army suffers a huge defeat? ETA for a new bunch of trained longbowmen: one generation. ETA for a bunch of trained crowwsbowmen: the time needed to reach the nearest town+1 week.
Except when you had units of archers, they weren't used as snipers like in your medieval video games. You dont need headshots. The point was to get a lot of arrows on the enemies, preferably from as far away from them as possible. So you dont need to practice shooting arrows at the range for a life to be a decent archer in those times, in a unit. All you needed to be was strong and durable enough, with basic understanding of where your arrow will land and thats good enough.
Good point. However, making a shitty, mass-produced bow requires far less skills, tools and time than making a shitty crossbow. If you lose your bows, you can make new ones (and fairly decent ones, if you've got skilled men) on the march. If you lose your crossbows, I guess you're fucked until you reach a town which has a smith that makes them. Even then it will take a lot more time to come up with enough of them.
There was a law in England that after a certain age you had to train every sunday for an hour or 2 in using a bow soo that righted that problem somewhat
Well I think its easier to train people to hit moving targets with crossbows, because they don't need to bother about pulling the bow at the right time. Also I think its easier to align with the target (whereas on a longbow you cannot see the entire arrow) and you do not have the problem of the arrow flexing around the bow.
I'v come back to this place to offer my thumbs-up, and to say something encouraging. I appreciate the lesson. Its far more than I knew. I was wrong on several points. But I'm used to being wrong... I am married!
I think people here are overlooking some huge factors. if you look at it from a pure range vs range perspective, longbow is almost destined to counter crossbowmen in range battles,range, loading speed and due to trajectory behind fortification etc. So after projectile get more and more relevant, a dedicated in most cases I see around the world do beat out a make shift crossbow man. I was fortunate enough to work in a museum during my teenage years and was playing with a modern replicate of a Chinese chukonu(repeating crossbow), I was stunned by its effectiveness(some shoots two arrows at once and can shot up to five or even ten bolts or something depends on the period, some designs it loads like a modern gun clip). After the encounter I asked professor there why was there archers deployed after this kind of weapon was invented. The simple answer I got was archer was the best unit to counter this kind of units. He also mentioned the reason the reason such huge effort went into improving crossbows chip size so to speak in comparison to the west could be due to the lack of a better long range bow ie longbow. So if you mix this unit into infantry the likelihood of it getting destroyed before deployed by long range arrows is much lower. For clarification here most armies start losing moral very quickly getting shot at and can't fight back you don't need to kill everyone. So I hope this helps you understand the dynamics better. Just to be clear I am not saying crossbow are not a great weapon, its just not good against mass archers. You are not fighting mass archer most of the time.
When you talk about training differences between bow and crossbow, the advantage of the crossbow is that it doesn't take 20 years of constant use to build up the arm and shoulder muscles to continuously shoot the crossbow 60 times in a battle. Sure, they both require marksmanship training and the point of aim:point of impact is different from bow to crossbow so training with one does not translate to direct effectiveness with the other.
Could a medieval archer have shot in the rain with a normal bow (not a crossbow)? Would the flight of the arrow been hindered or prevented by rain? Or would the arrow itself have been damaged by rain?
***** Not really a good point. I bet an arrow travels in water better than a bullet. Most bullets just get a few feet under water until becoming completely harmless. Wouldn't be surprised if hitting raindrops would hinder a bullet more than an arrow. An arrow is much slower so the water has time to get out of the way. It's also much heavier.
Waxing of the bowstring prevents the problem of moisture fully. There have been some conclusive tests done and were published in the Traditional Bowyer's Bible (sorry, forgot which volume)
But crossbowmen generally had a pavise to hide from archers with, so while crossbowmen can wait till the shower is over and then turn to shoot arrows at your skirmishers. Also frighteningly strong crossbows needed frightening mechanisms like a crank wheel to actually draw the bow, hence you'd want to be really good because you won't get another shot (unless you're behind a castle wall). Hence I'd like to think that crossbows were also really popular with knife-men.
I would almost assume you would have a crossbow installment which is fenced off and has men winching spare bows to hand to the shooters and keeping nasties off their flanks. But that is my mind using more modern tactics.
Luciffrit It's not wrong to assume that at all, but you'd need DOUBLE the men to crank spare bows which is not economic. You would see the logic that if you have ten crossbows and ten men, you would shoot ten crossbows at once to go for a quick ten kills, instead of one or two men scoring a kill every 5 seconds. I for one think it's an actual modern tactic to see the advantage of lightweight high strength crossbows being used as side arms, so when you're gearing up for a charge you would all fire your crossbows, like Romans throwing javelins and then close the distance.
Luciffrit Or more likely, a gaggle of women, old men past fighting, and boys not yet of combat age were co-opted to do the reloading. It's not like medieval castles were lacking in any of these, and no one's potential labor went to waste.
Richard I was done for by a crossbow at a siege. He was besieging Calus in France when a guy on the walls got him with a bolt. His shoulder wound became infected and that was him. We had to endure King John instead.
already as a teen i was able to shoot a 70kg (150lbs) crossbow fairly quickly. I think i remember it took 8 seconds to load and shoot. it used around 30 cm long arrows with feathers and would pierce trough a very very hard thick target made of compressed hay. taking out the arrow took ages every time. anyone hit by that would be toast.
I was using a friend's crossbow (gorgeous 30 year old 175lb barnett) and the only aluminium bolts that he could find just could not take the draw weight, the plastic nocks could take maybe two shots before shattering and more often than not they went through the circular wooden table that was our target, and into the rock on the other side. For targeting further away the accuracy really suffered. Stringing the thing is a bloody nightmare, there's a string to put on to enable you to put the other string on, imagine that in battle. Bloody good fun though.
apparently the ban on crossbows by the Church was not exactly that (certainly wasn't effective) and may have been in reference to tournaments which was specifically condemned at the Lateran Council in 1139 yet had little impact. www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran2.asp In other news, did Lindy seem a bit cross in this video or am I off the mark?
I have a theory of my own about the banning of the crossbow by the Pope. (Of course someone somewhere might have already thought about it, history is just a hobby for me and there are a lot of people who are far more knowledgable than me). But to the point - as we all know, this was at the height of the crusades period, when knights and armoured sergeants dominated the battlefield and knightly orders like the Templars and Hospitallers were the armored fists of the Pope and his political interests. And considering all of this, the fact that any peasant with a crossbow and two weeks of training could quite easily kill a knight with a lifetime of training and experience just couldn't have sounded good for the Pope. Of course there could also be other reasons for banning the crossbow, but this is probably one of the main. It also wouldn't be the first time the Catholic Church tried to maintain its power and influence through bans for "godly" reasons.
Lyubomir Ivanchev It was only banned in use against Christians. It was acceptable to use against non-Christians, like Muslims. The ban actually went into effect before the Crusades began.
Real Crusades History I didn't know that, but despite this fact, the theory is still valid if you look at it from purely political point of view - the feudal ruling class, to which knights belonged, had to be Christians in order to be legitimate rulers, and at the height of feudalism, when this ban was enacted, they ruled in a symbiose together with the church. They provided the money and protection that helped the church maintain its influence, while it provided a justification to their political power (rights to rule given by God, etc.) and taught the peasants to obey their masters like sheep obey their shepherd. And from this point of view, even if it was before the Crusades and knightly orders, the people who benefited the most from this ban were still the feudal ruling class, whose arms and armor gave them superiority on the battlefield and among their own subordinates. And therefore it was also in the interest of the Pope to keep this status quo and by protecting the feudal ruling class, to protect his own power.
Lyubomir Ivanchev It's hard for the theory to hold water because the ban was enacted so long before the existence of the Templars or the Hospitallers. The ban began before such orders were even conceivable. It was enacted in the eleventh century when the Church had very little in the way of military support unless it came from nobles like the King of France or the Countess of Tuscany who had soldiers. I also don't see any evidence that the Templars or Hospitallers acted as private armies for the papacy. The military wing of the military orders really only existed on the frontiers (Spain, Holy Land). The military orders acted pretty independently of the papacy, with their own agenda, though they were officially under the authority of the papacy. I think you're oversimplifying the structure of medieval society. Neither the church nor the nobility had absolute power over the common people, plus there were a variety of levels within those structures, with some nobles being poor and some peasants being wealthy. There's also no evidence that crossbows represented a significant threat to the existence of the nobility if they got into the hands of the peasants. Crossbows were mainly used in siege warfare as sniping weapons. Sieges always involved a contest between the nobility. A peasant revolt armed with a bunch of crossbows would not have gotten very far. The noble cavalry could have just ridden them down before they got off a second shot, since crossbows took so much time to prep and load for a single shot. The reason that the church banned crossbows was because they caused far more fatalities in sieges, which might have been solved more peaceably without the ability to slowly pick off the two sides through ambush sniping. The medieval nobles would have disagreed with you that the ban benefited them. They disliked the ban because they'd liked to use crossbows in their conflicts with each other. If anything is benefited the peasants, since peasants could get killed by stray crossbow bolts during a conflict. But ultimately it didn't matter, since the papal ban on crossbows had essentially no effect whatsoever - no one stopped using them. In the High Middle Ages the idea that the nobility would somehow be overthrown was completely inconceivable. The popes were not interested in keeping the status of the nobility intact any more than they were interested in making sure that the sun continued to rise in the morning. Rather, they were concerned with promoting the interests of those nobles who were loyal to them, while undermining the nobles that rebelled against them. The Middle Ages was about competition among the nobility, not between the nobility and the commoners. Anyway, hope that's helpful.
