Got a Real-World Weapon or Armor Question? Mk. VI

[Spiryt]

The genius of the English long bow was not as a "super weapon", but in the sheer numbers employed and their tactical deployment in combination with other elements. That is not to say the long bow was not a powerful bow with a relatively fast shooting rate, just that it is "horses for courses".

"Longbow" is just simple bow from one type of wood with generally 'D' shaped cross section, which is unsurprisingly long one as far as bows go....

There's nothing inherently "powerful" about it, and fast shooting rate in particular has almost nothing to do with type of the bow.

There were low poundage longbows, as well as 150 pounds monsters, it seems, as well as there certainly were clunkers along with very efficient and accurate ones.

Although data and experiments show that above 60 pounds, even most ingenuously made longbow generally would be slightly worse in the terms of any performance than composite reflexive bow of turkish, mongolian, or whatever design.

That's not the point here, though. The point is that this myth of "super weapon" longbow is indeed frankly ridiculous one. :smallmad:

[Xuc Xac]

That's not the point here, though. The point is that this myth of "super weapon" longbow is indeed frankly ridiculous one. :smallmad:

The longbow was the katana for Victorian era nerds.

[Matthew]

"Longbow" is just simple bow from one type of wood with generally 'D' shaped cross section, which is unsurprisingly long one as far as bows go....

There's nothing inherently "powerful" about it, and fast shooting rate in particular has almost nothing to do with type of the bow.

There were low poundage longbows, as well as 150 pounds monsters, it seems, as well as there certainly were clunkers along with very efficient and accurate ones.

Although data and experiments show that above 60 pounds, even most ingenuously made longbow generally would be slightly worse in the terms of any performance than composite reflexive bow of Turkish, Mongolian, or whatever design.

Sure, do not misunderstand me, I am saying that the long bows deployed in the hundred years war were powerful in the sense of not particularly inferior to the crossbows of the same period when employed by men trained in their use, and could be shot faster. Whether that matters on the battlefield depends on what is valued there, and the same for sieges, skirmishes, and raids.



That's not the point here, though. The point is that this myth of "super weapon" longbow is indeed frankly ridiculous one. :smallmad:

Certainly, I would tend to agree with that. :smallwink:

[MarkusWolfe]

I know that the Celts figured out how to forge iron so that it is stronger than bronze (even well enough to be considered steel), and that they figured out chainmail. Can I get a timeline on these metallurgical/military advances? Also, what sort of armor was common during the Dark Ages?

[Galloglaich]

I guess what I've been trying to explain about crossbows vs. longbows vs. firearms, is that while crossbows had a shorter overall range, they had a longer effective direct shot range at which they could target an individual human (or human on a horse) target than longbows. Crossbows could also be shot in an arc but only a very shallow arc.

So wherever you want to put the number for longbows, 50 yards, maybe 100 yards to target an individual human, beyond that you can only really use it for indirect shots like a mortar. The really heavy crossbows could apparently shoot accurately 150 to 200 yards. So lets say your longbow is shooting 8 to 10 shots per minute, but they are shooting at an area. The way they trained was shooting at a 30' sheet. So most of these arrows are actually going to miss. The Crossbow by contrast is getting maybe 6 shots a minute, but they are all aimed, most (or more at any rate) are going to hit.

I think this is what the 15th and 16th Century sources meant when they said crossbows were more accurate.

It was somewhat similar for early firearms which also did not have the ballistic arc ability that a longbow or recurve bow had, but shot in a strait line. But early firearms were not very accurate so they shot in volleys to make up for it; still something like area fire but more concentrated so again, a higher percentage of hits per round going downrange.


As a result of these dichotomies, the crossbow proved more useful at short to medium ranges. The longbow was good at point blank range or long range. The handgonne or arquebus was good at point blank to medium range.

So depending on the terrain, that will tell you which weapon is more useful. In a really open terrain like at Agincourt, the longbow is the more useful weapon. In a closer terrain like at Grandson or Morat, the crossbow and the handgonne are more useful (also because of the overhead cover of forests, which makes the arcing shots of the longbow less effective)

Does that make sense?

G.

[Galloglaich]

I know that the Celts figured out how to forge iron so that it is stronger than bronze (even well enough to be considered steel), and that they figured out chainmail. Can I get a timeline on these metallurgical/military advances? Also, what sort of armor was common during the Dark Ages?

Most common armor were bronze or iron helmets, and probably textile armor. The most prestige armor that everyone wanted was mail. (i.e. "Chainmail")

Most common protection though were shields.

Most common weapons were javelins. Then spears and knives, then axes, then swords. Swords were the prestige weapon everyone wanted though.

Early iron was not strong enough to make swords and early iron weapons are mostly spearheads and small daggers. Halstadt Celts started making pattern welded and forge-welded swords (sort of a mechanical composite steel) very soon after they adopted iron in the 8th Century, but these weapons were very rare. Steel (or 'steely iron') started to show up in some quantities in Celtiberian Spain, notably in falcatas, by the 4th or 5th century BC. The first notable center in Central Europe was in the early 3rd Century BC in Noricum, a multi-ethnic La Tene Celtic / Illyrian (proto slavic) tribal federation centered in what is now Austria and Slovenia. Many of these early Celtic, Celtiberrian and Illyrian weapons were steel but not tempered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noricum

The Romans had a huge demand for this steel and Noricum was flooded with Roman merchants who set up shop there. The Romans annexed it in 16BC. From that point on steel became increasingly common and head spread to the Germanic, proto-Slavic and Scandinavian tribes. As a result, more and more large (3 feet) swords became increasingly commonplace.

G.

[Galloglaich]

At range, that's a rather different story. From what I know, the bolt is a less rather less efficient projectile, both from the design of the pointy end and the general aerodynamic properties. So, while the crossbow could theoretically generate more power at the prod, by the time the projectile got there (assuming battlefield ranges) it'd bled off a large portion.

Yes, the crossbow bolt was not aerodynamic the way an arrow was. Once the energy ran out it basically didn't fly any more. This is why the crossbow was not capable of the high ballistic arcs the longbow (and recurve) used to get the really long range they had (except with special 'gadfly' bolts which didn't do much damage). But the crossbow could shoot a heavier bolt at a slightly higher velocity in a strait line a further distance. Same for the lead balls shot by early firearms.

G.

[Galloglaich]

That's not a viable claim. You're mixing sociological and strategic issues with hardware specs. The two have nothing to do with each other.

I'm just saying the English with their longbows were not as invincible as their history would have you believe. Their victories over the French were as much about French Chivalric / Aristocratic arrogance and stupidity than they were about English longbows.



Both are subject to gravity. Which shoots more levelly is a matter purely of velocity and any lift generated by the projectile. And whereas a crossbow looses a lot of velocity, shooting in an arc means you have gravity working on your side when it comes to impact velocity.

Yes but the crossbow apparently could be shot more accurately in that initial strait line distance.



They are? Given the better aerodynamic qualities of a decent arrow, I don't see that there should be much difference, giving good training. After all: We've been hunting small game with bows for a very long time. I'm not an archer, though.

Ask a hunter how far you can hit a deer with a bow.



Battlefield crossbows comparable in power to longbows with a single man using? A shot every 10 seconds using a mechanical assist to arm the bow? Really? How?

This video is from a pro-longbow guy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HagCuGXJgUs

Of course that is only a stirrup crossbow, it's military grade but not the really powerful cranequin type. Hopefully we'll get to see a demonstration with one of those. Historically, a crossbow was a team of two men, one loading while the other shot.



Even if the rate of fire is 7 compared to 10; that's enough. Put down twice as much equally (on battlefield scale) accurate ammunition as your foe and you win. Firepower's effectiveness has been shown to be squared, not linear; and that advantage equates to a massive one.

Like I said above, longbows were not accurate for individual target at their maximum range. Rate of shot is not the only relevant factor.



Hundred year war - clue is in the name. The great three battles were massive victories long before the French started listening to a mad French teenager and kicked the English out of their own country. It wan't just in England that these battles were famous: They shook Europe.

Indeed, as much because of the way French cannons shattered tough English armies at the end of the war as when longbows defeated the formidable French Cavalry in the beginning.

But the defeat of heavy cavalry in the 100 years war was nothing new. The first big examples that REALLY shook Europe were at Golden Spurs (1302), Morgarten (1315), and Bannockburn (1314), where commoners fighting as infantry defeated the cream of knightly heavy cavalry.

I dont' fully agree with the villainization fo the English, but there is a point; the Engish did adopt propaganda very early (and well) but also, here in the US (and by extension in the American dominated English speaking part of the internet) due to our lack of understanding of Continental European lanaguages, we yanks get almost all of our History through an English filter (and through a French filter seen through an English filter) which does emphasize the importance of their achievements. But as I've said before in this thread, both England and France were cultural, economic and political backwaters in the 15th and early 16th Century, when the Renaissance was already going strong in Flanders, Germany and Italy.

As a result, our Anglophile version of history is very simplified, the source of all the cliches in DnD and SCA and the US "Renaissance Faire" and Sci Fi Channel movies are in the Monty Python image of filthy peasants digging in the mud and Feudal lords recieving swords from moistened bints. While this was maybe going on in England Renaissance painters were making tryptichs in Florence, tempered steel armor was being mass produced in Milan and Barcelona using automated water mills, Czechs were introducing firearms to European battlefields, Gutenburg was making the printing press, and most armies in the economic and military center of Europe were hiring crossbow marksmen instead of longbow archers.

G.

[Yora]

Simple question, with a possibly very complex answer:

How much use are unarmed martial arts in warfare, if at all? I see how it can be useful in a brawl when you just want to beat each other up without anyone getting killed. But supposed you're wearing armor and have a weapon at hand, is there any reason to make use of you're unarmed martial arts knowledge?
And supposed you don't have any weapons at hand but your attackers do, is your martial arts training anything but "better than nothing"?

[Psyx]

I know that the Celts figured out how to forge iron so that it is stronger than bronze (even well enough to be considered steel), and that they figured out chainmail. Can I get a timeline on these metallurgical/military advances? Also, what sort of armor was common during the Dark Ages?


'Celts' covers a rather large area and timescale, as does 'dark ages'.
What are you after, specifically? What peoples/culture? Viking? Pre-roman Anglo-celts?

Mail certainly wasn't 'common', as it is very expensive. Likewise pattern-welded weapons. They were the panoply of status.




So wherever you want to put the number for longbows, 50 yards, maybe 100 yards to target an individual human, beyond that you can only really use it for indirect shots like a mortar. The really heavy crossbows could apparently shoot accurately 150 to 200 yards. So lets say your longbow is shooting 8 to 10 shots per minute, but they are shooting at an area. The way they trained was shooting at a 30' sheet. So most of these arrows are actually going to miss. The Crossbow by contrast is getting maybe 6 shots a minute, but they are all aimed, most (or more at any rate) are going to hit.


Whoa.

'indirect fire' does NOT mean inaccurate. Ever.
One can quite happily plop 40mm grenades into a 50gallon barrel with not too much practice at 200m. 100 years ago we were dropping artillery barrages 50 yards in front of advancing troops from miles away. Slings are frighteningly accurate, too. Archers didn't even bother practising at anything less than... was it 200 yards?

Don't judge accuracy by the size of the target, either. Shooting targets are pretty large, but anyone who isn't consistently hitting within 5-10% of the centre isn't even in contention. Are we to say that pistols are inaccure because the 10m competition target is the size it is?

And who cares about targeting individuals anyhow? Infantry or cavalry formations that were not loosely formed, because then they'd get cut to ribbons. Drop an arrow into a formation at a 45 degree angle and it would be hard NOT to hit something. Unless you are proposing that at that range crossbow users were able to pinpoint specific weak-points on individual targets that archers were not?

I'm not disagreeing that the longbow was not vastly superior in every way, but I'm heavily disagreeing with the logic by which you're reaching that conclusion.

[Psyx]

Simple question, with a possibly very complex answer:

How much use are unarmed martial arts in warfare, if at all?

In desperation!

Ju-jitsu techniques for example often suppose that your foe is armed and armoured - where punching them probably wouldn't do anything but get you killed - but was a second-line of defence, and a lot of it focuses on getting your foe's weapon out of his hands and into yours!

'Unarmed' techniques such as grapples, sweeps and trips were often heavily integrated into armed warfare, often using the weapon in some way to assist the technique, but that doesn't really count, I guess: You wouldn't want to step into sword fight completely unarmed if you could help it.

I imagine that it's perhaps cultural, though. Anyone know of a culture where you would go into a knife-fight with bare hands?

[Storm Bringer]

Simple question, with a possibly very complex answer:

How much use are unarmed martial arts in warfare, if at all? I see how it can be useful in a brawl when you just want to beat each other up without anyone getting killed. But supposed you're wearing armor and have a weapon at hand, is there any reason to make use of you're unarmed martial arts knowledge?
And supposed you don't have any weapons at hand but your attackers do, is your martial arts training anything but "better than nothing"?

short answer: yes.

longer answer: in classic DnD full plate armour/harness, one of the accepted methods of defeating it was was to pin the wearer long enough to get a dagger in the armpit or some other weak spot. Obviously, this requires you to be both able to pin someone, and be able to defend agianst being pinned.

[MarkusWolfe]

'Celts' covers a rather large area and timescale, as does 'dark ages'.
What are you after, specifically? What peoples/culture? Viking? Pre-roman Anglo-celts?

Mail certainly wasn't 'common', as it is very expensive. Likewise pattern-welded weapons. They were the panoply of status.



I know it was the Celts of modern day UK that figured out iron and chainmail. I also know that good swords were rare.

As for the Dark Ages.....I hear it was all leather and chainmail for the vikings, but I don't know what the other Europeans were wearing at the time.

Also, what degree of plate armor existed during the Dark Ages? Chainmail was the norm, but I think anyone with common sense would have the pieces that are inflexible anyways (forearms, shins, head) protected by gauntlets/greeves/helmets that were solid steel.

[Yora]

'Unarmed' techniques such as grapples, sweeps and trips were often heavily integrated into armed warfare, often using the weapon in some way to assist the technique, but that doesn't really count, I guess: You wouldn't want to step into sword fight completely unarmed if you could help it.
Or let's put it this way. Does a swordman who knows karate or judo have any more chance to win a fight than one who doesn't?

Do you actually get opportunities to kick or punch at your oponent while you're holding a weapon? I know only some basics of unarmed combat and nothing about sword fighting, but both do not seem very well suited to be combined. With a shield, punching and kicking seems completely out of the question, and even with a two-handed weapon, you'd probably have to be really good to release one hand, make a punch, get your grip back, and your guard back up before the oponent has a chance to strike.

[Spiryt]

As other's said, wrestling, or any other form of grappling would be often very useful, or even crucial in armored combat.

Just take a look at some Talhoffer interpretations (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWISsk0cy74).

Unarmed striking techniques probably not so much really, even though well placed elbow, knee or punch would be pain, especially if you're armored.


you'd probably have to be really good to release one hand, make a punch, get your grip back, and your guard back up before the oponent has a chance to strike.

Trying something like that would be rather idiotic, unarmed strikes could be incorporated if there's good opportunity to use them, obviously.

Incorporating them at all cost.... No.

[Yora]

Just take a look at some Talhoffer interpretations (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWISsk0cy74).
Interesting. The technique at 1:40 is basically exactly the same that is tought to beginners in Aikido. I didn't think of taking hold of the hand with your guard.

[Spiryt]

Here something about wrestling teaching of Otto the Jew...

Link (http://thearma.pl/zrodla/treningi/ottsylwek.htm)

I could only find in polish this quick... but as you've got some German words there, you can probably find more of the original text and info in German.

[MickJay]

Speaking of how well trained/untrained the crossbowmen were, it really depended on the time and place where they were used. In the 15th century Poland, for example, it was fairly typical that the men were recruited to serve as crossbowmen for a season, or a year. These would be apprentices and the like, inexperienced in combat, who would be quickly trained and deployed where needed. The favourite weapon of these troops was crossbow (gradually replaced by firearms over the decades). Relatively few, more experienced and better armed men would serve to protect the crossbowmen from sudden attacks (the general tactics was for these troops to maneouver on the edge of the "proper" battle, deliver volleys where they would do most harm to the enemy, and retreat/regroup when directly threatened.

Of course, these were not mercenaries in the strict sense of the word: the man organizing the troops would first receive a letter from the local commander, authorizing him to recruit a given number of men, and these would be dismissed after the contract expired.

[endoperez]

With a shield, punching and kicking seems completely out of the question, and even with a two-handed weapon, you'd probably have to be really good to release one hand, make a punch, get your grip back, and your guard back up before the oponent has a chance to strike.

You can always punch with the shield. If something goes wrong, letting go of your weapon and wrestling with the opponent might be the best option left for you, as seen in this demonstration (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsh0aQTIg9g)based on Hans Czynner's treatise.
Also, in this video one arm is freed from the weapon to parry, on the second hit. Doesn't work out perfectly, but any way...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA4FHLRLFbs

Many Chinese styles have both armed and unarmed techniques, and like in this video you often see both in demonstrations. They have one free hand in this video, though, and it makes things a lot easier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4bdm60npxM


Even when unarmed attacks can't be used like that, if you've learned to fight unarmed, you've learned about timing, distance, reading or controlling or bluffing the opponent and other such things. Those skills will be useful. You can also learn them through weapons practice as well, of course, but someone who has unarmed experience doesn't have to relearn all of that when he finds himself holding a weapon.

[Raum]

Simple question, with a possibly very complex answer:

How much use are unarmed martial arts in warfare, if at all?Depends on what you mean by 'used'. :) Hand to hand combat (unarmed and bayonet) is still taught today...so obviously it's important. Part of the importance stems from the training itself. It teaches both control and aggression while promoting fitness. On the battlefield, it's one of those things which is important 'when you need it' and then it's extremely important. :smallbiggrin: Ask any Vietnam vet who had to deal with the enemy getting to his foxhole. I suspect it's still relevant in the modern urban combat scenarios. Not something you want to have to fall back on, but needed when you can't control the engagement range. For that matter, I believe the British used bayonets in Fallujah - though it's been long enough I'm not certain.

[Subotei]

To me, I think a lot of the crossbow vs longbow debate misses the point. Both were effective weapons - only idiots take ineffective weapons onto a battlefield, and natural selection rapidly takes over. Essentially they did the same thing - put a pointy thing into a target over a distance - the differences (penetration vs rate of fire) are minor.

Given rough parity in weapons, then the most important aspects in victories are leadership and tactics. Agincourt as a case in point - both sides were professional soldiers, however the English had an excellent leader and chose (inso far as they could) tactics which suited them. The French were, on the day, divided and essentially leaderless, and their tactical mistakes stemmed from that, resulting in chaos. Had the English been armed with crossbows, the final result would've probably been the same.

[Mike_G]

Whoa.

'indirect fire' does NOT mean inaccurate. Ever.
One can quite happily plop 40mm grenades into a 50gallon barrel with not too much practice at 200m. 100 years ago we were dropping artillery barrages 50 yards in front of advancing troops from miles away. Slings are frighteningly accurate, too. Archers didn't even bother practising at anything less than... was it 200 yards?

Don't judge accuracy by the size of the target, either. Shooting targets are pretty large, but anyone who isn't consistently hitting within 5-10% of the centre isn't even in contention. Are we to say that pistols are inaccure because the 10m competition target is the size it is?

And who cares about targeting individuals anyhow? Infantry or cavalry formations that were not loosely formed, because then they'd get cut to ribbons. Drop an arrow into a formation at a 45 degree angle and it would be hard NOT to hit something. Unless you are proposing that at that range crossbow users were able to pinpoint specific weak-points on individual targets that archers were not?

I'm not disagreeing that the longbow was not vastly superior in every way, but I'm heavily disagreeing with the logic by which you're reaching that conclusion.

I second this. If my target is an enemy pike schiltron or a "Battle" of French men at arms slogging through the mud toward me, I'm perfectly content to drop ten arrows a minute into the middle of the press and call that a win.

Sieges are different. You may want to pick off one archer on the battlement. Modern combat is different, since you are shooting at dispersed individuals who are taking cover or moving rapidly from cover to cover. But if the target is a Column of the Old Guard, aiming for the middle and firing as fast as you can will do some damage. A Swiss pike square depends on being densely packed for protection against cavalry charges. Artillery or a storm of arrows would be the worst thing the could encounter.

Longbow vs Schiltron is one reason Scotland spent so much time as part of the UK. If Edward had taken more time to soften Bruce's army up with archery at Bannockburn instead of throwing his cavalry at pikepoints, things may have turned out very differently.

[Aroka]

Interesting. The technique at 1:40 is basically exactly the same that is tought to beginners in Aikido. I didn't think of taking hold of the hand with your guard.

The sword is a great tool even when you're not cutting or thrusting with it.

For instance, grappling is a very basic component of longsword fighting, but the longsword is still your main weapon; it's a great level/fulcrum for binds, locks, holds, trips, and throws, and some of the tricks you can do with it are pretty stunning.

Relatedly, Aikido includes a lot of anti-katana techniques, doesn't it? Are there techniques for performing the grappling moves while holding a katana? I'm curious about just how similar longsword and kenjutsu really are as styles - if both integrated grappling, for instance.

[Norsesmithy]

It's my experience watching and participating with people who have trained in Jujitsu, Akido, and Germanic HEMA style fighting that many of the techniques are very similar. But that the reconstituted western arts tend to be a little more aggressive and brutal, teaching students the sorts of things that cripple people in sparing at a earlier point in training.

[Aroka]

It's my experience watching and participating with people who have trained in Jujitsu, Akido, and Germanic HEMA style fighting that many of the techniques are very similar. But that the reconstituted western arts tend to be a little more aggressive and brutal, teaching students the sorts of things that cripple people in sparing at a earlier point in training.

Good point - Aikido is pretty sterilized and filtered. It might be more useful to look at Aikijujutsu. D'oh.

[fusilier]

It was somewhat similar for early firearms which also did not have the ballistic arc ability that a longbow or recurve bow had, but shot in a strait line. But early firearms were not very accurate so they shot in volleys to make up for it; still something like area fire but more concentrated so again, a higher percentage of hits per round going downrange.

Minor bone of contention here, I believe that massed volleys weren't introduced until the early 17th century. Prior to the introduction of the volley, they tended to favor deep formations where the front rank retired after firing, and the next rank stepped up. This allowed continuous fire. So the total effect was probably much the same. Also, I'm not so sure that an arquebus was that inaccurate compared to a crossbow, although the predecessors to the arquebus almost certainly were.

A quick comment about 10 shots a minute at long range with a longbow: It's not a machine gun. I would save that rapid fire for when the enemy is close, rather than wear out your archers with less effectual long range fire. For that matter some efficiency minded machine gun theorists might not think you should blast away at long range either. ;-)

[HenryHankovitch]

It's worth bearing in mind, when talking about bows and crossbows and the like, that before gunpowder, all these missile weapons were merely (very simple) machines for turning muscle power into kinetic energy. Throw a spear, your arm muscles are putting kinetic energy directly into the missile. Draw a bow, and you're simply compressing a spring which then transfers its energy to the missile on release. (The mechanical benefit here, is that you don't have to move your arm as fast as the resulting missile travels; a "slow" pull results in a "fast" arrow).

So with any form of simple bow, the biggest constraint on the weapon's power is the strength and skill of the person using it. Well duh, we think, referencing all those stories about training an English archer from childhood. But what this also means is that an individual's performance is not consistent over time. With each drawing of the bow, your archer is becoming more fatigued. He'll lose muscle strength, which means that eventually he won't be able to draw the bow completely, and he'll lose power. If we imagine drawing an English warbow to be a level of physical exertion similar to performing a heavy bench-press, you see what I mean. Five repetitions, ten, twenty...eventually your archer loses power, and at some point will simply be unable to draw his bow at all. Perhaps even more importantly, this means your archers can also be hindered by long marches, short rations, disease, dehydration, and privation--all the things you can expect on a military campaign.

