Archers VS Crossbowmen
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- Опубликовано: 8 авг 2019
- Who were the strongest and most effective Medieval ranged troops? The longbowmen or the crossbowmen? In this video we will compare their training, weapons pros and cons.
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The bow and arrow seems to have been invented in the later Paleolithic or early Mesolithic periods. The oldest signs of its use in Europe come from the Stellmoor (de) in the Ahrensburg valley (de) north of Hamburg, Germany and dates from the late Paleolithic, about 10,000-9000 BC. There are no definite earlier bows. The oldest bows known so far come from the Holmegård swamp in Denmark. Bows eventually replaced the spear-thrower as the predominant means for launching shafted projectiles, on every continent except Australasia, though spear-throwers persisted alongside the bow in parts of the Americas, notably Mexico and among the Inuit.
Bows and arrows have been present in Egyptian culture since its predynastic origins. Classical civilizations, notably the Assyrians, Greeks, Armenians, Persians, Parthians, Indians, Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese fielded large numbers of archers in their armies.
The development of firearms rendered bows obsolete in warfare, albeit efforts were sometimes made to preserve archery practice. In Wales and England, for example, the government tried to enforce practice with the Longbow until the end of the 16th century. Early firearms were inferior in rate-of-fire, and were very susceptible to wet weather. However, they had longer effective range and were tactically superior in the common situation of soldiers shooting at each other from behind obstructions. They also required significantly less training to use properly, in particular penetrating steel armour without any need to develop special musculature. Armies equipped with guns could thus provide superior firepower, and highly trained archers became obsolete on the battlefield. Traditional archery remains in use for sport, and for hunting in many areas.
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#metatron #versus #bow #crossbow
I believe the saying goes thus:
You raise archers.
You train crossbowmen.
Agree!
I believe saying goes thus as well
Then you raze the lands of your foemen...
I had not heard that before, but it makes sense.
Its the opposite actually
*saying that he prefers crossbows while wearing round kettle hat* Do you think he's italian? He might be italian
😂🤣
I thought that was a South African accent.
@@blackwater4707 It's a british-italian one. Being European, he was probably taught by a british english teacher growing up(assuming he had such a teacher), but he also spent quite a few years in England as well, developing that accent rather than an american one
@@austinhoward6557 english classes are allways based on british english
@@soyderiverdeliverybeaver8941 Not the ones I'll be teaching in China in a couple weeks. What with an American teacher they'll be having and all
Today's bodybuilder: Don't skip leg day.
Medieval longbowman: Don't skip left arm day.
@The Real Duke Bows are drawn with the right arm, usually. So the warning is to not neglect the left arm, or you'll look like one of those gym queens who are top heavy with spindly legs, only along the vertical division.
Today's Weebs: Don't skip right arm night.
“Don’t skip back day”
more like back day lol
if you use the arms too much, you'll end up saying goodbye to the bow forever somedays
I guess the right arm is already trained
It's funny when fantasy classify melee weapons as Strength weapons and bows are Dexterity weapons when it should be the other way around.
Yeah. That's the one thing I like in Warband: Power draw is based on strength.
Melee weapons should be 50% STR 50% DEX, while Bows should be 75% STR 25% DEX.
Or better yet, forgo DEX and have lower powered classes do less damage, relying on status attacks or multiple hits(depending on the combat system) instead of raw damage.
Dont forget endurance, this is the key to be efficient in melee fight especially in armor. You got exhausted while shooting you bow- take a moment to catch your breath and return to shooting does not matter how long it takes you to draw a bow once u release the arrow its just as deadly as always. Got tired in melee fight- you are fucked up.
Nah. Dexterity is accuracy and technique. There is nothing wrong with bows being dexterity based, they just need a strength requirement. Which many games do have! Other games need you to be proficient with the weapon to use it, meaning you trained your ass off and can pull the damn string.
@@christiancinnabars1402 bows and crossbows should also use WIS (at least in systems where WIS affects perception).
"A good archer is worth 3 good crossbowmen but you'll probably have 3 crossbowman to make good long before a decent archer"
Alexane Rose Bows have draw weights of 123lbs,180lbs! While the Goat Lever crossbow has a draw weight of 350lbs! Cranequin:450lb draw weight! Portable Roman Scorpio:700 lbs!Windlass:900,1000,1250lbs! Gambeson stops 60-80lbs! Lorica Segmentata:420lbs! Chainmail:700 Or 800 lbs! 2.7mm steel breastplate:1250lbs!Linithorax:(pointblank straight) 120lbs (angled)180lbs!most accurate armor rating!
@@marydominguez6033 crossbows amazing draw weight does not translate into energy at all due to the very short string. A crossbow needs many times the draw weight of a bow to produce the same result. Easy mistake to make when you're starting to learn, dont worry.
@@marydominguez6033 I'm glad you are interested in the topic, but drawweight doesn't directly translate to missile velocity, and missile velocity doesn't directly translate to preassure applied. Now: what armours can withstand different preassures is a farcical thing to think you can just make statements on. Length of pull, missile weight, armour quality, armour fabrication method, materials used and many many other variables. Watch Todd, some firearms channels, read about physics for a while, try to understand what the modern words we use for armour types really emcompass, have another think :D
@@marydominguez6033 um...calm down?
@@mondaysinsanity8193 ROMAN SEIGE CROSSBOW S HAD DRAW WEIGHTS AROUND 4125LBS TO 4500 LBS! A HIT FROM ONE OF THESE SENDS A MAN FLYING AND PINNS THEM OJ A WALL!
Drawing a longbow was so taxing that skeleton remains of archers are identifiable as such. Enlarged left arm bones and the like.
so that proves bone mass can increase from excercise?
@@hazzmati That "proves," as you say, that if you find a skeleton on a battlefield with left arm bones significantly larger than the right, and with associated arthritis-like symptoms in that left arm, then it was likely they were archers.
Hazzmati no, they bones aren’t enlarged. They had signs of arthritis and bone spurs on only one side
I read this as drawing a picture of a crossbow.
PSquared1234 Bows have draw weights of 123lbs,180lbs! While the Goat Lever crossbow has a draw weight of 350lbs! Cranequin:450lb draw weight! Portable Roman Scorpio:700 lbs!Windlass:900,1000,1250lbs! Gambeson stops 60-80lbs! Lorica Segmentata:420lbs! Chainmail:700 Or 800 lbs! 2.7mm steel breastplate:1250lbs!Linithorax:(pointblank straight) 120lbs (angled)180lbs!most accurate armor rating!
"Crossbows are slower"
Me, who has 9 inventory slots filled with loaded crossbows: *machinegun noices*
underrated
Stronghold the video game crosbows wins ever.