For sieges or battles where one side is staying put, the mobile siege shield, or pavese, is great for crossbowmen. They could hide behind these big, thick, stand-up tower shields and fire around them when they were loaded and ready. Could you make a video of the windlasses and crossbow cocking devices? Levers, ropes, cranks, etc. attached to that metal cross-pin in your crossbow stock.
You might want to check out Tod Todeschini, not only does he make insanely beautiful crossbows but has also uploaded a couple of very nice and very informative videos onto RUclips about them.
I agree! His website (one of his sites) is Todsstuff dot com, and he makes a host of amazing historical replicas, not just crossbows. It is also cool to see that Lloyd has hooked up with Hotspur! I hope he does some videos with them.
I like crossbows because they seem like such an ingenious idea. It's like what would happen if 20 modern industrial designers were sent back in time to redesign the bow "it's got to have this thing and that and it has to be more accurate" and so on
longbows required a very specific type of strength that required you to be shooting and training with a longbow for a great while which is why longbowmen were fearsomely good
For ranged weapons, I find bows to be the *easiest* to train soldiers, and that's one of the major advantages bows have over slings. Slings are notoriously brutal, have surprising range and can deliver incendiary and chemical weapons (pots of lye or pitch) which is horrifying for a siege. Plus you can supplement ammo on the field just by finding decent river rocks. But slings take a massive amount of practice to be able to use it in formation with any effectiveness, or to hit a distant target with any accuracy. Plus their ammo is heavy if you're going to bring it on a long march to the field. The training is cited (by at least one source) as the biggest reason why bows replaced slings.
Another advantage of the sling is that the sling itself doesn't take up much room. But, you're right bows male more sense. Just wanted to add my observation.
Slings dont penetrate much. Arrows can punch through leather and chain mail. Arrows can have different points for different uses. Also you can train yourself and others to use a sling at short ranges like with a bow at the same time. No difference. Seeings how slingers would throw instinctively like how archers shot.
Out of curiosity, with a crossbow, if you have it charged and ready to fire, but then decide not to, what do you do? I know you shouldn't dry fire it, but is it better to simply fire the bolt into a tree or the ground and recover it later, or could you take your drawing device (pully or goat'sfoot lever or whatever) and attempt to slowly release the string?
You can leave it like that for quite a while, actually. That's one of the good things about crossbows. I suppose it would be easier to shoot it a few feet away than undraw it - if that's even possible!
The ancient Greek siege crossbow was the interesting gastraphetes ("belly-releaser") named for the way it was spanned by pushing down on an elaborate slider mechanism.
Another fun point is to expand on the nature of loading the crossbow, and it staying loaded. You can load them ahead of time and leave them waiting for a reasonable period. The person who loads the crossbow doesn't have to be the one who actually fires it, meaning an expert with a decade of experience can become two or more experts with a decade of experience if you add more heavy crossbows and one or more people trained merely to reload them for the shooter. (I vaguely remember reading lists of equipment that had counts of crossbows that exceeded the number of the formal garrisons, which makes it an option that was possibly employed, but I have never seen solid evidence as to whether single skilled shooter with assistants and multiple bows were more common than multiple quickly trained shooters.)
I once read that the early crossbows did not have a topbit, so they could not shoot downwards. The problem is that the bolt would fall off if you tried to aim at an enemy below your height, so an inhabitant of a castle could not use a crossbow to attack besiegers.
A bit of a correction: It's not the strings that are vulnerable to rain, it's the limbs. Composite bows and composite crossbows have limbs made of different types of materials glued together, and glue tends not to maintain its adhesiveness when drenched by water. Bows in Europe are not composite bows, the longbow for example is only made out of yew wood. This means that they have less strength on the limbs, but it also means that they are resistant or even immune to rain. Crossbows in Europe, however, are of composite make. This means that they are vulnerable to rain. Eventually, European crossbows replaced their composite limbs with metal limbs to eliminate this vulnerability, but they haven't done this at the rainy battle of Crecy, which is part of the reason why the Longbow completely outperformed the crossbow in that battle. Also, the casualties on part of the Genoese Crossbowmen caused by the English Longbowmen are actually relatively light. It's just that the asshole Frankish knights that hired them cut them down when they thought they were retreating out of cowardice, after the Frankish commander ordered them to do something that is basically impossible (take an elevated position defended by Longbowmen unsupported, with a crossbow rendered useless by rain, without the Pavise shields left on the baggage train). Most of the casualties sustained by the Genoese Crossbowmen in that battle is caused by their own Frankish employers turning on them.
+Albert Ray Jonathan Very good reply and spot on. This is also one of the reasons the English loved the longbow, it wasn't ruined by bad weather, I have had this discussion lots of times and people seem unable to grasp it, often saying Mongol bows were so far superior, why didn't English use composite bows, they were so far behind using a bent stick etc etc, the fact is a Mongol bow (or Yumi or other bow of that nature) would fall apart in England.
I agree. I hunt whitetail deer and wild turkey with a modern cross bow and it suffers from non of these ailments. The weather does not affect the string or modern laminated limbs.
Some crossbow bolts with armour piercing heads are heavier than longbow arrows. Also, the crossbow is ideal for defense for you can't shoot a normal bow from the narrow space of castle wall arrowslits or hoardings.
I once played a game were you could equip your character with either bows or crossbows. The main difference between them was that crossbows shot twice as fast, which I never thought made any sense, as I always imagined they were pretty slow to reload. I don't really know what the developers were thinking with that.
I have a bit of a problem with the statement that bolts were lighter than arrows. Yes, they were smaller in general and yes it varies a lot, but in general bolts had just gigantic heads compared to arrows. Which was one of the reasons for short range.
BTW as far as i know the springy thingy quarrel holder wasnt common feature of medieval crossbows, quarrels were jus laid in the groove, so no running around.
have you ever heard of a carpet crossbow. in my youth using a kids rocking chair stave and many rubber bands with a crosspiece, I held off a large gang until the police came . its range was a city block and the carpet ammo would curve around the corner, where they coming. The adventures of Robin Hood with Richard Greene was a great training ground for ancient weapons
I think maybe they were just popular all around but mercenaries were equipped with them first since some provinces like Italy didn't had much of a standing army for the kingdom at the time.
A good crossbow has metal bits in it and pretty intricate mechanisms that require skills and infrastructure to produce, so it's naturally a lot more expensive than a bow. If you're a professional soldier, this would make a lot of sense as an investment. If you're a conscript, you're basically stuck either with the things you can afford yourself or with things that you're provided with. As a baron, I would think twice before giving out expensive weaponry to conscripts: after all, when you lose a man, you most likely also lose their weapons.
No, no, no... he has missed the missed important point. A crossbow had a short lever arm compared to the long lever arm if a longbow. This meant that even a really powerful crossbow did not have enough time to accelerate the bolt any faster than an arrow from a longbow, therefore the range was about the same. However, the much greater draw weight of medieval crossbones allowed the to arch MUCH heavier missiles, including bolts made of solid iron. This compensated for the slower rate of archery
Well first they wouldn't go as far as a longbow arrow because the more mass the harder it is to decelerate therefore the crossbow bolt with less mass then a longbow arrow will slow down quickly and be more susceptible to changes in the wind speed even a light breeze also because it had nearly the same sized point but less mass behind it compared to a longbow arrow it dosent hit with as much penetration power as something with more mass but the same surface area to spread the energy out on because if there going the same speed and have the same surface area for there points the one with the more mass hits with the more for because force is equal to mass Times acceleration therefore if it has the same Acceleration as a longbows arrow but less mass it hits with less force at longer ranges also you counterdict yourself your saying that and ill copy an paste this "crossbow did not have enough time to accelerate the bolt any faster than an arrow from a longbow, therefore the range was about the same." Then you go on to say that it could Accelrate a heavier missile to the same speed but the amount of force applied to the Mor massive projectile if you will is the same as if it was a lighter bolt which it wouldn't since it has the same power and time to accelerate it it would actually get to a slower speed because of the amount of mass of a solid iron bolt witch i have no idea if that exists or not but Thats not the point anyway so it wouldn't have the same range with heavier bolts but the hit would still be devastating especially in armor because of the amount of kinetic energy transferred from a solid iron bolt even going slower would be EXTREME
well actualy the speed of the projectiles was prety close as seen on the following website. www.thebeckoning.com/medieval/crossbow/cross_l_v_c.html Keep in mind this crossbow is "only" 740 lbs and not one of the heaviest as the 1000 lbs kind. The arrow of the longbow indeed has more momentum because it has a higher mass. I guess a crossbow arrow had more penetration because it was sharper then the longbow arrow or just because they took even heavier crossbows. @Lindy your remark on strenght seems odd to me. Peasants, being mostly farmers were actualy prety fit people to begin with. Working the land all day makes you get quite some strenght. With the mechanism of a crossbow do they actualy need more effort then the longbow? The rotating weel on a heavy crossbow seems rather "low effort" compared to holding a long bow. Or atleast they should be comparable and not make a huge diffrence.