Now, a crossbow uses the same mechanical principle; but the big difference is that most of them use additional mechanical devices to aid in drawing the bow (compressing the spring). A pulley or lever, a foot-loop letting you use your legs instead of your shoulders and arms, and so on. Even having someone else draw the bow for you, and then hand it to you ready to fire: you now have a machine that lets you hurl a projectile using someone else's muscles. Eventually, fatigue will also take its toll on a crossbow-man; but you can see where its effects could be greatly mitigated by the machine being used. Your tired/malnourished soldiers retain their full effectiveness for a longer period of time. The same applied to muskets as well: your soldier only needed to be strong enough to stand up, load the musket and fire.

What it really comes down to is that longbowmen--people able to draw those very heavy warbows--simply weren't a renewable resource. Not in the military sense. When you lost them, you couldn't simply go home for the winter and train a bunch more; you had to wait for their kids to grow up. IIRC, the law requiring English peasants to train with bows on Sundays was passed specifically because the Crown realized that they weren't replacing their archers in sufficient numbers. The fact that they had to pass a law demonstrates how they were already losing their supply of "recreational" archers.

One other thing: people discussing the cost/benefit of archery rarely mention the arrows. Arrow-shafts are handcrafted items, and good arrows are actually difficult and time-intensive to make, compared to a quarrel or a lead musket-ball. Cracks, splits, and warps in the wood can cause your shot to go awry, or even cause it to break as it leaves the bow. So now you have to manufacture a bunch of arrows, keep them well-protected and out of the rain and sun, make sure nobody piles a bunch of barrels on them or sits on them or anything else. That's expensive, both in terms of money and of man-hours and effort in the field.

[HenryHankovitch]

I second this. If my target is an enemy pike schiltron or a "Battle" of French men at arms slogging through the mud toward me, I'm perfectly content to drop ten arrows a minute into the middle of the press and call that a win.

Which is why pike-squares were usually used in a combined-arms system with crossbows, arquebuses or muskets. That formation "slogging" before you is bringing its own light infantry along with it, throwing missiles right back at you. It wouldn't have been a useful tactic if it had no recourse against enemy crossbowmen.

The vulnerability of the square formation doesn't become a real hindrance until the advent of light field artillery, which can be moved into position and fired directly onto the tight-packed, advancing squares. That's part of what made the shift to thin lines desirable; and so by the Napoleonic era, maneuvering from a line to a square formation is a dicey concern.

[Psyx]

“Yes but the crossbow apparently could be shot more accurately in that initial strait line distance.”

I’m not seeing that pin-point accuracy is particularly useful. A crossbow block being physically charged is in big trouble. Archers… still in trouble, but at least they can get more ammunition on-target while it’s happening. One accurate shot point-blank versus 3 argueably-maybe-slightly less accurate ones aimed at a close formation. I know where my money is!


“Ask a hunter how far you can hit a deer with a bow.”
I don’t know of anyone in this country who is barbaric enough to shoot deer with bows and let them pretty much bleed out. If you can't take down a deer without central nervous system trauma that will instantly kill it; you shouldn't be shooting at deer. :smallmad:


“Of course that is only a stirrup crossbow, it's military grade but not the really powerful cranequin type.”

See, this is kind of what I have a bit of an issue with. We see that a crossbow is ‘more powerful’ and ‘better ranged’ than a longbow, and then the rate of fire is compared favourably, too. When the reality is that the crossbows more powerful than a longbow are far, far slower, and the crossbows that have a decent rate of fire are outperformed by longbows in other aspects. It’s a poor comparison.


“Like I said above, longbows were not accurate for individual target at their maximum range.”

Have we much evidence to state that crossbows were; with their lower terminal velocity? I'm not really an expert on the accuracy of such weapons, to be honest. And my point is that it doesn’t matter: Individuals are not the target in massed battle: Put down the fire into the ranks as fast as possible.
Now in sieges, where marksmen are dispersed because of the lack of risk of being charged, then I would put a crossbow above a longbow in terms of usefulness pretty much every time.

“I don’t fully agree with the villainization of the English”

I don’t see why they would be vilified over the matter historically, unless there was existing prejudice. All of Europe at the time was neck-deep in ruthless nobles.
Everyone’s view of history has moved on great leaps and bounds since the early fantasy writers butchered a lot of it, and provided us with many of our clichés. To be fair: They weren’t interested in writing ‘accurate’ books or games. And if our view of European history is rather twisted; our view of Eastern history is even more skewed. At least with European history there have been a lot of English-language books on the subject, covered a good spectrum of bias and prejudice. I think that the labelling of [certainly modern - we can be a little more dismissive of older literature] English-language historians as -on the whole- Anglophile is slightly academically unfair.

“One of the accepted methods of defeating it was was to pin the wearer long enough to get a dagger in the armpit or some other weak spot. Obviously, this requires you to be both able to pin someone, and be able to defend agianst being pinned.”

Although of course you wouldn’t initially step into the fight bare-handed. It rather cuts down the options and announces the intentions. It would be perhaps terminally foolish.

“As for the Dark Ages.....I hear it was all leather and chainmail for the vikings, but I don't know what the other Europeans were wearing at the time.”

There’s been little that survived, archeologically. And the Viking cultures didn’t write too much down. I believe scale armour saw a little use – again as a status thing. Helmets – obviously. No horns on them, though! The premier piece of armour for them though was the shield.

“Also, what degree of plate armor existed during the Dark Ages? Chainmail was the norm, but I think anyone with common sense would have the pieces that are inflexible anyways (forearms, shins, head) protected by gauntlets/greeves/helmets that were solid steel.”

It didn’t. Iron was a very expensive commodity for one, and mail was not really ‘the norm’ as much as something to aspire to. I’m not a smith, but there’s more to making armour than just knocking a square of it into shape. Helms of the time were metal, but they were also made of horn as well. Additionally: They were composite affairs with a thicker metal frame and thinner metal or horn plates between them. I can’t immediately think of any surviving metal examples of greaves or bracers. Greaves though are fairly niche, as lower leg blows don’t tend to happen very much unless sweeping polearms are used – or long weapons, at least.

“Or let's put it this way. Does a swordman who knows karate or judo have any more chance to win a fight than one who doesn't?”

Judo is a sport, and is somewhat artificial as an art, but yet: If it got close and personal, then knowledge of balance, holds, chokes and throws would be useful. These techniques work well against armoured foes. That’s IF you could get past the weapon though – which is something that judo does not teach. Karate… not so much. It’s a very rarefied and linear form to start with, rather than an art designed to work in armed combat. Punches and kicks are going to be useless against armour, and that degree of extension is very unwise against an armed foe. Kicks above the knee would end in tears for the practitioner. I would not try to deliver a punch in a sword fight. Maybe an elbow strike if I was inside guard and midway through a take-down or disarm, but certainly not a punch.

“Aikido includes a lot of anti-katana techniques, doesn't it?”

Yes. Much stems from Ju-jitsu, which is pretty much expressly for dealing with armed foes.

“Are there techniques for performing the grappling moves while holding a katana? I'm curious about just how similar longsword and kenjutsu really are as styles - if both integrated grappling, for instance.”

Yes, although they’re not ‘basic’ teaching.
‘Kenjitsu’ covers a wide swathe of styles, as do Western sword styles. They’re both swords so much that holds true for using one holds true for the other, but much ken-jitsu that has survived today was from a peaceful period in Japanese history where the sword was employed against unarmoured foes and in duels in the same way as Western rapier styles. Whereas in the West effective armour was a more regular ‘threat’, and the styles needed to be able to deal with it.

“But that the reconstituted western arts tend to be a little more aggressive and brutal, teaching students the sorts of things that cripple people in sparing at a earlier point in training.”

That’s because the Western arts are a direct ‘rebuild’ of the old versions. There has been no real ongoing tradition, outside of fencing. Much of the Aikido and Ju-jitsu taught today is very watered down and much less lethal to use – or at least the early lessons are. Truth be told: Ju-jitsu is an utterly brutal no-holds barred style that makes Krav Magna look like patty-cake. Don’t be fooled by what you might see in a modern dojo. Aikido too is still pretty brutal, but it’s taught in a safe manner.

For example; many aikido techniques don’t work if the foe has a bar-straight arm. Students tend to be taught to push the inside of the elbow to bend it and deliver the technique, and practice partners obligingly keep their arm slightly bent. This is the ‘nice’ way. The reality of the situation is that anyone dumb enough to keep their arm straight would receive an open-hand press on the outside of the joint to break the elbow and THEN the rest of the technique would be completed. Likewise, when taking a foe to the floor in an arm-bar, you put your knees each side of the shoulder to keep them in-joint, then apply pressure. In reality, you deliver the technique fully on the way down and dislocate the shoulder THEN break the arm. Aikido and Ju-jitsu are far less pleasant and a lot more ruthless to be on the receiving end than a lot of other arts. They just look ‘soft’ because sparring accidents would be very unpleasant.

“this means your archers can also be hindered by long marches, short rations, disease, dehydration, and privation--all the things you can expect on a military campaign. “

This is true, but didn’t stop the English from winning at Agincourt, despite hunger, fatigue and disease.

[Mike_G]

Which is why pike-squares were usually used in a combined-arms system with crossbows, arquebuses or muskets. That formation "slogging" before you is bringing its own light infantry along with it, throwing missiles right back at you. It wouldn't have been a useful tactic if it had no recourse against enemy crossbowmen.


It was effective enough against the French at Agincourt, Poitiers and Crecy.



The vulnerability of the square formation doesn't become a real hindrance until the advent of light field artillery, which can be moved into position and fired directly onto the tight-packed, advancing squares. That's part of what made the shift to thin lines desirable; and so by the Napoleonic era, maneuvering from a line to a square formation is a dicey concern.

Th Scots at Falkirk in 1298 held off cavalry but were devastated by archery, as were the Welsh spearmen at Maes Moydog in 1295.

Combined arms works nicely, but that's not the argument. the argument is that against tight formations, rapid longbow fire is plenty accurate enough, and if the target is packed, lightly armed infantry, they can be annihilated by archery.

[Psyx]

"and if the target is packed, lightly armed infantry, they can be annihilated by archery."

And if it's dispersed, then it's time for the cavalry... :smallsmile:

[Galloglaich]

With all due respect to the Scotts at Falkirk, they were not professional infantry and were not using established pike square techniques at that point, they were still very much experimenting with weapons and tactics. Nor did they have a lot of heavy crossbows. The thing is longbows were tried against the Swiss multiple times throughout the Burgundian wars and were never successful. My personal opinion is as I said before, it's a matter of terrain. In open country, the longbow has an edge, in the forests and hedgerows, apparently the crossbow did.

As for the efficacy of the descending area attacks vs. the direct pinpoint attack, keep in mind, while they are indirect the way mortars are, these are not exploding munitions. Their targets are almost all wearing helmets (which was the most ubiquitous type of armor) and many of them were indeed wearing some kind of armor on their upper bodies. Most of the helmets were something like this:

http://www.aurorahistoryboutique.com/products/A000035.jpg

As for 'volley fire', my understanding is that this is what the Hussites did to break up cavalry charges, they waited until the last minute and opened fire.

As for accuracy of the arquebus vs. the crossbow, all of my sources including Alan Williams said that the crossbow had about three or four times the effective accurate range of the arquebus (about 150-200 meters). I assume of course he means the heaviest 'arbalest' types though he doesn't specify that.

But the bottom line is, these are my opinions basically, we don't have proof for any of this and for some reason, the longbow is one of those weapons which inspires a lot of passion among people. While we have some videos etc. to go on with the longbow, we really don't know a lot of hard data about the military grade crossbows or heavy arbalests.

I don't know what the rate of shots per minute is with a cranequin spanned crossbow, I've never seen anybody try it because there are probably only a dozen or two functional cranequin spanned crossbows in the world. It would be nice if somebody did it! I'd especially like to see a team trying this.

I also don't know what the velocity or equivalent of 'muzzle energy' of a heavy arbalest is. We do know for a recurve and for a longbow and for all the early firearms, but i can't even find a consensus on how heavy the crossbow bolts were, let alone a test with a 1000 or 1200 lb draw weapon.

I do not know what the effective strait-line range is for the crossbow either, Alan Williams says it's about 150 - 200 meters, so do a couple of other writers, but I can't find any actual testing evidence to verify that.


All the evidence I do have is the period literature and records, and these indicated that the people in Continental Europe felt the heaviest crossbows had longer effective direct shot range than any bow, that they were considered the greatest threat to armor until the arrival of muskets, and that they were the most sought after weapon for the European battlefield. This is what it says in Delbruck and the serious military historians, until I have more data available I'm basing my opinion on that.

G.

[valadil]

Both are subject to gravity. Which shoots more levelly is a matter purely of velocity and any lift generated by the projectile. And whereas a crossbow looses a lot of velocity, shooting in an arc means you have gravity working on your side when it comes to impact velocity.



I don't have numbers to back this up, only observations. An arrow's terminal velocity is lower than its speed when it leaves the bow. Gravity working for you isn't going to help all that much.



Crossbows were more accurate

They are? Given the better aerodynamic qualities of a decent arrow, I don't see that there should be much difference, giving good training. After all: We've been hunting small game with bows for a very long time. I'm not an archer, though.


There's a lot of technique that you can screw up when firing a bow that does not apply to a crossbow. In particular, consider the arm holding the bow. As you pull the string, that arm is pulled up in towards your body. The tension on the bow helps hold your arm up. When you release, the inclination is to drop the arm, but doing so will ruin your shot. Even if you hold your arm up correctly there will usually be some amount of movement affecting the arrow as it leaves the bow.

Now consider a crossbow. Your arm is no longer subject to that tension. Instead its just the crossbow holding that. When you fire, there's no sudden release of tension from your arm, so there's no movement on your part.

There's a lot of ways to screw up shooting a bow, but a crossbow is nearly point and click. As it is subject to fewer user based inconsistencies, the crossbow comes out ahead on accuracy.

[Mike_G]

With all due respect to the Scotts at Falkirk, they were not professional infantry and were not using established pike square techniques at that point, they were still very much experimenting with weapons and tactics.


These were veteran troops who'd fought under Wallace before, and beaten the English before. They held against the cavalry charge early in the battle, and stood up well against the English infantry. It wasn't until the archery barrage that they faltered, being poorly armored in an immobile formation without missile or cavalry support of their own.

They were good troops, they'd proven it, but they were unwilling to stand in a crowd under a rain of arrows.



As for the efficacy of the descending area attacks vs. the direct pinpoint attack, keep in mind, while they are indirect the way mortars are, these are not exploding munitions. Their targets are almost all wearing helmets (which was the most ubiquitous type of armor) and many of them were indeed wearing some kind of armor on their upper bodies. Most of the helmets were something like this:

http://www.aurorahistoryboutique.com/products/A000035.jpg



Descending fire doesn't drop straight down. Arrows fall at around 45 degrees, or less if the range isn't max. More chance of being hit in the body or legs than the top of the head. The bill probably protected you from being hit in the face with a falling arrow, but not from a shaft in the guts.

We're splitting hairs here. The longbow was a good weapon, it did help win a number of battle for the English. Yes, it has a few too many fanboys who think it can drill through Maximillian plate at 200 yards, but the backlash is equally wrong. It was a fine weapon, and a company of good bowmen was worth quite a bit in the hands of s decent commander.

The physical requirements and training time made it a difficult weapon to field if your kingdom wasn't set up for it. All archery based armies came from areas where it was a cultural skill. The Mongols, the Parthians, the mandated training by the English for centuries. You didn't just decide to recruit archers and turn new troops into decent archers.

The crossbow gets its power and accuracy from its mechanical design, not the brawn and instinct of its user. You can pick it up and be a reasonable threat in a short time. I could hit the target reliably within less than an hour. Archery takes a lot of practice to get consistent.

[Matthew]

The physical requirements and training time made it a difficult weapon to field if your kingdom wasn't set up for it. All archery based armies came from areas where it was a cultural skill. The Mongols, the Parthians, the mandated training by the English for centuries. You didn't just decide to recruit archers and turn new troops into decent archers.

The crossbow gets its power and accuracy from its mechanical design, not the brawn and instinct of its user. You can pick it up and be a reasonable threat in a short time. I could hit the target reliably within less than an hour. Archery takes a lot of practice to get consistent.

Indeed. There is no doubt in my mind that training a long bowman to shoot a decent poundage requires greater investment of time and resources than training a crossbowman to do the same, but we are prone to exaggerate the difference. For the former we are probably talking more months than the latter, but we should not fool ourselves into thinking it takes years and years to learn to handle a bow either; modern long bow enthusiasts may not have the same skill level as their forebears, but we are talking months, not years, for them to acquire the strength and skill to use the higher weight long bows. It might be suitable to be talking in terms of weeks versus months in comparing the crossbow and long bow (in the sense of acquiring the strength and skill to keep up the expected shooting rate).

Of course, handling the weapon is only part of the profession. Discipline and confidence need to be instilled in them, amongst other things, and participation on the battlefield is only ever going to consume a very small amount of time during their term of service. So, when we are comparing professional mercenary crossbowmen to city militia types, we are necessarily talking about more than just the handling of the weapon.

[HenryHankovitch]

It was effective enough against the French at Agincourt, Poitiers and Crecy.

The French weren't using pike squares. As a point of fact, if the French had fielded their knights as infantry, and advanced them along with their crossbowmen in something vaguely approximating a late-medieval pike formation, they would almost certainly have defeated the English.



Th Scots at Falkirk in 1298 held off cavalry but were devastated by archery, as were the Welsh spearmen at Maes Moydog in 1295.
The Scots at Falkirk didn't have any significant quantity of archers/crossbowmen. Also relevant was the fact that their hedgehog formation was (as most pike formations of that earlier period) an essentially ad hoc formation of soldiers who could not have advanced or maneuvered as a unit.

I can't speak for the details of Maes Moydog.


Combined arms works nicely, but that's not the argument. the argument is that against tight formations, rapid longbow fire is plenty accurate enough, and if the target is packed, lightly armed infantry, they can be annihilated by archery.
Combined arms IS the argument. Unless your opponent is a moron--which, admittedly, happens painfully often in history--battles cannot simply be reduced to a rock-paper-scissors system of "my archery beats your infantry, your cavalry beats my archery, unless it's English then the archers always win, always."

Missile fire is a desirable counter to heavy infantry like pike formations. But, if your opponent is not an idiot, and he is fielding his own bowmen properly, you can't depend on your archers--no matter how good--to be able to out-perform their own archers sufficiently to win the battle all by themselves. Remember, at Crecy a large part of the French army's stupidity was in poorly utilizing their own crossbowmen. English archers aren't invulnerable; even attacking from downhill, professional crossbowmen from behind pavises could have effectively countered the essentially unprotected bowmen.

And the specific point WRT to the English warbow was that it was a missile weapon that was unsustainable. By the 1500s or so, we aren't talking about mindblowingly awesome English archers, because they aren't around any more.

[Psyx]

My personal opinion is as I said before, it's a matter of terrain. In open country, the longbow has an edge, in the forests and hedgerows, apparently the crossbow did.

Which does sound quite reasonable. Logically; the lighter arrows are more easily deflected by light brush, and the overhead cover is going to reduce range heavily because it stops the archers... arching. and if targets are taking to cover and fighting from it - keeping down while reloading - then rate of fire becomes much less tactically useful.



As for the efficacy of the descending area attacks vs. the direct pinpoint attack, keep in mind, while they are indirect the way mortars are, these are not exploding munitions.

On the other hand; the toughest part of plate harness and horse armour to penetrate is the front...

I really don't swallow that indirect fire is any less effective. It's not inaccurate, that helmet brim is going to protect against about 5% of body hits by area, and nicely deflect a few of those into shoulders, it hits the backs of horses, it's going to come down more easily over any shields or pavise, the trajectory helps retain velocity, and it results in a whole formation that is struck and disordered, rather than a front two ranks that get turned to pin cushions while everyone else stands safe [having friends die when you can't even see the enemy yet is not good for morale].




As for accuracy of the arquebus vs. the crossbow, all of my sources including Alan Williams said that the crossbow had about three or four times the effective accurate range of the arquebus (about 150-200 meters). I assume of course he means the heaviest 'arbalest' types though he doesn't specify that.

I don't know much about arquebus much, but musket fire was considered accurate en masse to 100m; or 200m in the hands of a decent skirmisher.




All the evidence I do have is the period literature and records, and these indicated that the people in Continental Europe felt the heaviest crossbows had longer effective direct shot range than any bow, that they were considered the greatest threat to armor until the arrival of muskets


I don't disagree. But given a fairly narrow range advantage, perhaps a substantial penetration advantage at close range, decreasing over range, and a 10:1 rate of fire disadvantage, I'd give the edge in raw fire-power to the Longbow in open battle. Its lever action versus sharps rifles in many ways.

I'm not discounting the advantages of the crossbow, and the training requirements aren't even up for any kind of debate.




There's a lot of technique that you can screw up when firing a bow that does not apply to a crossbow.

There is; but we're talking about trained professionals here. Manual gearboxes and clutches are awkward with a lot to 'go wrong' but far more effective in the hands of a competent driver than an automatic one, for example. So it's a moot point.



I don't have numbers to back this up, only observations. An arrow's terminal velocity is lower than its speed when it leaves the bow. Gravity working for you isn't going to help all that much.

It's going to be faster than the crossbow's, because as well as better retaining initial velocity, the arrow is accelerating downwards at 10m/s^2.
I suspect that even though the powerful crossbow out-ranges the longbow and out-penetrates it at short range, that the longbow's penetration holds up better at long range.

[Spiryt]

Wait so from "longbow is superior" argument we've gone to "crossbow is superior" argument?

Anyway:


It's going to be faster than the crossbow's, because as well as better retaining initial velocity, the arrow is accelerating downwards at 10m/s^2.

As I mentioned few times, bolt is probably better at retaining it's velocity in most cases.

It's probably completely unaerodynamic and unbalanced for steep arch shooting, but it's different matter.


. It's not inaccurate, that helmet brim is going to protect against about 5% of body hits by area

Actually, it's going to protect way more. Kettle hat used right way (kept at right angle) is going to cover nice part of silhouette, as well as legs of guy behind you... As well as shields will, but that's not about comparing defensive equipment.

Anyway, well drilled tight formations aren't so vulnerable at all, because of it all, especially with shields.

And indirect fire is inaccurate. Basically with long time of flight, wind, and general aiming by the arc, slight change in the angle of shoot will give meters of change in the destination of arrow.


front two ranks that get turned to pin cushions while everyone else stands safe [having friends die when you can't even see the enemy yet is not good for morale]

Even in the age of musket one volley rarely was turning whole ranks into dead meat, simply ranged weapons of old aren't as effective.

There would be tons of misses, ground hit, deflections, etc.

[Deadmeat.GW]

I guess what I've been trying to explain about crossbows vs. longbows vs. firearms, is that while crossbows had a shorter overall range, they had a longer effective direct shot range at which they could target an individual human (or human on a horse) target than longbows. Crossbows could also be shot in an arc but only a very shallow arc.

So wherever you want to put the number for longbows, 50 yards, maybe 100 yards to target an individual human, beyond that you can only really use it for indirect shots like a mortar. The really heavy crossbows could apparently shoot accurately 150 to 200 yards. So lets say your longbow is shooting 8 to 10 shots per minute, but they are shooting at an area. The way they trained was shooting at a 30' sheet. So most of these arrows are actually going to miss. The Crossbow by contrast is getting maybe 6 shots a minute, but they are all aimed, most (or more at any rate) are going to hit.

I think this is what the 15th and 16th Century sources meant when they said crossbows were more accurate.

It was somewhat similar for early firearms which also did not have the ballistic arc ability that a longbow or recurve bow had, but shot in a strait line. But early firearms were not very accurate so they shot in volleys to make up for it; still something like area fire but more concentrated so again, a higher percentage of hits per round going downrange.


As a result of these dichotomies, the crossbow proved more useful at short to medium ranges. The longbow was good at point blank range or long range. The handgonne or arquebus was good at point blank to medium range.

So depending on the terrain, that will tell you which weapon is more useful. In a really open terrain like at Agincourt, the longbow is the more useful weapon. In a closer terrain like at Grandson or Morat, the crossbow and the handgonne are more useful (also because of the overhead cover of forests, which makes the arcing shots of the longbow less effective)

Does that make sense?