Add QuickDraw 3
Hahaahahahahaha "noises" hahahahahahhahahahahahahahahah I wonder how many times I've seen "*insert something* noises" 😂😂😂😂😂 funniesst shit I have ever seen
Lol
"Kingdom of Bohemia became crossbow countries"
Well, Warhorse? Where are my damn crossbows?
That's exactly what I was thinking lmao
I know, right? I mean, crossbows are mentioned within the first half hour of game time, but never seen.
Hope we will see in the next game
Some people were saying that while crossbows did exist, they didn’t have widespread use, that’s why we don’t see them in game.
@@krissianvictir1291 Huge Use in bohemia ! probally more common than the bow
Watches video
*HAS FLASH BACKS OF RHODOK SHARPSHOOTERS AND VAEGIR MARKSMEN*
Away with you, vile beggar!
I will drink from your skull!
It’s almost a harvesting season!
That's a nice head you have on your shoulders
Less talking! More raiding!
The pope once banned the crossbow...cause peasants were killing too many expensive knights
He banned bows in the same édict. He just wanted christians to stop shooting each other.
That was before coat of plates and plate armor became a thing. After around 1290s no one cared about it since the arrows bouced of of armor
He was more than likely scared somebody was going to assassinate him.
Pope mainly didn't want the people who bring him power and money to die to uneducated barely armed peasants
Only against christians though...
So my elven archer should ideally be a 7ft amazon. Gottit!
Well, in the Elder Scrolls, the elves are 2 meters tall and fairly stronger than humans, so true.
@@lordvaderdarthsith not true, until skyrim elves always had some of the lowest strengh and stamina attributes.
Depends on the setting. If elves have super human strength they can use heavy bows with no problems at all.
THICC archer mommy
@@TheBayzent Swole Tomboy Elf
If I learned ANYTHING from my 35+ years of RPGs, its......
KILL ALL ARCHERS FIRST.
(Too many scenarios to list here.)
@Çağlar Özgür Let's be honest, the rest of the party had better be playing on their strengths at first contact. Few, if any reprisals. (I have powerful friends)
kill the mage first
*vietnam flashbacks*
Actually, if it’s Mount and Blade, kill the Swaidian Knights first!!
In Skyrim is..
Kill the mage first
Ah the genoese crossbowman, giving ptsd to all medieval 2 player
I will never forget my first encounter with genoese crossbowmen. I was literally playing as England with mass longbowmen.
"Who are these guys? Genoese crossbowmen? Ok, crossbowmen. I got this, no problem. Wait...what is that? Are they wearing shields on their backs? Wtf? WHY?!"
*Crossbowmen fire 1 time and start reloading*
"OH SHIIIIIIT!!!"
JA! you havent face mongols archers, those guys are the nightmate
@@lordjor96 Warriors of Chaos WISH they were Mongols. :D
I had a high dread general with fine armour routing an entire army of them while his bodyguard was already dead
laughs in cataphracts
So in other words:
Quality and Versatility = Archer
Quantity and Ease of Us = Crossbow
You also need to add Wet Weather = Archer.
@@glenbe4026 You realise archers were completely screwed if their bows got moist?
@@darthplagueis13 Yes, BUT a longbowman can unstring and restring their bow fairly quickly. A crossbowman can not. A major factor at Crecy was that the English Longbowmen could quickly unstring their bows, when the rainstorm hit, then quickly restring them after it left, whilst the Genoese Crossbowmen needed mechanical means to do the same.
Like revolver vs semi auto lol
@@glenbe4026 This also depends on the bow type. Composite bows held together by animal glue would delaminate if they got damp from humidity or rain. Self-bows were OK as long as you kept the string dry.
While crossbowmen and longbowmen are fighting , they see a strange man holding a weird bow
The last thing the hear after they die “LET ME HOW YOU ITS FEATURES”
i was thinking the same thing....... lol
And the most hearty of laughs
*HA HA HA HAAA*
Then they see millions of arrows falling from the sky by one man with a powerdrill some wood and a bit of tape
what
Explain please
I would choose crossbowmen and set them up similarly to a musket firing line. While the first line was reloading, the second would aim and fire, and they'd alternate like that.
Shame long bow's can fire farther due to the weight and length of the arrow
@@alanrickett2537 wouldnt you ba able to shoot more bolts on the long run with a crossbow?
@@firmak2 I don't think so the crosdbow is a complex weapon compared to a long bow and so is likely to break first, the augment lb v cb id about skill verses mechcanisation
@@alanrickett2537 you need years to train a longbowmen and weeks for a crossbowman.
Stunlocking in real life
Yea, but how good are they aginst DRAGONS?!
Субота with MAAAAACHICCCUUULLTIOONNNSSSAAAAGGGHHH or at open field
Get out. Lol
they are effective in one episode but will miss all their shots in the next one.
ummm........ haven't you seen the Hobbit? it seemed quite efective there.
Agains Dragon This are Two Options ruclips.net/video/AA5M0QKXtWU/видео.html a stronger Option here ruclips.net/video/E9FU-HBG7His/видео.html more a ballista
I'd go with the joerg sprave repeating crossbow.
Are we to be shown it's features?!
@@G00N3YC4NG "let me show you its features HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH"
I understood that reference.
That german guy is ogrer than me
if joerg live in ancient times, we probably already have guns a 100 years early 😂 LOL
Jesus Christ, your pronunciation of both English and Chinese is so good 😭
Thank you very much I apprecaite
I believe he prefers Metatron...
his Japanese pronunciations are also really good
Woah, your production quality has skyrocketed since last I checked. Good job, man, love your work!
Drawing back my 50 pound recurve bow is a workout in and of itself.
Friend of mine shoots his 90 pound bow 2 times a week for a few hours at an archery range. But that's all he does for exercise so his body has a horribly weird shape with those back/shoulder muscles being super buff and the rest of his body is like super skinny.
You have to teain your other arm too, otherwise you'll end up with an anaesthetic asymmetry in your arms.
@@arx3516 otherwise known as the masturbation-arm
@@torvamessorem6686 congrats you beacome friend with an orc
@@SaurusWarriorSotek I'm already married to one.
Just thought of something interesting.
It makes sense that the English preferred longbows in the mid-late middle ages, since most of their biggest fights were in France. Since they had to transport their entire army across the Channel, they really couldn't afford to carry three guys+shield(s) and multiple crossbows to only get one guy actually fighting. Plus to unstring or otherwise perform maintenance on a crossbow you need a lot of equipment, which would be difficult for an army to carry in an offensive campaign.
For Italian city states the crossbow was very good on the defensive, especially in large fortifications where there would be a lot of people inside who could assist the crossbowmen without necessarily being trained soldiers themselves. When acting as mercenaries logistical issues would be for their clients to handle, so the main concerns would be around training time.
England had a more ready trained Archer (numerous) because of the law that had the men training from the time they were 9yrs of age ... By the time they were going to war .. They had 10 or 15 yrs of training ... The battle of Agincourt proves that the Archer was the best
Very well put Sir!
