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Re: Crossbows vs. Longbows
Every post, and this does look more and more like a personal agenda - and a very emotionally biased one, at that. On that note, I do not choose a side in this argument, I believe that both tools of war have valid applications, and that one may excel where the other fails - thus my amusement with this entire argument. But still, I want to dance with you, Joe. :p
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<3 I have yet to see a weapon fire magic bullets, and I would agree that the longbow certainly does not do so. And neither does the crossbow. I think your rigid thinking holds you back from the true reality of warfare (especially medieval warfare), that there is no right answer - there is only what works. |
Re: Crossbows vs. Longbows
As I recall the History Channel had a show on the Battle of Crecy(hitler was not involved strangely enough). They performed tests which concluded that the English longbowmen's arrows couldn't actually penetrate French armor. They then brought in a crowd control expert who studied the landscape of the battle and thought it would represent a serious crowd control problem. They were fighting in a valley and all of the French knights were going after the same few British nobles. The History Channel then looked at how the saturated ground affected troop movement. The effect of the mud was so bad that it required something like 30lbs of force for a fully armored French knight to pull his boot out of the mud. The much lighter armored English longbowmen did not have this problem. They concluded that the French had serious crowd control issues that caused them to bunch and fall over. Unfortunately for the French, due to the suction generated by the mud+heavy smooth armor contact, the French knights became exhausted and stuck in the mud. At this point the English longbowmen just walked around and slit all of the noble's throats as they received nothing for a ransom. Its been a while since I've seen that episode so I probably have a few "facts" wrong. The History Channel has seemed to have moved on to end of the world garbage :(
On another note, the Pope outlawed crossbows for some time because they were so devastating. I think its very clear where I stand in the crossbow vs. longbow debate. Edit: wow this post is 15 pages long. I thought it was 3 pages... |
Re: Crossbows vs. Longbows
If your memory is correct it seems that TV show ignored the presence of horses entirely. Even if longbow arrows couldn't penetrate french armour (which I believe they could) they could still take down the horses, causing a huge amount of damage. Coming off a horse abruptly in full armour while other fellows on huge horses in full armour are charging around and doing the same, that can't be a lot of fun.
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Re: Crossbows vs. Longbows
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<3 JM For the record, I'm on neither side of the debate. I was actually arguing a completely seperate point :) |
Re: Crossbows vs. Longbows
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As for the Pyramids, I don't know, what function did they have besides being an impressive looking amount of rocks that formed a gigantic tomb? There's enough similar megalomaniacal projects around the world all time. |
Re: Crossbows vs. Longbows
Yeah I'm definitely not convinced we /can't/ reproduce great works of the past, it's just that we /don't/. We produce great works appropriate to our time, like supercomputers, skyscrapers and power stations. Can we make something just like the pyramids? Of course we can. But we won't, because who would ever put all the effort and manpower in? Culturual and societal pressures are entirely different.
That said we could easily make a modern versions of the pyramids by stacking machine made concrete cubes on each other. It wouldn't be impressive like th pyramids are though, because the process involved wouldn't be impressive. |
Re: Crossbows vs. Longbows
I want to build a pyramid in my garden to preserve me for the afterlife. I would certainly not want to look bad when attending to afterlife parties. Also, with a pyramid, my fans would have a natural place of worship.
Oh, and the pyramid could also function as a place to stash my body while I'm being called back from the place of fairies and fancy dress parties. |
Re: Crossbows vs. Longbows
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Just to clarify one thing - we still do not *know* how on Earth those pyramids got completed. The theories are getting better, but it's truly astounding how large the stones are, even near the top - we would have tremendous problems placing those stones today without a helicopter. But back to the masonry, the Pyramids, like many ancient masterworks of stone, never had and never needed mortar, or anything to bind the stones together. They are fashioned at a level comparable to the finest machine cut stone (bear in mind, I am really comparing them to modern human stonecutters), despite the fact that they are not regular and standardized in size and shape. Even more astounding to me, are the "viewing" portals placed strategically about the structures. These are angled tunnels, of less than 1' square, leading out from key chambers to coincide with astronomical events. There are thousands of feet of these tunnels, and the ones that I have seen (they've sent at least a couple of RC cameras up them) are perfectly smooth - impeccably crafted into hundreds of stones which whose placement and assembly is simply incredible. We don't have stonemasons today that can even approach this level of craftsmanship on any scale even remotely approaching the construction of such an immense structure. If Khufu had ordered the Pyramid built on the day of his birth (no mean feat!) it is estimated that 250 tons of stone would have to be installed every day for his entire 60+ years of life, if they had expected it to be complete in time for his death. Also, a cited quote from Wikipedia- "The accuracy of the pyramid's workmanship is such that the four sides of the base have a mean error of only 58 millimeter in length, and 1 minute in angle from a perfect square. The base is horizontal and flat to within 15 mm. The sides of the square are closely aligned to the four cardinal compass points (within 3 minutes of arc based on true north not magnetic north)." Show me someone today who can perform this feat with only 5000 year old technology, and I will surely give you a cookie, sir. Oh and did you know, that the longbow was just used to humiliate the French at Crecy, while the Welsh waited for them to exhaust themselves, so they could slit their throats? That account of the battle seems a bit fanciful, but I can get behind it. The longbow even wins fights where it kills no one. :o |
Re: Crossbows vs. Longbows
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Common knowledge (hence often wrong) - looking at the number of bullets produced in WWII, and the number of causalties inflicted, dividing the former by the latter.. arrives at the figure of 10,000 bullets per casualty. Which, to my mind gives hope - we really don't *like* to kill people. But the point in this context is filling the skies with sharp pointy things seems as valid today as it was hundreds of years ago. Second point: I have upon occassion gotten to metal detect for civil war bullets et.al I have found far more instances of unfired shells than fired ones. Point? Beats me? Perhaps the fired ones disintegrated or were carried off in bodies. Or perhaps, under the pressure of firing they dropped a lot more slugs than they fired. Just interesting. |
Re: Crossbows vs. Longbows
I don't want to draw the attention away here, just a harmless retort...
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How do you think will it look like in 5000 years? I don't know what it will be, but there will be something that people wonder about how we did it. That we actually managed to have space travel with this crude and dangerous technology, just shooting big barrels filled with hydrogen into the sky? And thus bringing humanity MTV, great-great-great-great grandfather of ALLNET or whatever. |
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