G.

Actually the light crossbows did that range, the heavy crossbows were fired for effect at 300 to 400 yards.
And could reach out to 500 to 600 yards (and be completely ineffectual from what I see the saracens claim when they used them).

[fusilier]

Some more comments on crossbows etc.

A well made arquebus, carefully and properly loaded, in the hands of a skilled shooter could probably hit individual targets out to over 100m, and be plenty useful against massed targets at longer ranges. A rifled one (and rifles did exist by 1500) would be even better. But that's not going to be your average soldier, or your average arquebus.

I suspect that "mass produced" crossbows would suffer similarly. War bolts could apparently be pretty crudely made, which did not aid in accuracy (the main concern being that they don't shatter when fired). However, as with many historical artifacts, the common variety rarely come down to us. Instead we are left with the finely made examples, typically destined for nobility and the wealthy, and probably some unusual examples of ordnance (like siege crossbows), that were maintained for whatever reason. This may skew our understanding of what was typical, or what could be expected from a common variety weapon.

From what I have read (which may indeed be flawed, as it is limited), price wise arquebuses and crossbows were about on par. The amount of time to train a soldier was roughly the same. But arquebuses did displace crossbows, even at sea, where matchlocks could be rather annoying. I find it hard to believe that if crossbows had a significant edge in accuracy over arquebuses, that arquebuses still would have replaced them. Although there may be other factors involved.

@Galloglaich: You're right about volleys, why exactly tactics changed only to come back to volleys again is not clear to me. Clearly they were experimenting with new technology.

[Spiryt]

Generally, yes muskets and arquebuses were taking over crossbows in battles.
Despite differences, "basic" use were roughly similar - powerful, low rate of fire, point and shoot weapons, so less useful one was being overthrown trough the 16th century.

Conquistadors were using crossbow and guns at the same time, though, for example.

They had obvious differences, which may be often troublesome - people talk about accuracy and stuff, forgetting that the manner whole use would be very important - crossbow may be a bit awkward with reload, and longbow with it's
not compact dimensions and stuff, but doing all stuff to reload an arquebus, keeping your match ignited.... Not very comfortable thing to do in battle.

And crossbows were actually more expensive than decent guns, AFAIK.

And still quite a bit more accurate.


A well made arquebus, carefully and properly loaded, in the hands of a skilled shooter could probably hit individual targets out to over 100m, and be plenty useful against massed targets at longer ranges.

Actually, sources tell us about quite horrible inaccuracy - which is hard to be explained only by weapons itself from a lack of data, of course, but still accuracy was poor, at least in battles.

[fusilier]

Actually, sources tell us about quite horrible inaccuracy - which is hard to be explained only by weapons itself from a lack of data, of course, but still accuracy was poor, at least in battles.

Yes, but my point was that in battles they weren't using the finely made hunting arquebuses. And it's likely that in battle your average crossbowman wasn't using a finely made hunting crossbow either.

I don't know about horrible accuracy (unless you are comparing them to modern weapons). And it's important not to confuse an arquebus with it's predecessors (various handgonnes). Also, if I recall correctly, early arquebuses may have been held against the breastbone, instead of the shoulder. Once arquebusiers starting holding the weapon against the shoulder (like a crossbow), then I would imagine that they started to fair pretty well in terms of accuracy when compared to the weapons that they eventually replaced. The only difference at that point is the attention that must be paid to a matchlock when pulling the trigger, which might prevent a snap shot.

Clearly arquebuses didn't immediately replace crossbows, but they do seem to have done so fairly completely by the time that muskets were being introduced. Early arquebuses may have indeed have been significantly less accurate than crossbows, but by the time they reached their final form (before 1500) they were probably much closer to par.

From what I know, an average arquebus and an average crossbow were about the same in almost every respect (cost, accuracy, range), with the arquebus being more robust and making a better club when it came down to it. I've spelled out my suspicions (which are only just suspicions) that most of what has survived can skew our perceptions. And when it comes to period sources, they can often favor tradition over new-fangled devices -- the Pike was generally considered the more *appropriate* weapon with a classic pedigree, but that didn't stop pikes eventually being completely replaced by muskets. If on the otherhand, crossbows were significantly better, but also significantly more expensive than arquebuses, there may be an argument there, but that doesn't conform to what I've read about them.

[Spiryt]

From what I know, an average arquebus and an average crossbow were about the same in almost every respect (cost, accuracy, range), with the arquebus being more robust and making a better club when it came down to it.

I don't think that they can be compared like that, because they're well... very different.

Different projectile, with different ballistics, cost would depend on may factors, from quality of wood to ergonomics. Effect of impact on wood, metal armor, cloth armor, flesh, would be drastically different too, and such "details" would have great influence on decisions which weapon to use.

Generally, I feel that crossbow may be still "simplest", or rather most reliable range weapon - of course, you can do many things to screw the shot (like unsymmetrical drawing the string for example), but generally accuracy would be quite consistent.

In case of guns, powder was put into gun manually each time. It could be easily affected by weather. In short, each load way more often than not, especially in battlefield conditions, would propel bullet with different velocity.
Results are obvious.

Also, recoil connected with relatively low velocity, and quite long barrels could affect the trajectory.

That's what I heard at least - while in modern guns effect of recoil on trajectory of bullet which caused it is minimal, AFAIK, it would be worse back then.

"Inertness" of shot would be another problem - especially in stressful conditions, badly set match could cause that time between "firing" and actual shot could be quite long.

All those can be corrected by good, experienced shooter, of course, but those are occurrences, that cause that shooting muskets and arquebuses would be quite different (no matter if "worse" or "better") than shooting crossbow.

[ZeltArruin]

I have a question about shields, and it is a simple one. With a not tower shield, how are you supposed to defend your leg on your shield side? I have tried many things, but given that I am mostly making stuff up when I fight and that I am in single combat skews my answers.

[Spiryt]

I have a question about shields, and it is a simple one. With a not tower shield, how are you supposed to defend your leg on your shield side? I have tried many things, but given that I am mostly making stuff up when I fight and that I am in single combat skews my answers.

I would say, that given to geometric reason, punishing his arm when he tries to reach your leg is quite obvious option, but let's wait for more experienced people.

[fusilier]

I don't think that they can be compared like that, because they're well... very different.

Actually, crossbows and arquebuses fill the same niche: simple projectile weapons that are easily learned by common soldiers. So a comparison at that level is really appropriate when we are talking about why one gave way to the other. They really had the same battlefield function, and in time periods like the late 15th - early 16th century they are often referenced together.

It's my opinion that the bow fell into a related but different niche than the crossbow and arquebus, and that's why comparisons to it are somewhat more muddled.


Generally, I feel that crossbow may be still "simplest", or rather most reliable range weapon - of course, you can do many things to screw the shot (like unsymmetrical drawing the string for example), but generally accuracy would be quite consistent.

In case of guns, powder was put into gun manually each time. It could be easily affected by weather. In short, each load way more often than not, especially in battlefield conditions, would propel bullet with different velocity.
Results are obvious.

But Crossbows have another set of problems that they can face. Moisture can be detrimental to a crossbow, although most in the later period had metal bows so they were probably better off than a bow. Atmospheric conditions and wear can affect the cord (and therefore the tension). The various winding mechanisms can be delicate and awkward to use especially when being jostled about in tight formation. Conversely, there is very little on an arquebus to wear out, or be affected by weather conditions (yes the matchcord must be kept dry, but I don't think getting crossbow cords soaked is such a good idea either). Variability in powder is an issue, but unless some disaster has befallen your powder supply, the variations aren't going to have much effect in battlefield conditions. [A side note, I believe that during the great siege of Malta, crossbows were issued when powder was in short supply, or possibly for night-actions.]



"Inertness" of shot would be another problem - especially in stressful conditions, badly set match could cause that time between "firing" and actual shot could be quite long.

Yeah that's what I tried to say earlier: in the case of most matchlocks, it's not a simple matter of pulling the trigger, like on a crossbow. The trigger must be pulled without too much speed, as it's apparently possible to smother the matchcord in the powder. Even when it does ignite, there can be a noticeable delay between introducing the matchcord to the pan, and the gun firing. It is certainly a more finicky ignition system.

[Storm Bringer]

@Galloglaich: You're right about volleys, why exactly tactics changed only to come back to volleys again is not clear to me. Clearly they were experimenting with new technology.

actually, I can explain that one:

the answer runs somthing like this: for a long time, fire by rank or platoon firing was the 'textbook' answer, which all nations trained their regulars to do, when advancing over a open terrain agianst another formed body of infantry, as a prelude to a bayonet charge.

however, at times, the rolling fire of platoon fire was not what the tactical situation called for, and the combined crushing power of a mass volley was felt to be more useful.

also, extended firefights were bad for unit cohesion. eyewitness reports say that structured platoon fire generally only lasted a few volleys under fire before it broke down and everyone just loaded and shot as fast as he could. hidden behind huge clouds of smoke, the troops could only guess as to what thier fire was doing to their foe, but had a clear idea what the foes fire was doing to them. two lines of troops firing at each other rapidly became very ragged and disordered.


thus, officers would choose to fire mass volleys for specific situations. For example, a unit attacking cannon would only pause to fire one volley before getting stuck in with the bayonet, trying to out-shoot cannon within cannister range was clearly suicide. the british, in thier reverse slope defenese doctrine, would meet an advancing french column with a single volley, then charge home though thier own gunsmoke. the french would, more often than not, recoil and break from this double shock. British officers blame the troops at New Orleans for stopping and returning fire rather than pressing home with the bayonet (this lead to several british assault parties over 19th century being sent into the attack with unloaded weapons, to force the troops into melee).



Once breech loading weapons became common, the speed of the volleys picked up to the point where it was worth doing all the time.

[fusilier]

actually, I can explain that one:
. . .


Thanks Storm Bringer, but the time period I'm talking about is a bit earlier. It appears that in the 1500s the tactics switched from lining up and firing volleys, to continuous rolling fire - perhaps it had to do with both improvements in accuracy and range, and maybe even faster loading times and more available gunpowder. In the early 1600s the shock value of volleys came back, with volleys from formations 3 or 4 ranks deep reserving the fire until very close.

Not that the earlier formations wouldn't give a salvo when the enemy was close, but that a large proportion of the troops would be in a position where they couldn't fire (being in the rear ranks).

You are right that in the later period 18th-19th century that different styles of firing were preferred depending upon the situation. Fire by company, fire by files -> fire at will, could be used, with volleys reserved for shock value at very close ranges. Prussian manuals claimed that volleys should not be delivered until the soldiers' bayonets could touch their opponents' bayonets!

[Karoht]

I have a question about shields, and it is a simple one. With a not tower shield, how are you supposed to defend your leg on your shield side? I have tried many things, but given that I am mostly making stuff up when I fight and that I am in single combat skews my answers.
3 options. I'll assume you are holding a sword with said shield in all cases. I'll also assume no armor on legs.
A-Move your leg. Voiding is almost always your best method of defense. Step backwards, or back and to the opposite side of the blow. So if the blow is aimed at your left leg, step back and to the right, about a 45 degree angle.
B-Even with a buckler I can reach low enough to defend my knee (though this would probably be a poor idea with a buckler) to give you an idea of reach, though with your arm that extended you probably won't stop a very strong blow. My heater shield will usually drop low enough to protect my upper shin. If the blow is going to hit my ankle or foot, see option A. Typically option A is ideal any time the weapon is aiming for any part of your body below the waist, rather than waisting the movement of your shield or weapon to guard that low.
C-Low guard with weapon braced against the back of shield (sword points at the opponents ankle. Even with a small heater, this will guard will protect your upper body with the shield, and your lower body with the low guard of weapon. You essentially extend the shield by doing so. The most you should have to do to defend your leg is turn your body or sword, but if you have that kind of mobility, see option A. In single combat, I take this guard all the time if I'm up against an opponent I've never fought before, as it is very general an non-offensive. If I know them or have had time to watch them, I'm usually in a center guard or modified center guard.

Last point. In my fight group I have a lot of people who enjoy trying to score points by aiming for the leg. To the point where, in a match of first person to 3 points, sometimes all 3 blows are to the leg. If someone wants to come out the gate slashing away at your legs, back up and take a high guard or plant and take a center guard. Center guard will give you better reach (approx 90 degree angle on a thrust VS 45 degree angle thrust at your thigh = superior range, weapon and arm length not withstanding), and High Guard will give you a better position to strike the upper body from.


I fought with a Norman Teardrop shield once, not having to work as hard to defend my legs really made me lazy. Probably awesome in rank and file formation fighting, but not so much in single target or non-formation melee.

[Storm Bringer]

Thanks Storm Bringer, but the time period I'm talking about is a bit earlier. It appears that in the 1500s the tactics switched from lining up and firing volleys, to continuous rolling fire - perhaps it had to do with both improvements in accuracy and range, and maybe even faster loading times and more available gunpowder. In the early 1600s the shock value of volleys came back, with volleys from formations 3 or 4 ranks deep reserving the fire until very close.

Not that the earlier formations wouldn't give a salvo when the enemy was close, but that a large proportion of the troops would be in a position where they couldn't fire (being in the rear ranks).

You are right that in the later period 18th-19th century that different styles of firing were preferred depending upon the situation. Fire by company, fire by files -> fire at will, could be used, with volleys reserved for shock value at very close ranges. Prussian manuals claimed that volleys should not be delivered until the soldiers' bayonets could touch their opponents' bayonets!


hmm, not sure. I could talk out of my arse, but i'd be lying if i claimed that i knew.

what proportion of troops were musket armed at that point? I was under the impression that until the late 1600's, the majority of soldiers were still equipped for melee. maybe changes in the numbers of muskets led to a change of tactics (i.e. when the oppent is mostly armed with muskets and uses pikes only for anti-cav duty, then thier is less call for emergency fire to break an incoming charge, meaning you can afford to volley)

[fusilier]

hmm, not sure. I could talk out of my arse, but i'd be lying if i claimed that i knew.

what proportion of troops were musket armed at that point? I was under the impression that until the late 1600's, the majority of soldiers were still equipped for melee. maybe changes in the numbers of muskets led to a change of tactics (i.e. when the oppent is mostly armed with muskets and uses pikes only for anti-cav duty, then thier is less call for emergency fire to break an incoming charge, meaning you can afford to volley)

Throughout that period the ratio of musket/arquebus to pike was generally increasing. By around 1600 the preferred ratio was 3:2 to 2:1 -- but local conditions could mean a considerable amount of variation. It was considered one of the innovations of Gustavus to introduce volley fire (although the Dutch may have introduced some form of it earlier). The increasing use of the longer barreled musket (and then later arquebuses/calivers having longer barrels), may have simply meant that multi-rank fire was possible. In a charge situation, it seems to have been preferable to refrain from firing until the last possible moment, to ensure more hits. But this is all speculation.

[Galloglaich]

I'm glad to see the points seem to be converging on this a little.

The one area i still disagree with some of you on is the idea that the crossbow was easy to train.

And on a related note, this idea of a big skill difference between city militias and mercenaries.

Actually the mercenaries usually were city militias (or sometimes rural militias). Most urban militias were well trained. Most crossbowmen you read about in hundreds of battles in the Medieval and Renaissance periods were actually imported militia from cities like Genoa or Berne or Prague. Apparently these weapons were not all that easy to use (or use effectively) because various leaders in France and Germany and etc. tried to give crossbows to levies and they didn't do very well with them. With the experts, it was another story. This shows up in the records of the Teutonic Order up in the Baltic quite a bit. Crossbows evidently played a major role in their successes against the bow and javelin armed Prussians, Samogitians, Lithuanians etc. as well as against the Tartars.

The same thing was true of early firearms, gunners seemed to come from certain areas where guns were well established (like Bohemia). My theory on this is that early firearms required a better or higher level of 'gunpowder culture' than the later matchlock and (especially) wheel lock, snaphaunce and flintlock weapons which came later. People tend to discount hand gonnes and hand-culverins, but from videos I've seen and data that I've looked at, I think this is a mistake. These were powerful weapons (harder hitting than a .357 magnum) which were reasonably accurate at short range. The real problem is that handling firearms you had to ignite with a lit match on a touch hole is tricky. If you don't know what you are doing you could easily blow up the gun or the whole powder magazine.

From what i see in the historical record, it was when the arquebus began to be somewhat semi-standardized that Kings and Dukes were able to start arming ordinary levies and relatively quickly training them to use guns, which is one of the reasons the arquebus gradually began to supplant the crossbow.

But just to emphasize the point; the Conquistadors were by no means the only ones to use crossbows side by side with guns, so did the Swiss, the Venetians, the Poles, the Bohemians, the Hungarians, the Dutch and many others.

So similarly, one possible point of confusion on crossbows I think is that there were crossbows and then there were crossbows (and secondarily, there were militias and then there were militias). A crossbow available during the battle at Falkirk is not, in my opinion, even comparable to a longbow really. It may have a composite prod by that point (some did, maybe about 10-20% based on records I've seen from the armories of the Teutonic order in the 13th Century). But even the strongest available would be spanned with a foot stirrup and maybe a simple belt hook. By the 14th Century stronger weapons were appearing with heavy composite prods, requiring a windlass or a goats foot. By the 15th Century the spring-steel prods were becoming available, and had to be spanned by a cranequin. These weapons were feared. I can tell you that you see that in period documents and records. The people who used these weapons were well paid, almost always mounted with two or three servants and often more than one horse. They were not handed out to the yokel from the levy.

They WERE used by town militias, people of a certain rank, guild members etc. Those who could afford these (they were in fact possibly more expensive than an arquebus) were paid three times the normal rate of an ordinary soldier among the Swiss for example, just below the rate for cavalry.

The arquebuses that Beretta sold to Venice in 1526 cost 296 ducats for 185 barrels (most expensive part of a matchlock weapon). That is an equivalent cost of roughly 96 crowns (Kreuzer) per weapon, but I've seen records of cranequins costing 150 crowns in the Baltic. It's unclear though if those are fancy hunting weapons, or if it just means the cranequin itself and not even the weapon. Regardless, these were not cheap!

But there were also weaker crossbows around, powerful enough to kill a man, not really ideal for warfare. Same with bows. I think these kind of weapons could be and were given to raw levies or untrained troops. But I also think it is important to understand, most towns had well trained militias if they wanted to remain towns for long. And it was in fact these militias who were often hired out as mercenaries... quite frequently as crossbowmen.

Finally... on the range. yes maximum range for a heavy crossbow may be about 450 yards, (Alan Williams mentions a test done with an antique 1200 lbs draw crossbow in Italy around 1903 which had about that much range) but at that range the energy is practically nothing due to the poor aerodynamics of a crossbow bolt as compared to an arrow. I was referring to the effective direct range, which I keep seeing estimated at 150 - 200 yards.

G.

[Galloglaich]

3 options. I'll assume you are holding a sword with said shield in all cases. I'll also assume no armor on legs.
A-Move your leg. Voiding is almost always your best method of defense. Step backwards, or back and to the opposite side of the blow. So if the blow is aimed at your left leg, step back and to the right, about a 45 degree angle.
B-Even with a buckler I can reach low enough to defend my knee (though this would probably be a poor idea with a buckler) to give you an idea of reach, though with your arm that extended you probably won't stop a very strong blow. My heater shield will usually drop low enough to protect my upper shin. If the blow is going to hit my ankle or foot, see option A. Typically option A is ideal any time the weapon is aiming for any part of your body below the waist, rather than waisting the movement of your shield or weapon to guard that low.


I like to keep my shield low, it goes up easier with my flinch response and I can displace high cuts with my sword easier and I can low cuts.

G.

[fusilier]

A quick question/comment:

How common were cranequins? I thought you could get similar power from a windlass drawn crossbow, but it was just awkward (and definitely not suited to mounted crossbowmen). My understanding is that cranequins were not that common, probably due to their expense.

[Karoht]

I like to keep my shield low, it goes up easier with my flinch response and I can displace high cuts with my sword easier and I can low cuts.

G.
I'm told I should keep mine lower. I keep my heater's top rim level with my shoulder, approximately 9 inches from my body.
I was also told to never move the shield more than 6 inches in any given direction, shield bashes non-withstanding. If you have to move more than that, you are better off just moving.

[Galloglaich]

A quick question/comment:

How common were cranequins? I thought you could get similar power from a windlass drawn crossbow, but it was just awkward (and definitely not suited to mounted crossbowmen). My understanding is that cranequins were not that common, probably due to their expense.

Not too common, I've seen ratios of about 4 to 1 stirrup crossbows to windlass crossbows in some records from Switzerland and Prussia. And yes I agree with you I think that is because of the expense but then again early firearms were rare as well, as were the really heavy longbows. As were knights for that matter.

One of the features of the cranequin was that they could be used on horseback, none of the stirrup types could, and yeah obviously neither could the windlass type. I believe the large windlass type fell out of favor in the 14th - 15th Century but remained used for siege warfare.

It's hard to be sure though a lot of the data is confusing and limited.

G.

[Matthew]

Crossbows evidently played a major role in their successes against the bow and javelin armed Prussians, Samogitians, Lithuanians etc. as well as against the Tartars.

Actually, that reminds me of a good article: Horses and Crossbows: Two Important Warfare Advantages of the Teutonic Order in Prussia (http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/ekdahl.htm). Also worth a look on this subject is Saracen Archers in Southern Italy (http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/saracen_archers.htm).

[Aroka]

I have a question about shields, and it is a simple one. With a not tower shield, how are you supposed to defend your leg on your shield side? I have tried many things, but given that I am mostly making stuff up when I fight and that I am in single combat skews my answers.

This was actually covered in this thread a while ago: if someone goes for your leg, you go for their head. Going low almost always leaves your head open - unless you've got a shield, of course. The other easy option is voiding - you move your foot away. That's the most basic form of avoiding any attack - move swiftly on your feet so that you're no longer in your opponent's way. If you've got a weapon and a shield, move in a way that lets you strike your extending (maybe even over-extending and unbalanced, if they try to follow your dodge) opponent. Remember, dodging doesn't mean twisting your body, especially the torso, out of the way - that unbalances you. It means moving on your feet so you don't get hit. Try to follow up voiding with a counter-attack, though - you're in a good position to do so, given your opponent's weapon is probably not at the ready to parry you.

Also, a "tower shield" is basically a pavise, and that was not for holding or for using in melee, but a portable piece of wall for protection from missiles while you load your crossbow.

[Matthew]

I see Armies of Feudal Europe 1066-1300 (http://www.scribd.com/doc/29393652/Armies-of-Feudal-Europe-1066-1300) is available to read on Scribd. Nice bit on horse armour there. :smallbiggrin:

[HenryHankovitch]

The one area i still disagree with some of you on is the idea that the crossbow was easy to train.


I think there are two big conflations going on that cause confusion:

First, that when we talk about "longbows" versus crossbows we're usually actually discussing "English warbows" versus crossbows. Because we talk English here, which means cultural saturation of Crecy in specific and Anglophilia in general. :)

My general understanding is that most longbow designs in history tend to be a 50-80 lb draw weight. Certainly that's the ballpark for modern sport and hunting bows. Whereas the Welsh/English warbow was a 100+ lb monster. So, when you have a corps of soldiers that can actually draw this beast, it gives you a noticeable advantage in range and penetration.

My suspicion is that if you compare "normal" longbows to crossbows, such advantages tend to disappear. So when we have this discussion we're specifically calling out the English warbow as an exceptional example. Of course, as you point out, not all crossbows and crossbow-men are of equal build either.

Secondly--and this was the point I was trying to highlight earlier--we're conflating skill-training with physical conditioning. With a high-weight longbow, physical conditioning is (so we are told) the largest part of "training" a bowman. Again, I bring up my example of bench-presses. The proper technique for performing a bench-press can be taught in minutes. But training someone to go from a 100lb bench press to a 200lb bench press can take several months, or years. I don't mean to imply that strength is the only consideration in training an archer; just that a heavy-pull longbow is significant in that you require physical conditioning as well as dexterity and experience.