That and I think English had crossbows banned at somepoint too. Besides, as pointed out by others. England had renowned longbow training already. Heck, there were families after families that just had their sons pick up a bow and become expert.
I mean, trained longbowman is considered a lot more better than a trained crossbowmen. The best part about of crossbows were that you didn't need too much strength training or technique to score consistent hits with the crossbow. After all, it was basically point and shoot for the peasantry.
And crossbow bolts are easier to store in armouries. Crossbow bolts have wooden fletching, arrows use feathers. As such crossbow bolts can be hoarded for years or decades and be usable, but within a few years the feathers on arrows will decompose so they require a constant cycle of maintenance.
@@TheBirdmaster45 a vast manpower of archers available ready to go, industrial scale capabilities of mass producing long war bows and arrows and a generation drilled to the core archers
and you've got a deadly weapon!
An advantage of archers is that, due to the strength and experience they have, if they were to get into a close quarters engagement they could hold their own and even batter the enemy. e.g Agincourt
Archers in melee would drop their bows and move to a melee weapon, including Agincourt.
Sure tina, sure.
Whatever you say slick.
archers are mainly made of middle to lower class, in other word pub brawling dumbasses in the eyes of the elite knights. .
If
Not exactly the best example, at Agincourt the archers had deployed numerous stakes infront to stop Calvary charges and had the forrest on their flanks to prevent being outflanked by French horsemen. There’s been quite a few battles in the Hundred Years’ War where archers without enough prep time were absolutely decimated by knights
The soldier skilled with both a crossbow, a melee weapon (spear, sword, etc), and shields would be the ultimate meta unit. Crossbows take far fewer time to train and use effectively than a bow and it is eligible for far more people to use with deadly effect. Thus, a professional soldier with a crossbow would have more time to train in other combat arts. Like the Janissary, I run this unit type in my war games and they destroy other unit compositions. The predecessor to firearms.
Actually. I think it is the opposite. It's easier for skillful archers to become good melee fighters because the strength archery practice built up. There is a reason steppe nomads can shoot well and also charge like hell. sword dueling without protections might be mostly a dex and stamina fest. Fully geared up battlefield hack and slash with axes, spears, lances, pikes, swords, and shield melee needed a lot of strength. Again. If you are unfamiliar with nomads and Eastern mainland soldiers, just look at how all purpose the samurais were-archer, swordsmen, pike/spear men, and heavy/skirmishing cavalry men
@@pypy1986820 I mean, if you're a God with a bow why would you want to charge the enemy in melee? You would have at least a sword for last resort.
@@MatheusRodrigues-gm5tf because, from what I understood, the ranged warfare before gunpowder era usually can't be the ultimate universal solution. I have come to understand that there was simply little to no reliable way to do away with disciplined and heavily armed soldiers holding out in defense favored locations with ranged projectiles alone in reasonable time frames back in the olden days.
Specifically, one can weaken, dismount, and one's opposing forces out with projectile; but if the opposing forces were still determined to fight to the bitter end and the other side can't afford the time needed to starve them out, then one has to go in close and personal because, again, it seems to me that the handheld bows ultimately can't penetrate decent quality steel at reasonable range and Medieval artillery and explosives can't reliably bring down competently constructed fortifications of its time.
Simply put. I think, back in the pre-gunpowder eras, there were too many military circumstances where getting in close and personal were the only reliable strategy, so no respectable military can afford to ignore the "good ol' hack and slash" completely.
yup this is why knights usually carried a crossbow, and not a bow
@@cwinowichreally?
A video on European crossbowmen vs Chinese crossbowmen would be cool.
Yeah, he failed to mention that the Chinese had magazine-fed crossbows. All you have to do is just keep pumping the handle. They were used until fairly recently.
@Abu Troll al cockroachistan It depends which type you are referring to. The ones that you are referencing were the larger, single shot type. The Zhuge nus were smaller, but had a magazine and would be sort-of automatic.
@jocaguz18 Yeah, those were actually a real thing.!
Trilby Man Owens arguably the smaller arrows were more effective. It’s not like they weren’t effective. The smaller arrows were capable of shooting right through a fully armored Chinese warrior and come out of the other side. I think mentioning the crossbow with the larger arrows is quite useless
@@haydeen6535 Yeah, I agree, but Abu Troll mentioned the larger crossbows, so I wanted to point out that the Chinese did NOT have automatic ballistas. (By automatic, I mean like a Gatling gun, where you have to keep cranking it.)
Ahhh notification Squad here. So hyped for that vid.
Edit: To answer Metatrons question in the end of his vid in wich unit I would invest my money in: there are two main factors wich would change my oppinion. Time and effectivness. If I got lots of time training my troops I would defenitively Spend my money on Archers because they have a much higher shot/lose/fire rate than crossbows without any assitance loader. But if I dont have as much time to prepare for a upcoming war, I would invest into crossbows because of the low training time.
^ This.
Another important factor in my mind is which armor/monster we generally use/face in the region and the time I'm in. If you don't need heavy draw weight to pierce your target's armor/skin/scale, archer would be fare more proficient in battle if you have time to train them.
Money permitting, I would have both. Mercenary Archers to whittle the enemy down, and home-grown Crossbowmen armed with Arbalests and protected by a Pavise to deal with heavily armored foes. For Mercenary Archers, they wouldn't have to be Longbowmen. I think I remember hearing that the Sardinians had good Marine Archers for hire.
Might depend on your ressources, too. Crossbow bolts are shorter and generally easier to mass produce than arrows. They also carry the advantage of getting stuck easily or breaking on impact which means that the enemy won't be able to pick up your ammo and use it against you.
Would the crossbow itself be much more expensive than a longbow? I feel that should be factored in somewhere
There are a few things I want to mention:
- Crossbow are generally more expensive and harder to make than bow, and this is especially important when you want to raise an army because it's easier to mass produce. It's kinda like how full plate armor is better than all other armors, but most monarch would only equip their troop with breastplate at most
- Crossbow tend to shoot stubbier bolt, which sacrifice some range to be more effective against heavily armored troop. But generally speaking, medieval troop are not that well equipped beside the knights and the really rich soldier, which is probably why bow still stay viable for a long time
- Aiming is not that important in medieval warfare because you would probably just lose an arrow/bolt in a mass of people and hit someone anyway. I mean sure, sometime you would need accuracy (mostly to shoot enemy archers on a castle wall during siege probably), but most of the time you probably will never need pin-point accuracy
I mean after all, it's really depends on what kind of composition are you going against. Against a small, but well equipped troop, crossbow would probably do better but bow would shine in a battle of number
The bow is great for battle, the crossbow is however very much superior in a siege. Especially for the attacker. Because it is a "sniper" weapon. You can have it drawn, aimed and wait for the enemy to peak over the battlements. Something that is just impossible with the war bow.