@@dmyt58 While it's hard work to draw a crossbow it could be done with both arms using a relatively natural pulling motion, or with a rotating wheel as you point out. Drawing a heavy war bow on the other hand requires considerable strength in a very specific non-common motion; thus necessitating years of dedicated training. This however, as Lindybeige point's out, was not the case with lighter bows which could be used effectively from the get go by any reasonably fit person.
GepardenK any heavy crossbow uses a wheel. The ones you can draw with both hands are the lighter ones, same with the lever. Drawing a war bow would not be a problem for a peasant. If you work all day on a field all your muscles will be strong. In a few weeks the peasants would train the mussles they need more and be able to draw heavier bows. The main advantage of crossbows is it is very easy to aim them (and you can keep them drawn for a couple of hours if you need it). I bet you can train anyone to a decent degree of crossbow aiming in a week, keep in mind you try to fire on a mass of a couple hunderd of thousand man not on a single dude somewhere. To get to the same level with a bow you need months to get even close. If you want your peasants to start using the advantages of the bow over the crossbow you need years of training. You need to be able to know the height of your arrow at a certain point fired with a certain arc to shoot over something and into something else behind it. A crossbow on the other hand just flies straight into something with a little bit of drop from gravity.
I can see why they were slow to catch on. They take much more effort to make, longer to reload, and shorter effective range. But the stopping power and the ability to snipe are advantages that can’t be ignored.
As I recall, English Longbow production almost killed off the Yew tree in Europe and required deals with the HRE to buy all their Yew forests. It was simpler to manufacture and you didn't need to buy metals for the basic bow but the scarcity of the Yew towards the end must have driven up costs.
You could always hide behind a pavise shield with a crossbow; bolts are also shorter in length, so they can be produced in higher quanities than arrows using the same amount of wood, I would assume.
Lindybeige If I'm not mistaken The Chinese repeating crossbow was made to be easy to use for militia conscripts thus making it a good weapon for civilian use in self defense. Poison was painted on the bolts thus making even the slightest scratch deadly. I am not saying that it is the bestest crossbow ever but I think it has a wider range of uses than raking the deck of a ship.
+andre robinson It didn't have much power and you couldn't really aim it because of the firing mechanism and magazine. They essentially had to be hip-fired and rocked around as you kept pulling the lever. Then on top of that the bolts couldn't be fitted with fletching because they would otherwise jam in the magazine (more than they already did, which may have been quite a lot). As I understand it they were mainly intended for close-range ambushes against horses; large, lightly-armored targets.
The reason it takes longer to train to use a warbow is because you need to 1. Get strong 2. Get good at useing the thing Wile both of those exist for the crossbow, the crossbow can be learned much faster. I shot bows in tournemnt and own a crossbow, I learned my crossbow in one week, and the bow in a few months. The traditional bow needs more skill to be used than a crossbow.
Also to crossbows tend to make quite inefficient use of the stored energy and so much more powerful ones were required for which you needed something like a goats foot, windlass or some means of mechanical advantage to draw, making them slower and more difficult to draw and (I presume) more expensive to make.
+Montpelier Montgomery me too, and with enough training you can shoot reload and shoot again rather quickly especially with a lighter poundage crossbow, i have a 150lb crossbow and can fire once (maybe twice on a good day) every 4-5 seconds, it takes practice though
we know from history that xbows were indeed quite common during the middle ages. If they were common it is safe to assume that they do play their missile part in battles. If they play this part in battles it seems obvious that the indirect archer volley fire we see so often in hollywood productions was either very ineffective or non-existing at all.
martyb999 i remember reading that early firearms took less craftsmanship and were were cheaper to produce and train and that their main advantage was their range (weird since they cant hit anything at a far distance) but eh... mass volleys solve that problem.
That’s the only reason that makes any sense; the negative psychological effect it would have had on the enemy and it would be a status thing (having the latest “tech”)? Even so it couldn’t have taken professional soldiers long to realise the things were more dangerous to the users rather than the targets? They’d have taken FOREVER to load as well as being really short range? I’d be interested to know what Lloyd thinks.
Yeah, maybe, but they were SO ineffective? I agree with TidusplZUO about the psychological benefits but that would only matter the first time you came up against them? Medieval people weren’t stupid? Maybe by the time the enemy was less conscripted farmer and more professional soldier the weapons had improved enough to be effective?
Also punching through armour. Musket rounds are bigger and heavier than crossbow bolts and in the day and age that everyone and their mom had a breastplate, it was a huge advantage. Hell, gunpowder in general changed the warfare a lot. It's why everyone just went back to cloth uniforms and stopped building castles, because why bother.
I have fired a lot of both, I am good with both, but my groups are probably 1/6 the size of my archery groups. Be it this is a modern crossbow (20 years old), it has peep sights. But I did read that some old crossbows also had a sights. I think they both hold their own. The crossbow is the better weapon overall until you consider volume of fire, then they sort of even out. When you start to consider training, it is obvious why the crossbow took over. Just hitting targets may be easy to learn with archery, but to hold consistent tight groupings can be taught in a day with a crossbow, this takes years with a bow.
People are missing the point of this video, somehow. Apparently to be military quality marksmen (of any generation) you had to be some sort of dead shot. Just able to make astounding shots. That's not the case in most historical situations or modern day ones for that matter. That's the reason in most modern day battlefields the weapon with the highest kills is usually the crew serviced weapon, M60's and M240's and such. Yes having people with excellent aim is always good but in a ground battle, volume beats out accuracy.
Lindybeige: Crossbows can be held at full draw for quite some time, which is something you can't do with a longbow because you'd get quite exhausted. Hollywood: Hold my beer
Implying the french didn't kick your asses during the Hundred Years War... Implying the normans at the time of Guillaume weren't french... Implying the english longbow is superior in nearly all ways to the crossbow... Implying the french never won a battle... Implying the french weren't one of the powerhouse of europe during the medieval times... Seriously you guys? Why are you so proud of yourselves?
***** Yes by the time of William. It was the Norman Conquest, not the "French" conquest. "The Norman conquest of England was the 11th century invasion and occupation of England by an army of Norman, Breton, and French soldiers led by Duke William II of Normandy, later styled as William The Conqueror." A distinction is made between the French and the Normans.
Sorry what was that about archery not being that hard? Archery is a challenging skill to master, I have been shooting since I was a little one. I'm a master of the skill and a coach. I'm telling you right now, to get to the level I'm at takes years of hard training even if you had a natural gift with it like I did. Archery involves breath control, heart control, physical training, proper stance, advanced hand to eye coordination, proper draw, proper hold, proper release, proper follow through, mental training, and a lot of research (that's just naming a few). Apart from the actual skill portion even finding the right equipment is a challenge. A bow is like what a wand is in Harry potter, except with a bow it can take months of gear testing to find the right bow and accessories that suit you. Sorry for the rant but It gets to me when people dismiss archery as simple when in fact it is incredibly complex.
He was saying that is not that hard to train archers for war. With low poundage bows, a large area to hit and following the lead of a more experienced person, you could train some archers that would be usefull relatively fast. They would not hit apples of people heads and would be a lot worse than longbowmen, but would be cheaper, more numerous and easier to replace. It's the same with needing years to train a expert sniper and just some months to train a infantary soldier.
Strangely enough crossbows were still being used in the 16th century, though dying out. Cortez had a group of about 12 crossbowmen with him during his conquest of Mexico. Also I am sure I remember reading that although English forces didn't used crossbows on land (except as mercenaries or allied Gascons), it was still common for English ships to have crossbows from about the time of King John until the 16th century for use in naval boarding actions where the short-range punch of the crossbow could be useful in close-ranged nature of such attacks.
The problem is that a youtube comment is by far not sufficient. I am just mouthing off my frustration. I bet other people experience the same thing when they encounter simplified discussions over something they are passionate about. Makes you wonder how much wrong information you are fed about things you don't know any better.
I wonder why it would be important that people "decide who knows what". You might be a fan of his works as well but you must have noticed his lack of giving out sources. We can still be entertained and all but it would be terrifyingly naive to think that what he says is actually all that historically reliable.
Dear Lindybeige, As a school teacher, your videos are very helpful for the time periods I'm not particularly strong in - I focused in modern East Asia as a master's degree student. I had always believed in some of the myths you talk about here. Some time in the future, could you please address the point about a bolt or arrow "piercing" plate armor and whether or not it would actually seriously injure or kill someone? Also, could you please address the advantages and disadvantages of early personal firearms (e.g. matchlock or wheellock muskets) compared to longbows and crossbows?
Would you need a vice to replace the string though? I mean ok. The current string is damp and generally awful, but you could still pull it back, bringing the edges of the arms in closer letting you put on the new string. Then you'd release, pull back the new string and take off the old one. I may be missing something though.