In contrast, working a lever or belt-hook or crank on a crossbow means that you don't need to start with some sort of sturdy, muscular yeoman in order to create a competent crossbow-man. I'm not claiming that it's not a concern at all; certainly you need a soldier that can march, that can hoist a pavise, that can load that crossbow over and over and over again; but the demand on the archer's physical strength is diminished. This means that training a crossbow-man, as with training a pikeman or arquebusier, is more simply a matter of teaching him the drill manual. Make him do the same actions over and over and over again until he can do them quickly, under stress. You don't have to worry about whether he had enough protein as a child, or whether he spent his adolescence playing football on Sundays instead of drawing a longbow.

So in the end, yes, the training is not necessarily "easy." But with a crossbow, you can make a lousy bowman into a good bowman through drill. That's easy, inasmuch as drill can be taught to almost anyone. It's just a question of how much money and man-hours you can throw at the problem. Quite different from depending on an ever-dwindling stock of young Englishmen with a specific muscular capability developed over 10+ years.

[Brainfart]

It's my experience watching and participating with people who have trained in Jujitsu, Akido, and Germanic HEMA style fighting that many of the techniques are very similar. But that the reconstituted western arts tend to be a little more aggressive and brutal, teaching students the sorts of things that cripple people in sparing at a earlier point in training.

Don't forget the Italian HEMA styles too. They've probably got the only master who states 'I kick him in the balls to cause him pain' in a treatise.

[Daosus]

I am not certain, but it's possible that arquebuses and muskets replaced crossbows because of logistical issues. It is much easier to carry 20-30 shots for a gun than it is to carry the same amount of crossbow bolts. Also, gunpowder can be produced in large batches, whereas you need a bunch of people to sit there and make bolts. Bolts require forging, while bullets require only casting. So, it could be that while guns were no easier to use, they were easier to supply with ammunition.

[Aroka]

I am not certain, but it's possible that arquebuses and muskets replaced crossbows because of logistical issues. It is much easier to carry 20-30 shots for a gun than it is to carry the same amount of crossbow bolts. Also, gunpowder can be produced in large batches, whereas you need a bunch of people to sit there and make bolts. Bolts require forging, while bullets require only casting. So, it could be that while guns were no easier to use, they were easier to supply with ammunition.

Didn't troops with muskets carry molds and lead, and scavenge/loot/steal/rob lead, on campaign in order to cast their own shot? With lead, you pretty much just needed the molds and a campfire.

[Fhaolan]

I have a question about shields, and it is a simple one. With a not tower shield, how are you supposed to defend your leg on your shield side? I have tried many things, but given that I am mostly making stuff up when I fight and that I am in single combat skews my answers.

To add to the other answers (which are all quite right), when fighting weapon and shield it is advantagous to not be standing straight up. I did a quick search and didn't find any good pictures of a sword & shield stance, but I didn't take much time out to look. However, I did find pictures of the stance I'm thinking of, just with the fighters using two-handed longswords: http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/Mair/Mair.htm

With this stance it is much easier to keep your center of balance, move around an uneven field, and be able to quickly move your shield to cover your legs.

One of the problems you are possibly running into is that in many sparring systems, it is 'illegal' to use a shield properly as it can easily cause injury to your opponent. Shields should be active, moving constantly and taking advantage of it's mass as a secondary weapon. Bucklers even more so, punching at the opponent and his weapon, etc. But in many systems if you actively attack with your shield you are disqualified.

[Deadmeat.GW]

Finally... on the range. yes maximum range for a heavy crossbow may be about 450 yards, (Alan Williams mentions a test done with an antique 1200 lbs draw crossbow in Italy around 1903 which had about that much range) but at that range the energy is practically nothing due to the poor aerodynamics of a crossbow bolt as compared to an arrow. I was referring to the effective direct range, which I keep seeing estimated at 150 - 200 yards.

G.

Keep in mind that the testing from Mr Williams also included the admission that the crossbow in question had been poorly maintained and was not in mint condition.

He said in mint condition this would have been quite likely far more impressive.

The Swiss trained for shooting at 300 meters, a tad over 300 yards.
Given that they were to effectively hit enemies at that distance I doubt they would be shooting at this range if it did nothing.
Lets be honest if the Swiss were shooting people at over 300 yards they were doing it because it did something more then hurl a bolt with 'practically no energy'.

If they had there would not have been much reason for people to fear them, lets be honest.
Just keep pacing at 300 yards and let them waste bolts for no effect would have been a common tactic if such was the case.

The crossbow suffers from the same problem as the sling, a bow is 'better' therefore the crossbow/sling/... cannot shoot as far as the bow and if they could it would be ineffectual...

Below a little quote from Wiki, where they first acclaim the longbowman as superiour and then add below it the following...:

The crossbowman
While the famous English longbowman is better known in popular imagination, the missile troops that caused the most damage in the medieval era was the crossbowmen.[16] The Catholic church tried to outlaw this effective weapon, which had an effective range of 370–500 meters. The crossbow was constructed initially of wood with steel gradually taking over. It shot metal bolts that could pierce most medieval armour. The advantage of the crossbowman was that he did not need extended or expensive training, and crossbows could be maintained and deployed with less trouble. It had a complex winding mechanism which meant a much slower rate of fire than the longbow bow. A longbowman could release six shafts in the time it took the crossbowman to release one bolt.[17]

This long reload time left the crossbowman vulnerable and exposed. Bowmen often worked with an assistant to help reloading, who was also armed with a spear and a very large shield to provide cover for the archer as he reloaded. The best crossbowmen were considered to come from Genoa in Italy, parts of Spain and Portugal. Crossbowmen were often a large component in medieval armies, and were considered an elite unit, with important responsibilities. They generally opened a battle with a cloud of bolts, or manoeuvred to attack the flanks. They were considered so valuable, that in Spain crossbowmen were considered in rank equivalent to a cavalryman.[18]

If crossbowmen were as ineffectual as people claim and the range on their weapons were so low that you could get at most, and that is if you were facing a slow opponent, one volley off they would NEVER have been considered usefull.
You would DEFINATELY NOT pay the guy using one as much as a cavalryman.

So, given the facts that crossbowmen were being paid a substantial amount, lets consider that people would not pay for substandard service more then for effective service and the fact that an awfull lot of other countries quite happily used them to devastating effect I think we can pretty much say that the crossbow is suffering from a similar fate as European martial arts.
It has not received much publicity and is therefore getting an unfair reputation of uselessness or qualitatively inferiority.

[valadil]

There is; but we're talking about trained professionals here. Manual gearboxes and clutches are awkward with a lot to 'go wrong' but far more effective in the hands of a competent driver than an automatic one, for example. So it's a moot point.


Trained or not, it's easier to screw up shooting a bow than a crossbow. I bumped into this guy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Johnson) at the range many years ago. Didn't know who he was at the time but I was a cocky little highschooler who told him he needed to hold his arm up longer since he was dropping it before the arrow left the bow. He didn't mind, because I was right. If an Olympic gold medalist can screw up his shots like this, I have no trouble believing a trained professional will as well.

[Galloglaich]

Actually, that reminds me of a good article: Horses and Crossbows: Two Important Warfare Advantages of the Teutonic Order in Prussia (http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/ekdahl.htm). Also worth a look on this subject is Saracen Archers in Southern Italy (http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/saracen_archers.htm).

Cool Matthew thanks for those links, that is very helpful to me :) Cheers mate.

G.

[fusilier]

I must admit that I becoming somewhat skeptical of the effective ranges being mentioned.


Keep in mind that the testing from Mr Williams also included the admission that the crossbow in question had been poorly maintained and was not in mint condition.

He said in mint condition this would have been quite likely far more impressive.

Wasn't it also a rather large siege crossbow?


The Swiss trained for shooting at 300 meters, a tad over 300 yards.
Given that they were to effectively hit enemies at that distance I doubt they would be shooting at this range if it did nothing.
Lets be honest if the Swiss were shooting people at over 300 yards they were doing it because it did something more then hurl a bolt with 'practically no energy'.

A few points:
1. Most of the sources I've read have claimed that past 100 or 150 yards the bolt had last enough energy that it couldn't be expected to pierce armor, but would still be effective against unarmored foes (or for that matter the unarmored portions of them).

2. If the Swiss were shooting people accurately at over 300 yards on the battlefield, then they had the effectiveness of rifle muskets. That's a pretty serious claim, and there should be a noticeable increase in casualties, especially given the typically slow moving mass formations of the day. There should also be some reaction to this evident in changing tactics (much like the French focused on more rapid movements, when rifle muskets were introduced).

3. The Swiss used meters in the Middle Ages? :-) Seriously though, you shouldn't take the measurements given too much credence. There were a variety of different yards, feet, ells, etc., in use all over Europe. Most period sources I know use the term "paces" which can be roughly acquired by counting your steps as you walk, and is typically around 2.5 feet. [Care must be taken however: the Roman pace was the distance a single foot traveled, or two steps, and was close to 5 feet]. Paces are often equated with yards, which are often equated with meters. My point is when dealing with period sources you should take these ranges as very rough.

I don't disagree with most of what you have to say, its just these ranges (which seem to be getting longer and longer as the conversation develops) that make me suspicious. Just because they started firing at longer ranges, doesn't mean the fire was terribly effective. I believe during the Napoleonic Wars there was some battle in Spain, where an Army Corps(!) volleyed at 1,000 yards! It was probably intended more as a show of coordination and drill, than to produce mass casualties. Likewise, if only a few bolts are finding their targets at 300 yards, that could be disconcerting to the receiving end. And if your bolts are plentiful, why not try for some long range shots? During the American Civil War, some commanders felt that fire over 100 yards wasn't effectual, but that it helped calm the troops' (i.e. the ones shooting) nerves.

[Galloglaich]

I agree with you Fusilier. Not that they couldn't have done some long -range target practice, you can get a shallow arc with a crossbow and the Swiss had some of the best. But I don't think the effective military range was more than 150-200 meters on the outside.

One point of contention Fusilier, the crossbow Williams menttions may have been a big siege weapon but the really strong 500 kg draw cranequin weapons were often quite small, smaller than the earlier ones.

Regarding range. We keep wanting to have simple metrics settle these sorts of debates. But range is not the be all end -all of a weapon. In 1942, the mauser k98 had an effective range exceeding 400 meters, but it proved grossly inadequate when put up against the new Ppsh-41 SMGs the Russians suddenly deployed which had a realistic effective range of probably around 75 meters.

War is complex, even in the days of plate armor and bows. It's never as simple as people think. But one thing I do notice about Crossbows vs. bows, bows were popular in places with a lot of open space, the rolling hills of England, the Steppes of Central Asia, the deserts and plains of the Middle East. Crossbows were popular in wooded and / or mountainous or hilly areas, like the Alps, the Baltic, the Black Forest, Bohemia. Maybe there is a connection?

I reccomend reading those articles Matthew linked by the way they are really interesting and add to the conversation we had here, and open up the reality of warfare in the Baltic in the middle ages.

On bullets, somebody asked this... they did make bullets in the field over campfires. They also re-used spent bullets which were gathered up after battles.

G.

[Galloglaich]

Some very interesting quotes from the article Matthew linked to, sounds like everybody was right:

"In the case of a long range shot of something like 300m the bolt, after about nine seconds, struck the ground steeply at an angle of 70 degrees. Although the energy on impact fell to about half the initial energy, th shot was still effective up to 200m (source footnote 121)

At the beginning of a battle the crossbow bolts were shot diagonally upwards for a distance of about 200m towards the enemy lines. Among the hail of normal bolts it was also the practice to include Heulbolzen (whistling bolts) which produced a sharp whistling sound; in the Order's records they re referred to as Bremsen (gadflies)(source footnote 122) Their purpose was to weaken the enemy and their hoses psychologically, and to casue confusion. This effect was not produced by the sound as such, bu tby the fact that experience had shown that there was a relationship between the sound and pain; (snip)

After such a punishing hail of bolts at the beginning of a battle, the crossbowmen moved forward in order to take aimed shots at a distance of up to 80m, and thus to contribute to the further course of the battle. The great difference from the English longbowman lay iin the often decisive fast that the longbowmen could shoot six or seven arrows before a crossbowmen could get off one shot (if they had mechanical winders) (source footnote 123)"

I'll have to check his sources on this but it's an interesting deeper insight into the use of the crossbows, drawn mostly from the Teutonic orders voluminous records.

G.

[Matthew]

Cool Matthew thanks for those links, that is very helpful to me :) Cheers mate.

No problem; its funny how articles like this can slip the mind and need reminders to recall the existence of. The De Re Militari website is a great on-line resource for primary sources and articles relating to medieval warfare. I have a long list of articles I want to look up from their journal next time I am in in Senate House and have the time! On the same subject, another article of interest available through Jstor is: David S. Bachrach "Crossbows for the King: The Crossbow during the Reigns of John and Henry III of England" Technology and Culture, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 102-119.

[Psyx]

In case of guns, powder was put into gun manually each time. It could be easily affected by weather. In short, each load way more often than not, especially in battlefield conditions, would propel bullet with different velocity.
Results are obvious.

Isn't that the point of measured powder horns?
although I'm not sure when they were invented, off the top of my head.



I have a question about shields, and it is a simple one. With a not tower shield, how are you supposed to defend your leg on your shield side? I have tried many things, but given that I am mostly making stuff up when I fight and that I am in single combat skews my answers.

Don't put your left leg so far forward?
If you lead with your left side and have your left leg forward, with your body side-on and behind the shield then your are heavily compromising your reach with your weapon arm. This means that someone can hit your leg and you can't reach them. Your best defence isn't a static shield, but the threat of an attack. Makes sure that if your partner can hit you, you can hit them.

Also; don't have too much weight on the leg, so you can move back and void the blow. If you seat everything on that leg, you'll have to weight transfer before moving.

A shield is a dynamic thing, not just a lump to put between you and a foe. Move it. Or yourself. If your shield is so high as to block your line of view to your foe in any way; it's probably too high.

[Psyx]

"At the beginning of a battle the crossbow bolts were shot diagonally upwards for a distance of about 200m towards the enemy lines. "

So the whole 'crossbows are more accurate because they are more direct firing' thing is tosh, then?

[Xuc Xac]

"At the beginning of a battle the crossbow bolts were shot diagonally upwards for a distance of about 200m towards the enemy lines. "

So the whole 'crossbows are more accurate because they are more direct firing' thing is tosh, then?

Keep reading and pay close attention to the part that says "After such a punishing hail of bolts at the beginning of a battle, the crossbowmen moved forward in order to take aimed shots at a distance of up to 80m, and thus to contribute to the further course of the battle."

[Brainfart]

Don't put your left leg so far forward?
If you lead with your left side and have your left leg forward, with your body side-on and behind the shield then your are heavily compromising your reach with your weapon arm.

Your weapon arm and body aren't static.

[Psyx]

Keep reading and pay close attention to the part that says "After such a punishing hail of bolts at the beginning of a battle, the crossbowmen moved forward in order to take aimed shots at a distance of up to 80m, and thus to contribute to the further course of the battle."

Yeah; I got that. I tend to finish reading when I start paragraphs. the second part was so obvious as to not really require much comment: As at 80m, we already know that bows and crossbows are perfectly capable of aimed fire.



Your weapon arm and body aren't static.

Is it 'state the obvious to Psyx day' again, and nobody mentioned it?

The advice still holds. Many newer fighters lead overly with a shield and always strive to use it as a wall, leaving the left leg too far forward, where it can be threatened without sufficient counter threat.

[Brainfart]

Seeing as you failed to take the obvious into account when you first made your post, I'd say so. :smallwink:

The thing about the shield is that it allows a fighter to cover his forward leg perfectly adequately. He doesn't have to rely on slipping the leg out of range and countercutting to a higher target. Additionally, most interpretations of armed western martial systems that I've seen will usually place more weight on one foot, and it's usually the forward foot. The same advice that you offered on weight transference hinders the fighter's ability to move forward quickly.

[Galloglaich]

"At the beginning of a battle the crossbow bolts were shot diagonally upwards for a distance of about 200m towards the enemy lines. "

So the whole 'crossbows are more accurate because they are more direct firing' thing is tosh, then?

No I don't think it does, the real "indirect fire" is with the gadfly arrows out to 300m, the 200m shots are basically in a shallow arc., effectively still direct shots though. At 80m they don't need to arc the shots at all.

At any rate part of that article is data from the records (which is also the basis of the Osprey book on the Teutonic Order which reaches slightly different conclusions) and part of it is the authors opinion. I don't agree 100% with the latter but the data is very useful.

Incidentally do you have evidence that longbows arre accurate in a direct aimed shot at a human being at 80m? Not contesting that claim I'd just like to know for sure.

also the article points out that from Teutonic Order records they werent' using the steel prod weapons very much due to the cold. The steel prod weapons tend to be stronger than the composite prod weapons.

G.

[Mike_G]

Ok, this has gone on too long.

Arrows, bolts, musket balls, and .50 cal BMG rounds all fly in a parabolic arc, and all need to be arced to hit distant targets. That's why there an elevation knob on the sights.

Longbows fining in an arc versus straight shooting crossbows is crap. Just ask Newton. If you shoot anything at long range, you will aim high and your shots will land at a steep angle. Up close, you can aim much straighter, since the projectile will have less drop.

I've shot crossbows, and had to aim higher for distance, and shot bows at "close" range, and anything under 50 yards you aren't arcing you arrows much at all.

So all this about longbow arrows bouncing off your kettle hat while the bolt splits you sternum is garbage, assuming similar range and power of the weapon.

So, kiddies, long range =plunging fire, close range =flatter fire. For everything.

Hell, the Marines taught us indirect machine gun fire, to hit the guy on the other side of the hilll, like it was a rapid fire but small caliber mortar. This used to be a big part of the doctrine back before WWII, using massed machine gins like artillery batteries. We don't fight than way any more, but projectile motion is still projectile motion.

[Xuc Xac]

So all this about longbow arrows bouncing off your kettle hat while the bolt splits you sternum is garbage, assuming similar range and power of the weapon.

There's your problem. Yes, all projectiles travel in a parabolic arc. But with some weapons that means "if you want to hit his heart, you need to aim at his head" and with other weapons it means "if you want to hit his heart, you need to aim at that cloud over there that looks like a hippopotamus and hope the wind up there is going in the same direction it is down here..."

[Spiryt]

Hell, the Marines taught us indirect machine gun fire, to hit the guy on the other side of the hilll, like it was a rapid fire but small caliber mortar. This used to be a big part of the doctrine back before WWII, using massed machine gins like artillery batteries. We don't fight than way any more, but projectile motion is still projectile motion.

Well, I think that Marines also taught you that different projectiles had different ballistics.

And bolts compared could be quite a bit different compared to arrows, like short 9mm compared to rifle 7.62 for a bit simplish comparison.

Bolts generally wouldn't be weighted in a way that would allow them to fly in the nice arc.

On the other hand, they would generally loose velocity slower, especially when not shoot at steep arc, while achieving greater initial velocities, as I mentioned before.

In short, this indeed would lead to different motion in the air.

[Psyx]

Seeing as you failed to take the obvious into account when you first made your post, I'd say so.

Ohhhkaaaay. I didn't think I had to spell out everything from basic axioms, as I assumed a certain degree of interpretive intelligence in the reader-base here.


Most interpretations of armed western martial systems that I've seen will usually place more weight on one foot, and it's usually the forward foot. The same advice that you offered on weight transference hinders the fighter's ability to move forward quickly.

MORE weight perhaps. But it's not 80/20 is it? Overly uneven weight distribution requires weight transfer before movement can take place. A lot of people don't really think enough about where their weight is, and where this stops them moving. You need to be able to move and change direction, and you can't do that while practically hopping on your front foot: Which I've seen inexperienced shield fighters do an awful lot.

Hopefully the advice will be useful to the person it was intended for, rather than experienced fighters who should already know.



At 80m they don't need to arc the shots at all.

*Honk*

Yes they do. Speed of sound = 330 ish m/s. Or 750mph.

I'm assuming that we don't think that a bolt travels more than half that. Or 160ish m/s. Taking half a second to reach a 80m target at half the speed of sound [!]
Acceleration due to gravity =10m/s
Run that through some basic physics, and you'll see that the crossbow does need to be aimed high, and is not completely direct fire, by a long shot. Put the bolt's velocity down to something more realistic, and the aim needs more adjustment.



Incidentally do you have evidence that longbows arre accurate in a direct aimed shot at a human being at 80m? Not contesting that claim I'd just like to know for sure.

I've stood and watched archers plonk arrows into targets at that distance. Of course there is still a trajectory to the shot, because with missiles travelling at such speeds, it's impossible for there not to be.

[Psyx]

Longbows fining in an arc versus straight shooting crossbows is crap.


And there was me resorting to mere physics, when succinctness was far more entertaining!

[Karoht]

Seeing as you failed to take the obvious into account when you first made your post, I'd say so. :smallwink:

The thing about the shield is that it allows a fighter to cover his forward leg perfectly adequately. He doesn't have to rely on slipping the leg out of range and countercutting to a higher target. Additionally, most interpretations of armed western martial systems that I've seen will usually place more weight on one foot, and it's usually the forward foot. The same advice that you offered on weight transference hinders the fighter's ability to move forward quickly.

I've been fighting for close to 10 years.
Void always trumps shield. That doesn't mean always rely on the void and not use the shield, but it does mean to prioritize your stance and body weight distribution so you can.
And every fighting style I've ever seen which places more weight on a lead foot, I've had the habit slapped out of me by the next guy. So I take it with a grain of salt that group X teaches such a stance and not group Y.

As for moving forward quickly, you want a balanced stance, not a lead leg heavy stance. But that's just me stating the obvious.

[Galloglaich]

So all this about longbow arrows bouncing off your kettle hat while the bolt splits you sternum is garbage, assuming similar range and power of the weapon.

So, kiddies, long range =plunging fire, close range =flatter fire. For everything.

EDIT: I THINK You are wrong, and you still don't get it.

And just for the record, you aren't the only guy here who was in the military. I spent some time on an Uncle Sam machine gun range myself.

The difference between crossbow bolts, bullets and arrows are that crossbow bolts are shorter, fatter, heavier and less aerodynamic. Yes you can shoot bullets (or crossbow bolts) in an arc, but you don't shoot a volley of rifle fire up at a 70 degree angle in order to arc into targets from above. That is why longbows shoot farther in indirect shots, because they shoot in very high arcs and the aerodynamics of arrows allows the gravity to keep the velocity up to a lethal level. With crossbows, just like it says in that article, when the energy drops out of the bolt enough that it's just flying, it's simply not going to do a lot of real damage. but the effective direct range is longer. This is the same idea of a "spent" bullet. Arrows don't really work the same way when shot in a high arc.

All this talk about shooting modern crossbows is also "Garbage" incidentally unless you have got a 200 kg + draw weight crossbow to play with you aren't even in the ballpark of the type of weapons we are talking about. If you are spanning a crossbow with your hands it's not a military grade weapon.

Anyway, the bottom line is that we don't have the data on the real powerful crossbows yet. We will have it soon, but right now it's not available. As soon as some tests are done I will post the data here regardless of which position it supports. Longbows are for whatever reason, weapons people emotionally identify with. I really don't get it, but whatever floats your boat.

At this point the data we do have is ambiguous enough that both sides of the argument are going to apparently continue to connect the dots to suit their own preconceptions. I don't think I'm doing that but I probably am. All I can say is I started out a "longbows are superior" guy but after reading through a lot of old records I changed my mind.

When modern test results are published (hopefully complete with some nice videos) we can put this to rest, just like so many of the other hot internet debates on medieval weaponry were put to rest: on riveted vs. butted mail, on longbows vs. armor, on European swords being inferior to katanas etc.

G.

[Galloglaich]

There's your problem. Yes, all projectiles travel in a parabolic arc. But with some weapons that means "if you want to hit his heart, you need to aim at his head" and with other weapons it means "if you want to hit his heart, you need to aim at that cloud over there that looks like a hippopotamus and hope the wind up there is going in the same direction it is down here..."

Exactly.

G.