Would you not use a recurve bow for a siege maybe ?? there is a big misconception about the power of long bow being superior to recurve bow and also a huge misconception that there was more long bows the recurve bows.
@@wezdacapo6128 Has the same problem as a war bow - while it's shorter, the problem very much is not the size but the fact that you can't just keep it drawn forever and wait for an opportunity - like with crossbow.
i love the English law that stated everyone should practice the bow on sundays. a fun activity that seeds for an army of strong marksmen. Crossbows will be used to defend my keep from those who mean harm.
That's the real genius of that law: those basterds train themselves *for free* for their King. The flip side is that you know have warbow wielding peasants that endured hard training to obey your stupid laws, and aren't too happy about your new tax raise for war 😏.
@@lucofparis4819
But they weren't peasants. They were mainly free.born, lower middle class, smallholders,, merchant, artisan types. They had a certain power, free-speaking and aware of their rights and wage scale.
The French, in particular, didn't understand this. They didn't want to arm their own peasants, with good reason...,as was seen with the Jacquerie.
@@adventussaxonum448 Oh they were certainly peasants for the English nobles, and training them as yeomen certainly did cause issues, just as it did in France during the few experiments.
@@lucofparis4819
Yes, issues such as the "Peasants' Revolt" of 1381. However, it was not carried out by "peasants".
The leaders were an artisan, two priests and a substantial property owner. Many of their followers were of similar status. Obviously, there were some peasants.
The crown didn't train people to be yeomen. It was the status of a freeholder, a small landowner. The archers were drawn from these ranks.....they trained to be archers. Obviously, they had something to lose. Even the English crown didn't want to train peasants, with nothing to lose, to use a game changing weapon.
@@adventussaxonum448 Ok, I know what's going on, you just don't know what a peasant is. In medieval times, peasants were the commoners living in the countryside. Peasant literally means countryman, as opposed to someone living in a town or city. This includes, but is not limited to: farmers, artisans, agricultural workers, apprentices, local priests, local militiamen, and obviously, land owners who are neither nobles nor very wealthy inhabitants of towns and cities that just happen to own a massive property over there (those last ones would most likely be first targets of these peasants unless they join them). Ergo, the Peasants' Revolt was indeed a peasants' revolt. Shocking, I know!
I’d arm my army with muskets. That is why I always carry a chemistry book in the trunk of my car. Just in case of time traveling shenanigans after which I’ll have to raise a medieval army.
I don't remember anyone getting isekai'd with their Volvo
@@0d138 had to google isekai. Now I know a bit more.
@@0d138 lmao
Loser
@@tylerhigham8171 ok "Tyler"
In A Storm of Swords, during the assault of Castle Black, Sam and someone else were working in a pair with 2 crossbows. (1 shooting, 1 reloading.)
Yep. GRRM is pretty well versed in medieval warfare (atleast on a theoretical level) and it really shows.
I’m very impressed that you know about the servant reloading system. There were often two either side, one to cock back the string and the other would place the bolt. They were at all times behind wall when doing this and would rotate if the one shooting was hit.
Interesting
I believe archers are the most useful soldier. Crossbowmen are best used from castle walls or against fortified positions like during sieges.
Takes time to train a bowman
@@mr.fantastic7756 yes, but they can be used in nearly every combat scenario and quite probably has a greater rate of "fire", especially if you're using 2-3 ranks you can have a non-stop bombardment on an enemy.
Crossbowmen you probably need an extra rank to keep the same pace as longbow archers.
In my opinion crossbowmen are a defensive type of soldier.
As for the comment on walkung around all day with a crossbow ready to shoot I think it's a major risk to everyones safety if one would accidently go off like in Robin Hood.
If im correct, an arrow is heavier than a bolt, meaning when shot from great heights (such as castle walls) they have more penetrative power. Also, with a crossbow, you can aim between the battlements, waiting for an enemy to stick his head out. Dosnt that mean the archers are actually better at defending walls than crossbowmen, and crossbowmen are better at attacking? If not, please state why, im interested in hearing your reasonning.
@@generalgrievous5177 well yes an arrow is heavier but crossbows have generaly a much more powerful draw weight to give the bolt its penetrative power, some crossbows had a draw weight so heavy you was not able to draw it with hands alone
@@johan.ohgren The Chinese and Bohemian armies would beg to differ. Bowmen in groups can do more than crossbowmen in a general situation, but the very weakpoint of archers is the length of training one. In drawn out battles, Archers have fewer troops available for deployment and would most likely rely on the infantry to cover their weakness from the same type of opponent(Japanese and English bowmen found a way to solve it), meanwhile a Crossbow troop may require more men to operate effectively but they have the Pavise or stationary shields to prevent arrows from completely annihilating them.
Mounted Archers/crossbowmen are story of their own as they have a mount to use in combat.
Neat video Metatron! For those interested, Mike Loades wrote a book called "War Bows" which gives a very thorough description of bows, crossbows, and how they were used. Based on that book, I'd like to offer a few points related to this video:
4:35 It's a bit of an exaggeration to say that you can keep a crossbow spanned for an entire day. According to Mike Loades, composite crossbows were preferred for hunting over steel crossbows because they could be kept spanned for longer without weakening the crossbow. Of course, you can still keep a steel crossbow spanned for far longer than you can keep a longbow drawn.
9:10 This is especially beneficial because you can keep crossbows stored in your castle's armory for a long time, and if you are suddenly attacked and don't have a lot of trained soldiers on hand, your servants would be able to use those crossbows despite their lack of training.
11:45 While you may not need much accuracy for a regular skirmish, it's absolutely essential during sieges and naval battles, and sieges were far more common than skirmishes in the open.
"In RPGs like dark souls you need strength for swords and dexterity for bows. That should be the other way around."
Fume ultra greatsword. A hunk of slate so large it was left to rot for a very, very long time because nobody could move it at all.
Yeah, I understand what he actually meant, before I get yelled at.
Finally, I been waiting for a vid like this
Slingers are the most skillful missile troops.
Agreed.
Javelinmen.
@@lukatomas9465 nah, just throwing. You don't have to worry about spinning a rock attached to a leather band over your head and then manage to toss the stone but not the band, and don't hit anyone but your target in the process.
@@jotabeas22 Ok, what about Blowdartmen?
@@lukatomas9465 really in need of skill and technique - aiming is easy, but knowing how to blow and not mess up with the darts - 90% time poisoned - is hard.
However, not *as* hard as using a sling. And much less implemented in warfare.
It is a good day and hard decision when Lindybeige and The Metatron release a Visio within 30 minutes of each other
Say hi to Adam Smith for me
Karl Marx burn in hell Marx
Why not both?
Damn you
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holy shit great video, instantly subscribed
What you said about ranged weapons was very good. Even in modern times, strength is required for accuracy, not dexterity.
