[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

Recently I have been revisiting my conceptions of crossbows when compared to bows. I thought the extremely heavy draw weights of crossbow's prods, some of them so heavy you could only draw the cord using a mechanism, would render the crossbow a powerfull shooting weapon, although having a slow time to shoot again.

However, I saw people arguing on XV and XIV century armor groups that such heavy draw weights doesn't count that much since the prod isn't pushed many centimeters (although theoretically you could, but it wasn't done at the time), so you don't use that much of energy, to the point that even 1000-15000lb windlass-operated crossbows would have pretty much the same penetration force of a 120lb longbow, something like that. So, besides being easier to master (though not that easy, as you had had training with it as Portuguese sources show) than a longbow, crossbows doesn't really offer any advantage compared to a bow, but I find this to be contradictory ...

The crossbow is always pointed as the main reason or one of the main reasons why Western Armies had advantage against their enemies, namely the Early Crusades, the Teutonic Knights' conquest of Prussia and even the Hungarian conflicts with Mongols in 1240's. So, apparently the Mongolian bow was even better than the Longbow, it seems, but the success of Hungarian resistance in the Siege of Esztergom's citadel has been attributed to the crossbow, and in many circumstances where the Hungarians had successes or punished their enemies the crossbow has to be mentioned.

So, both the Turks and the Mongols were heavily adept on the bow, so how can we explain that a weapon in all respects inferior to a bow should be credited with such successes? Not to mention that crossbows were used by Levantine Muslims in proportion, and in Spain the Granadines were recognized by all other Muslims as adept crossbowmen.

By the way, does it make sense to attribute the successes of Mongol attacks on the Sajó Bridge and in the later stages of the Battle of Mohi to catapults and early firearms? Both seem to be particularly inefficient, and the Mongols had this strange tendency of using catapults against soldiers (which I thought it was just a Hollywood trop) while those were generally used against structures.

[T. Kew]

I tend to feel that the best way to approach any question like this is to start from the assumption that people in the past were not idiots. They may have been less informed than we are today, but they were just as smart and could evaluate options and make decisions just as well as we can.

If we look at the bow vs the crossbow and say "well the crossbow is obviously just worse for reasons X and Y, why did anyone ever use it?", but history shows that the crossbow was used at least as much as the bow (if not moreso), the conclusion to take needs to be "ok, we were wrong, the features we thought were critical are clearly compensated for by other points or simply less important than we imagined". Maybe rate of fire, for example, simply isn't that important in practice in most cases.

In the modern world we are also very prone to over-weighting the effect of technological differences between weapon systems and under-weighting the 'soft' (social, cultural, organisational, etc) differences between the soldiers wielding them. English yeoman archers were a relatively well organised, respected and paid class of semi-professional infantry - that can be at least as important to their success on the battlefield as the specific weapons they held.

[Sean Manning]

Also, most books on European crossbows focus on the period after 1400 because we have surviving crossbows and those beautiful Flemmish paintings, but there are many hints that European crossbows between 1000 and 1350 were different. They probably had long-powerstroke crossbows, and did not often make those inefficient but powerful steel crossbows. See Age of Datini.

So if you want to understand battles in the 11th, 12th, 13th century you need to study crossbows in that period, not crossbows in the 15th and 16th century.

[Bartek Strojek]

From the perspective of sheer energy, 1200 pound crossbow, even spanned over only 6 inches, theoretically can store way more energy than even 200 pound bow over 28 inches.

And if we're to believe this video, Andreas Bichler already reconstructed 1200 pounder that is indeed shooting way harder than any 120 pound bow out there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2Rl9DLUfao

With more than 197 Joules of KE. Same crossbow supposedly managed 202 J with heavier bolt as well.


Besides, as usually mentioned in those discussions, ability to hold the weapon spanned, ready to shoot and aimed at all time, together with ability to easily shot from various positions, and from beyond various cover, was undoubtedly greatly valued thing about crossbow.

[Wilhelm S.]

[Ryan S.]

First, I think that the claim that crossbows won a battle doesn't necessarily mean that the crossbow was the best weapon, but rather, that it was the weapon that was most relied upon. For example, the longbows won the battle of Agincourt, in part because the English had so many of them. There were reasons other than battle effectiveness that explain why the English had longbows and not crossbows or just more knights.