[Mike_G]

EDIT: I THINK You are wrong, and you still don't get it.


G.

I'm fairly certain I'm not.

I do get what you are saying, but I disagree.

Yes, there's a difference between projectiles, but it's not as extreme as is being made out here. Everything arcs. The more velocity you put on the round, and the more aeordynamic it is, the further it will fly before it hits the ground, but at 50 yards, a longbow or crossbow would shoot fairly flat and at 300 yards both would need to fire very high and arc the shot.

Muskets were often fired at a high angle for distance fire. I don't think bows were ever fired higher than a forty five degree angle.

I think somewhere there is a blind spot., where bolts fly straight as an arrow (ha!) for a hundred yards then fall to earth, while arrows must be arced to fly 50 yards. This is ridiculous.

For similar draw weights at similar ranges, I don't think we're talking "aim at his head, or aim at Venus to hit him in the chest" I think we're talking "aim at his head, or aim a foot over his head."

I refuse to believe that with battlefield weapons, say an English Longbowman at Agincourt versus a Genoese crossbowman of the same era, that there is any range at which the archer would have to drop the arrow on your head while the crossbowman could shoot it straight into your chest.

[fusilier]

I refuse to believe that with battlefield weapons, say an English Longbowman at Agincourt versus a Genoese crossbowman of the same era, that there is any range at which the archer would have to drop the arrow on your head while the crossbowman could shoot it straight into your chest.

The draw weights on crossbows and longbows are significantly different. I think that's the point that is trying to be made. So the initial velocities are significantly different. That's probably the major factor in which shoots "flatter" -- although projectile shape matters too. In one of those links that Matthew pointed out, the crossbowmen had to elevate their pieces when shooting at around 200 meters, but by around 80 meters they could aim point blank. Given the greater initial velocity, they probably didn't have to elevate as much as a longbow when shooting at 200m. So the chance of avoiding headgear and hitting the chest would probably be greater. I'm not sure how much any of that matters on the battlefield.

I do think some hyperbole was used when describing the situation though.

[Daosus]

Allright. The aerodynamics of any body are roughly described by the below equation:

F=c*V+g = m*a,

where F = force, c = drag constant, V = velocity, g = gravity. F, V and g are vectors.

This means that for a body of high mass, high drag constant and high initial velocity, the profile of flight comes out to a fairly flat region in which it's slowing down rapidly, and then a fast fall region in which the forward component of velocity is almost gone. This describes the crossbow bolt pretty well

For a body of low mass, low drag constant and low(er) initial velocity, there would be a ballistic arcing region, and then the same fast fall region as described above. This describes the arrow.

However, because the initial velocities are different, it is entirely possible that the flat range of the bolt is about as long as the ballistic region of the crossbow. This would also imply that the flight time of the bolt is quite low, compared to the arrow. Since the arrow flies slower, gravity has more time to affect it, and since it's actually aerodynamic enough not to lose too much forward velocity, you can arc it. With a crossbow bolt, arcing would likely result in it flying more or less straight, and then suddenly starting to fall at an unpredictable distance dictated by the imperfections in the construction of the bolts. You could make the drop predictable by building the bolts to good tolerances (like we do golf balls now).

So, FFS people, no one is trying to say that neither is affected by gravity. Just the bolt is fired faster, loses velocity faster, and has a short flight time and a low degree of drop before it's nearly useless because it's too slow.

[Skorj]

OK, some simple facts:

Faster projectiles have a flatter arc.

Drag is a v^2 thing above about 60 f/s. (It's quadratic, and at fired projectile speeds the v^2 term dominates).

With two projectiles of roughly similar shape, cross-sectional density is the main factor in how fast a projectile loses speed. An arrow could be better or worse than a crossbow bolt in this regard, depending on how much of each was wood vs metal, and how large of an arrowhead was used.

Early musket balls were an exception to all the above, as they'd spin out to a frisbee shape as they traveled, and at about 50 yards would start acting like a frisbee.

[Galloglaich]

I'm fairly certain I'm not.

I do get what you are saying, but I disagree.

Yes, there's a difference between projectiles, but it's not as extreme as is being made out here. Everything arcs. The more velocity you put on the round, and the more aeordynamic it is, the further it will fly before it hits the ground, but at 50 yards, a longbow or crossbow would shoot fairly flat and at 300 yards both would need to fire very high and arc the shot.

At 300 yards, yes, the question is some where in between, say about 100 yards or 150 yards.



Muskets were often fired at a high angle for distance fire. I don't think bows were ever fired higher than a forty five degree angle.

Do you think Muskets ever were fired at a 45 degree angle? Or a 30 degree angle?



I think somewhere there is a blind spot., where bolts fly straight as an arrow (ha!) for a hundred yards then fall to earth, while arrows must be arced to fly 50 yards. This is ridiculous.

Certainly. It's not what I was suggesting though. I'm saying basically that bows shot strait for some distance, you could say 50 yards, beyond that they were increasingly arced. Crossbows shot strait a little further, maybe it's 150 yards, maybe some other number. This is what Delbruck, Williams, and other experts seem to be saying based on the old documents. But the old documents could be wrong or misinterpreted.



For similar draw weights at similar ranges, I don't think we're talking "aim at his head, or aim at Venus to hit him in the chest" I think we're talking "aim at his head, or aim a foot over his head."

But they aren't similar draw weights. That is one key point you are apparently missing. A 1200 lbs draw crossbow is potentially stronger (initially) than a 125 lb bow. Precisely how much stronger we don't know yet because the data isn't available.



I refuse to believe that with battlefield weapons, say an English Longbowman at Agincourt versus a Genoese crossbowman of the same era, that there is any range at which the archer would have to drop the arrow on your head while the crossbowman could shoot it straight into your chest.

I currently believe the opposite, but if data emerges to prove me wrong, (or even, substantially indicate that I'm wrong) I'll change my mind again. :)

G.

[Deadmeat.GW]

I must admit that I becoming somewhat skeptical of the effective ranges being mentioned.



Wasn't it also a rather large siege crossbow?



A few points:
1. Most of the sources I've read have claimed that past 100 or 150 yards the bolt had last enough energy that it couldn't be expected to pierce armor, but would still be effective against unarmored foes (or for that matter the unarmored portions of them).

2. If the Swiss were shooting people accurately at over 300 yards on the battlefield, then they had the effectiveness of rifle muskets. That's a pretty serious claim, and there should be a noticeable increase in casualties, especially given the typically slow moving mass formations of the day. There should also be some reaction to this evident in changing tactics (much like the French focused on more rapid movements, when rifle muskets were introduced).

3. The Swiss used meters in the Middle Ages? :-) Seriously though, you shouldn't take the measurements given too much credence. There were a variety of different yards, feet, ells, etc., in use all over Europe. Most period sources I know use the term "paces" which can be roughly acquired by counting your steps as you walk, and is typically around 2.5 feet. [Care must be taken however: the Roman pace was the distance a single foot traveled, or two steps, and was close to 5 feet]. Paces are often equated with yards, which are often equated with meters. My point is when dealing with period sources you should take these ranges as very rough.

I don't disagree with most of what you have to say, its just these ranges (which seem to be getting longer and longer as the conversation develops) that make me suspicious. Just because they started firing at longer ranges, doesn't mean the fire was terribly effective. I believe during the Napoleonic Wars there was some battle in Spain, where an Army Corps(!) volleyed at 1,000 yards! It was probably intended more as a show of coordination and drill, than to produce mass casualties. Likewise, if only a few bolts are finding their targets at 300 yards, that could be disconcerting to the receiving end. And if your bolts are plentiful, why not try for some long range shots? During the American Civil War, some commanders felt that fire over 100 yards wasn't effectual, but that it helped calm the troops' (i.e. the ones shooting) nerves.

The reason I used meters is that they had a different 'yard' then the rest of the regions around them which was closer to the meter then the English yard.

As for the shooting at that range, they did indeed have crossbowmen who would be accurate at that range in hitting single targets.

However you need to keep in mind the terrain they fought in, hilley, forested and so on.
Oft quite outnumbered also.

To even the odds they learned to shoot at individuals at the range of 300 'yards' for the pure crossbowmen.
The trained specialists.

The non-specialists made a far worse showing, from what I could see they made a good shot if they hit a single target at 80 yards and the trained specialists often remarked upon this lack of skill with derogatory remarks.
So, militia with crossbows, 80 yards...

Specialist crossbowmen who did nothing but that...300yards.

Heck, I am sure any military or ex-military person can happily say the same thing about sunday shooters and they happiness at hitting a stationary target at 50 meters, most of the time...with a rifle.

[WarKitty]

Quick question - about how long would an infantry spear be? I'm thinking a bronze age to early iron age spear designed for thrusting in close range.

[Mike_G]

At 300 yards, yes, the question is some where in between, say about 100 yards or 150 yards.


150 yards is way too far for a straight shot from anything that doesn't eject brass. Between 50 and a hundred I might believe, but I think I need to see a crossbow leveled at a target a football field and a half away and not dig up turf .



Do you think Muskets ever were fired at a 45 degree angle? Or a 30 degree angle?


Yes. At least 30 degrees. I've seen referrences to the drill command "Elevate" given to musketeers engaging troops at long range.

Look at the long range leaf sights on older rifles. Look at how elevated the barrel has to be to line up the rear sight and front sight. And those are much flatter shooting than muskets.

Bullets drop quickly, especially spherical, relatively low velocity musket balls. I doubt you could level the weapon and hit a guy above the knees at a hundred yards.




Certainly. It's not what I was suggesting though. I'm saying basically that bows shot strait for some distance, you could say 50 yards, beyond that they were increasingly arced. Crossbows shot strait a little further, maybe it's 150 yards, maybe some other number. This is what Delbruck, Williams, and other experts seem to be saying based on the old documents. But the old documents could be wrong or misinterpreted.



But they aren't similar draw weights. That is one key point you are apparently missing. A 1200 lbs draw crossbow is potentially stronger (initially) than a 125 lb bow. Precisely how much stronger we don't know yet because the data isn't available.


First, we need to make sure we aren't comparing Schroedinger's Crossbow, where we use siege bows when we want stats that favor power and light crossbows when we want to compare rate of fire and specially made hunting crossbows when we want to compare accuracy.

I doubt the Genoese were carrying boiws with a 1200 lb draw.

And if they were, the draw length is much shorter, imparting power to the bolt over less distance, which reduces overall "oomph."



I currently believe the opposite, but if data emerges to prove me wrong, (or even, substantially indicate that I'm wrong) I'll change my mind again. :)

G.

Drawing on what I've read, and what I've shot, I need to be persuaded that there were crossbowmen making 200 yard, flat shots and hitting individuals. Not everyone can do that with a modern rifle.

[Matthew]

Quick question - about how long would an infantry spear be? I'm thinking a bronze age to early iron age spear designed for thrusting in close range.

Probably 5-7 feet. Longer spears certainly existed, such as for ship to ship fighting in the Illiad, and Hoplite spears got longer, perhaps as much as 9' (or perhaps even more, though that would be unwieldy in one hand) before making the transition to the prototype for the sarissa, which ranged anywhere from 18-24', though more usually 18-21'. The "standard" one-handed infantry spear, though, ranges most often around 5-7 feet, as far as I am aware.

[fusilier]

@Deadmeat.GW
Ok, I would believe that the professionals (if that's the right word to use for them), would have more experience with long range shooting. And if you adapted meters as the closest measurement to whichever was originally quoted that's fine. I'm still a bit skeptical, as there could be exaggeration (both intentional and unintentional), and my impression is that they didn't seem to care too much about precise measurements at the time. Early tables of cannon ranges, typically given as point-blank and max, must be treated with much suspicion, and reflect general opinions rather than any realistic measurements (almost invariably they show culverins as shooting farther than cannons, for instance).

@Mike_G
A 1200lbs crossbow would have been rare, but based on the discussion here, 400-800 lbs probably were fairly common? That's still quite a bit more than the heaviest of longbows (and for that matter, it's probably safe to assume that most longbows had a draw weight of less than 125lbs?). The shorter bow is also more efficient in transferring energy to the arrow/bolt.

Holding a musket at 30 degrees would be pretty strange. However, I think most people would be surprised by the amount of elevation used on a rifle-musket --> maybe about 10+ degrees (which doesn't sound like much, but it is). My Carcano has volley sights that go out to 2000 meters! With a very stable, but less aerodynamic, roundnose bullet, it's a pretty steep angle. It's also different to aim, because your face is nowhere near the stock at that point.

[Brainfart]

Ohhhkaaaay. I didn't think I had to spell out everything from basic axioms, as I assumed a certain degree of interpretive intelligence in the reader-base here.

Hey, when you state something like that without anything to qualify it, don't be surprised when people offer corrections. :smalltongue:



MORE weight perhaps. But it's not 80/20 is it? A lot of people don't really think enough about where their weight is, and where this stops them moving. You need to be able to move and change direction, and you can't do that while practically hopping on your front foot: Which I've seen inexperienced shield fighters do an awful lot.

Pretty close, actually. It depends on the instructor. Mine (and his) advocate a 70/30 split in longsword and sword & buckler, though I've seen other groups do a 60/40 split.

There's rear-weighted stances too, of course, but they're used only in conjunction with certain guards or actions. A rear-weighted stance lengthens the time necessary to perform any offensive action from out of measure.

I'm not seeing how the advice for equal weight distribution helps you to your intended objective.

When you do a forward passing step, it's your rear leg that needs to transfer weight to your lead leg. A lightly loaded rear leg allows you to step forwards faster. It might slow down a rearward passing step a tiny amount if the person is unused to quick weight transfer, but it's nothing that can't be overcome with practice.


I've been fighting for close to 10 years.

Just out of curiosity, what martial arts did you practice in that time?



Void always trumps shield. That doesn't mean always rely on the void and not use the shield, but it does mean to prioritize your stance and body weight distribution so you can.

And every fighting style I've ever seen which places more weight on a lead foot, I've had the habit slapped out of me by the next guy. So I take it with a grain of salt that group X teaches such a stance and not group Y.

As for moving forward quickly, you want a balanced stance, not a lead leg heavy stance. But that's just me stating the obvious.

Like I said to Psyx above, I'm not seeing how an equal weight distribution gets you what you want.

[Yora]

Why are we still talking Bow vs. Crossbow after seven days, when at no point there was a disagreement that they are both good weapons and bows might get better results if the shooter is really well trained?

[Psyx]

but by around 80 meters they could aim point blank.

But they can't. There's at least a yard of drop at that range, assuming a very generous velocity for the crossbow and that the laws of physics still apply.



Drawing on what I've read, and what I've shot, I need to be persuaded that there were crossbowmen making 200 yard, flat shots and hitting individuals. Not everyone can do that with a modern rifle.

I would need evidence that the shot wasn't being made on the moon. Firing bolts at half the speed of sound, with no drop off in velocity, our crossbowman would be firing 8m above the target point at that range. That is not a 'straight shot'.

We keep hearing 'arrows aren't as accurate because they fire in a steeper arc'. I've only got my own experiences with 40mm and cricket balls to go on; but it really doesn't take much practice to be able to place either one pretty darned accurately out to a considerable distance. Quarterbacks manage to do ok, too.
Yes: The crossbow has a flatter trajectory, but it's not going to make a huge amount of difference to the accuracy in the hands of a trained man at shorter ranges. At longer ranges the crossbow's advantage of higher initial velocity is gone, and the drop-off is going to be steeper than the arrow's.

Not that any of that matters anyway when you're putting shots into a clump of men; which is essentially the goal here. What counts there is simply the chance of each chance delivering a disabling blow, multiplied by shots fired.


I refuse to believe that with battlefield weapons, say an English Longbowman at Agincourt versus a Genoese crossbowman of the same era, that there is any range at which the archer would have to drop the arrow on your head while the crossbowman could shoot it straight into your chest.

Concur.
We don't need much in the way of tests: Simply apply some velocity formula and acceleration due to gravity on the back of a cigarette packet. Both arc. Arrows arc more (hence the whole 'archery' thing!), but the shooter is always going to have to compensate. I'd -personally- rather compensate 50% more with projectiles that are more stable and retain more killing power at those ranges.


To even the odds they learned to shoot at individuals at the range of 300 'yards' for the pure crossbowmen. The trained specialists.
The non-specialists made a far worse showing...


This sounds... right. A non-trained shooter aiming one 'height' above a target and hitting... fair cop. Trained marksmen putting off shots at 30 or more degrees... fair enough. And for just this reason, I don't see that trained longbow men would suffer with inaccuracy at extreme range more than a crossbowman: If you can fire accurately at 30-40 degrees, you can do it at 45.



Quick question - about how long would an infantry spear be? I'm thinking a bronze age to early iron age spear designed for thrusting in close range.

For formation combat or individual? Around or a foot more than the person using it is a good rule of thumb for an individual spear. Whatever feels right!


The shorter bow is also more efficient in transferring energy to the arrow/bolt.

I rather thought that crossbows were far LESS efficient...?




Pretty close, actually. It depends on the instructor. Mine (and his) advocate a 70/30 split in longsword and sword & buckler


That's an awful lot. That rings all kind of alarm bells with me.
There is no point planting that much weight on one foot, as it adds nothing.


Like I said to Psyx above, I'm not seeing how an equal weight distribution gets you what you want.

It allows you to move in either direction. Fast.
Good footwork and weight distribution in martial arts - like dancing - is absolutely crucial. Moving forward is good in that it might allow you to get in a strike. But being able to quickly move back means that you are very likely to be able to void a blow.
Which to me means that I'd like to be able to do either, but I certainly want to be able to move back, because not getting killed is ultimately the primary objective - not killing the other guy.

[Galloglaich]

@Mike_G
A 1200lbs crossbow would have been rare, but based on the discussion here, 400-800 lbs probably were fairly common?

Not according to my sources, including the one which Matthew linked to above on the Teutonic Order in Prussia, which states that the stirrup crossbows were 150 kg draw and the cranequin crossbows were 500 kg draw.

It all depends what time period you are referring to but in the 15th Century I do not think the 500 kg crossbows were any more rare than the 120 lb draw longbows.

From the source:

In the fifteenth century, to compete with the longbow and the emerging use of firearms, the crossbow was equipped with a powerful steel bow, with the help of which the draw-weight increased to up to 500 kg. In the case of the stirrup crossbow with a horn bow, the draw-weight was up to 150 kg.107 The strong steel bows could be drawn only with the special help of mechanical devices such as a windlass (the so-called 'English winder') or the ratchet winder (the so-called 'German winder' or cranequin). Even after 1450, the crossbow was in no way inferior to hand-held firearms, and it was also used as a weapon of war in the sixteenth century.

It's a funny coincidence this guy apparently has the same bias that I do (especially when by the end of the article he's quoting the same pro-longbow propaganda everyone here is.)

Look, here is where I find this disparagement of the crossbow suspicious. It's really pretty simple. In order to believe the crossbow was vastly inferior to the longbow, you really have to assume that these people were stupid. I'm suspicious of such theories in general because they have repeatedly proven to be incorrect.

If you look at say, the Teutonic Order. They had access to the longbow, they had plenty of money. English Crusaders joined forces with the Order on numerous Crusades throughout the Middle Ages and there were strong direct trade links between the Baltic and England (and Scotland). In fact, many towns in the Baltic had sizable English populations, notably the town of Elbing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbl%C4%85g#Hanseatic_Elbing

The city of Danzig fought a trade war against England in the late 15th Century (and won, incidentally)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Hanseatic_War

More to the point, they DEFINITELY had plenty of access to powerful recurves of the Mongol and Turkish types. At the risk of opening yet another can of worms, from everything I've read these recurves were just as powerful as longbows. So why didn't they adopt them, or, if you assume that it really did take 20 years to learn to shoot one, why didn't they hire plenty of Tartar or Turkish auxiliaries as archers instead of importing crossbowmen from as far away as Switzerland and Genoa?

They actually did this (with the so-called Turcopoles) in the Crusader Kingdoms in the Mediterranean, but these were eventually replaced by crossbows. Tartar mercenaries were available in the Baltic and were used by all sides, but again, were replaced by crossbowmen.

Was this due to stupidity? Perhaps. I won't rule it out. But experience tells me probably not.

In the long run, we'll see. Some people may not need or want to see data and think everything can be sussed out on the back of a pack of cigarettes but I think actually putting the kit together and trying it out will often give us surprising results. It wouldn't be the first time.

G.

[Caustic Soda]

When modern test results are published (hopefully complete with some nice videos) we can put this to rest, just like so many of the other hot internet debates on medieval weaponry were put to rest: on riveted vs. butted mail, on longbows vs. armor, on European swords being inferior to katanas etc.

G.

Riveted versus butted mail? I think I missed that one. what was it all about? and what did the test results show?

I've seen more of the others than I care for, but that one seems to have gone over my head entirely.

[Psyx]

Some people may not need or want to see data and think everything can be sussed out on the back of a pack of cigarettes

Was that a dig? I'm not saying that a crossbow is a piece of junk. Soldiers don't use bad weapons for several hundred years if they have another available choice.

I'm just saying that it takes about 30 seconds to figure out that the notion that crossbows can magically shoot straight and level for 80m is patiently absurd. As is the idea that they would be shooting anything like straight at greater ranges. In the hands of a skilled user, warbows are not at some massive accuracy disadvantage.

Maybe instead of taking the word of other sources and regurgitating them, we should apply some high-school physics and elementary grade common sense to the problem. Call me a product of the modern eduction system, but I prefer using a bit of science to automatically believing everything an old book tells me.




Interestingly, when looking for some crossbow velocities; these two links came up first:

http://www.huntersfriend.com/products/archery/crossbows/performance.html
http://www.hunting-fishing-gear.com/article-display/1737.html

There's a couple of interesting comments regarding range, trajectory and velocity buried in the text.

[Spiryt]

Riveted versus butted mail? I think I missed that one. what was it all about? and what did the test results show?

I've seen more of the others than I care for, but that one seems to have gone over my head entirely.

Virtually all rings of mail ever encountered were connected with each other with rivets.

http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/pix/mail_links.jpg

Most prevalent construction was rows of solidly shut, uniform links, alternating with rows of riveted rings.

While today, of course, with lack of tools, time, skill, smithy, or whatever, people who want to have something that resembles mail, take some metal rings and butt them together.

From whatever reason, some people "test" such stuff against different weapons - results are obvious, such "mail" falls apart quickly in the best case.

That's pretty much it.

[Galloglaich]

Was that a dig? I'm not saying that a crossbow is a piece of junk. Soldiers don't use bad weapons for several hundred years if they have another available choice.

It's not a dig, it's a disagreeement. (and i would have mentioned you by name but I didn't remember who had said that and didn't have time to look it up) I don't think you can figure everything out in advance because you don't always know all the variables. Thus we have been surprised by things like how effective armor was or how much swords really weighed.



I'm just saying that it takes about 30 seconds to figure out that the notion that crossbows can magically shoot straight and level for 80m is patiently absurd. As is the idea that they would be shooting anything like straight at greater ranges. In the hands of a skilled user, warbows are not at some massive accuracy disadvantage.

I think you mean patently. And I also think you and Mike G. are mischaracterising my argument. I'm obviously not claiming that crrossbows shot as straight as a laser. Subjectively at some point, something is more or less a straight shot (shall we say, up to a 10 degree elevation ?) and something is more of an arcing / curved / indirect shot (45 degrees?). I think you know what I mean though just don't like the data.



Maybe instead of taking the word of other sources and regurgitating them, we should apply some high-school physics and elementary grade common sense to the problem. Call me a product of the modern eduction system, but I prefer using a bit of science to automatically believing everything an old book tells me.

Literary records are evidence, they are not definitive evidence, but they are evidence. Do you really think people were lying about how they used weapons in period? I don't share the contempt for "old books" that you apaprently do, though I don't take them as gospel either. Ultimately the bottom line for me comes from modern testing like has been done with so many other weapons and armor such as at the Royal Armouries at Leeds.