They had safety guards on a crossbow? I think having the bow 'cocked' all day would do serious damage to your crossbow
Steel doesn't tend to yield. If pushed the release (was often a lever for leverage), it would release. Recall a medieval crossbow was 800 to 1500lb of pull. It took force to release that power as they didn't have as fine of release mechanisms as the light crossbows we see in movies.
Note: force*distance, why a "lighter" pull bow shot an equal weight arrow the same velocity (obviously, crossbow bolts were shortened to optimize them).
Crossbowman all the way.
Crossbows deserve more love
They're also much more practical in siege warfare.
(Although I am a Handgun man myself)
yeees arquebus all the way
@@seribelz No you meant Muskets
crossbows are boring.They are like guns.No one likes gun warfare.Ancient warfare all the way
@@arthasmenethil7208 "no one likes gun warfare"
DANG.
@@arthasmenethil7208 agreed! I wouldn't use a weapon at all, just claw at people and bite them and screech like an austrolopithicus
I feel like that samurai armor behind him looks like a "life seized" Lego Darth Vader. 5:05
As an archer always cringe when I hear someone use the word "fire" lol, bow had a longer range, I have crossbows and many bows including several longbows, the longbow has a MUCH longer range as it has a longer stroke than the crossbow, the crossbow is more powerful up close but at range it drops off pretty quickly, I would take a troop of long bowmen over crossbowmen any day.
Both sound dangerous
the true questions are, Why are they for? and, How will they be developed?
Metatron! thanks for the awesome historical videos. Peace from Portland Oregon, USA
Tabletop games need to make that update, changing dexterity to swords and strength to bows and crossbows.
Some games have bows that require strength to use, they are mostly listed as warbows thought.
So you can be super strong and miss every shot with the bow, and be really accurate with the greatsword but be unable to even dent chainmail. Right.
@@Anegor You've never used a bow before, have you? You need a LOT of upper arm STRENGTH to pull it back and hold it for several seconds. Try taking a bow with a 50 pound draw, pull the string back and try to hold it in place as long as you can. Heck, for that matter, just try loading a crossbow AT ALL. You need a lot of strength to use something like a warbow. Dexterity is useless when using something that you don't move around often. Also, a dexterous sword user can easily overcome chainmail, since they can poke the tip into one of the rings and then destroy the ring link by pushing the sword in with a thrust. Most sword techniques require dexterity over strength. Some of the deadliest cuts don't come from strength, but precision. You should learn how weapons are used in the real world and from there apply it to fantasy worlds.
@@robertsilvermyst7325 Properly made chainmail have the rings locked in a patterns of five. Four solid rings connected by a fifth ring with it's two ends locked in with a miniature bolt. Therefore, PROPER MAIL will stop a sword thrust. check out this video on mail armor ruclips.net/video/VtJS1MziI98/видео.html. You simply can't hack through well made armor, including chain mail and gambeson, so..... GO FOR THE EYES
@@stefan1360 like what games
Wouldn't carrying a loaded crossbow around damage the cord? The same as you do not want to have the string on your bow all the time as it deforms the timber?
Maybe
Great video, great technical information. The helmet suits you!
I would go with crossbows for the peasants and common soldier, but also try to spend some money on actual bowman.
spears are also great weapons for peasants, they take very little training for basic use.
@@kercchan3307 I don't agree. Spears are great for everyone.
The masters of the crossbows are the archers, because its more easier to them to use the crossbows
@@kercchan3307 Spear is best, always.
I wonder the effectiveness of something like shield and spear wall but they have crossbows as well initial volley, first few lines hold with spears back lines reload and fire in volley like muskets
Metatron, have you played Total War Medieval 2? Alot of what you discuss i see in the game and wonder what your opinion of it is?
I hate fighting against Genoese Crossbowmen lmao
Few things in that game are as satisfying as the enemy getting desperate and throwing a freshly trained army at the army you've been trucking around with since the very start. Max experience english longbowmen basically delete any infantry unit you click on.
@@marcus2249 For them i always use my mailed knights to cause em to run, then run in with my spear infantry to hold and clog enemy infantry. Then ill round out the cavalry snd beeline the crossbows till theyre pushed out.
@@gso619 Thats when you know, youve made it.
@@Darksky1001able Ight ty
Many thanks, this video is extremely useful.
Great video🤓👍👏
To the question, it would depend on the situation. All else equal, given the time and money to train whatever I wanted, I'll take 10 archers over 10 crossbowmen. The faster reload, and the greater ease of making the weapon and ammunition, give them more versatility.
However, if I had limited time (I know the enemy is near and could attack at any time) or my available humans were mainly casual peasants who weren't already bow-trained, I'll take the cost and time benefits of equipping 20 decent crossbowmen rather than trying to pay for 5-10 archers who may not even be fully trained by the time the enemy decides to attack.
That would be why England required all adult males to train with the bow. By making people do it on their own time, you have a ready supply of well-trained recruits that just need a few weeks of upgrading and conditioning to be battle ready rather than needing to pay them for a 4 year college degree in bow-shooting.
What if i equipped 10 crossbow with large shield?
Honestly as a kid, I took a couple of years or archery training (cause I found Legolas cool) and it was a huge struggle trying to shoot at the center of the target. It also has to do a lot with skill. I remember the gym teacher at school bringing a bow and showing us how archery works and I thought I would be the best one in my class but there were a couple of kids who got much better shots off than me. So it’s not just about training- sometimes talent is a huge contributing factor.
GREAT video! I've always thought what you say about the strength needed to use a bow, about the silliness in movies of having the archers draw and hold for ridiculous amount of time, and especially what you say beginning at 10:08 about the physical abilities needed for using swords as opposed to bows. That has always seemed backwards to me. Thanks so much for confirming my thoughts.
I even heard about the Saracen archers holding up to 8 arrows in their DRAW hand, the same hand used to pull back the bowstring, as a way to increase rate of fire in those times, since they fired on the right side of the bow as opposed to the more well known left side. Their bows weren't generally any more powerful than the English war bow, it was smaller in size, couldn't shoot as far and had a more pronounced curvature to compensate for it's size, but this meant more versatile and quicker shooting as well as better adaptability to different situations where you had to shoot quickly from any position, hanging upside down, on the move or lying on the floor for example and in any hand. I would suggest watching Danish archer Lars Andersen, who reconstructed this ancient, more natural form of archery according to his own interpretation.
You are wrong in the regard to their bows are not more powerful.
Composite bows can be made as powerful if not more, irrespective of their size. Because those bows are in reflexed state when unstrung.
Otherwise yeah, 60lb composite bow is my to go.
Yet at the same time, in formation warfare context I will pick up a chinese crossbow seriously.