Second, I am no expert, but I always think of the Mongols and Turks as being primarily horse archers. You can't use a crossbow on a horse very well. However, if one is shooting from behind a wall, slow reloading and reduced mobility is less of a problem. I think the optimal way to use a crossbow is to have teams of loaders and shooters behind a wall. Especially in a city under siege, this would be advantageous. The city could recruit civilians into the defense and employ them as loaders or even shooters. Maybe the city keeps an extra stockpile of crossbows, and the people fleeing the countryside to the city would provide a surplus of people, so 2 loaders per shooter is feasible. I imagine a group of shooters could then fire a steady stream of rapid fire bolts on the attackers. However, they don't have to hold their bows spanned til the enemy is close enough.

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

As mentioned, that reconstruction by Andreas Bichler indicates suggests that certain historical crossbow designs outperformed most any yew bow. Some 15th-century European crossbows with horn prods were even bigger while still being convenient for a single person to use (weighing 10lbs or less). Steel crossbows seem to do much worse based on recent reconstructions, though Ralph Payne-Gallwey claimed to have shot very far with that 15th-century example he refurbished.

If you compare the cranequin-spanned horn crossbow with a military-weight yew bow, the former has a few notable advantages: higher kinetic energy & thus penetration, higher velocity & thus greater range (probably, depending on aerodynamics of the projectiles in question), higher accuracy, little physical conditioning required, greater ability to shoot from cover, & a faster first shot (spanned & loaded crossbow vs. bow with arrow nocked but not drawn). The yew bow has the advantage of overall rate of shooting, simplicity, & cost.

However, it's important to remember that the cranequin & windlass weren't the only ways to span military crossbows. Belt-spanning methods & the goat's-foot lever remained popular even in the 15th & 16th centuries. We know relatively little about how these methods function, but sources like El Victorial give the impression that crossbows spanned in such fashion come closer to bows. They require strength to operate & likely manage approximately equivalent performance to yew bows at any given fitness level. They shoot slower but not nearly as slowly as crossbows spanned by cranequin or windlass.

In any situation with cover, such as defending fortifications or skirmishing in rough terrain, the crossbow strikes me as significantly superior to the bow. Without that element, the crossbow's advantage in accuracy counts for a lot. I used to underestimate this based on European sources & how they show that crossbowers & troops with firearms trained extensively. However, a 17th-century manual by Cheng Zong You explicitly lays out the difficulty of shooting a bow well & relative ease of wielding a crossbow. It recommends a crossbow acknowledged as weaker than a 50lb bow for this reason, using poisoned bolts to make up for the weapon's minimal stopping power.

Also, while many crossbow designs surely would be inconvenient on horseback, European cavalry made considerable use of crossbows.

[Wilhelm S.]

[Ryan S.]

[Graham Shearlaw]

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

[Sean Manning]

Tripple post.

[Ryan S.]

[Jean Henri Chandler]

A few comments on this

Fist, I think several people already made some good points I'd like to emphasize.

Pedro makes a good point that crossbows start to be 'mentioned in the dispatches' a lot going back to the first Crusade and before. The Mongols mentioned them a lot, as being a problem.

Tea made perhaps the most important meta-point - we should not look at these people and assume they are imbeciles. This is very challenging for us because the historiography of the 19th and 20th Century tended to think hat way, but they were wrong.

Sean also made a good point that there are many different types of crossbows, just as there are many different types of bows and firearms.

I think Bartek is wise to point out the work of herr Bichler. I'd also like to contextualize this by saying that Bichler is an academic who has made a very deep study of the historical methods for making crossbows. This is the big difference, IMO, between his results and those of some of our friends who have made replicas without really looking into let alone using historical construction methods. It is no small thing to emulate the accumulated skill of multiple generations of artisans or a lifetime of honing a craft.

Bartek also points out that crossbows can be held in readiness longer. I'll add to this.

