Crossbows vs. Longbows

[lch]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

I don't know, come back to me when modern craftsmen can replicate the functional perfection of say, a Stradivarius, or the Great Pyramid. There are truly countless examples of physical feats that our predecessors performed at levels of proficiency that are as yet unmatched in modern day.

I don't want to enter any Crossbows vs. Longbows, Pirates vs. Ninjas, Vampires vs. Werewolves or similar discussions, but I actually have to tell a little story about this. There's this local guy that has used applied mathematics, FEM and stuff like that, to make stringed instruments. His work wasn't really popular, though, so he invested a couple of kilos and bought a Stradivarius. Then he submitted the Stradivarius as his own work, and (I think seperately) his own work as Stradivarius a couple of times. The supposed Stradivarius was always held in high favors and the perfect sound was emphasized, while the supposed own work performed not so good against "real" Stradivarius and similar great names. It shows that names are more important than quality even in this business. Since this little stunt, he now is really popular and makes good money by producing more strings, of which he can only make a few per year, AFAIK he's pretty overbooked now and he's in the newspapers here from time to time.

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.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by lch

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.

Well I didn't mean that the Pyramids themselves are functional, I was referring to functionality of the masonry involved, and the engineering required.

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.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

Again, the theory behind the use of archers seemed to be "sheer # of pointy sticks flying through the air". Perhaps hastily crafted arrows are not suitable for target archery, or even for hunting. But they are just fine for firing at thousands of screaming soldiers. Most of them. You shrug off the bad arrows, because you have highly trained your archers to fire quickly and tirelessly, to saturate your field with projectiles.

Interesting side note.

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.

[MachingunJoeTurbo]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

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.

And by this reasoning you are emotionally involved as well through your amusement.

You are gleefully missing the point. He said that working with less sophisticated equipment creates a better operator. The point boiled down to this - take a modern compound bow, and remove the sights and other "archer aids". Odds are, that the classically trained longbowman will operate that bow at a level superior to a modern archery student, who has only ever fired a bow with all of the modern accessories.

This simply cannot be possible. The mechanical aids also deal with the very function of the bow itself and the quality of its shots before the archer is involved. And how do you train said expert archer if the quality of equipment is not a given? Technology is a good thing. If you had it why wouldn't you use it?

Again, the theory behind the use of archers seemed to be "sheer # of pointy sticks flying through the air". Perhaps hastily crafted arrows are not suitable for target archery, or even for hunting. But they are just fine for firing at thousands of screaming soldiers. Most of them. You shrug off the bad arrows, because you have highly trained your archers to fire quickly and tirelessly, to saturate your field with projectiles.

This relies on purely on faith and the exactness required for even a semblance of accuracy over a short distance doesn't bear this out. You are assuming that they are "good enough" and assuming that again the archers are trained to the point where they shoot "tirelessly." Not so. Each successive shot of a bowmen will tend to get worse and worse as they tire and as they suffer from fear.

Oddly, you are also making an -assumption- here, that disagrees very widely with historical accounts, that only precisely and purposefully fired arrows are lethal. Most bow volleys were not fired at short range, and thus were not fired directly. They are lobbed in the general direction of a foe, with the assumption that enough of them will find meat, to justify the expense.

I would argue that history is on my side. After all you had "highly trained archers" shooting at European powers during colonialist and imperialist times. Why then did they not overpower said troops with their bows? Many of those countries like India had the longbow in their culture for many more years and refined to a point that England never took it. But despite the fact that said Imperialist powers were armored only in a brightly colored coat and armed with a weapon that was arguably slower than a crossbow, the bow shooting peoples did not prevail. If said fighting style of cohesive lateral missile weapons were not effective the outcome of that period of history would be very different.

And again when you look at other medieval battles you see without significantly hampering the assault and other factors England did not win. I continually point to Patay because you had a well rested troop of longbows outnumbering mere French scouts and they even had some stakes set up. But despite your claims they could not cut down a mere 100 of those French in total from any distance. While they in turn were massacred. Focus and seizing the moment in a cohesive strike is far better than missile spam of dubious quality.

I don't know, come back to me when modern craftsmen can replicate the functional perfection of say, a Stradivarius, or the Great Pyramid. There are truly countless examples of physical feats that our predecessors performed at levels of proficiency that are as yet unmatched in modern day.

Simply not true for reasons that others explained.

I believe the entire argument up to now, has been the temporal ease with which the English were able to raise large numbers of longbowmen. The point being that perhaps 1000 crossbowmen in many cases are superior to 1000 longbowmen, but 2000 longbowmen with slightly inferior ability, and slightly inferior arrows, will create a level of saturation that will -possibly- achieve the desired effect more readily. There are 2 VERY important points about this. The first is that the historical accounts are that this period was one of great success for England, so we know that the Welsh longbow must be good for something. But also, we know that there is no true way to compare the performance of the available alternatives, because we're hundreds of years past the fact. So you are arguing theory (your heartfelt beliefs in the ability of the crossbow) versus the reality of the longbow's success.

Again I've already mentioned Constance, the Hussite Crusades, Burgundian Wars and so on. "Longbow success" had more to do with French failures than the longbow. Because when they stopped failing they started winning quite handily.

And once more you had Europeans grossly outnumbered by bow wielding indigenous populations. Who won there is quite evident. You are still exaggerating the quality per arrow. There is no slightly. It has to be way way down. There is no other possible way they could literally MISS an UNARMORED dude that many times otherwise despite them being in nicely organized blobs.

Many animal parts were used for composite bows (cross or traditional), but composite crossbows were not used exclusively, nor was whale bone the industry standard. Seems that ox and other more commonly seen animals yielded most of the materials.

And even this brings the cost up. More materials mean more cost. The fact they even bothered with whale bone shows how important they thought they were and how they could not be "cheap."