Much more powerful, just search "Han Crossbow"
Hold on, does that mean that The Scorpion King has a historically accurate depiction of bows?? l mean, The Rock is the only one capable of drawing his bow :O
Edit. for the question in the end, l imagine archers have higher firing rate, so if money's no issue l'd go for archers with shit-loads of push-ups & pull-ups included in the training :D
Hiring archers takes even more money because they are scarce.
You could train poor civilians in crossbowmen much quiker for much less money and afford to have many of them.
Therefore more crossbowmen is preferabe to archers if you were to have enough money
i think that, in general at least, the fire rate matters less than many people think;
assuming your archers/crossbomen are kept away from enemy infantry it's likely that both will have used up all their arrows/bolts by the time the fight is over;
Granted the bow's faster shooting rate will be be advantageous in certain situations, an important thing about these weapons is also that as you shoot more projectiles, you begin to tire yourself, so by the time you've shot many time you will become less effective, which for a bow means reduced accuracy, shooting rate and power, whereas for a crossbow it only means reduced shooting rate.
Honestly, i don't know which is the better weapon; but in general i would say that the ease of use of the crossbow deserves more respect than it's given due to it's strategic implications; no matter how tired or weakened a crossboman is, his shots will always be accurate and powerful; meanwhile an exhausted or malnourished archer can become almost completely useless.
@@captainnyet9855 true
Yes. The one thing they got right in the whole movie. :D
Special bows that only the story's hero could draw are an old motive from mythology. Odysseus had one. In the ancient Indian epics there are several, prince Rama came across two of them (he was so strong he broke the first one).
Maybe the range of both weapons is something you should have talked as well
Yes I was waiting for the same. Unless I'm missing something a crossbow should have more penetrative power at shorter ranges since bolts are lighter than arrows which makes them speed up more when fired at any given draw strength. At longer ranges it would be the exact opposite: the lighter crossbow bolt will be slowed down much faster by air resistance than the heavier arrow; allowing the arrow to keep it's penetrative momentum for much longer than the bolt.
@Dogs Sing No it will not. A *sharper/thinner* arrow will cut somewhat better through air (being more aerodynamic); a *lighter* arrow however has less mass which means it's easier for air resistance to slow it down. This is why shotgun pellets have a dramatic force drop after about 30-40m (due to their light weight), and this is also why you can throw a big pebble much much farther than you can throw a small pebble (the small pebble is lighter and therefore harder to throw as far)
@@GepardenK arrows from English longbows were bouncing on French knights from 10 distance.......bow has no advantige over any distance in manner of penetration
Solid video. I agree with most points
I love the metatron's videos. As a writter I use his videos for education as how would weapons work in realistic battles.
I would like to point out that keeping a wooden crossbow cocked for even a few hours would damage it irreparably and a new prod would need to be fitted. It is the for the same reason that you cannot keep wooden bows stringed for days upon end. The compression and tension eventually deforms the bow and makes it lose almost all its power. For those unfamiliar with how bows work, they're drawn to brace height (the point where the string rests without pulling back) and then hooked on either end into the nocks of the bow to keep it there. There is a significant amount of tension in a bow just sitting on the floor.
This, of course, does not apply to metal prods on a crossbow.
I'd probably recruit archers - they are more versatile.
What you don't really mention is the ballistic characteristics of the weapons.
A crossbow bolt has a flat trajectory, at fixed power. With archers you are better able to arch volleys at troops/ formations behind the front lines and fortified defences.
Archers are also able to shoot over the heads of their own front line troops, so you can deploy them on the battlefield more flexibly.
Wouldn't you be able to do that with crossbows to, just by adjusting the angle you shoot?
The issue is the recruitment part. Unless you're the english and archery is regular sunday activity for your people, you can't just raise an army of archers quickly from populace who have no training with them. You can however very very quickly train peasants to load and fire crossbows. In pure martial prowess, experienced archers trump crossbowmen but in terms of logistics its years of training and a culture dedicated to archery vs several weeks of basic training...
@@sisocrack You certainly can angle the crossbow up, but a bolt is not as effective as an arrow when fired in that way and an archer can also more easily find the perfect range by subtle adjustments to the length of his draw as well as the angle of release.
As mentioned in the video, due to their greater speed of reload, archers can literally rain arrows down on an enemy in a way a company of crossbowman cannot.
The strength of a crossbow is its penetration power when fired directly at the enemy and the ability to snipe. When fired in an arc that power advantage is largely lost.
@@kholui yeah I think firing from prone is one thing I really like about crossbows. But being able to rain down volleys of arrows from the castle wall is certainly another really awesome thing that longbows can do.
The weapon that can be use if there is a wall over is a bow, crossbow has straight trajectory
As a fan of Bernard Cornwell's Agincourt novel I enjoy your further insights about the weapons and tactics he refers to.
Nice Vid
Actually cultural context would particularly come in to play, in this instance.
If one would raising troops on Eurasian Steppe, the most plentiful troops would probably be horse-archers.
Cultural and martial traditions of region would have a strong influence on the contingent of a native military force. Swiss, Cisalpine German, Milanese, and Genoese crossbowmen. If in the region the general population has, already, cultural adopted longbow archery, and everyone uses a bow for hunting to put meat on the table, use archers. However, bows, in comparison to crossbows, are lighter, handier, more compact, more maneuverable, and more versatile. Bows paired with horseback, is formidable combination. The Scythians, Sarmatians, Cumins, Hans, Tatars, Mongols, and other steppe peoples have built vast empires exploiting the bow and horse combination.
The most correct comment so far, "horse archery" was the most effective use of a projectile weapon until fire weapons. Any serious debate about bow vs crossbow should not commit only to the usage of the longbow, that saw limited action (England), some parts of Western Europe.
Crossbow and the composite bows made empires rise and fall not the longbow.
@@gabicraioveanu2590 Even so, battles were still mostly decided by melee not missile weapons for much of the medieval period.
Crossbow was effectively used even in the modern era. The arcabuses replaced them little by little, and then the muskets replaced the latter
Well said.
Those countries use what they got, straight from their culture. Its origin. How things came to be.
And sometimes things were invented as an answer to certain situations. I take it crossbows were one such thing?
I imagine generals of other countries had no good start to train archers since they're late in the game, so they had to come up with something that can match them in what time they have left. Hence the crossbows.
@@gabicraioveanu2590 yes. More contexts.
If I were a very wealthy nobleman, I'd employ both archers and crossbowmen. While the crossbowmen reload, the archers can take aim and fire until the crossbowmen are ready to fire again. Of course, it could be redundant to use both.
Or you may have your missile troops to be trained with both skills? Who knows which circumstance your troops will face?
@@chengkuoklee5734 and get halfassed archers and crossbowmen, and more weight to carry for these troops. Mixing them doesn't seem logical either. Different guys can't just use their buddy's arrows if he runs out by some chance and all the other guy had are bolts.