But that said, the physics cited upthread a little seems to support what I was saying, a higher initial velocity and higher weight means a more sudden drop off in energy for the crossbow, better aerodynamics and lower initial velocity means a better 'ballistic' performance by an arrow. The people in period felt that what they considered a straight shot (which may actually be 5, 10, who knows may be 15 degrees of elevation) was capable of hitting targets up to 80 meters or 150 meters or whatever, and they clearly distinguished that from 'indirect' shots up to 300 meters.



Interestingly, when looking for some crossbow velocities; these two links came up first:

http://www.huntersfriend.com/products/archery/crossbows/performance.html
http://www.hunting-fishing-gear.com/article-display/1737.html

There's a couple of interesting comments regarding range, trajectory and velocity buried in the text.

Interesting comments and numbers regarding modern hunting crossbows, I didn't see any data on weapons in the ballpark of 15th Century military crossbows. Which isn't surprising because they don't make anything 1/4 that powerful any more since you don't need it for hunting, and they are dangerous. Crossbows of that kind of power have to be tested at a rifle range.

I've seen stats on modern crossbows in the 250 lb draw range which had up to 185 fps. I can only speculate on what a 1200 lb draw weapon would be but I don't think it would be a direct correlation. You might see up to say 250 fps or maybe as high as 300 fps, but there are a lot of other variables like the type of string, the length of the stroke, the different behavior of compound (pully) prods vs. strait prods, the shape, weight and length of the bolt (the old ones being much shorter and fatter). It's beyond me to measure all of these factors, which is why I'm impatient for a real test.

But a few replicas have been made and we will see tests eventually, maybe this summer.

G.

[Galloglaich]

Virtually all rings of mail ever encountered were connected with each other with rivets.

http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/pix/mail_links.jpg

Most prevalent construction was rows of solidly shut, uniform links, alternating with rows of riveted rings.

While today, of course, with lack of tools, time, skill, smithy, or whatever, people who want to have something that resembles mail, take some metal rings and butt them together.

From whatever reason, some people "test" such stuff against different weapons - results are obvious, such "mail" falls apart quickly in the best case.

That's pretty much it.

But the controversy was that people thought, because "butted mail" is very common at Renaissance Faires, surely it should have been common in Ye Olden Days. Even recently the RPG book "From Stone to Steel" claimed that riveted mail was rarely used due to being too stiff, and butted mail still shows up (more or less randomly) on lowbrow shows like 'Deadliest Warrior'.

A big internet flame war over this issue in the 90's was settled a few years ago when definititve studies were published showing almost all the mail armor which has been recovered in Europe and the Middle East before the 19th Century was either riveted or solid or welded (the vast majority being riveted or alternating riveted / solid links). Some really old, badly rusted examples they originally thought were butted turned out to be riveted when they looked at them with x-rays.

G.

[Brainfart]

That's an awful lot. That rings all kind of alarm bells with me.
There is no point planting that much weight on one foot, as it adds nothing.


Really? Most of the interpretations of European sword arts that I've seen tend to place the majority of their weight on one foot. What you're saying might be true in an unarmed context (I wouldn't know), but you're going to need a heck of a lot more evidence to convince me that placing more weight on one leg adds nothing.



It allows you to move in either direction. Fast.
Good footwork and weight distribution in martial arts - like dancing - is absolutely crucial. Moving forward is good in that it might allow you to get in a strike. But being able to quickly move back means that you are very likely to be able to void a blow.
Which to me means that I'd like to be able to do either, but I certainly want to be able to move back, because not getting killed is ultimately the primary objective - not killing the other guy.

What's considered to be good is relative. Being able to move quickly in every direction is important, yes, but placing that much weight on one foot doesn't impede this. How exactly does it affect mobility negatively? :smallconfused:

There's more than one way to void a blow as well. You can get the heck off the line by stepping to either side. You can step diagonally relative to your opponent, which will allow you to void while allowing you to stay in an appropriate distance to counterattack. Stepping backwards is probably the worst option unless you're already sure that the other fellow has completely misjudged the distance between you two.

[Psyx]

What's considered to be good is relative. Being able to move quickly in every direction is important, yes, but placing that much weight on one foot doesn't impede this. How exactly does it affect mobility negatively?


Because you must weight shift prior to moving that leg. You absolutely cannot move your foot if 70% of your weight is on it.
That's before we address balance issues: You might not be fighting on a nice mat, and slipping with that much weight on the foot will have unpleasant consequences. You simply don't want to gamble your life that the grass under your feet isn't slippery. The importance of solid footwork is often missed by people who practice indoors all the while. Do you think that 70/30 is honestly a good idea when standing on a muddy, grassy field, slick with blood and rain, with threats in every direction?
And you're also a lot easier to trip; although that is less important in armed combat.
Finally and somewhat importantly, blatantly having weight on one foot is quite obvious, which means your partner automatically can reduce the possible number of things that you can do to him by degree.

'Interpreted' Western arts are just that: We have a bunch of pictures from 600 years ago and a lot of guesswork, with often very little said about footwork. There's a lot of lessons to be learned from fighting arts that didn't die out, and those arts invariably stress balanced footwork. There is no magical reason why Western arts should throw out every lesson taught in other cultures - it simply makes no sense.



You can get the heck off the line by stepping to either side.

And if your weight is on one foot, you have no option but to move the other one first or waste time weight shifting.

[Galloglaich]

First, we need to make sure we aren't comparing Schroedinger's Crossbow, where we use siege bows when we want stats that favor power and light crossbows when we want to compare rate of fire and specially made hunting crossbows when we want to compare accuracy.

I obvously don't agree with the implication that I'm cherry picking numbers, but I will concede this, there were many different types of crossbows in period and they do get pretty confusing. I've found at least 5 distinct types of military crossbows widely used in Europe already. Here is what I've identified so far:

MILITARY CROSSBOWS

Simple yew prod crossbow aka Knüttelarmbrüste used from at least the 12th Century through the 16th. Marginally capable as a military weapon, similar to a modern hunting crossbow. This is the weapon which is usually compared to a longbow.
Composite prod stirrup crossbow aka 'Steigbügelarmbrust' . spanned with a stirrup, made of wood bow reinforced with baleen and / or sturgeon 'horns'. Later (stronger) composite prods were made uses goat foot ('Geissfuss')or belt-hook to span. made of wood, sinew, rams horn, bull horn, and other materials. Up to 150 KG draw.
Windlass siege crossbow "english winder", large powerful composite prod crossbow but very slow to span with a cord and pully 'Seilrolle' or Windlass 'Winde', popular in the 14th Century for seige warfare, gradually discontinued in the early 15th century. 300-500 KG draw.
Heavy composite arbalest. Small. Usable from horseback. Spanned with cranequin. Better in winter than steel prod. 300-400 KG draw (possibly more powerful in winter time).
Steel prod arbalest uses cranequin aka "German winder" small. Usable from horseback. 500 KG draw.
Gastrophetes / Scorpion old fashioned Greek 'Belly bow' used by Byzantine Ballistiari through the 14th Century.
Repeating Crossbow used by Chinese but also known in Europe. Shoots very light bolt with no fletchings, usually used with poison. Used through the 19th Century.

HUNTING CROSSBOWS

Skåne Lockbow - very light crossbow for small game, of a type found in Denmark.
Slurbow - shoots bullets or clay pellets.
Hunting arbalest cranequin spanned steel prod arbalest similar to the military version, remained in use for hunting into the 18th Century (these are mostly what have survived)

SPECIALIST

Ballisteri very small 'pistol' crossbow. Uses a screw to span. Either an expensive toy or an assassins weapon.



I doubt the Genoese were carrying boiws with a 1200 lb draw.

Why?



And if they were, the draw length is much shorter, imparting power to the bolt over less distance, which reduces overall "oomph."

Draw length is one of many factors, isn't it.



Drawing on what I've read, and what I've shot, I need to be persuaded that there were crossbowmen making 200 yard, flat shots and hitting individuals. Not everyone can do that with a modern rifle.

You have to be able to do that with a modern rifle if you expect to get out of boot camp. Even in the Marines :smalltongue:

G.

[Galloglaich]

apparently the English Longbows were tried by the Teutonic order:


When, in the summer of 1390, Bolingbroke was preparing for his journey to Prussia he had, among other things, eighty longbows costing one shilling each and six broadbows, each at double the price, purchased for him.95 They were packed in hemp, tied up with straps made from Hungarian leather and provided with a lock. In addition, there were four bundles of broad arrows. Perhaps the wood for these bows came from Prussia, as the tough and elastic yew wood was an important article of export of the Ordensstaat. Thus, in the year 1396 the commander of Ragnit deposited no less than 7,600 unworked wooden pieces for bows (ywenbogenholcz) and 1,150 of the same for crossbows (knottelholcz) with a Danzig citizen on the Grand Master's behalf.96 We also know that Bolingbroke's bows were used in action because in a description of the siege of Vilnius (Lithuania) in autumn 1390 the Knights' chronicler, Posilge, writes: 'Also the Lord of Lancaster from England was there; he had many fine archers, who did much good'.97 The impression is that Posilge was very impressed by the effectiveness of the English longbows.
The Teutonic Order had, from the very beginning, preferred the crossbow to the ordinary bow. The oldest recorded use of the European crossbow dates from the fourth century AD, and one comes across them again in the tenth.98 During the First Crusade the crossbow was in general use. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries important improvements were made which led to the further spread of this weapon. The trigger, the notch for the bolt, the nut and its socket, and the stirrup were introduced, and these were only some of the changes made. The stirrup was fixed to the stock and served for spanning the bow. Already in the statutes of the Teutonic Order there was mention of the workshop in which the crossbows with stirrups (as well as bows) were produced: 'Marschalus potest accipere de domo balistarum minores balistas aptas pedibus ad trahendum et arcus pro fratribus, quibus sive balistas sive arcus viderit expedire'.99

They were impressed, but evidently they preferred the Crossbow.

G.

[SigCorps]

While I am no where near an expert on arms and equipment from history. I have had expience with the modern rifle. We regularly trained to shoot out to 300 meters with the M16A2 and over 400 meters with the M249 SAW.

At 300 meters you still aim center mass on the target with the rifle. So any compensation for distance is negligible on a modern rifle.

[Shademan]

http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=19926&start=0&sid=61d36ca1f163d7a532f2b2637b63b589

crossbows

[Mike_G]

While I am no where near an expert on arms and equipment from history. I have had expience with the modern rifle. We regularly trained to shoot out to 300 meters with the M16A2 and over 400 meters with the M249 SAW.

At 300 meters you still aim center mass on the target with the rifle. So any compensation for distance is negligible on a modern rifle.

One assumes you set the elevation knob on the rear sight assembly differently for 300 meters than you would for 200, or 500. If you set your windage and elevation, your point of aim is still center mass, but the rifle is actually angled differently.

At PI we shot 200, 300 and 500 yards (meters are for foreigners) known distance, adjusting our sights in reaction to where our shots were spotted. This is for your qual score, and to get familiar with the way the rifle works, so spending three weeks on you belly with a support sling strangling your left arm and a makrsmanship notebook beside you, you learn to shoot.

In an unknown distance situation, where targets could be at any range (like combat), you can set your battlesight zero for 300 yards, and if you aim center mass you may hit a closer guy in the head and a more distant one in the leg, but for miltary purposes that's fine. It doesn't mean the shot isn't arcing. Back in the day, when bows or muskets had a much less flat trajectory than .223 ammo, the leaders would estimate range to a target, usually an enemy formation, not a skinny third world teenager with an AK running from cover to cover, and the fring unit would adjust sights or elvate as per drill.

But the fact stand that all projectile motion is a parabolic arc. I'm not in any way saying either the crossbow or longbow was a bad weapon, but I would be suprised if the arc for those two weapons were all that different (like, arrows landing on your kettle hat while the bolts hit you in the belt buckle different), comapring battlefield versions of each.

[SigCorps]

While yes you set your battle site zero to 300 meters as we did in the Army, the compensation you are talking about on a modern rifle is miniscule to that of what you weould need for a bow, or crossbow.

We shot at targets that ranged from 25 to 300 meters with the M16 , I never had an issue hitting center mass with my sights set to 300. Even with the M249 set to 300 hitting the 400 meter targets was done with little to no compensation.

[MarkusWolfe]

Quick question - about how long would an infantry spear be? I'm thinking a bronze age to early iron age spear designed for thrusting in close range.

Ones used with a larger shield would be 5-7 feet, while the ones used with smaller shields or without any shields would go up to 9 feet. Also bear in mind the different kinds of spearheads and their effects (broad spearheads don't penetrate very deeply and are ineffective against armor but can be pulled out quickly, while narrow spearheads have the opposite effect.)

[Psyx]

So any compensation for distance is negligible on a modern rifle.

Tell that to a sniper. They'll smile and tell you that's why you aren't a sniper...

The rounds drop less at a given distance because they are travelling at least five times faster than the fastest bolt. Any projectile not generating lift will drop 16 feet in a second. Now with a 'primitive' weapon that second might only get you a hundred yards or so of range, whereas with a 5.56mm NATO round, that second will get you 1000m of range.

[MarkusWolfe]

But the controversy was that people thought, because "butted mail" is very common at Renaissance Faires, surely it should have been common in Ye Olden Days. Even recently the RPG book "From Stone to Steel" claimed that riveted mail was rarely used due to being too stiff, and butted mail still shows up (more or less randomly) on lowbrow shows like 'Deadliest Warrior'.

A big internet flame war over this issue in the 90's was settled a few years ago when definititve studies were published showing almost all the mail armor which has been recovered in Europe and the Middle East before the 19th Century was either riveted or solid or welded (the vast majority being riveted or alternating riveted / solid links). Some really old, badly rusted examples they originally thought were butted turned out to be riveted when they looked at them with x-rays.

G.

I'm signed up at Spike.com. Could you give me some links so I can prove to the other fans that riveted was common in the medieval era compared to butted?

[Psyx]

^It's kind of common sense, too.

Mail was expensive stuff as it takes AGES to make, and metal was often expensive too. The kind of people who could afford mail could afford the extra labour costs for the same material costs and armour that was far more effective, and didn't fall apart.

[Spiryt]

Not to mention that especially in less "civilized" areas of Dark Ages, 25 pounds of suitable iron was usually true FORTUNE.

Making butted mail out of it would be somehow like using Ferrari 599 as a tractor.

Not to mention that they wanted to live. That's was point of armor. :smalltongue:


Here (http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html) is decent article anyway.

[Mike_G]

While yes you set your battle site zero to 300 meters as we did in the Army, the compensation you are talking about on a modern rifle is miniscule to that of what you weould need for a bow, or crossbow.


That's been more or less exactly my point.

But it's still a turn of the dial to raise the rear sight assembly. Even at high velocity, the round is dropping, and will hit the guy at 200 yards higher up on the body than the guy at 300 yard.

With a corssbow, we are talking orders of magnitude less velocity than a 5.56 mm round. We're talking a proijectile that's a ton heavier, less dense,a dn more subject to all manner of factors that will throw off the accuracy.

Thus, I doubt that it "shot flat" out to 150 yard. I just don't really believe that.



We shot at targets that ranged from 25 to 300 meters with the M16 , I never had an issue hitting center mass with my sights set to 300. Even with the M249 set to 300 hitting the 400 meter targets was done with little to no compensation.

And that's probably fine for a man sized target standing in the open. If you aim at his belly button, you can hit two feet high or two feet low and still ruin his day. If you are aiming at a head above the lip of a fighting hole, you may want to adjust that rear sight.

[Galloglaich]

I'm signed up at Spike.com. Could you give me some links so I can prove to the other fans that riveted was common in the medieval era compared to butted?

Dan Howards article on mail is pretty good and he does mention this specifically.

http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html

Eric Schmid's "Mail Research Society" is probably the most definitive single source in the world on mail specifically. They will answer questions if you email them.

Royal Armoury at Leeds is also a good source, you can get email answers from them.

http://www.royalarmouries.org/visit-us/leeds

G.

[fusilier]

In the spring I read a book called "Mercenaries and their Masters", by Michael Mallet. It's about Condottiere and is mostly focused on the 15th century. I remembered that I hadn't returned it to the library yet (for some reason the due date is December -- and I'm not even taking any courses this semester -- suckers!), so I gave it a quick glance to see what he had to say about projectile weapons during the period.

The book does not go into the technical details, but it was interesting. He notes that as late as the 1430s there were still some English longbowmen in service in Northern Italy. They were better paid than crossbowmen, but he points out this is because they were still mounted, not because their weapons were seen as more valuable. He also states that crossbows were pretty much ubiquitous in Italy at the time. Then he talks about hand guns, and there was something that I hadn't taken much notice of the first time I read it.

At the beginning of the 15th century hand guns are depicted in Italy, but almost always in conjunction with the defense of towns. By the middle of the century they are being used in open battles though, and they steadily replaced crossbows through the century. Part of this replacement may be due to hand guns being cheaper to produce than crossbows (and this source claims they are cheaper), but there is circumstantial evidence of their effectiveness. Captured hand gunners were typically executed on the spot, which he interprets as a testament to their effectiveness, and not simply abhorrence at the use of new technology. Also, in the middle of 15th century, when war threatened, Milan boasted that it could field 20,000 hand gunners. This was undoubtedly exaggeration for the purposes of propaganda. Nevertheless they boasted of their number of hand guns, and not their number of crossbows.

[fusilier]

Dan Howards article on mail is pretty good and he does mention this specifically.

http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html

. . .

G.

I have no dog in this fight, but I did take a quick glance at that article (thanks for sharing by the way). While it's not obvious, according to that article butted mail was used historically:


The next innovation for mail armour was the development of the mail and plates (sometimes called combined mail) construction. . . . Butted mail was more often used in this construction than in regular mail, yet riveted mail was still the most common. . . .

It is implicit in this statement that butted mail was used in the construction of regular mail. It is also implicit that it was uncommon, but I could find no claim as to how uncommon it would have been.

So tests with butted mail aren't necessarily historically inaccurate, but they may not be good representations of what would be typical. Note that in addition to pointing out the use of poor rivets and butted mail in some tests, there are several other factors mentioned as to why those tests were poor. So exactly how period butted mail stacks up against period riveted mail isn't clear.

Galloglaich, this leads back to the question I asked about the ratios of cranequin or windlass bows to other kinds. A cranequin 1200lbs crossbow may have excellent performance, but can we take it as typical of a crossbow of the 1400s? Not that we shouldn't study it, but when thinking about battlefield effectiveness, we might want to consider more common weapons in our analyses. Rather than the best possible example we can find.

[Brainfart]

'Interpreted' Western arts are just that: We have a bunch of pictures from 600 years ago and a lot of guesswork, with often very little said about footwork. There's a lot of lessons to be learned from fighting arts that didn't die out, and those arts invariably stress balanced footwork.


There is no magical reason why Western arts should throw out every lesson taught in other cultures - it simply makes no sense.


Funny that you should mention this. I've done some preliminary research into reconstructions of traditional Chinese sword arts as well, and they've arrived at similar conclusions. This is also why there's been a fair amount of discussion about filling in the gaps (i.e. body mechanics etc that aren't explicitly stated in the treatises) by borrowing from other traditions.

In some treatises, it's pretty clear as to how you're supposed to hold a stance:
http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/image/fiore1.jpg

And no, they aren't just a bunch of pictures. Methinks you've been ignoring the captions. :smallwink:



And if your weight is on one foot, you have no option but to move the other one first or waste time weight shifting.

The first art of your assertion is demonstrably false, and the second doesn't even make a significant difference. If you aren't going to manage to void a blow, a couple of milliseconds isn't going to make a difference.

The way I was taught to use the gathering step was to push off with the rear leg and land with the forward one without transferring weight to the rear foot. Jack Dempsey mentions the 'falling step' in his book and it appears to be a fairly similar concept, just without the violence of execution since a sword blow doesn't need the same kind of motive force from the body to lend power to it.

[Galloglaich]

There is no doubt handgonnes and arquebusses were the hot new thing in the late 15th Century.

The problem with using them outside of fortifications was that they were slow to set up and 'delicate' to use (in the sense that you had to be careful not to screw up).

The use of firearms spread from Eastern Europe. Bohemian Hussites addressed this vulnerability problem in the 1420s by combining gunners (and crossbowmen) with wagons defended by heavy infantry. In the mid 15th Century the Hungarian "Black Army" was making widespread use of firearms, as many as 1/3 of their army were gunners. By this time gunners were being protected by halberds and pikes.

By the end of the 15th Century the matchlock arquebus was a somewhat standardized design, it was easier, safer, and quicker to use than the earlier handgonne, Czech pistala or hand-culverin types, and it began to be possible to train gunners systematically in a relatively short period of time. This made them very useful indeed, (and this did not seem to be the case with heavy crossbows or longbows, or early firearms, which tended to require users recruited from places with a culture of their use.)

Crossbows were still used on the front-line alongside arquebusses until the 1520s or thereabouts. as someone pointed out, Cortez had as many crossbows as arquebusses, for example (about a dozen of each in his original force). By then the first Muskets were coming online, and wheellocks were beccoming available which made the use (and therefore the training for) guns much easier.

G.

[Galloglaich]

I have no dog in this fight, but I did take a quick glance at that article (thanks for sharing by the way). While it's not obvious, according to that article butted mail was used historically:



It is implicit in this statement that butted mail was used in the construction of regular mail. It is also implicit that it was uncommon, but I could find no claim as to how uncommon it would have been.

He's talking about Russia there. Butted mail wasn't used in Western Europe (nor was mail and plate).



So tests with butted mail aren't necessarily historically inaccurate, but they may not be good representations of what would be typical. Note that in addition to pointing out the use of poor rivets and butted mail in some tests, there are several other factors mentioned as to why those tests were poor. So exactly how period butted mail stacks up against period riveted mail isn't clear.

I disagree, as far as I know they haven't found any butted mail that was in use in Europe before 1900 AD. If you (or anyone) knows of any please post it here.



Galloglaich, this leads back to the question I asked about the ratios of cranequin or windlass bows to other kinds. A cranequin 1200lbs crossbow may have excellent performance, but can we take it as typical of a crossbow of the 1400s? Not that we shouldn't study it, but when thinking about battlefield effectiveness, we might want to consider more common weapons in our analyses. Rather than the best possible example we can find.

It's a valid point, but I've addressed this before (upthread, a couple of times including a list of all the types of crossbows I am aware of), they were relatively rare, so were 125 lbs draw longbows. So were guns in this period (at least durign the first half of the 15th Century). But we do have records on how many were used, and it's not insignificant. One Teutonic order document from the 15th Century for example lists (roughly) 4000 knottelholcz or regular wood stave crossbows, 1500 Steigbügelarmbrust or stirrup crossbows, and 1000 cranequins in the Teutonic order armory I think at Koningsburg. On campaign (during the annual reysa or raids) they specifically used the latter, the knottelholcz were for garrisons and levies during larger battles.

If I have time later this weekend I'll scan some excerpts from my books at home on this and post them here. But there are a lot of records from armouries from many parts of Europe, from the Swiss Confederacy, from Italy, Bohemia, many parts of Germany, the Crusader states, and in France and England too I'm sure though I haven't read as much about those regions.

G.

[Galloglaich]

Also, in the middle of 15th century, when war threatened, Milan boasted that it could field 20,000 hand gunners. This was undoubtedly exaggeration for the purposes of propaganda. Nevertheless they boasted of their number of hand guns, and not their number of crossbows.

They may well have been exaggerating for the reasons you state, but I wouldn't entirely rule it out either, Milan had the greatest capacity for making steel probably in the world at that time, I know after one battle in the early 16th Century they were able to re-arm something like 15,000 soldiers in a matter of weeks.

G.

[fusilier]

There is no doubt handgonnes and arquebusses were the hot new thing in the late 15th Century.

The problem with using them outside of fortifications was that they were slow to set up and 'delicate' to use (in the sense that you had to be careful not to screw up).

The use of firearms spread from Eastern Europe. Bohemian Hussites addressed this vulnerability problem in the 1420s by combining gunners (and crossbowmen) with wagons defended by heavy infantry. In the mid 15th Century the Hungarian "Black Army" was making widespread use of firearms, as many as 1/3 of their army were gunners. By this time gunners were being protected by halberds and pikes.