Great video! i'm an archer myself. 50lb Recurve and i love shooting. Could you please make a video about Scythian and Mongolian bows and how those compare to bows used by the West :D
The first crossbows were designed by ancient Greeks and powered by tension stored in coiled ropes or held into place in mechanisms pushed against the stomach . Great defensive weapons.
The drawback to bows is the draw back
Good observation!
Da dum tss
How can you say something so simple yet so insightful
Bupbadabaa! Lindybiege!
*video ends*
*outstanding move*
I like the fact that the Nobility thought the Crossbow was an unfair weapon as it meant that even a peasant could kill a king.
Only in theory. A good king wouldn't put himself in a position where someone would just shoot him in the face.
+Michael Dean you would not get anywhere near a king wielding a crossbow but you are 90% correct it meant a common soldier/fighter could kill a noble knight, it was more battlefield orientated
+Mister Babadook That's funny, because at least two kings of England were shot in the face.
CountArtha rip kings
Richard the Lionheart was hit with a crossbow. He also used one at Acre.
One thing you didn't mention about a siege is this:
Yes, accuracy when shooting at someone behind cover is important, but the crossbow is more useful for the defenders, because you don't need to expose yourself from cover much to fire it. With a longbow you need to stand up, draw it and loose, which gives people plenty of time to hurl sharp things in your general direction. With a crossbow you can loose the bolt crouching and accurately shoot it out of the tiniest castle slit, something you can't easily do with a bow.
Richard the Lionheart was killed by a crossbow when besieging a castle, if you remember. :)
well why not shoot in an arc from behind the walls of your castle?
Lower material cost could also have meant they were able to produce more arrows
And the crossbowman was flayed alive and hanged for that. Don't use crossbows kids.
@@linkofvev More like don't kill kings lol.
You're right that a crossbow would be good last line of defence as a close range weapon under Siege
But they couldn't deliver the numbers of arrows to defeat an army marching towards the walls which you would need arches to thin down the army
@@dmyt58 Because you wouldn't be able to see the target due to the wall in the way.
One advantage I have heard for crossbows also deals with sieges, but more of a benefit to those being besieged.
This had to do with the fact that as you highlighted, that you could keep a crossbow drawn and even loaded for a very long time. So while there might be only a handful of people trained in shooting the crossbow, they could press into service able bodied people around the castle to reload crossbows for the crossbowmen, giving them a ready supply of loaded crossbows to quickly switch between and loose bolts from. And thus being able to put up a tremendous amount of fire. Much more than if they had to load them by hand.
I do not recall where I heard it, so I wonder if anyone has heard of this before.
I heard a similar thing. I also remember the evidence for this theory was something like that castles that had crossbows had way more crossbows than people qualified to operate them.
This might also be where the "less training" thing comes in. In the same way anyone can operate a gun, but a trained soldier and/or gunsmith could use and maintain them better. In the video, he said he taught someone to use a bow at a basic level in an afternoon. For crossbows, you can do it in minutes. True, they won't be AS effective as a trained user, but they could at least compete, whereas using, say, a sword, a spear, or even a regular bow would mean random bloke wouldn't stand a chance.
That has document to happened with old muzzle-loading firearms, so I wouldn't be surprised that it happened with crossbows too.
Do not over estimate the size of a medieval siege. Unlike in Hollywood, maybe 20 weaponable men where in a castle and the evil enemy with all his relatives, squires and horseboys count also not more than 50 people ... if there someone dare a glance behind the battlement and getting hit - that was the highlight of the day...
Mike Romney is right. Also, it would be more effective to give those other people bows.
But how far should I level up my Dex if I want to use one?
you only need enough dex to be able to equip it.
And also enough STR to pull the string and carry it around. DEX quickens the reloading.
It requires more strength than dex to use, the sniper crossbow for example needs 16 dex and 20 strength. Although the Avelyn is really the only viable Xbow.
IvanX1991 when i was growing up the only viable one was the unique legendary crossbow Buriza-Do Kyanon.
dex? what are you a fucking scrub
The couch arrived in two boxes four days early, which was great because we'd just moved into a new house and needed places to sit. My son and I put it together pretty quickly ruclips.net/user/postUgkxitRzxya-XugamYgLwa_2G1gxPg4MCJHa . Another reviewer suggested inserting the seat into the side and I'm glad they did as the instructions weren't clear on that matter. It's incredibly light and slides easily across the wood floor, making it easy to move. It's firm, but comfortable. It will even be great to nap on. I got the gray, which definitely has strong blue undertones, but I'm okay with that.
There is a very good explanation why crossbows were more popular than bows : because sieges were actually way more frequent than open field battles during the Middle-Ages. Add pavises and all kind of defensive structures, you now have crossbowmen brillant in both attack and defense. Bows are spraying weapons and weapons of mass destruction : perfect for battles. Crossbows have accuracy and safety, perfect for sieges. Another point : bolts are much more deadly than arrows. Some were even designed so the bolt could be recovered easily from a wound but without the head. So you try to pull it out : you now have a wooden thing in your hand and the deadly iron thing still in your body. In other words, you're dead. Bolts have also much more variety than arrows. Some bolts were for example designed to kill horses (you just have to aim for the hocks and enjoy the spectacle of dying horses). At the end, firearms replaced the crossbows as they have roughly the same use in battle, plus the moral effect.
Another reason it takes like seven years to become strong enough to use a bow for war
I feel the last comment was out of place. The Genoese were frighteningly good, and their sheer uselessness at Crecy was due to the absolute stupidity of their commanders. The battle was started abruptly, so they were forced to use their low-poundage bows rather than their heavy ones (which were back at the baggage train). It was raining, which rather spoiled their strings. And as if that wasn't enough, they were ordered to advance to the very foot of the hill occupied by the English. A crossbow has a flat sort of angle of fire. They were therefore unable to sight on the English archers, who happily poured arrows on them until they ran.
I would hazard that under different circumstances, the result would be reversed.
I would argue that the poundage of the crossbows means little when fighting against longbowmen who are generally un or poorly armored. More armor penetration isn't really terribly useful against someone who has none anyway. For that matter, I would say that higher poundage bows would have been a liability rather than improving their situation (the fact that they would have been dry might, though) because they would be more difficult to draw and loose, further exacerbating the deficiency in shooting rate. A duel between a group of longbowmen and crossbowmen is a loosing prospect for the crossbowmen. Under different circumstances in the same battle, they may very well have fared better than they did, but this is just one of a large number of reasons why the French lost that battle.
Ferretsnarf With the higher poundage bows, wouldn't the range also be increased? Potentially to a range greater then that of an average 100 pound yew bow? I assumed the larger crossbows would have allowed them to stay out of range and force the English to advance rather than vice versa.
I think the crossbowmen also left their shields behind but I don't know if that bringing them would change the battle or not.
wanadeena I recall seeing Mike Loades talking about this on one of his "Weapons that Made Britain" shows. I think the issue with the Genoese mercenaries not having their shields was that they were easy targets for the English archers, and thus were sitting ducks being out front.
badnewsBH That's where I got the info too, the targets were in a bad position thus the reason they lost. Also being murdered by their own comrades hurts them too.
A few things to point out.
The reason the genoese crossbowmen lost to the english longbowmen was because they got killed by the french knights.
And the reason the english longbowmen beat the french knights was the same reason that the french knights attacked their own allied genoese crossbowmen.
Namely that the french king was an idiot.
One large advantage of the crossbow is that you can fire it from a crouched position, such as from behind a large shield. And you can load it and store the energy in the weapon, meaning the loader and the shooter can be two different people.
One common crossbow tactic was to have a team of three. One carrying a large shield, called a pavise, then a master of the team, who was the crossbowman who fired the crossbow. And then a third man, whose job it was to load the crossbow. And they had two crossbows, so while the crossbowman was using one, his loader was readying the other one and they passed them back and forth.
Why didn't this work against the english longbows?
Because the french king was an idiot.
The pavises were still on the baggage train because the french king thought it would be stupid to actually form up his units properly and ready them for battle with all of their gear instead of just going straight at it.
Skillful tactics and smart techniques count for nothing if you don't use them.
The english commander on the other hand did a bunch of clever things, such as picking a good battlefield, readying his troops, deploying them properly, preparing obstacles and so on and so forth.
All the things someone who is a competent military leader would do.
And which the french king did not.
Since he was an incompetent moron.
Absolutly fine post except for one thing... You do not FIRE!!! a crossbow :( as Mr beige has said in another video.
This could be a medieval ballad of some kind.
The King's Army was on the field;
But still packed were the shields;
O, the Englishmen drawed
The Frenchknight were awed...
Because the King was a moron
The thing is someone trained in the longbow can shoot 10 arrows in 1 minute
You get 20 longbow Archers that's over 200 arrows in a minute
The king was at the battle you are thinking of the wrong battle. This was the battle of crecy
If it's Crécy we're speaking of, king Philippe VI, following the advice by knight Le Moine de Bazeilles who came back from reconnaissance of English lines, ordered his troops to stand still and planned to postpone the battle to the next day. The morons and idiots were the French corps leaders who disobeyed and charged the English lines.