I do not think that anyone argued that we can do things that more primitive men could not. The point is, they also could do things that WE cannot. Pride in our accomplishments will not bring back the depth and capability of pre-modern craftsmen.

Pride won't technology will.

Nunchuck skills?

Yea verily.

Where do you get your figures on expected medieval salaries? This is a pretty bold claim, and I think deserves a source.

Compared to several other claims made by other posters that go unquestioned? Not really but you didn't ask them now did you? No doubt in several places I've read but if you want an example from the horses mouth you can look at this old English wage roll cited here in this quaint old book

http://books.google.com/books?id=r7o...esult#PPA59,M1

"Paid to Geoffry le Chamberlin, for the wages of twelve crossbow-men, and thirteen archers, for twenty-four days, each crossbow-man receiving by the day 4d and each archer 2d"

Archers made more than a standard foot mook generally and crossbows more than that as shown here.

Well it's a good thing that no one ever celebrated and revered master archers, or you might not have a point at all here.

Except that "Master of Crossbowmen" was also Master of Archers. My point is still there I'm sorry to inform you.

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.

And the system that works is the crossbow and what "evolved" from it so to speak. That's the military legacy that came to dominate the world, the simple firearm.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by MachingunJoeTurbo

This simply cannot be possible. The mechanical aids also deal with the very function of the bow itself and the quality of its shots before the archer is involved.

I would argue that history is on my side. After all you had "highly trained archers" shooting at European powers during colonialist and imperialist times. Why then did they not overpower said troops with their bows?

And the system that works is the crossbow and what "evolved" from it so to speak. That's the military legacy that came to dominate the world, the simple firearm.

You missed the point. Operator (the archer) can change his equipment and adapt.

A skilled acher A without mechanical aid will shoot worse than skilled archer B with mechanical aid.
If both use bows WITHOUT mechanical aid, A will shoot better than B because B hasn't learned to judge things without his aids.
Which one would shoot better, if BOTH used mechanical aids? Will the things A has learned before using an aid offset the fact that B has more experience shooting with an aid?

Second, colonialist and imperialist times were different. I haven't studied the time, but gunpowder weapons would make huge difference. For one, gunpowder made knights obsolete, something longbows and crossbows never managed.

Third, crossbows and firearms aren't related. A gun isn't "better crossbow". That's like saying water-pistols are based on crossbows. Some guns are held like crossbows and I guess almost all have a trigger, but there are many guns that are nothing like the crossbow, and many of the things that make guns superior would be impossible in a crossbow.

[Agema]

Originally Posted by MachingunJoeTurbo

I would argue that history is on my side. After all you had "highly trained archers" shooting at European powers during colonialist and imperialist times.

And once more you had Europeans grossly outnumbered by bow wielding indigenous populations. Who won there is quite evident. You are still exaggerating the quality per arrow. There is no slightly. It has to be way way down. There is no other possible way they could literally MISS an UNARMORED dude that many times otherwise despite them being in nicely organized blobs.
...

Were they highly trained? Well disciplined? Good morale? I'd suggest overwhelmingly they were not. Many also did not have (as) good bows. Or they did not use massed bowfire. In fact, several times those Indian longbowmen actually took a fair toll on the English in battles.

I continually point to Patay because you had a well rested troop of longbows outnumbering mere French scouts and they even had some stakes set up.

You continually misportray Patay. Firstly, the English were caught unprepared with barely the time to form up, which has doomed many armies. Secondly, what you dismissively call "scouts" were HEAVY CAVALRY. Thirdly, the English (5000) outnumbered the French (1500) as a whole, but in fact there were well under 1000 longbowmen, who had neither got their stakes up properly (which you half-concede), were not supported by melee troops, nor had their flanks secured.

Again I've already mentioned Constance, the Hussite Crusades, Burgundian Wars and so on. "Longbow success" had more to do with French failures than the longbow. Because when they stopped failing they started winning quite handily.

I severely doubt longbowmen were present in the Hussite crusades or Burgundian wars in significant numbers, or that the generals using them would be accustomed to their best usage, if indeed they even could get best usage given the relatively small number of them available.

And the system that works is the crossbow and what "evolved" from it so to speak. That's the military legacy that came to dominate the world, the simple firearm.

That's like saying railways evolved from canals. Firearms did not evolve from the crossbow or the bow.

[P3D]

The English longbow did not need the years of training in order to get the archers to hit the target. It needed that to build up the muscles to pull a 120lbs+ longbow - resulting in bone deformities found on medieval skeletons.
And you needed that strength to punch through any armor.

As comparison, modern bows are much lighter. Entry-level adult bows are usually around 40 lbs (pound force, 4.54N), the ones used by the average hobbyists are 60-80, be they of whatever type. 40-60lbs bows in the medieval were used by the womenfolk of castles - for hunting and last-ditch defense. And much less effective in combat - shorter range and penetrating power. I was shooting a 40lbs bow and it had hard time penetrate 1" pine from 20 yards or so, FWIW.

OTOH. Get a crossbow and an average medieval youth, with strong muscles from physical work. Longbows have to be pulled by upper body, while crossbows are pulled by (stronger) leg muscles or windlass. You get the range and penetrating power (as in 80lbs+) you need without too much of training and could trump the range and power of any long bow with a crossbow strong enough. Granted, you need the resources to field 3 crossbowmen for each longbowmen for the same ROF - but they would need about the same amount of ammunition for comparable effect.

Of course, if your king orders archery to be a national pastime for every commoner, and your society is suitable for it - e.g. a peasantry not oppressed as much as the serfs in continental Europe thus less likely to revolt - an island nation should go for longbow.

Just my two cents.

[DarkAnt]

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...

[Sombre]

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.

[Sombre]

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.