By the end of the 15th Century the matchlock arquebus was a somewhat standardized design, it was easier, safer, and quicker to use than the earlier handgonne, Czech pistala or hand-culverin types, and it began to be possible to train gunners systematically in a relatively short period of time. This made them very useful indeed, (and this did not seem to be the case with heavy crossbows or longbows, or early firearms, which tended to require users recruited from places with a culture of their use.)

Crossbows were still used on the front-line alongside arquebusses until the 1520s or thereabouts. as someone pointed out, Cortez had as many crossbows as arquebusses, for example. By then the first Muskets were coming online, and wheellocks were beccoming available which made the use (and therefore the training for) guns much easier.

G.

Field fortifications seem to have played an increasingly large part during the 15th century in Italian warfare. This may have made it a bit easier to field handgunners outside of fortified towns.

Crossbow training seems to have been widespread in the civic militias in Italy at this time. All Venetians were required to train with crossbows, and of course Genovese crossbowmen were well known throughout Europe.

I think Cortez had significantly more crossbows than arquebuses. While the Venetians had banned crossbows from their galleys by 1520, the Spanish were a little bit slower to replace them in their navy (especially those bound for the Indes). Resupply of powder would have been a serious problem in Mexico. Even then they did run low on crossbow bolts. If I remember the story correctly, they handed out a few examples of bolts to their indigenous allies, and asked if they could make copies of at least the shafts. Within a week they had something like 40,000 very well made bolts some with cast copper heads! (Don't quote me on that, without checking up on the details).

On the other hand, when Columbus was organizing one of his later expeditions, his troops were armed with equal numbers of arquebuses and crossbows.

Wheellocks were not used by common troops -- ever. During the 30 years' war (and probably a little bit earlier), they were used by specialist infantry, but that was still uncommon. Cavalry pistols on the other hand were made possible by the use of wheellocks. Cavalry is expensive anyway, and wheellocks were very expensive. The infantryman's firearm was typically a matchlock until about 1700.

However, what I was really remarking upon was the apparent effectiveness of the earlier hand guns, which seems to be out of proportion with the technical details of such weapons being discussed here. They being cheaper doesn't seem to be sufficient to explain the reputation that they developed.

[Galloglaich]

Field fortifications seem to have played an increasingly large part during the 15th century in Italian warfare. This may have made it a bit easier to field handgunners outside of fortified towns.

Yes that's true you seem to see a lot of field earthworks reinforced with sticks and those big bundles of straw etc. in period art from this time.



Crossbow training seems to have been widespread in the civic militias in Italy at this time. All Venetians were required to train with crossbows, and of course Genovese crossbowmen were well known throughout Europe.

Yes! But this is another thing I keep trying to point out in this thread; these towns were the source of the culture of crossbows. Just like Wales (and later, various English towns) was the source for the Culture of longbows and parts of Bohemia and Germany and certain Italian cities were the source of the culture of early firearms. There is a very persistant cliche about the Middle Ages that militia were incompetent and weak compared to professional mercenaries or knights.

The reality is that militias were the professional mercenaries in most cases and often defeated knights. Specifically regarding crossbows, it's another (more or less correct) cliche that many Crossbowmen were recruited from Genoa. Well, these were not trained in a professional mercenary school! They were the town militia. Same with the famous "Swiss mercenaries". They were all originally militia; very very good militia. It wasn't until Maximillian I invented the Landsknechts circa 1500, who were designed specifically to emulate the Swiss Reislauffer (militia) that you see something like professional mercenary schools.



I think Cortez had significantly more crossbows than arquebuses.

According to Bernal Diaz, in his original force of 500 men, Cortez had 12 Arquebusses and 13 Crossbows. Most of his force were like Diaz, Rotoeleros.



While the Venetians had banned crossbows from their galleys by 1520, the Spanish were a little bit slower to replace them in their navy (especially those bound for the Indes). Resupply of powder would have been a serious problem in Mexico. Even then they did run low on crossbow bolts. If I remember the story correctly, they handed out a few examples of bolts to their indigenous allies, and asked if they could make copies of at least the shafts. Within a week they had something like 40,000 very well made bolts some with cast copper heads! (Don't quote me on that, without checking up on the details).

That is very interesting!

On a related note, I just read a couple of days ago how an artisan captured by the Lithuanians in the Baltic saved his own life by promising to teach them how to make crossbows of the Central European type.



Wheellocks were not used by common troops -- ever. During the 30 years' war (and probably a little bit earlier), they were used by specialist infantry, but that was still uncommon. Cavalry pistols on the other hand were made possible by the use of wheellocks. Cavalry is expensive anyway, and wheellocks were very expensive. The infantryman's firearm was typically a matchlock until about 1700.

I stand corrected. i wasn't aware of that, it's interesting. But do you agree the matchlock was much easier to use, and to train for, than the hand-culverin?



However, what I was really remarking upon was the apparent effectiveness of the earlier hand guns, which seems to be out of proportion with the technical details of such weapons being discussed here. They being cheaper doesn't seem to be sufficient to explain the reputation that they developed.

I know you like early firearms, but the longbow, the recurve, and the crossbow all also had fearsome reputations as well...

G.

[fusilier]

He's talking about Russia there. Butted mail wasn't used in Western Europe (nor was mail and plate).

It's not entirely clear from the context that he is referring only to Russia, although rereading it, it may indeed be the case. Also, at no point in the article does he say that butted mail was not used in Western Europe.


I disagree, as far as I know they haven't found any butted mail that was in use in Europe before 1900 AD. If you (or anyone) knows of any please post it here.

Note 59:

Butted mail is commonly used by modern re-enactors but historically it rarely had a place on the battlefield. It offered virtually no protection against the most common threats, i.e. arrows and spears. Even the earliest mail seems to have been made of riveted links

The note is in reference to the "flawed" tests. He does not say that butted mail had "no place on the battlefield" and he does not make any claim that it was *never* used in Western Europe. I'm just pointing out that the source can't be read to say that butted mail was never used in Western Europe, only that it was rarely used in Western Europe. It may be that the author simply doesn't have enough information to make a definitive statement.


It's a valid point, but I've addressed this before (upthread, a couple of times including a list of all the types of crossbows I am aware of), they were relatively rare, so were 125 lbs draw longbows.

Exactly my point! I think it's interesting and useful to look at the technological extremes of these weapons -- but that we should not assume that such weapons were typical. [I'm not actually asking you for more detailed information, I was just linking back to a previous statement that had a similar line of reasoning]

[Galloglaich]

The note is in reference to the "flawed" tests. He does not say that butted mail had "no place on the battlefield" and he does not make any claim that it was *never* used in Western Europe. I'm just pointing out that the source can't be read to say that butted mail was never used in Western Europe, only that it was rarely used in Western Europe. It may be that the author simply doesn't have enough information to make a definitive statement.

Yes, the truth is, so far we haven't found any butted mail that was historically used as armor in Europe (at least that I know of). But they could find some tomorrow, so Dan has to be careful making a public statement in an article. I'm more reckless :smallamused: But I think I'm on pretty safe ground.

Incidentally, Dan Howard, who wrote that article for Myarmoury, is a kind of a rival of mine, he is doing the GURPS lowtech combat system for GURPS 4, soon to be released (or so I gather). It will probably be pretty good.


G.

[Spiryt]

The fact that no butted mail was ever found in Europe is kind of his mantra too.

And they were making some really interesting stuff in Russia, like very light mails from about 2,5 cm wide links.

But it was of course almost only ceremonial, so I would guess that butted ones were too.

[fusilier]

Yes! But this is another thing I keep trying to point out in this thread; these towns were the source of the culture of crossbows. Just like Wales 9and later, various English towns) was the source for the Culture of longbows and parts of Bohemia and Germany and certain Italian cities were the source of the culture of early firearms. There is a very persistant cliche about the Middle Ages that militia were incompetent and weak compared to professional mercenaries or knights. The reality is that militias were the professional mercenaries in most cases and often defeated knights. Specifically regarding crossbows, it's another (more or less correct) cliche that many Crossbowmen were recruited from Genoa. Well, these were not trained in a professional mercenary school! They were the town militia. Same with the famous "Swiss mercenaries". They were all originally militia; very very good militia. It wasn't until Maximillian I invented the Landsknechts circa 1500, who were designed specifically to emulate the Swiss Reislauffer (militia) that you see something like professional mercenary schools.

No need to convince me, your arguments on these points are very good. With specific reference to Northern Italy, there was a distinction between mercenaries and the town militias, but they became increasingly blurred. With the mercenaries basically turning into standing armies (as it was generally easier and safer to renew their services), and being augmented by locally formed units.




According to Bernal Diaz, in his original force of 500 men, Cortez had 12 Arquebusses and 13 Crossbows. Most of his force were like Diaz, Rotoeleros.



That is very interesting!

I know his force was augmented by Navarez's troops but I don't what their dispositions were. The story about the manufacture of crossbow bolts was in a discussion about native production networks, and I think there was some skepticism about the numbers in the source that I read. Also I may have conflated them even more. Unfortunately I do not have my sources in front of me, and I don't think I will be able to track them down anytime soon.




I stand corrected. i wasn't aware of that, it's interesting. But do you agree the matchlock was much easier to use, and to train for, than the hand-culverin?


I know you like early firearms, but the longbow, the recurve, and the crossbow all also had fearsome reputations as well...

G.

Yes, I agree absolutely.

And yes I'm aware that I may have a bias, but others like the longbow, the recurve, and the crossbow, so I may not be the only one with a bias.

I was remarking that the circumstantial evidence seems to be that early firearms had a pretty fierce reputation -- also they started replacing other projectile weapons (which is a long transition of over a century, but still it's a transition). The transition may be explained by economic factors (although that doesn't rule out other factors), but the reputation cannot be explained by economic factors alone.

[fusilier]

Yes, the truth is, so far we haven't found any butted mail that was historically used as armor in Europe (at least that I know of). But they could find some tomorrow, so Dan has to be careful making a public statement in an article. I'm more reckless :smallamused: But I think I'm on pretty safe ground.

OK! ;-) As long as your honest about it, I'm inclined to take your word.


Incidentally, Dan Howard, who wrote that article for Myarmoury, is a kind of a rival of mine, he is doing the GURPS lowtech combat system for GURPS 4, soon to be released (or so I gather). It will probably be pretty good.

I never got into GURPS 4, but the GURPS 3 edition of that book is good -- although it's not a combat system, it extends some things like the armor rules.

[Galloglaich]

No need to convince me, your arguments on these points are very good. With specific reference to Northern Italy, there was a distinction between mercenaries and the town militias, but they became increasingly blurred. With the mercenaries basically turning into standing armies (as it was generally easier and safer to renew their services), and being augmented by locally formed units.

Of course there was a difference between condotierri and militia, my point is most mercenaries got their training as militia. Just like most blackwater or executive outcomes operatives got their training in the US or UK Army.



And yes I'm aware that I may have a bias, but others like the longbow, the recurve, and the crossbow, so I may not be the only one with a bias.

We need at least one of each for balance :)



I was remarking that the circumstantial evidence seems to be that early firearms had a pretty fierce reputation -- also they started replacing other projectile weapons (which is a long transition of over a century, but still it's a transition). The transition may be explained by economic factors (although that doesn't rule out other factors), but the reputation cannot be explained by economic factors alone.

They were dangerous, they impress the hell out of me in youtube videos.

My favorite (apologies if you've seen it before):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkbSTyT1COE

G.

[Galloglaich]

I never got into GURPS 4, but the GURPS 3 edition of that book is good -- although it's not a combat system, it extends some things like the armor rules.

I lost track of GURPS about 10 years ago but people tell me it's one of the good systems for realistic combat.

G.

[Subotei]

The transition may be explained by economic factors (although that doesn't rule out other factors).....

Yes -the very thought was occuring to me earlier. In an army already supplied with cannons for siege work etc, the cost and logistical advantage of sourcing perhaps one extra wagon of powder (and a few barrels of shot) , as to say three or four wagons of bolts begins to make economic sense, once you have a trained nucleus of troops capable of using the weapon. The trade off of effectiveness/cost/reliabilty has always had a place in warfare.

[Karoht]

Just out of curiosity, what martial arts did you practice in that time?Western European Martial Arts. Which is the art I assume we've been discussing all this time. If you want specifics, I've been mostly Sword and Shield (Heater and Round and Buckler), Axe and Shield, or Two-Handed Sword focused, in a one-on-one arena style combat format. But for reference, Sword and Shield or Sword and Open Hand are kind of my specialties.
Prior to that, I've taken Kendo for about 2 years, Fencing (epee) for 3, Judo, Karate, Tai Kwon Do, and Boxing. I was a simultaneous orange belt in Karate and Judo at age 6.


Like I said to Psyx above, I'm not seeing how an equal weight distribution gets you what you want.Okay, I'll explain it.
If I want to go forward, I need forward inertia. If the majority of my body weight is over my lead foot, then moving forward will take relatively less energy. Also, the muscles are primed for the 'push off' or spring forward. Going backwards however, my muscles and body mass is oriented the the wrong way.

Balanced stance gives you the option to go ANY direction quickly, without having to shift your body mass first.

Psyx:

That's an awful lot. That rings all kind of alarm bells with me.
There is no point planting that much weight on one foot, as it adds nothing.I have to agree with Psyx on that. Forward heavy stance, especially with something as movement heavy as sword combat, is really not going to get you anywhere unless you are being taught rank and file shield wall tactics, at which point they are probably also teaching you to brace the wall against the push.

Karate taught us to have that tough forward oriented stance. It was to prevent trips and to advance forward to strike. Judo was all about balancing your mass and avoiding or grappling with the guy trying to take you off your feet.
Fencing teaches a forward mass stance, because you aren't really taught to retreat. You are (mostly) taught to advance and strike faster than the other guy.
Different arts teach different things for different purposes. Thats the big thing you should take away from this.


Psyx:

It allows you to move in either direction. Fast.
Good footwork and weight distribution in martial arts - like dancing - is absolutely crucial. Moving forward is good in that it might allow you to get in a strike. But being able to quickly move back means that you are very likely to be able to void a blow.
Which to me means that I'd like to be able to do either, but I certainly want to be able to move back, because not getting killed is ultimately the primary objective - not killing the other guy.Bang on Psyx.
Survival trumps killing someone else. Victory isn't victory if you don't live to drink a beer with your buds afterwards.
Speaking from experience, mobility has won me more fights than being planted.
REALLY GOOD mobility teaches you to defend yourself by simply voiding, or turning your target profile, turning your body into a blow to take advantage of armor hardpoints and how to take a blow but turn it to your advantage as well. This part I'm not so great at (comparitively), but one of my students uses his forearm bracer to greater effect defensively than some people use large shield.

[Xuc Xac]

Fencing teaches a forward mass stance, because you aren't really taught to retreat. You are (mostly) taught to advance and strike faster than the other guy.
...
Survival trumps killing someone else. Victory isn't victory if you don't live to drink a beer with your buds afterwards.


That's why kendo and European fencing aren't really combat arts: they train you and reward you for actions that would get you killed in a real fight. In a sporting match, you win if you hit the other guy first, even if it's by a split second. In a real fight, the guy who got stabbed second is just as dead as the guy who got stabbed first.

[fusilier]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkbSTyT1COE

G.

Great, now I want an arquebus. :-) I got too many reenacting impressions as it is . . .

[Caustic Soda]

@ Spiryt & Galloglaich:

So (comparatively) widespread use of butted mail is a relatively new phenomenon, made possible mainly because people at Ren Fairs aren't actually trying to kill people, and some people backdated the use of butted mail?

If that is the case, couldn't you say that the Ren Fair people who believed butted mail to be widely used in the past were committing the same kind of mistake as Rennaissance artists depicting plate mail and steel breastplates in the Trojan War?

Seems oddly fitting, in a way.

[Storm Bringer]

@ Spiryt & Galloglaich:

So (comparatively) widespread use of butted mail is a relatively new phenomenon, made possible mainly because people at Ren Fairs aren't actually trying to kill people, and some people backdated the use of butted mail?

If that is the case, couldn't you say that the Ren Fair people who believed butted mail to be widely used in the past were committing the same kind of mistake as Rennaissance artists depicting plate mail and steel breastplates in the Trojan War?

Seems oddly fitting, in a way.

I was under the impression that those artists knew (or, at least, thier socity knew), that the romans didn't wear plate armour. they were just re-casting a classic tale with then-contempory stylings.

[Spiryt]

I was under the impression that those artists knew (or, at least, thier socity knew), that the romans didn't wear plate armour. they were just re-casting a classic tale with then-contempory stylings.

Maybe some knew, most definitely didn't.

Just take a look at any Internet boards, movies, or whatever and horribly absurd images of WWII tanks, weapons and uniforms...

And it was freaking 70 years ago, there are pictures, movies, documentation, manuals, technical plans and all from that period.

How was medieval or renaissance man supposed to know how exactly it all looked 1500 years before his life ?

I'm pretty sure Shakespeare wrote something about clock ticking in Julius Caesar ?

[Psyx]

Thus, I doubt that it "shot flat" out to 150 yard. I just don't really believe that.

I'm pretty sure nobody involved in the thread believes that any more. Hopefully.




And no, they aren't just a bunch of pictures. Methinks you've been ignoring the captions.

They don't help much a lot of the time. It's building a fighting system from practically scratch. And a lot of things can creep in that bear no relevance to reality sometimes.



The first art of your assertion is demonstrably false, and the second doesn't even make a significant difference.

Erm... ok; a couple of examples: Stand on one leg. Now move it. You have to hop to do so. Having no point of contact with the floor is also not generally a good idea.

As for the second point; The best way to get this home would be to try a tango/salsa class, and try moving your feet in the required manner without weight shifting. It makes a significant difference.

Additionally; what about the other points raised: ie balance on somewhere that's not a practice hall, et cetera?

[Yora]

To get back to a question I had before the crossbow week:

If you're a master of both armed and unarmed martial arts, and you have a dagger, a sword, a spear, and a staff at hand, and you're attacked by people who want to kill you, and you don't really care if any of them die: Is there any reason to face them unarmed instead of taking up a weapon?
As fun as kung fu movies are and how spectacular many demonstrations look, it just doesn't seem a good idea to fight unarmed, if you have any other options.

[tyckspoon]

Is there any reason to face them unarmed instead of taking up a weapon?
As fun as kung fu movies are and how spectacular many demonstrations look, it just doesn't seem a good idea to fight unarmed, if you have any other options.

None at all. There may be some question as to which of your available weapons is best used for the situation, but they will all be better than no weapon.

[Galloglaich]

I'm pretty sure nobody involved in the thread believes that any more. Hopefully.

Neither of you have come even close to convincing me yet. I must be stupid.

G.

[Galloglaich]

@ Spiryt & Galloglaich:

So (comparatively) widespread use of butted mail is a relatively new phenomenon, made possible mainly because people at Ren Fairs aren't actually trying to kill people, and some people backdated the use of butted mail?

If that is the case, couldn't you say that the Ren Fair people who believed butted mail to be widely used in the past were committing the same kind of mistake as Rennaissance artists depicting plate mail and steel breastplates in the Trojan War?

Seems oddly fitting, in a way.

Yeah I think there is some truth in that statement. The only difference is that the artists in question were depicting real armor and weapons of some era, which is not something you see much in a Ren Faire (at least not in a US Ren Faire)

G.

[a_humble_lich]

Neither of you have come even close to convincing me yet. I must be stupid.


I think the question is more what you are calling a "flat shot." We can easily calculate a lower limit to the amount a bolt will drop. At 150 yards, if we ignore air resistance and say a crossbow bolt travels at the speed of sound (which is an upper limit, I don't think even crossbow fanatics would claim supersonic bolts) we get that the bolt will drop about 4 yards. This is twice the height of a person. But it is still a very small angle (about 1.5 degrees). So the shot can't really be considered flat in that it does drop a significant amount, but the angle is still small.

With more realistic numbers the angle will go up significantly. But I feel confident in saying that the bolt will drop at least 4 yards unless the bolt is supersonic. (In theory if the bolt could get significant lift and make this lower, but I feel that air resistance should be much larger than lift)

[Spiryt]

65 m/s is pretty sensible velocity of ~80g bolt from decently heavy crossbow.

With lighter bolts, you could certainly get higher, but not 340 m/s, certainly. :smallwink:

And actually, the rate of velocity decrease would be very important here.

Bolts generally would loose it slower than arrows, but still pretty quickly compared to many other objects.

[a_humble_lich]

I agree completely, 340 m/s is ridiculous, and air resistance is very important. I was trying to find an absolute lower limit and show that even that was fairly high. If I have time, I'll try to do a more accurate calculation.

[Spamotron]

I'm looking for a good resource on stick-fighting especially European cane-fighting based on fencing. The self-defense versions, not sport.

Thanks

[Mike_G]

65 m/s is pretty sensible velocity of ~80g bolt from decently heavy crossbow.

With lighter bolts, you could certainly get higher, but not 340 m/s, certainly. :smallwink:

And actually, the rate of velocity decrease would be very important here.

Bolts generally would loose it slower than arrows, but still pretty quickly compared to many other objects.

So, at 65 m/sec, the bolt will take ~3 second to travel 150 yards, without calculating the loss of velocity due to air resistance. So probably a bit over 3 seconds.

Using the 16 feet/second drop from an earlier post, we see that the bolt will fall 48 feet in 3 seconds.

So, to hit the guy in the chest at 150 yards, you need to aim something like 45 feet above his head.

So if that is "flat," it's for a very generous value of "flat."

[Raum]

At sea level, gravity alone will cause a projectile to drop at a rate of 9.81m/s^2. It seems to me the real question is "how fast will a crossbow bolt be going?"

Using the high end of bows mentioned in the thread, an 800kg draw bow will accelerate a 40g bolt to 200m/s in 0.01s. (Do note, I picked a hundredth of a second acceleration time out of the air...I don't really know how long the bolt will stay in contact with the string.) Given these numbers, the bolt will drop ~7.3m at 150m range.

If the bow only had a 100kg draw, a 40g bolt would only be traveling 25m/s and would drop ~196m at a range of 150m...assuming it made it that far.

So it really depends on what the crossbows' draw weights were.

There are lots of assumptions in my math. Constant acceleration for one hundredth of a second being one but it also ignores atmosphere entirely. That said, I'm not sure I'd describe even the ideal 7.3m drop as a 'flat shot'...the crossbow's direct aiming point is more than three times a tall man's height over the target's head. However, it is significantly closer to flat than a longbow's much lower acceleration (even when accounting for a longer acceleration time).

[Galloglaich]

I think the question is more what you are calling a "flat shot." We can easily calculate a lower limit to the amount a bolt will drop. At 150 yards, if we ignore air resistance and say a crossbow bolt travels at the speed of sound (which is an upper limit, I don't think even crossbow fanatics would claim supersonic bolts) we get that the bolt will drop about 4 yards. This is twice the height of a person. But it is still a very small angle (about 1.5 degrees). So the shot can't really be considered flat in that it does drop a significant amount, but the angle is still small.

With more realistic numbers the angle will go up significantly. But I feel confident in saying that the bolt will drop at least 4 yards unless the bolt is supersonic. (In theory if the bolt could get significant lift and make this lower, but I feel that air resistance should be much larger than lift)

Yes I would be amazed if a crossbow bolt achieved even half the speed of sound.

And obviously by "straight" I never meant like a laser.

But let me try to explain it this way. We've already been told on this thread that Muskets arced their shots quite a bit at long range. I think one guy said 10 degrees? But is there any doubt a musket shoots a 200 meter target (relatively) strait or dramatically less arced compared to a longbow?

Crossbows are a notch or two down from that surely in terms of fps, but at 150 meters, at least apparently some folks in period thought they could shot straight, to the extent that they were aiming at individual targets as opposed to just a certain area.

Which is why they seemed to feel that Crossbows were more useful in areas like the Baltic or the Alps where there is dense forest.

Which is the (fairly humble, I think) point i was trying to make.

G.

[Galloglaich]

At sea level, gravity alone will cause a projectile to drop at a rate of 9.81m/s^2. It seems to me the real question is "how fast will a crossbow bolt be going?"