The main source for Crécy is Froissart.
www.dhi.ac.uk/onlinefroissart/browsey.jsp?pb0=BookI-Translation_137v&img0=&div0=ms.f.transl.BookI-Translation&panes=1&GlobalMode=facsimile&img0=&disp0=pb&GlobalWord=0&GlobalShf=&pb0=BookI-Translation_137r
I put this question to you (another potential 'point about' video) HOW do horses pull carriages/wagons down hills without the wagon hitting them in the bum?
Yes I could google this, but I'm not practical like that.
Wagons had brakes..
Also, wagons were generally connected to the horses by rigid bars rather than ropes.
+Phi6er Usually a simple lever that would press a pad against the axle or wheel, or some similar friction-brake setup. Quite basic, really.
Downhill hadn't been invented yet, so it wasn't a problem.
+Mick G. lmfao
He looks like a recrut in mount and blade: warband
swadian militia
Lloyd, you are right about the case of linen bowstrings being unaffected by moisture. The case with the Genoese crossbowmen at Crecy was they were wielding composite crossbows. In doing my reading, composite bows and prods are very moisture sensitive and are generally at home in the drier Mediterranean and Asian steppes. It is therefore more likely that it was the bows themselves were weakened by the French damp than the strings.
An English/Welsh longbow is also more stable in a wetter environment and they were likely given a finish of linseed oil and beeswax.
So, if crossbows are great for sieges, but go bad in rain, would that mean that it's harder to siege castles in England than, say, Southern Spain?
It probably is anyway... 1) miserable, muddy, disease-breeding conditions in the rain and 2) The castle might not run out of water so fast.
Very likely - Although the weather may have been wetter in Iberia back in the day. Before they deforested the entire subcontinent and all that for ships.
Mansen Hadn't thought of that..
Your comment rhymes very nicely
A lot of things went bad in the rain, it was always generally unfavourable to attack during a wet spell. However, you can almost always hold a siege off for a few hours and wait, there were larger factors determining the success of a siege such as terrain, of which in Southern Spain is almost guaranteed to be hilly and rocky, whereas most of England is virtually a swamp yet to be drained by industrious Dutchmen.
I have to admit you "points about weapons" videos are by far my favorite videos.
Every time you said ''another draw back'' I had to say ''no pun intended''
Fun game effect: Dwarfs in Eon use the crossbows almost exclusively. The designers figured a person with above-average strength but of short stature and arm length might be more comfortable sliding a crossbow crank or lever back and forth than giving a big long bow a long pull.
Eon, also home of the heavy repeating crossbow. Their fantastic extrapolation of a mix between a cho-ko-nu casette crossbow and a heavy crossbow. A three-crew-served stationary monster of a machine.
Missing one rather important point...the time needed to train someone to be decent with the crossbow (one week, being generous) is incredibly shorter than training someone with a longbow (one...life?). Not strong enough? Not going to be even able to draw a longbow. Not strong enough? Use a lever/windlass/cranequin/your whole body... it takes too long to reload? Hide behind the walls or the huge pavise shield. Your army suffers a huge defeat? ETA for a new bunch of trained longbowmen: one generation. ETA for a bunch of trained crowwsbowmen: the time needed to reach the nearest town+1 week.
I think this is a big advantage
Except when you had units of archers, they weren't used as snipers like in your medieval video games. You dont need headshots. The point was to get a lot of arrows on the enemies, preferably from as far away from them as possible. So you dont need to practice shooting arrows at the range for a life to be a decent archer in those times, in a unit. All you needed to be was strong and durable enough, with basic understanding of where your arrow will land and thats good enough.
Good point. However, making a shitty, mass-produced bow requires far less skills, tools and time than making a shitty crossbow. If you lose your bows, you can make new ones (and fairly decent ones, if you've got skilled men) on the march. If you lose your crossbows, I guess you're fucked until you reach a town which has a smith that makes them. Even then it will take a lot more time to come up with enough of them.
Shit bows don’t work for war they lack the stopping power to kill anyone wearing armor
There was a law in England that after a certain age you had to train every sunday for an hour or 2 in using a bow soo that righted that problem somewhat
I love these videos. They're brilliantly informative and help to dispel a lot of the myths surrounding medieval weaponry. Thanks! :D
Well I think its easier to train people to hit moving targets with crossbows, because they don't need to bother about pulling the bow at the right time. Also I think its easier to align with the target (whereas on a longbow you cannot see the entire arrow) and you do not have the problem of the arrow flexing around the bow.
I'v come back to this place to offer my thumbs-up, and to say something encouraging.
I appreciate the lesson. Its far more than I knew.
I was wrong on several points. But I'm used to being wrong... I am married!
Im just magic-spelled with your sarcastic tones and body language.
I wish I have discovered your channel earlier :)
I think people here are overlooking some huge factors. if you look at it from a pure range vs range perspective, longbow is almost destined to counter crossbowmen in range battles,range, loading speed and due to trajectory behind fortification etc. So after projectile get more and more relevant, a dedicated in most cases I see around the world do beat out a make shift crossbow man. I was fortunate enough to work in a museum during my teenage years and was playing with a modern replicate of a Chinese chukonu(repeating crossbow), I was stunned by its effectiveness(some shoots two arrows at once and can shot up to five or even ten bolts or something depends on the period, some designs it loads like a modern gun clip). After the encounter I asked professor there why was there archers deployed after this kind of weapon was invented. The simple answer I got was archer was the best unit to counter this kind of units. He also mentioned the reason the reason such huge effort went into improving crossbows chip size so to speak in comparison to the west could be due to the lack of a better long range bow ie longbow. So if you mix this unit into infantry the likelihood of it getting destroyed before deployed by long range arrows is much lower. For clarification here most armies start losing moral very quickly getting shot at and can't fight back you don't need to kill everyone. So I hope this helps you understand the dynamics better. Just to be clear I am not saying crossbow are not a great weapon, its just not good against mass archers. You are not fighting mass archer most of the time.
1:46 "Another drawback" I see what you did there, lindy
When you talk about training differences between bow and crossbow, the advantage of the crossbow is that it doesn't take 20 years of constant use to build up the arm and shoulder muscles to continuously shoot the crossbow 60 times in a battle.
Sure, they both require marksmanship training and the point of aim:point of impact is different from bow to crossbow so training with one does not translate to direct effectiveness with the other.
Sun you would used belts and leavers to pull it back and also you are probably a whole lot weaker then most people who lived back the.
interesting videos
could you, please, make a comparison (pros and cons) about longbows and eastern recurve bows
thanx
Could a medieval archer have shot in the rain with a normal bow (not a crossbow)? Would the flight of the arrow been hindered or prevented by rain? Or would the arrow itself have been damaged by rain?
***** Not really a good point. I bet an arrow travels in water better than a bullet. Most bullets just get a few feet under water until becoming completely harmless. Wouldn't be surprised if hitting raindrops would hinder a bullet more than an arrow. An arrow is much slower so the water has time to get out of the way. It's also much heavier.
***** I have always understood the problem with a bow in the rain is the wet bowstring - NOT the arrow hitting the raindrops. Mayhaps I was mistaken?
Waxing of the bowstring prevents the problem of moisture fully. There have been some conclusive tests done and were published in the Traditional Bowyer's Bible (sorry, forgot which volume)
Marc Ritz
THANK YOU
IFY0USEEKAY
Mayhaps you didn't read the question. Wet strings were discussed in the video.
A point of view about siege engines plese!
I loved the bit at the end, classic Genoese. Subscribed.
But crossbowmen generally had a pavise to hide from archers with, so while crossbowmen can wait till the shower is over and then turn to shoot arrows at your skirmishers.
Also frighteningly strong crossbows needed frightening mechanisms like a crank wheel to actually draw the bow, hence you'd want to be really good because you won't get another shot (unless you're behind a castle wall). Hence I'd like to think that crossbows were also really popular with knife-men.
What do you mean with knife-men? Otherwise I agree.
Assassins.
I would almost assume you would have a crossbow installment which is fenced off and has men winching spare bows to hand to the shooters and keeping nasties off their flanks. But that is my mind using more modern tactics.
Luciffrit It's not wrong to assume that at all, but you'd need DOUBLE the men to crank spare bows which is not economic.
You would see the logic that if you have ten crossbows and ten men, you would shoot ten crossbows at once to go for a quick ten kills, instead of one or two men scoring a kill every 5 seconds.
I for one think it's an actual modern tactic to see the advantage of lightweight high strength crossbows being used as side arms, so when you're gearing up for a charge you would all fire your crossbows, like Romans throwing javelins and then close the distance.
Luciffrit
Or more likely, a gaggle of women, old men past fighting, and boys not yet of combat age were co-opted to do the reloading. It's not like medieval castles were lacking in any of these, and no one's potential labor went to waste.
This just reminded me of Guards! Guards! Which I might now have to re-read.
Of course you prefer bows. You're English. It's the law. ;-)
I don't know. but I thought the Japanese prefer bows, They always bow their heads.
Jeff Vick bows became obsolete immediately
Richard I was done for by a crossbow at a siege. He was besieging Calus in France when a guy on the walls got him with a bolt. His shoulder wound became infected and that was him. We had to endure King John instead.
