[Søren Niedziella]

I was looking through the "John Woodman Higgins Armoury" a while ago when I saw this helmet. I can't help smiling when I see it - though the poor guy certainly didn't. I wonder if he looked out from the castle wall at the wrong time?

Søren

[David Martin]

"Luce! Take a look over the parapet and see if they're still there!"

[Aaron Schnatterly]

... pierced by three, resisted a fourth..."

Gee... glad that 4th one didn't come all the way through! The head must've slowed it down some.

Morbid as this is, the forensic archaeology is really neat - talk about a bad day! I had an image of 4 archers just waiting around for a head to pop up - like a horde of kids around a Chuck E Cheese "whack-a-mole" game.

Look at this from the other direction - if the helm had been hit before the head - still would have been the same result. Given the high marks attributed to the armourer, it makes me wonder what the bows/crossbows were like to have generated such force.

[Allen W]

This strikes me as more of a period test target than a battle casualty.

[Allan Senefelder]

According to what I remember reading in the Higgins Collection catalog i've got from the 60's this helmet was found in the moat of a castle. Doesn't mean it wasn't a practice target but if some one were going to take four in the head sneaking a peak over the parapet they would either fall backwards or forwards over the wall and into the moat.

[Aaron Schnatterly]

[David Black Mastro]

[Aaron Schnatterly]

[Jean Thibodeau]

A draw of 5.5 and a weight of 1,640 : That is scary impressive . I wonder if this translates to a much faster bolt than a longbow arrow or maybe only a modest increase in speed but with a very heavy bolt.

The limbs of a very heavy draw weight bow does not mean that the mass of the limbs or the material can use that power to make the limbs move 10X faster than the limbs of a 164 pound draw resulting in an arrow moving ten time faster.

But a draw weight this high mean that a very heavy projectile won't be able to slow down the speed of the limbs, thus the bow string and arrow or bolt. So to take advantage of the stored energy efficiently there must be an ideal weight of projectile.

A much lighter projectile will only have a very insignificant higher velocity than the optimum projectile weight.

I'm just taking a wild guess here and anyone with an archery / physics who can give us an educated opinion about this would be very welcome.

I'm also curious about the range of power of crossbows from those spannable by hand and those using various types of pulleys or cranequin or stirrups and belt hooks. Oh, and the range of weight of bolts.

[David Black Mastro]

[David Black Mastro]

[Aaron Schnatterly]

[David Black Mastro]

Of course, when it comes to evaluating the power of steel-staved crossbows of the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, we should also consider the power of earlier wood-staved and composite-staved models. The Alexiad, written by the Byzantine Princess Anna Comnena, offers a description of the crossbow used by Western Crusaders during the First Crusade:

The cross-bow is a weapon of the barbarians [i.e., Franks], absolutely unknown to the Greeks. In order to stretch it one does not pull the string with the right hand while pushing the bow with the left away from the body; this instrument of war, which fires weapons to an enormous distance, has to be stretched lying almost on one's back; each foot is pressed forcibly against the half-circles of the bow and the two hands tug at the bow, pulling it with all one's strength towards the body... They [the bolts] are short, but extremely thick with a heavy iron tip. In firing, the string exerts tremendous violence and force, so that the missiles wherever they strike do not rebound; in fact they transfix a shield, cut through heavy iron breastplate and resume their flight on the far side, so irresistable is their discharge. An arrow of this type has been known to make its way right through a bronze statue, and when fired at the wall of a very great town its point either protruded from the inner side or buried itself in the wall and disappeared altogether. Such is the cross-bow, a truly diabolical machine. The unfortunate man who is struck by it dies without feeling the blow; however strong the impact, he knows nothing of it.

Even allowing for exaggeration, that's pretty impressive.

[Jean Thibodeau]

David, thanks ;

Very interesting as it seems that the laws of diminishing returns sort of kicks in when the mass of the bow and the thickness of bow string make the whole system inefficient at transmitting the energy to the bolt.

Maybe a longer draw with somewhat longer bolts than traditional would have made more efficient crossbows.

The solution used to increase power seemed to have been to just make heavier and heavier bows were a combination of heavier weight and longer draw might have given better results ?

Many much lower power recurve bows and compound bows give velocities of close or even above 200 feet per second at draw weights below 80 pounds.

It not the weight of the bow, it's the speed of the arrow.

If an 80 pound bow can accelerate an arrow of the same weight to the same speed as a 1600+ pound crossbow it says a lot about the efficiency or lack of efficiency of a design. ( Assuming I have my fact right. )

[Aaron Schnatterly]

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

[David Black Mastro]

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

That's about 1900 foot pounds - wow. More punch than some assault rifle rounds...

[Michael G. Myers]

[Gavin Kisebach]

This has my MP gears turning, and I must ask a couple of questions.

How tall were the walls of this fortification? The angle of entry is extremely high, and suggests to me that either the wearer was looking UP at the moment of impact (which is highly unusual) or the crossbowmen were right at the base of the wall. Why would crossbowmen be right beneath a parapet? Shouldn't they be further away behind pavises?

I'm no expert on how to storm a castle, so remember to add a dash of salt, but how much would I have to pay you to lean out thru a crennelation during a siege? if the facade of the wall was, say 18 - 24 inches thick, you'd have to lean out pretty far to expose an angle of enrty like this. I'd just toss a rock over and listen for "Le Ouch!"

Finally, what are the chances of three (four?) shots striking before Luce LeBozo figures out he should have stayed behind the wall and "piche la vache"? I'm sure the old trick of putting your helmet of a stick has been in use for some time.

I'm gonna swim upstream here and say this wasn't on Luce's head when these holes appeared.