Some corrections



I think it's manifestly incorrect to suggest that crossbows can't be used or were not well suited to use on horseback. I'm sure it was quite difficult, especially with the heavier military grade weapons, but we know that mounted crossbowmen were in wide use in the late medieval period. In NE Europe, it was routine practice for every lance or gleve of heavy cavalry to include at least one mounted crossbowman, and they were also used as scouts. They were considered an indispensable countermeasure for heavy cavalry when facing Steppe Nomads, who remained a constant menace throughout the high-to-late medieval and early modern periods. But these types of troops were also popular in Italy and Switzerland, Burgundy and Scandinavia. Clearly the found a niche. Perhaps the difference in perspective here is between the High and late Medieval period.

There is art and written sources from Italy, Poland, Holy Roman Empire, Swiss Confederation, Hungary, Austria, Bohemia Flanders, Holland, Sweden and Burgundy, that I know of, depicting and describing the use of mounted crossbowmen going back to the late 14th Century.


It's worth pointing out as well that the Ottomans and Arabs also used a type of crossbow. Mostly in siege warfare but also on horseback.

A few points
Crossbows and bows work differently, and crossbows have a possible advantage in siege warfare. As Bartek mentioned, the crossbow can be held in readiness indefinitely. It is also more accurate for being aimed at individual targets. Self-bows (i.e. 'bows') work at long range, but generally as shot in volleys, or what the English called 'clout shooting'. Their range for hitting an individual target has been variously estimated, but rarely over 50 meters. Crossbow shooting contest rules stipulate shooting at 8" sized targets at that range, and note that the bolt should not fall more than from the mans forehead to his chin over that distance.

This type of direct shot accuracy can mean that during a siege, attackers have to set up further away from the wall. This exact situation is mentioned in all kinds of chronicles and accounts from the Late Medieval period (notably the Swiss Chronicles and Jan Dlugosz) but you can also read accounts of this in 13th Century books like the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia.

I think it's quite likely, by the way, that many of the late medieval type spanners developed for crossbows were made precisely so they could be used on horseback. Including both cranequin and the goats foot / wippe type spanners, and needless to say, the Latchet crossbows which remained in use in some places well into the late 16th Century (for example in the Scottish borderlands).

On the other hand, bows were better for plunging shots and with flight arrows, probably had a better total range. This seems to have been a factor in naval warfare.

Also, crossbows usually shoot heavier projectiles than bows, very generally speaking. Arrows used by steppe nomads were often in the 20-40 gram range. Longbows shot arrows around 50-60 grams. Crossbows, at least by the late medieval period, were shooting bolts on average around 80 grams, and big wall crossbows such as the one in one of Bichlers vidoes, could shoot bolts of 200 grams or more. This may not be needed to kill a man, but it could mean a greater likelihood of killing a horse, and doing so more quickly. This is obviously a big problem for any cavalry, perhaps especially Steppe nomads whose horses aren't as likely to be well protected.



For siege warfare, we also know that crossbows were used frequently with pyrotechnic compounds to start fires, and they seemed to have a niche for this as well.


The question about the short powerstroke is still frankly, a mystery. I don't think we actually understand why this design change was made. But if we remember Teas point, and remain cognizant of work like that of mr Bichler or the discoveries of guys like Payne-Gallwey (instead of trying to dismiss them because they doesn't match our preconceptions) we may eventually figure that part out.

[Ryan S.]

I don't think anyone here thinks people back then were stupid. I think the main question is which was better, the bow or crossbow? If the crossbow was better, then why would militaries still use the bow? Obviously, those are simple questions that, however, can not be answered with simple answers. It is a good starting point to discuss the crossbow and bow. It doesn’t imply that the people in the past were idiots.

I think one also has to avoid going to the other extreme and assume that people always made the optimal choice. People don't know everything, and are often hesitant to adopt changes. War is a harsh teacher, and so when one side adopts an improvement that allows them to win, then the other side, will also seek to adopt that improvement. However, if they keep winning, perhaps for other reasons such as a larger army, then they will be more tolerant of inefficiencies and often resist change. Of course, change can be hard, imagine if the English tried to turn on their longbowmen to crossbowmen.

As far as mounted crossbowmen, I didn't mean to imply that they didn't exist, but that being mounted makes a different cost benefit analysis. The result being that in certain situations and for certain types of combatants, a bow is the better choice. That mounted crossbowmen were used as scouts or skirmishers makes sense. If a scout happens upon an enemy, the "fire-ready" feature of his crossbow would help him to shot first, and he wouldn't have to worry about reloading if he either charged or fled.