Joffrey likes them
GodCreeperXz Fuck the water
hi Caligula
Every time you said "drawback of the crossbow" I cracked a smile...
already as a teen i was able to shoot a 70kg (150lbs) crossbow fairly quickly. I think i remember it took 8 seconds to load and shoot. it used around 30 cm long arrows with feathers and would pierce trough a very very hard thick target made of compressed hay. taking out the arrow took ages every time. anyone hit by that would be toast.
The best part is that during sieges less competent men, women or children could be used to reload the crossbows while more able men would fire them.
I was using a friend's crossbow (gorgeous 30 year old 175lb barnett) and the only aluminium bolts that he could find just could not take the draw weight, the plastic nocks could take maybe two shots before shattering and more often than not they went through the circular wooden table that was our target, and into the rock on the other side. For targeting further away the accuracy really suffered.
Stringing the thing is a bloody nightmare, there's a string to put on to enable you to put the other string on, imagine that in battle.
Bloody good fun though.
apparently the ban on crossbows by the Church was not exactly that (certainly wasn't effective) and may have been in reference to tournaments which was specifically condemned at the Lateran Council in 1139 yet had little impact.
www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran2.asp
In other news, did Lindy seem a bit cross in this video or am I off the mark?
Cross at the bows, or just in general?
;)
I have a theory of my own about the banning of the crossbow by the Pope. (Of course someone somewhere might have already thought about it, history is just a hobby for me and there are a lot of people who are far more knowledgable than me). But to the point - as we all know, this was at the height of the crusades period, when knights and armoured sergeants dominated the battlefield and knightly orders like the Templars and Hospitallers were the armored fists of the Pope and his political interests. And considering all of this, the fact that any peasant with a crossbow and two weeks of training could quite easily kill a knight with a lifetime of training and experience just couldn't have sounded good for the Pope. Of course there could also be other reasons for banning the crossbow, but this is probably one of the main. It also wouldn't be the first time the Catholic Church tried to maintain its power and influence through bans for "godly" reasons.
Lyubomir Ivanchev It was only banned in use against Christians. It was acceptable to use against non-Christians, like Muslims. The ban actually went into effect before the Crusades began.
Real Crusades History I didn't know that, but despite this fact, the theory is still valid if you look at it from purely political point of view - the feudal ruling class, to which knights belonged, had to be Christians in order to be legitimate rulers, and at the height of feudalism, when this ban was enacted, they ruled in a symbiose together with the church. They provided the money and protection that helped the church maintain its influence, while it provided a justification to their political power (rights to rule given by God, etc.) and taught the peasants to obey their masters like sheep obey their shepherd. And from this point of view, even if it was before the Crusades and knightly orders, the people who benefited the most from this ban were still the feudal ruling class, whose arms and armor gave them superiority on the battlefield and among their own subordinates. And therefore it was also in the interest of the Pope to keep this status quo and by protecting the feudal ruling class, to protect his own power.
Lyubomir Ivanchev It's hard for the theory to hold water because the ban was enacted so long before the existence of the Templars or the Hospitallers. The ban began before such orders were even conceivable. It was enacted in the eleventh century when the Church had very little in the way of military support unless it came from nobles like the King of France or the Countess of Tuscany who had soldiers. I also don't see any evidence that the Templars or Hospitallers acted as private armies for the papacy. The military wing of the military orders really only existed on the frontiers (Spain, Holy Land). The military orders acted pretty independently of the papacy, with their own agenda, though they were officially under the authority of the papacy.
I think you're oversimplifying the structure of medieval society. Neither the church nor the nobility had absolute power over the common people, plus there were a variety of levels within those structures, with some nobles being poor and some peasants being wealthy. There's also no evidence that crossbows represented a significant threat to the existence of the nobility if they got into the hands of the peasants. Crossbows were mainly used in siege warfare as sniping weapons. Sieges always involved a contest between the nobility. A peasant revolt armed with a bunch of crossbows would not have gotten very far. The noble cavalry could have just ridden them down before they got off a second shot, since crossbows took so much time to prep and load for a single shot. The reason that the church banned crossbows was because they caused far more fatalities in sieges, which might have been solved more peaceably without the ability to slowly pick off the two sides through ambush sniping.
The medieval nobles would have disagreed with you that the ban benefited them. They disliked the ban because they'd liked to use crossbows in their conflicts with each other. If anything is benefited the peasants, since peasants could get killed by stray crossbow bolts during a conflict. But ultimately it didn't matter, since the papal ban on crossbows had essentially no effect whatsoever - no one stopped using them.
In the High Middle Ages the idea that the nobility would somehow be overthrown was completely inconceivable. The popes were not interested in keeping the status of the nobility intact any more than they were interested in making sure that the sun continued to rise in the morning. Rather, they were concerned with promoting the interests of those nobles who were loyal to them, while undermining the nobles that rebelled against them. The Middle Ages was about competition among the nobility, not between the nobility and the commoners.
Anyway, hope that's helpful.
For sieges or battles where one side is staying put, the mobile siege shield, or pavese, is great for crossbowmen. They could hide behind these big, thick, stand-up tower shields and fire around them when they were loaded and ready. Could you make a video of the windlasses and crossbow cocking devices? Levers, ropes, cranks, etc. attached to that metal cross-pin in your crossbow stock.
another advantage of the crossbow is that you can shoot in more confined spaces and whilst lying down
You mean like hussittes under their famous battle wagons? I tried to imagine longbow archer there and had to laugh.
My face gets very serious and I click quickly when there is a lindy about crossbows
You might want to check out Tod Todeschini, not only does he make insanely beautiful crossbows but has also uploaded a couple of very nice and very informative videos onto RUclips about them.
I agree! His website (one of his sites) is Todsstuff dot com, and he makes a host of amazing historical replicas, not just crossbows. It is also cool to see that Lloyd has hooked up with Hotspur! I hope he does some videos with them.
I like crossbows because they seem like such an ingenious idea. It's like what would happen if 20 modern industrial designers were sent back in time to redesign the bow "it's got to have this thing and that and it has to be more accurate" and so on
"I'm gonna tell you a couple of three things."
Your mannerisms remind me so much of Hugh Laurie and that's why I enjoy your videos haha
Battle of Chalus, 1199 - Pierre Basile's crossbow: 1, Richard Lion Heart: 0
longbows required a very specific type of strength that required you to be shooting and training with a longbow for a great while which is why longbowmen were fearsomely good
For ranged weapons, I find bows to be the *easiest* to train soldiers, and that's one of the major advantages bows have over slings.
Slings are notoriously brutal, have surprising range and can deliver incendiary and chemical weapons (pots of lye or pitch) which is horrifying for a siege. Plus you can supplement ammo on the field just by finding decent river rocks. But slings take a massive amount of practice to be able to use it in formation with any effectiveness, or to hit a distant target with any accuracy. Plus their ammo is heavy if you're going to bring it on a long march to the field.
The training is cited (by at least one source) as the biggest reason why bows replaced slings.
Another advantage of the sling is that the sling itself doesn't take up much room. But, you're right bows male more sense. Just wanted to add my observation.
+nick highland *make
Slings dont penetrate much. Arrows can punch through leather and chain mail. Arrows can have different points for different uses. Also you can train yourself and others to use a sling at short ranges like with a bow at the same time. No difference. Seeings how slingers would throw instinctively like how archers shot.
I loved watching William Tell!
Out of curiosity, with a crossbow, if you have it charged and ready to fire, but then decide not to, what do you do? I know you shouldn't dry fire it, but is it better to simply fire the bolt into a tree or the ground and recover it later, or could you take your drawing device (pully or goat'sfoot lever or whatever) and attempt to slowly release the string?
You can leave it like that for quite a while, actually. That's one of the good things about crossbows. I suppose it would be easier to shoot it a few feet away than undraw it - if that's even possible!
The ancient Greek siege crossbow was the interesting gastraphetes ("belly-releaser") named for the way it was spanned by pushing down on an elaborate slider mechanism.
Another fun point is to expand on the nature of loading the crossbow, and it staying loaded. You can load them ahead of time and leave them waiting for a reasonable period.
The person who loads the crossbow doesn't have to be the one who actually fires it, meaning an expert with a decade of experience can become two or more experts with a decade of experience if you add more heavy crossbows and one or more people trained merely to reload them for the shooter. (I vaguely remember reading lists of equipment that had counts of crossbows that exceeded the number of the formal garrisons, which makes it an option that was possibly employed, but I have never seen solid evidence as to whether single skilled shooter with assistants and multiple bows were more common than multiple quickly trained shooters.)
I once read that the early crossbows did not have a topbit, so they could not shoot downwards. The problem is that the bolt would fall off if you tried to aim at an enemy below your height, so an inhabitant of a castle could not use a crossbow to attack besiegers.