Give your crossbows to your conscripts or militias so they can shoot the enemies down along with your trained archers, perhaps.
Would be nice if they have slings too. Do stones and pebbles lying about on the ground count as its ammunitions?
Excellent voice and nice video
1:17 Prehistoric giants defending time traveler from deer cavalry charge.
I, wait... Oh yeah that seems more accurate than a hunt. The deer are clearly attacking.
@@justtime6736 those are the tankeyest deer that their commanders like to place in front to absorb your initial arrow volleys.
Crossbowmen. More fast to train, more man would be recruted and the cost of mantaing the army would be cheaper.
@@ellisbarnett0292 Putting them in a good positon, nothing like the french, who literally charged into their own crossbowmen; gives a lot of help in this situation
@@gabrielferreira1531 "the cost of mantaing the army would be cheaper" This is questionable because the cost of maintaining a military force involves allot more than just the weapons they're issued. Per soldier might be cheaper, but when you factor in the scaled overall logistical cost of more recruits/soldiers crossbows could end up being more expensive. Pavises ain't cheap either.
I know, but im using a caeteris paribus method
@@corwinhyatt519 Archers were paid more than crossbowmen.. as they are more skilled.
@@aitorbleda8267 While less went into each pocket, more soldiers means more grain, meat and drink that needed to be accounted for (among other things)... We're looking at the same issue from different directions. Crossbowmen are preferable due to the ease of training and the shorter time to proficiency over a bowman, but that doesn't mean a force of crossbowmen costs less to maintain than a similarly paid, per batch, force of bowmen.
You're correct, you can take a group of villagers and train them more quickly to be effective with crossbows. And for more close quarter combat scenarios, the crossbow would be more effective. Especially if you have them loaded and lined up behind the wall with 1 person to aim and shoot and anothers to simply reload. But the longbow has the advantage of range which you did not mention. If i were defending a castle with high walls. The longbow can reach hundreds of yards, or if i had the advantage of the high ground in a field scenario. The longbow would be a lot more effective. They both are great weapons when used to their advantages. Personally, I would train an army for both. To exploit the range both weapons have. Longbow until we've been breached, then to crossbow for up close power and simplicity.
What I missed in the video was penetrative power and angle of attack. I always thought that the crossbow bolt can penetrate better but that it is shot in a direct line, whereas the arrows rain down on the target. This difference has an effect on how to mount an effective defence.
Another factor to consider is this. Archers have to continually practice to stay proficient with the bow. Crossbowmen on the other hand, once they have it down, it takes little to no practice to stay proficient. Plus bolts are shorter than arrows, so they would be cheaper and easier to make. Overall, it would be much easier and cheaper to train and maintain a company of crossbowmen compared to a company of archers.
:D You're awesome!
Thanks!
I think crossbowmen are the right choice just because of how much easier it is to train one to a reasonable standard of effectiveness. Even if bowmen are individually better, if you can get two or three crossbowmen for the same cost as a single bowman, you’re coming out ahead. And you can expand your forces or replace losses way easier.
It depends. If you have an archery culture, you don't need to spend time or money to train more archers, you literally just have to offer pay to volunteers who can shoot well with heavy bows, of which there will be many. That's how the English, Mongols, Huns, Chinese, and various Middle Eastern cultures did it (among others; this is by no means an exhaustive list).
This video just showed randomly to me, but I loved it
Good, no fuss information , entertaining video well presented . A great historian .
Just subscribed to your channel. I do have a question regarding this subject, how hard and/or expensive was to fabricate a crossbow compared to a warbow?
@Xaris Xeros thanks man!! Such an extensive and detailed answer!
Well in D&D ypu need DEX for weaker bows as it accounts for aiming. But there are so called composite bows that deal more damage but require certain strength to even be able to use it. But damage modifier still comes from dexterity to account for aiming.
Timur Sultanov nerd
Good video
I legit thought this was gonna be a Chivalry 2 video but I ended up getting knowledge of the basses of both longbows and crossbows
I’d rather raise mix of cross and regular bows, but If i had to choose only one it would be an army of pommelthrowes.
11:50
Why not Both?
Quite Far but kinda same, in a Battle, a Japanese Army often employ both Archer and Matchlocks, using Archers of both Ashigaru and Samurai to suppress the enemy while the Matchlocks will fire the devastating volley.
I was watching a movie about the Mongols yesterday, and it occurred to me that I know very little about their close-in combat. I know that they were excellent archers from horseback which gave them a speed and range advantage over everyone else in an open field, but how did they fight in close quarters? [Wow, I just started watching your video on Mongols vs knights, and got as far as the Great Courses ad then returned here to edit my comment. Your GC ad is the BEST, by far, that I've seen yet. I bought several courses back before they had on-line access, and have been considering subscribing to the on-line service for some time. You sold me.on it.]
They fought worse in close-quarters, this is why pitched battle during Mamluk-Mongols war were mostly won by Mamluks. Same with 2nd Invasion of Hungary or Poland, by more heavily armored european knights.
Slingers : "Look at what they need to mimic a fraction of our power"
Talking about Genoese crossbowmen.
Includes 2/3 pictures with Hussite soldiers.
Okay.
Question!! How small did mideavil crossbows get?
There were smalls ones which were not much bigger than your hand, but those seem to be more of a curiosity/toy for rich nobles than having any practical application. I don't know how small you can make a crossbow and still retain practicality though.
Tods Workshop channel on youtube Balestrino.
Kimosabe you men this ?ruclips.net/video/KyzhrbbuDM0/видео.html
Im a Bulgarian and we used Horseback Archers a lot . People were basically born on a horse and died on one too , mainly nomadic up until 681 a horse and a bow was a essential combination . I would go with mounted archers and grounded crossbowman combination , some diversity wont hurt xD
About that point made around 5:00 that you could have a crossbow ready, but not a bow:
I think thay comparison is wrong for two reasons:
1. The crossbow bolt won't just stay in place when you carry around a crossbow, but fall off.
2. You can just walk around with a bow and a notched arrow if you're in a dangerous area. You still will need to draw first before shooting, but your rate of fire afterwards will be way quicker with a bow.
Exept that some crossbows had a metal clip holding the bolt so u could aim down from a wall etc...
It depends on the quality of troops I'm recruiting. If they're untrained peasants I'd give them crossbows every time, if they're trained and well versed with their weapons already I'd go with bows.
Except untrained peasants would break the fragile crossbow, shoot each other in misfires, etc.,
Bowmen, i want to find the one "diamond" among the troops... Fantasy note in Tolkien's lore in fight 2 Elf's could kill 2 Balrog's in fight for Gondolith or Elf Fingolfin hurt The Dark Lord Melkor 7 times and these feats cannot be done by dexterious jumping around with bow, but was made in melee and it needed strenght plus lots of valor and might
bellissimo come sempre
My brother used to be on the archery team so in response I got a crossbow and the ability to aim ur shot with patience makes a huge difference in target shooting
Metatron fails to mention that in head to head battles at Agincourt and Crecy the long bow absolutely destroyed the crossbow-- greater range and rate of fire.