Thanks for the pictures, they are an interesting addition. I especially like the first one as a work of art. It seems to be consistent that in the art, crossbows are used by the attackers in a siege, but not the defenders. Maybe, that has to do with the story the pictures are telling. The picture with the fireworks, for example, has the defenders not doing much, just looking on and perhaps being afraid. Anyway, are crossbows especially good siege weapons? I would have thought that it isn't worth it to try and shoot a defender through a keyhole.

Here is an interesting link with pictures of a crossbowman fighting lancers. https://www.quora.com/How-practical-would-it-be-to-use-a-medieval-crossbow-on-horseback-compared-to-a-composite-bow

I also found a source that says that Crusaders sometimes shot in pairs, one to load and the other to shoot. It has a lot of information, but it is in German: http://www.bucavasgyuro.net/data/publikaciok/...replik.pdf

[Sean Manning]

[Jean Henri Chandler]

The image you liked of the mounted crossbowman is from one of the illustrated Swiss chronicles by Diebold Schilling. Those are full of crossbowmen (and many other kinds of warriors armed with a wide variety of weapons). There are dozens of depiction in those chronicles showing mounted and dismounted, attacker and defender armed with crossbows.

The other image in the discussion you linked to is from Hans Talhoffer. That's one of the fencing manuals, he gets into some plays with the crossbow facing lancers and swordsmen on horseback.

The "are they stupid or what" thing comes in from the fact that in Continental Latin Europe, for several centuries, the favored weapon was the crossbow, until very gradually replaced by firearms. They knew of and could acquire the English style longbow and the steppe nomad type recurve composite bow, but they preferred the crossbow. I think it's clear they had good reason, and I do not believe they were 'stuck in a rut' for four hundred years.Contrary to modern myth, this was not a period where people were really stuck in a rut, especially in the late medieval period when the more powerful crossbows appeared.

I think Sean hit the nail on the head bringing up the English-centric version of history we get in the English-speaking world. All countries heavily emphasized nationalistic and patriotic, to put it politely, agendas into their approach to history, and this was especially true all over Europe and the English speaking world in the 19th-20th Centuries. But in the middle ages, England was not the center of the world. To the contrary, England was fairly behind and the most sophisticated (technologically, culturally, economically) parts of Europe were in Central / Northern Italy, Flanders (today Belgium) and Central Europe (Germany, Bohemia etc.), roughly in that order.

I think the issue with who used what also had to do with the training culture associated with each type of weapon: Longbow, recurve bow, firearm, and crossbow. Part of the legacy of a Victorian English perception of medieval history is that we inherited the trope that crossbows are simple to use ('any peasant can pick one up') whereas Longbows took years of training.

This isn't really true, in the sense that while some crossbows, the kind you could by from Wham-o in the 1960s for example, are indeed simple, and some of the ones used in medieval warfare were as well, most of the military grade ones used then, certainly by the late medieval period, are not. Spanning a weapon with a 1,000 or 1,200 lb draw is a complex and fairly risky process which can leave you with a serious injury if you screw it up. Doing so under duress even more so. Managing these weapons from horseback clearly took considerable skill as a rider, as a marksman, and as a specialist at the intersection of both roles. This skill was developed in three ways - through a lively and vigorous culture of warlike sports, including shooting contests, in all the cities of Central, Northern and Southern Europe; avid hunting done in a militaristic manner also throughout Europe, and near constant low-intensity warfare.

The guys on horseback in the Swiss Chronicle charging the defensive position with their crossbows were not from some peasant levy. They had probably grown up with the shooting contests, hunted with crossbows on horseback, and had participated in small skirmishes and sieges many times a year since they came of age to join the militia or sign up as a mercenary for a season. Mounted crossbowmen were well paid, as much as demi-lancers, and were highly valued elite soldiers.

Crossbowmen in general, both mounted and on foot, continued to be used alongside handgunners through the end of the 15th Century and for a generation into the 16th. This alone tells us that they must have been pretty effective or they would have been phased out more quickly. The idea that these people were 'stuck in a rut' and couldn't figure out that crossbows were sub-optimal is extremely unlikely given the explosive pace of (highly effective) innovations in weapons, armor, and military tactics at this time.

J

[T. Kew]