A bit of a correction: It's not the strings that are vulnerable to rain, it's the limbs. Composite bows and composite crossbows have limbs made of different types of materials glued together, and glue tends not to maintain its adhesiveness when drenched by water. Bows in Europe are not composite bows, the longbow for example is only made out of yew wood. This means that they have less strength on the limbs, but it also means that they are resistant or even immune to rain. Crossbows in Europe, however, are of composite make. This means that they are vulnerable to rain. Eventually, European crossbows replaced their composite limbs with metal limbs to eliminate this vulnerability, but they haven't done this at the rainy battle of Crecy, which is part of the reason why the Longbow completely outperformed the crossbow in that battle. Also, the casualties on part of the Genoese Crossbowmen caused by the English Longbowmen are actually relatively light. It's just that the asshole Frankish knights that hired them cut them down when they thought they were retreating out of cowardice, after the Frankish commander ordered them to do something that is basically impossible (take an elevated position defended by Longbowmen unsupported, with a crossbow rendered useless by rain, without the Pavise shields left on the baggage train). Most of the casualties sustained by the Genoese Crossbowmen in that battle is caused by their own Frankish employers turning on them.
+Albert Ray Jonathan Very good reply and spot on. This is also one of the reasons the English loved the longbow, it wasn't ruined by bad weather, I have had this discussion lots of times and people seem unable to grasp it, often saying Mongol bows were so far superior, why didn't English use composite bows, they were so far behind using a bent stick etc etc, the fact is a Mongol bow (or Yumi or other bow of that nature) would fall apart in England.
Another reason why a spare string was kept under someones hat is because it would stay slightly greasy which makes the string faster and more dureable
I agree. I hunt whitetail deer and wild turkey with a modern cross bow and it suffers from non of these ailments. The weather does not affect the string or modern laminated limbs.
Some crossbow bolts with armour piercing heads are heavier than longbow arrows. Also, the crossbow is ideal for defense for you can't shoot a normal bow from the narrow space of castle wall arrowslits or hoardings.
I was really hoping he would say "Another drawback to the crossbow was the drawback"
I once played a game were you could equip your character with either bows or crossbows. The main difference between them was that crossbows shot twice as fast, which I never thought made any sense, as I always imagined they were pretty slow to reload. I don't really know what the developers were thinking with that.
Also with a crossbow you can fight crouched behind something, with a long bow you can't.
Depends how you hold the bow but still it wouldnt be comfortable and you'd of had to practice the different draw angles
I have a bit of a problem with the statement that bolts were lighter than arrows. Yes, they were smaller in general and yes it varies a lot, but in general bolts had just gigantic heads compared to arrows. Which was one of the reasons for short range.
More medieval weaponry please :D
BTW as far as i know the springy thingy quarrel holder wasnt common feature of medieval crossbows, quarrels were jus laid in the groove, so no running around.
When they did not have the quarrel holder, they used a bit of wax as weak glue to make the bolt stick in the groove.
Crossbow: the shotgun of old
have you ever heard of a carpet crossbow. in my youth using a kids rocking chair stave and many rubber bands with a crosspiece, I held off a large gang until the police came . its range was a city block and the carpet ammo would curve around the corner, where they coming. The adventures of Robin Hood with Richard Greene was a great training ground for ancient weapons
What made crossbows so popular with mercenaries specifically?
I think maybe they were just popular all around but mercenaries were equipped with them first since some provinces like Italy didn't had much of a standing army for the kingdom at the time.
A good crossbow has metal bits in it and pretty intricate mechanisms that require skills and infrastructure to produce, so it's naturally a lot more expensive than a bow. If you're a professional soldier, this would make a lot of sense as an investment. If you're a conscript, you're basically stuck either with the things you can afford yourself or with things that you're provided with. As a baron, I would think twice before giving out expensive weaponry to conscripts: after all, when you lose a man, you most likely also lose their weapons.
They are easy to use theItalians were very good with and they hired themselves out because they got better wages
Crossbow men were for the most part were not paid more then welsh and English archers
I was literally thinking the other day that I hope Lindy does something about crossbows soon.
Didn't Richard the Lionheart got picked off by a crossbowman during a siege? That's how he died ...
Very nice, would love to see you make a point about arbalests
No, no, no... he has missed the missed important point.
A crossbow had a short lever arm compared to the long lever arm if a longbow. This meant that even a really powerful crossbow did not have enough time to accelerate the bolt any faster than an arrow from a longbow, therefore the range was about the same. However, the much greater draw weight of medieval crossbones allowed the to arch MUCH heavier missiles, including bolts made of solid iron. This compensated for the slower rate of archery
Well first they wouldn't go as far as a longbow arrow because the more mass the harder it is to decelerate therefore the crossbow bolt with less mass then a longbow arrow will slow down quickly and be more susceptible to changes in the wind speed even a light breeze also because it had nearly the same sized point but less mass behind it compared to a longbow arrow it dosent hit with as much penetration power as something with more mass but the same surface area to spread the energy out on because if there going the same speed and have the same surface area for there points the one with the more mass hits with the more for because force is equal to mass Times acceleration therefore if it has the same Acceleration as a longbows arrow but less mass it hits with less force at longer ranges also you counterdict yourself your saying that and ill copy an paste this "crossbow did not have enough time to accelerate the bolt any faster than an arrow from a longbow, therefore the range was about the same." Then you go on to say that it could Accelrate a heavier missile to the same speed but the amount of force applied to the Mor massive projectile if you will is the same as if it was a lighter bolt which it wouldn't since it has the same power and time to accelerate it it would actually get to a slower speed because of the amount of mass of a solid iron bolt witch i have no idea if that exists or not but Thats not the point anyway so it wouldn't have the same range with heavier bolts but the hit would still be devastating especially in armor because of the amount of kinetic energy transferred from a solid iron bolt even going slower would be EXTREME
well actualy the speed of the projectiles was prety close as seen on the following website.
www.thebeckoning.com/medieval/crossbow/cross_l_v_c.html
Keep in mind this crossbow is "only" 740 lbs and not one of the heaviest as the 1000 lbs kind. The arrow of the longbow indeed has more momentum because it has a higher mass. I guess a crossbow arrow had more penetration because it was sharper then the longbow arrow or just because they took even heavier crossbows.
@Lindy your remark on strenght seems odd to me. Peasants, being mostly farmers were actualy prety fit people to begin with. Working the land all day makes you get quite some strenght. With the mechanism of a crossbow do they actualy need more effort then the longbow? The rotating weel on a heavy crossbow seems rather "low effort" compared to holding a long bow. Or atleast they should be comparable and not make a huge diffrence.
@@dmyt58 While it's hard work to draw a crossbow it could be done with both arms using a relatively natural pulling motion, or with a rotating wheel as you point out. Drawing a heavy war bow on the other hand requires considerable strength in a very specific non-common motion; thus necessitating years of dedicated training. This however, as Lindybeige point's out, was not the case with lighter bows which could be used effectively from the get go by any reasonably fit person.
GepardenK any heavy crossbow uses a wheel. The ones you can draw with both hands are the lighter ones, same with the lever.
Drawing a war bow would not be a problem for a peasant. If you work all day on a field all your muscles will be strong. In a few weeks the peasants would train the mussles they need more and be able to draw heavier bows.
The main advantage of crossbows is it is very easy to aim them (and you can keep them drawn for a couple of hours if you need it). I bet you can train anyone to a decent degree of crossbow aiming in a week, keep in mind you try to fire on a mass of a couple hunderd of thousand man not on a single dude somewhere. To get to the same level with a bow you need months to get even close. If you want your peasants to start using the advantages of the bow over the crossbow you need years of training. You need to be able to know the height of your arrow at a certain point fired with a certain arc to shoot over something and into something else behind it. A crossbow on the other hand just flies straight into something with a little bit of drop from gravity.
I can see why they were slow to catch on.
They take much more effort to make, longer to reload, and shorter effective range.
But the stopping power and the ability to snipe are advantages that can’t be ignored.
wouldn't the cost of the crossbow would be another disadvantage compared to the english long bow ?
As I recall, English Longbow production almost killed off the Yew tree in Europe and required deals with the HRE to buy all their Yew forests. It was simpler to manufacture and you didn't need to buy metals for the basic bow but the scarcity of the Yew towards the end must have driven up costs.
hmm didnt know that . interesting point .
Witch Sniffer You don't need yew - ash is just as good.
Rob Moseley Ash is a decent alternative but will lose some elasticity and power through repeated drawing which is something Yew is resistant to.
you do a great job.
0:30
Unlike a bow, you can hold it a full draw and camp, and camp, and camp =P
Then, a F18 flies overhead, pilot jumps out and frags you with an RPG.
You could always hide behind a pavise shield with a crossbow; bolts are also shorter in length, so they can be produced in higher quanities than arrows using the same amount of wood, I would assume.
wouldn't the chinese repeating crossbow be one of the best crossbows?
Great for raking the deck of a ship at very close range. Less good in other situations.
Lindybeige If I'm not mistaken The Chinese repeating crossbow was made to be easy to use for militia conscripts thus making it a good weapon for civilian use in self defense. Poison was painted on the bolts thus making even the slightest scratch deadly. I am not saying that it is the bestest crossbow ever but I think it has a wider range of uses than raking the deck of a ship.
+andre robinson It didn't have much power and you couldn't really aim it because of the firing mechanism and magazine. They essentially had to be hip-fired and rocked around as you kept pulling the lever. Then on top of that the bolts couldn't be fitted with fletching because they would otherwise jam in the magazine (more than they already did, which may have been quite a lot). As I understand it they were mainly intended for close-range ambushes against horses; large, lightly-armored targets.