True. I've always thought that if I were in a battle in a forest or an area with lots of cover, I'd rather have crossbow, but in an open field, I'd prefer a longbow. [Not that I could hit the broad side of a barn with either, but I'm assuming I'm trained.]
2 battles in a war won by the French...
@@pickleballer1729 The eternal question I've asked myself. I'd rather have my compound bow over my crossbow in all situations except sniping from cover. With a whisker biscuit I can run semi cocked through a forest and shoot multiple shots off.
@@keithmoriyama5421 Whisker Biscuit? Never heard that one before.
@@batteredwarrior
Us french brang fuckin canons at the end so we kinda broke the question.
I'll just choose the more modern crossbow: the arquebus ;)
No need to worry about that silly "accuracy" training, just make loud and flash at them! 😅
That was a very good video on the topic.
You might add that professional naval crossbowmen such as the Catalan crossbowmen did have two crossbows and no servant. It might be possible to span two crossbows simultaneously on a ship.
If a crossbowmen has a pavese and an iron hat helmet, he can become a moving turtle, because a crossbow can be used with a hanging pavese.
Great question. I suspect the question boils down to resource availability and the available for training. If I'm from somewhere that metal is expensive but wood is plentiful I'm going with the war bow. If I was somewhere that I had a large number of shop keepers, weavers, smiths, etc. who's employment isn't as seasonal as agriculture I'm going with the crossbow, especially if we're able to aquire metal for the triggering mechanism at affordable rates.
The type of wood used for longbows is rare and requires a lot of work and industry to turn into a bow. Also time iirc
The faster training of troops is also the reason arcubusses replaced bows. 14 days for a muscetier years for bowmen.
These are weapons of war, not a personal defense weapon. The way you knew it was time to use one is that you woke up that morning marshaled in a big army, staring across a field at another army. The notion that you'd just be going about your normal day just toting around a crossbow ready to fire is absurd. For one thing, it's dangerous. For another, the quarrel is just perched in a groove atop your crossbow. It's not held in place, so if you tip your weapon, it falls off. So the notion that having to nock an arrow and draw the bow before firing being a big disadvantage is pretty silly. In the context in which medieval battles would be fought, you'd have more than ample time to do this. Where the crossbow *does* have an advantage is that it's far more forgiving of the user. You don't need to be stupendously strong, you don't need as much training, and you can hold the weapon and aim with deliberation, where an archer must release the bow shortly after drawing. But, in exchange, they fire much more slowly. War crossbows require superhuman strength to draw without leverage, which is why you see all kinds of mechanical assistance. The result is that they have a much lower sustained rate of fire, though archer fatigue over the course of a long battle would also limit how many arrows could be feasibly fired over a longer battle. But even more importantly, the vulnerability of crossbowmen in pitched battle as they reload their contraptions severely limited their mobility. This is because they'd have to bring heavy pavises or mantlets with them to provide cover from counter-battery. Not too difficult if you're defending a fixed position, or setting up for a prolonged siege, but a severe limitation when you're marching in foreign fields.
Aaron Long that’s what I was thinking too and to add on this, Archers can stay in the back row and shoot above the heads of their own army, whereas crossbowmen are only effective in the front row because crossbows can‘t really shoot at an angle. That‘s why archers were also more effective in a siege, they could actually shoot their arrows over the walls
@@felixd.5876 I hadn't even thought of that, that is a pretty good point. Though I'm not sure it would be impossible to use indirect fire with a crossbow, but I would venture to suggest that the same feature of being easy to train would make such tricks as indirect fire unlikely to be effective. But in principle, there's no technical reason you couldn't fire a crossbow over the heads of your front-line troops. I remember reading some tech fluff about the Army experimenting with smart optics on rifles which would, with the aid of a computer, let a squad fire indirectly by giving each rifleman a indicator on their aimpoint to guide the fire.
Aaron Long it‘s not really possible and it was one of the reasons that the French lost the Battle of Agincourt so badly. Their crossbowmen were in the back row and could not fire their bolts at the English army uphill.
I don‘t know very much about it but it has something to do with the bolts because they had a different type of feathering (idk if this is the correct word)...
@@felixd.5876 The most recent research shows that the high casualties among French knights at Agincourt happened at very close range where the English archers were engaged in direct fire--20 paces or less. Indirect fire might work well against lightly armored troops on a battle field, but against heavily armed troops, knights and men-at-arms the arrows needed to be fired at close range with hardened steel arrowheads. And even then, the high lethality of the English longbow men was due to a combination of having well trained professional archers as well as being a numbers game. Lets say your armor is 95% arrow proof, that means every 20th arrow, on average, is going to do something to you, whether it's delivering a wound, or damaging your armor (the French knights complained particularly about visors and the eye slits as being particularly vulnerable) Each arrow that damages your armor makes you more vulnerable to constant incoming arrow fire. Eventually a severe wound will be inflicted. An English archer with a war bow could loose anywhere between ten-twelve arrows per minute while a crossbow had a rate of fire of about three bolts per minute on average. Clearly, if you had to raise an army in a hurry, the crossbow is the better choice. However, if both trained crossbowmen and trained longbow men were available in equal numbers, I'd choose the longbow men for my army every time. It's worth remembering that after Agincourt, the French largely refused open battle with English armies and won back their lost lands though a series of sieges, and at the very end, when they did accept open battle with the English they were able to defeat the longbow men with massed cannon fire.
Andrew Lustfield while you are right about the the casualties in the lines of the french knights, just imagine how demoralizing it must have been if 5000-7000 longbowmen fire all their arrows at once, even darkening the sky, and inflicting heavy casualties on everyone who doesn‘t have a somewhat good metal armour.
And while the french were able to defeat the English in the war, you can argue how much this has to do with the archer/crossbowmen argument, because IIRC the French had the numbers advantage throughout most of the war.
I would find it interesting if you would showcase an actual historical events where these two weapons meet on the battlefield
Often when the French were fighting the English, the French utilized the Genoese Crossbowmen as mercenaries. Agincourt, Poiters and Crecy are the ones I know off (and the Crossbowmen did not fare well). Part of the issue at Crecy was that the Crossbow is a poor wet weather weapon. When it rains, both crossbows and longbows/warbows need to be destringed to protect the strings from getting wet. Unstringing and Restringing the Warbow/Longbow is very easy and quick. Unstringing and Restringing a Crossbow is complicated as it required mechanical means to do so.
for personal security, guards,fighting in a town,building,dense forest-crossbow,for big military use,big field battles against cavalry or infantry charges-well trained long bowmen,rain of arrows into a huge crowd of enemies