Pre-video: Ah, excellent, I like crossbows!
Post-video: Ah, some things I didn't know (or consider) about a weapon I like!
Net result: Gain!
The reason it takes longer to train to use a warbow is because you need to
1. Get strong
2. Get good at useing the thing
Wile both of those exist for the crossbow, the crossbow can be learned much faster.
I shot bows in tournemnt and own a crossbow, I learned my crossbow in one week, and the bow in a few months.
The traditional bow needs more skill to be used than a crossbow.
+long live the beard You would be pretty cool if you weren't a brony.
MrPartySack
>he has a pony icon
>not called a pony fag
make up your mind damnit
MrPartySack
>pony icon
enough said
Piss Prince You make a strong argument.
+Piss Prince Hey, at least he isn't as cringy as the one using "meme arrows"
"One draw back of the crossbow..." I see what you did there.
Imagine entering this dude's house and he start randomly describes you how a crossbow is so effective in sieges...
Also to crossbows tend to make quite inefficient use of the stored energy and so much more powerful ones were required for which you needed something like a goats foot, windlass or some means of mechanical advantage to draw, making them slower and more difficult to draw and (I presume) more expensive to make.
Personally, I prefer crossbows.
+Montpelier Montgomery me too, and with enough training you can shoot reload and shoot again rather quickly especially with a lighter poundage crossbow, i have a 150lb crossbow and can fire once (maybe twice on a good day) every 4-5 seconds, it takes practice though
we know from history that xbows were indeed quite common during the middle ages. If they were common it is safe to assume that they do play their missile part in battles. If they play this part in battles it seems obvious that the indirect archer volley fire we see so often in hollywood productions was either very ineffective or non-existing at all.
The AK-47 of medieval times, I get that but why did firearms replace it? Early guns were crap.
martyb999 i remember reading that early firearms took less craftsmanship and were were cheaper to produce and train and that their main advantage was their range (weird since they cant hit anything at a far distance) but eh... mass volleys solve that problem.
Psychological warfare, I guess. Weaponising explosions is scary as hell.
That’s the only reason that makes any sense; the negative psychological effect it would have had on the enemy and it would be a status thing (having the latest “tech”)? Even so it couldn’t have taken professional soldiers long to realise the things were more dangerous to the users rather than the targets? They’d have taken FOREVER to load as well as being really short range? I’d be interested to know what Lloyd thinks.
Yeah, maybe, but they were SO ineffective? I agree with TidusplZUO about the psychological benefits but that would only matter the first time you came up against them? Medieval people weren’t stupid? Maybe by the time the enemy was less conscripted farmer and more professional soldier the weapons had improved enough to be effective?
Also punching through armour. Musket rounds are bigger and heavier than crossbow bolts and in the day and age that everyone and their mom had a breastplate, it was a huge advantage.
Hell, gunpowder in general changed the warfare a lot. It's why everyone just went back to cloth uniforms and stopped building castles, because why bother.
I have fired a lot of both, I am good with both, but my groups are probably 1/6 the size of my archery groups. Be it this is a modern crossbow (20 years old), it has peep sights. But I did read that some old crossbows also had a sights. I think they both hold their own. The crossbow is the better weapon overall until you consider volume of fire, then they sort of even out. When you start to consider training, it is obvious why the crossbow took over. Just hitting targets may be easy to learn with archery, but to hold consistent tight groupings can be taught in a day with a crossbow, this takes years with a bow.
People are missing the point of this video, somehow. Apparently to be military quality marksmen (of any generation) you had to be some sort of dead shot. Just able to make astounding shots. That's not the case in most historical situations or modern day ones for that matter. That's the reason in most modern day battlefields the weapon with the highest kills is usually the crew serviced weapon, M60's and M240's and such. Yes having people with excellent aim is always good but in a ground battle, volume beats out accuracy.
HrHaakon Exactly. Remote weapons with the capabilities to produce mass casualties from a single shot.
I really like the Chinese crossbow with it's magazine to autofeed new bolts.
Crosbows are much cooler then bows :P
impossible
You know nothing William snow
you've obviously never seen a skilled archer.
Lindybeige: Crossbows can be held at full draw for quite some time, which is something you can't do with a longbow because you'd get quite exhausted.
Hollywood: Hold my beer
Implying the french didn't kick your asses during the Hundred Years War...
Implying the normans at the time of Guillaume weren't french...
Implying the english longbow is superior in nearly all ways to the crossbow...
Implying the french never won a battle...
Implying the french weren't one of the powerhouse of europe during the medieval times...
Seriously you guys? Why are you so proud of yourselves?
+Schmitt Lenin well it took france 100+ years to finally start winning, and then they had Joan of Arc and God helping them, which is cheating. :p
TheCsel Those damn frenchmen and their overpowered God!
+Schmitt Lenin Normans were not French. They were Norse descendants who had their own ethnicity
Jon Snow Not by the time of William
***** Yes by the time of William.
It was the Norman Conquest, not the "French" conquest.
"The Norman conquest of England was the 11th century invasion and occupation of England by an army of Norman, Breton, and French soldiers led by Duke William II of Normandy, later styled as William The Conqueror."
A distinction is made between the French and the Normans.
Could you make about crossbow types? Especially medieval longbows? Information about them are as scarce as a unicorn.
DRAWBACK! Shame on you for that shocking pun.
Could you do a video about Ballista please? Would be nice to hear your opinion and point of view on those things.
Sorry what was that about archery not being that hard? Archery is a challenging skill to master, I have been shooting since I was a little one. I'm a master of the skill and a coach. I'm telling you right now, to get to the level I'm at takes years of hard training even if you had a natural gift with it like I did. Archery involves breath control, heart control, physical training, proper stance, advanced hand to eye coordination, proper draw, proper hold, proper release, proper follow through, mental training, and a lot of research (that's just naming a few). Apart from the actual skill portion even finding the right equipment is a challenge. A bow is like what a wand is in Harry potter, except with a bow it can take months of gear testing to find the right bow and accessories that suit you. Sorry for the rant but It gets to me when people dismiss archery as simple when in fact it is incredibly complex.
He was saying that is not that hard to train archers for war. With low poundage bows, a large area to hit and following the lead of a more experienced person, you could train some archers that would be usefull relatively fast. They would not hit apples of people heads and would be a lot worse than longbowmen, but would be cheaper, more numerous and easier to replace. It's the same with needing years to train a expert sniper and just some months to train a infantary soldier.
Melggart oooh.... my bad, this makes more sense.
Spent 2 weeks training with a bow 100 yards 6/10 shots middle.
Not that hard
Kuba Jankowiak That's not very impressive.
Proves that it's easy.
Strangely enough crossbows were still being used in the 16th century, though dying out. Cortez had a group of about 12 crossbowmen with him during his conquest of Mexico.
Also I am sure I remember reading that although English forces didn't used crossbows on land (except as mercenaries or allied Gascons), it was still common for English ships to have crossbows from about the time of King John until the 16th century for use in naval boarding actions where the short-range punch of the crossbow could be useful in close-ranged nature of such attacks.
It was because of training. If you can shoot a gun, you definitely can use a crossbow. Most people can't use a warbow
Meeeh, so much misinformation
then correct it, as otherwise your post is rather useless
The problem is that a youtube comment is by far not sufficient. I am just mouthing off my frustration. I bet other people experience the same thing when they encounter simplified discussions over something they are passionate about. Makes you wonder how much wrong information you are fed about things you don't know any better.
Marc Ritz I am going to allude to many blatant inaccuracies in your comment, but then decline to say what they actually are.
Make a video reply then. We will all watch it and decide who knows what.
I wonder why it would be important that people "decide who knows what". You might be a fan of his works as well but you must have noticed his lack of giving out sources. We can still be entertained and all but it would be terrifyingly naive to think that what he says is actually all that historically reliable.
Dear Lindybeige,
As a school teacher, your videos are very helpful for the time periods I'm not particularly strong in - I focused in modern East Asia as a master's degree student. I had always believed in some of the myths you talk about here. Some time in the future, could you please address the point about a bolt or arrow "piercing" plate armor and whether or not it would actually seriously injure or kill someone? Also, could you please address the advantages and disadvantages of early personal firearms (e.g. matchlock or wheellock muskets) compared to longbows and crossbows?
Just a little correction on a point you made Lloyd, I don't want to be shot at by a longbow or crossbow at long range or short range
Food for thought I guess.
Would you need a vice to replace the string though? I mean ok. The current string is damp and generally awful, but you could still pull it back, bringing the edges of the arms in closer letting you put on the new string. Then you'd release, pull back the new string and take off the old one.
I may be missing something though.
Another amazing video from lindybeige. Could you make a followup video about over-glorification of the longbow? Thank you :)
Great video! i'm an archer myself. 50lb Recurve and i love shooting.
Could you please make a video about Scythian and Mongolian bows and how those compare to bows used by the West :D
The first crossbows were designed by ancient Greeks and powered by tension stored in coiled ropes or held into place in mechanisms pushed against the stomach . Great defensive weapons.