Using the high end of bows mentioned in the thread, an 800kg draw bow will accelerate a 40g bolt to 200m/s in 0.01s. (Do note, I picked a hundredth of a second acceleration time out of the air...I don't really know how long the bolt will stay in contact with the string.) Given these numbers, the bolt will drop ~7.3m at 150m range.

If the bow only had a 100kg draw, a 40g bolt would only be traveling 25m/s and would drop ~196m at a range of 150m...assuming it made it that far.

So it really depends on what the crossbows' draw weights were.

There are lots of assumptions in my math. Constant acceleration for one hundredth of a second being one but it also ignores atmosphere entirely. That said, I'm not sure I'd describe even the ideal 7.3m drop as a 'flat shot'...the crossbow's direct aiming point is more than three times a tall man's height over the target's head. However, it is significantly closer to flat than a longbow's much lower acceleration (even when accounting for a longer acceleration time).

Thanks for crunching the numbers. That is interesting.

I think bolts weighed about 90 grams (though there is some argument about that) so the initial velocity in your model would probably more like 100 m/s, and actually probably more like 70 or 80 m/s since I think 500 kg is more realistic than 800 kg. Nevertheless I think at 150 meters the elevation is still probably under 5 or 10 degrees compared to 45 degrees for a bow at that range.

You could get a comparison of the drop rate from bullet ballistics but I would assume a bolt with vanes would be a bit more aerodynamic than a bullet. Some of them were apparently made to spin which has I don't know what effect. Arrows were in turn also significantly more aerodynamic than bolts.

G.

[Spiryt]

500 kg steel prod crossbow could generally speed ~90g bolt up to about 67 m/s AFAIK.

100 m/s is probably achievable with light bolts and composite prods, but probably won't be really useful that often.

[Galloglaich]

500 kg steel prod crossbow could generally speed ~90g bolt up to about 67 m/s AFAIK.

100 m/s is probably achievable with light bolts and composite prods, but probably won't be really useful that often.

Interesting ... what is your source for that? Or just crunching the numbers?

G.

[Spiryt]

Interesting ... what is your source for that? Or just crunching the numbers?

G.

The source is Die Armbrust that I saw in the net somewhere, I think but can't find it now, and a lot of crunching too. :smallwink:

It's only in German AFAIK, but fortunately at least numbers are the same everwhere. :smalltongue:

I remember 67 m/s for 80 g bolt, but with some "adjustments" 90 should go too.

Data is for "halb rustung" prod which would be generally around 500 kg.

[a_humble_lich]

I just did a much more accurate calculation. I wrote a short program to integrate the equations of motion for a ballistic bolt including air resistance. If anyone wants details, or a copy of the program/code let me know. I did not include any lift generated by the bolt, but I contend this should be small.

There are several parameters that go into the program. I used a 80g bolt with a radius of .4cm (this includes the head) at sea level, fired by someone at a height of 1.5m. My big questions are the initial velocity and the coefficient of drag (i.e. how much air resistance there is) of the bolt.

When the air resistance is small (C_d = .2) I find that a velocity of 71m/s is needed to get to 450m, which earlier was said to be a maximum range. This is when the crossbows are shooting at an angle of 30 deg (because of air resistance the angle of maximum distance is not 45 deg). At this speed an angle of 8 deg is needed to hit a target at 150m (and the bolt will fall on the target at on angle of 9.2 deg) after flying for 2.1s.

I like these values for initial velocity and drag. The velocity is about what Spiryt said, and with that drag it gives a maximum range close to what Galloglaich said the Swiss claimed.

What does all this mean? For starters, at ranges of 150m fairly shallow angles will be needed for a crossbow. However, the aerodynamics of arrows/crossbow bolts is fairly complicated. I would like to see some data from an actual bow/crossbow and perhaps a wind tunnel before I would say anything with great confidence. Searching for values on the internet has given a very wide range of values for the speed and drag of both arrows and crossbows (some of which I flat out disbelieve). Not to mention what is the actual effect of lift, the rotation of the arrows, etc.


(Aside)
Trying to calculate the initial velocity given the force of the bow seems doable, but in practice I think it would be hard. Mainly, the force on the bolt is not constant, the force will be greater at the beginning and goes to zero as it leaves the crossbow. It is not obvious (to me) how this works and I'd want to know more about crossbows work before trying to think about it.

[Spiryt]

Eh, it's pretty complicated indeed, and I can do some basic calculations with bows, but I'm not sure how crossbow work...

The energy delivered to the bolt would depend on so many factors.... It's not easy with the bows, as I said, and with crossbows we have much more powerful prods, that are much less efficient due to draw length, but on the other hand bow arms have much shorter road to go, impact is more violent, vibrations are somehow absorbed by the handle.

Anyway, those are interesting calculations...

What velocity decrease ratio it gives?

I've seen a data about replica of longbow about 24 kg - so about 55 pounds - speeding arrow up to 44 m/s.

Decrease of velocity in flight is 0,13 (m/s)/m.

Unfortunately there's no data about arrow, even it's weight at very least, in this example.

EDIT: Anyway, as far as I know, resistance of air is quite a.... female dog for bolts and arrows. Feathers produce a lot of it to stabilize.

Just seeing both modern and ancient flight arrows - they universally have possibly minimal feathers.

[a_humble_lich]

The figures you give confuse me, because with the numbers I've been using I have a velocity decrease ratio of about a fifth of what you give (when you say 0,13 you mean the same thing as me saying 0.13, right?) While I'd expect arrows to have less drag that the crossbow bolts. I'd like to know more actual data, however what I can easily find on the internet seems contradictory. What I'd really like to see would be for a given bow/crossbow both the initial speed and the maximum range. Without more numbers I don't feel good using this analysis to compare longbows and crossbows.

What I do feel more confident in saying is that the angle a crossbowman would need to hit a target 150m away is in the range of 5-10 deg, while a bow (at 44m/s) would need an angle of more like 25 deg. At that range I don't think aerodynamics is too important of an issue yet. But it should be noted that even an angle of 5 deg at 150m mean you are aiming 13m (!) above the target. That does not sound easy (not that I disbelieve, but that I'm quite impressed).

[Spiryt]

Eh, the problem is that such data is not easily achievable...

People don't seem to record initial velocity and distance traveled at the same time.

Obviously though, you're probably underestimating the influence of fletching, vibration of the shaft and other factors. Arrows and bolts are indeed quite rapidly slowing down projectiles.

Then comes the balance, some arrows were better suited to achieve stable position at high arc shots, to travel far.

Bolts, as far as I understand, would generally be more stable after leaving the bow than most arrows, but not really well suited for long distance shooting.

Arrows (http://www.longbow-archers.com/arrows.htm)

[Yora]

I would like to know more about asian armor. All I'm really familar with are Oyoroi and Ashigaru armor, and even that isn't much.
Does anyone about you here know about indian, chinese, or korean armor and can reccoment some sites to read?

[Mike_G]

What I do feel more confident in saying is that the angle a crossbowman would need to hit a target 150m away is in the range of 5-10 deg, while a bow (at 44m/s) would need an angle of more like 25 deg. At that range I don't think aerodynamics is too important of an issue yet. But it should be noted that even an angle of 5 deg at 150m mean you are aiming 13m (!) above the target. That does not sound easy (not that I disbelieve, but that I'm quite impressed).

Which synchs up fairly well with my "aim 40 feet over his head" theory.

All I was ever trying to say was that at the range that a longbow arrow will be significantly arced, so will a bolt. I was fine until the "kettle hats will protect you from the falling arrows but the bolts will come straight down your throat" commentary. Past a hundred yards, everything is coming in at an angle.

[Spiryt]

I would like to know more about asian armor. All I'm really familar with are Oyoroi and Ashigaru armor, and even that isn't much.
Does anyone about you here know about indian, chinese, or korean armor and can reccoment some sites to read?

Well, that's broad topic, to say at least.

Dunno what you know about Japanese ones, but there are two articles that seem fairly professional.

1 (http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_jpn_armour.html)


2 (http://www.sengokudaimyo.com/katchu/katchu.html)

[Yora]

I know these two. But they are good examples of the fact, that almost all material about asion armor is about Oyoroi and nothing else. :smallfrown:
While that's good enough for people who are exited about samurai, it's a bit like researching european armor technology and having it reduced to Gothic Plate Armor only.

However the first one at least talks a bit about the types of armor that evolved into the Oyoroi. It's highly appreciated.

[Galloglaich]

There used to be a good website called "Silk Roads Design Armoury" with detailed information on all kinds of Asian armor but it seems to have been taken down.

At this point I would suggest getting Osprey military books on the specific Asian arms and armor you are interested in. Some examples:

Sikhs
http://www.amazon.com/Sikh-Army-1799-1849-Men-at-Arms/dp/1841767778/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1282491900&sr=8-1

Mughul India
http://www.amazon.com/Mughul-India-1504-1761-Men-at-Arms-Nicolle/dp/1855323443/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282491941&sr=1-3

Ottoman Turks
http://www.amazon.com/Armies-Ottoman-Turks-1300-1774-Arms/dp/0850455111/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

Janissaries
http://www.amazon.com/Janissaries-Elite-David-Nicolle/dp/185532413X/ref=pd_cp_b_1

Mongols 1200-1350
http://www.amazon.com/Mongol-Warrior-1200-1350-Stephen-Turnbull/dp/184176583X

Chinese Armies 200-589 AD
http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Chinese-Armies-BC-589-Men-At-Arms/dp/1855325144/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282492089&sr=1-5

Chinese Armies 590 - 1260 AD
http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Chinese-Armies-590-1260-Men-At-Arms/dp/1855325993/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b

Samurai Invasion of Korea 1592 - 1598 AD
http://www.amazon.com/Samurai-Invasion-Korea-1592-98-Campaign/dp/1846032547/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282492234&sr=1-3

Some of those Osprey books are scanned on google books.

There is a book called "From Stone to Steel" which covers a lot of Asian and South Asian armor and equipment in a D20 context.

My book "Arms and Armor of the Ancient World Part II" has some Asian armor including Japanese, Chinese, and Turkish armor, but it's not as deeply focused on that as on the European kit.

I think GURPS low tech (3E?) has some realistic Asian kit.

G.

[Psyx]

Crossbows are a notch or two down from that surely in terms of fps, but at 150 meters, at least apparently some folks in period thought they could shot straight, to the extent that they were aiming at individual targets as opposed to just a certain area.


It doesn't really matter what the sources claim as regards the straightness of the shot: Highly demonstrative physics show that it's not even close to being a straight shot. Surely that acceleration due to gravity is not in question here: Aiming three times higher than someone's head is not straight.

But that's not to say it's not accurate enough to pick someone out as a target. Cutting back to several pages ago I tried to make the point that indirect doesn't mean inaccurate. The crossbow marksman of the age were hitting targets despite the angle, because they were good with them. Just the same as the archers were. I completely believe that both weapons were accurate at a range that required a high-level of 'aim off' indeed.

By a bit of maths we're led to believe that both weapons were not point-and-click-to-kill, but ones requiring - At anything more than point blank range - Skill in aiming based on experience. It's just that the longbow also required more physical training as well.

[Psyx]

Is there any reason to face them unarmed instead of taking up a weapon?

'They want to die' is all I can come up with.

[Matthew]

Seems to me on the continuing subject of the crossbow versus bow debate that there are a few salient points:

1) There is a difference between direct and indirect shooting [i.e the distinction is not just imagined].
2) The former is more accurate than the latter in the sense that you aim at a target you can see, though this does not matter over much when targeting a large body of troops.
3) In some instances, some medieval crossbows had a longer direct shooting range than some medieval bows.
4) A direct shot at short range will more reliably penetrate armour than an indirect shot at long range.

In the high to late medieval period (1100-1500) both crossbows and bows were employed on the battlefield, in skirmishes, and at sieges, being favoured by different military groups living in relatively close proximity. That is to say, the relative advantages that they enjoyed were sufficient for both to continue in use without one being completely eclipsed by the other.

The specific degrees of advantage and disadvantage necessarily remain elusive at this time, but we can also say:

1) The more powerful the crossbow the more difficult it is to reload, so that even with the employment of time saving devices you are looking at anything from 6-60 seconds reload time (though 6-30 second might be more accurate).
2) Bows can be shot very quickly, several shots within 6 seconds perhaps, but doing so is tiring, with increasingly powerful bows requiring commensurate strength and training to handle.

So, if discharging a large volume of missiles in a short period of time is the aim, then a bow will generally be better suited to the task. If volume is not the issue, so much as the ability to hold and aim for a long period of time, or shorter training periods, then a crossbow will probably avail better. Out of context, though, that is pretty much irrelevant.

What else can be said? Not much, I would guess. :smallwink:

[Galloglaich]

It doesn't really matter what the sources claim as regards the straightness of the shot: Highly demonstrative physics show that it's not even close to being a straight shot. Surely that acceleration due to gravity is not in question here: Aiming three times higher than someone's head is not straight.

But that's not to say it's not accurate enough to pick someone out as a target. Cutting back to several pages ago I tried to make the point that indirect doesn't mean inaccurate. The crossbow marksman of the age were hitting targets despite the angle, because they were good with them. Just the same as the archers were. I completely believe that both weapons were accurate at a range that required a high-level of 'aim off' indeed.

By a bit of maths we're led to believe that both weapons were not point-and-click-to-kill, but ones requiring - At anything more than point blank range - Skill in aiming based on experience. It's just that the longbow also required more physical training as well.

It's interesting that you and I apparently several of the same posts with all the math stuff and came to radically different conclusions.

I may have to review the thread after a couple of weeks maybe I'm too immersed in the discussion and I'm missing something.

G.

[fusilier]

"Flat" shooting is a relative and subjective term. A high-power rifle may need very little elevation to hit a target at 150m, whereas crossbow may require 10-15 degrees or so (just a guess, I don't actually know). However, a bow may require 30-40 degrees at that range. So relative to a bow the crossbow is shooting flatter. For that matter, it's still possible to "aim" the crossbow at 10-15 degrees, whereas at 30-40 it's probably not practical (I assume one would aim before elevating). Although, typically one would be shooting at mass targets, so precision aiming isn't necessary.

"Point blank" on the other hand is different, and point-blank range for a crossbow was considered to be around 80 yards.

[Mike_G]

"Flat" shooting is a relative and subjective term. A high-power rifle may need very little elevation to hit a target at 150m, whereas crossbow may require 10-15 degrees or so (just a guess, I don't actually know). However, a bow may require 30-40 degrees at that range. So relative to a bow the crossbow is shooting flatter. For that matter, it's still possible to "aim" the crossbow at 10-15 degrees, whereas at 30-40 it's probably not practical (I assume one would aim before elevating). Although, typically one would be shooting at mass targets, so precision aiming isn't necessary.

"Point blank" on the other hand is different, and point-blank range for a crossbow was considered to be around 80 yards.

You can aim an elevated bow by looking through the lower half of the bowstaff at your target. I've seen bowstaves with lines on the lower arm corresponding to ranges. You elevate the bow until the correct line is level with the target, then loose. You don't look along the arrow, at the cloud above the enemy formation, you look past the bowstaff at the target. The premise is no different than the volley sights on a rifle.

[Fhaolan]

I'm looking for a good resource on stick-fighting especially European cane-fighting based on fencing. The self-defense versions, not sport.

Thanks

There are many forms of European cane-fighting, but from the description you're interested in one currently known as Bartitsu. There is a Bartitsu society which has published a few books on the subject. There are also some self-defence schools that teach it, but they are few and far between, and all the ones I know are in Germany.

Other forms of stick fighting that you may be interested in would be the Irish form Bataireacht, and the French form of Bâton français. Doing web searches on these terms will show lots of 'stuff', but there I haven't found any really good manuals or teaching aids for any of it.

[Galloglaich]

Another good one is Jogo Do Pau, which is a pretty big sport in Portugal and the Canary Islands

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSDSsereOdg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze1SpAUk1zI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xxHRtENF0E&feature=related

here you can see some training being done, drills

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaiZgOMi_zk&feature=related

There are some articles here:

http://www.jogodopauportugues.com/program/articles.html


If you are real interested in Bartitsu I know one of the main guys who teaches it in the UK, pm me and I can send you a link to his website, I don't want to post it here due to the high traffic volume.

G.

[Galloglaich]

You can aim an elevated bow by looking through the lower half of the bowstaff at your target. I've seen bowstaves with lines on the lower arm corresponding to ranges. You elevate the bow until the correct line is level with the target, then loose. You don't look along the arrow, at the cloud above the enemy formation, you look past the bowstaff at the target. The premise is no different than the volley sights on a rifle.

I guess it's a "glass half empty" / "glass half full" kind of discussion.

One thing is for sure, I said longbows vs. armor were an internet fault line, I've now learned the lesson that longbows in general, period, are an internet fault line. I won't make the mistake of mentioning them in a forum again. I apologize to anyone I offended in this thread, you get kind of carried away in these intensive debates.

I really appreciate all the number crunching that was done at the end though I got some really useful data out of that and learned some nuances I didn't know before.

G.

[a_humble_lich]

I glad you enjoyed it, I leaned the physics of arrow flight is much messier that I thought. Mainly I was surprised at the wide range of values with regards to archery which exist on the internet. Things like air resistance, arrow speed, range vary by an order of magnitude depending whose speaking.

And I don't think the discussion was a mistake, I sure learned a lot.

[Spiryt]

I glad you enjoyed it, I leaned the physics of arrow flight is much messier that I thought. Mainly I was surprised at the wide range of values with regards to archery which exist on the internet. Things like air resistance, arrow speed, range vary by an order of magnitude depending whose speaking.


Because it all depends on bow, it's quality, arrow shape, fletching, mass, flexibility quality..

So possible characteristics can naturally vary a lot, there are thousands of combinations.

[fusilier]

You can aim an elevated bow by looking through the lower half of the bowstaff at your target. I've seen bowstaves with lines on the lower arm corresponding to ranges. You elevate the bow until the correct line is level with the target, then loose. You don't look along the arrow, at the cloud above the enemy formation, you look past the bowstaff at the target. The premise is no different than the volley sights on a rifle.

I did not know that. That's pretty cool, and would certainly be helpful for volley fire. I don't know much about crossbow sights, I do know they existed, but I suspect that many crossbows were simply sighted over the bolt.

But do you see what I'm saying about flatter shooting? I'm inclined to believe that even a fairly powerful crossbow, would require a fair amount of elevation at 150m, but significantly less than a bow. That seems to fit with the first hand accounts.

[Mike_G]

I did not know that. That's pretty cool, and would certainly be helpful for volley fire. I don't know much about crossbow sights, I do know they existed, but I suspect that many crossbows were simply sighted over the bolt.

But do you see what I'm saying about flatter shooting? I'm inclined to believe that even a fairly powerful crossbow, would require a fair amount of elevation at 150m, but significantly less than a bow. That seems to fit with the first hand accounts.

I was always willing to accept "flater" but the feeling from many posters, and the misconceptions fostered by bad rules discussions that "Arrows=Arced flight, Crossbows=straight flight" is fundamentally wrong.

It's all projectile motion. A powerful bow shoots flatter than a weak crossbow. Not many crossbows were weaker than bows, but turning the bow sideways and nailing it to a stick doesn't make it shoot flatter. Increasing the velocity of the missile makes it shoot flatter.

I think maybe this discussion got heated, but I did learn a few things I didn't know, and I'm happy that somebody broke ouit the physics and crunched some numbers.

I think the biggest bones of contention revolve around the fact that there really aren't standard bows or crossbows or good reliable tests, so we all tend to interpret the incomplete data in a way favorable to our own suppositions.

[Matthew]

I think maybe this discussion got heated, but I did learn a few things I didn't know, and I'm happy that somebody broke out the physics and crunched some numbers.

I think the biggest bones of contention revolve around the fact that there really aren't standard bows or crossbows or good reliable tests, so we all tend to interpret the incomplete data in a way favourable to our own suppositions.
Exactly so. I think there is more agreement than disagreement, most of the latter coming down to misunderstandings of precise meanings.

[Galloglaich]

There are a lot of tests on longbows, a lot of good data, but nothing yet really with the crossbows and hopefully we will see more soon like I was saying.

There is a guy in the Uk who makes pretty strong prods (850 pounds or thereabouts) but he is assuming 50 gram bolts which I think is wrong and he still has to figure out some things about crossbow strings. They need to get a couple of antiques and make a close comparison in order to make a proper replica. Probably somebody like Royal Armouries at Leeds will do it.

There is a high level of expertise on this forum and I really learned a lot in this dicussion. My only point (I think perhaps validated somewhat) is that the Crossbow and the longbow, (and the recurve and the early firearms) filled certain distinct (environmental based or operational based) niches in combat, it wasn't really a matter of one being better than the other necessarily, at least until the mid 16th Century when guns clearly pulled ahead of all other missile weapons.

G.

[Mike_G]

There are a lot of tests on longbows, a lot of good data, but nothing yet really with the crossbows and hopefully we will see more soon like I was saying.

There is a guy in the Uk who makes pretty strong prods (850 pounds or thereabouts) but he is assuming 50 gram bolts which I think is wrong and he still has to figure out some things about crossbow strings. They need to get a couple of antiques and make a close comparison in order to make a proper replica. Probably somebody like Royal Armouries at Leeds will do it.

There is a high level of expertise on this forum and I really learned a lot in this dicussion. My only point (I think perhaps validated somewhat) is that the Crossbow and the longbow, (and the recurve and the early firearms) filled certain distinct (environmental based or operational based) niches in combat, it wasn't really a matter of one being better than the other necessarily, at least until the mid 16th Century when guns clearly pulled ahead of all other missile weapons.

G.

A friend of mine who designs guns for his day job builds crossbows on the side.

Here (http://freegatearmory.com/) is his website.

I'm not saying these are actually comparable, since he mostly sells to SCA members for their archery tournaments, but the guy knows his ballistics and has done a lot of research. As a history buff, I've had him explain a lot of the fundamental formulae to me.

I agree with you more than I disagree, I just got my knickers in a twist about one or two points. I apologize if I wielded my opinion like a hatchet.

[Karoht]

On the note of Butted Mail VS Riveted:
When I first joined the organization I fight with, I was assured at the time that butted was authentic enough. I didn't look into it. I'm deeply regretting taking someone's word for granted now, regardless of what the facts say on the matter.
Oh well, flat ring riveted gets cheaper every day, it's lighter, tougher, and it looks tougher and meaner. Me likey. My butted shirt can be used for decoration later.

[Galloglaich]

Sorry to hear it man.

if it's any consolation Dan Howard says the cheap riveted mail from India is all wrong too.

I'd love to have some myself but I can never afford it, always too many other things in the way.

G.

[Karoht]

Well, anything machine made gets a bit of an inauthentic stamp, depending on which circles you hang out in.
I keep an eye on the quality of the stuff we get from India. For chain mail, the quality is high enough for what I'm doing. As long as the rivets aren't obviously the wrong kind (some kind of easy pop clip in style rivets), and as long as it is still 4-in-1 pattern, I'm cool.

A friend of mine made a vest out of butted titanium rings. Impossibly small (3/16ths) and strictly just for show and it was expensive to get the rings. It's stupidly light, and he's done a few tests on it, it did hold up to rebated combat. Almost makes me curious enough to go see the cost on riveted titanium now.

[Cheesegear]

Can somebody please explain how a spear, or harpoon gun works?

And/or explain why conventional firearms wont work underwater? I'm pretty sure it has something to do with water resistance slowing down the bulltet. But, why doesn't that work on a Harpoon gun (or maybe it does?).

But, I figure someone from here might know.

[Crow]

Most spearguns use stretched bands to propel the spear. The spear is often hydrodynamic, which helps it glide through the water after it's been fired. Still, your range is usually only going to be around 30 feet or so, and it's often difficult to hit at that range.

As for the firearms underwater, I could tell you, but I'll wait to let someone who will give you a more detailed answer. ;)

[endoperez]

Can somebody please explain how a spear, or harpoon gun works?

And/or explain why conventional firearms wont work underwater? I'm pretty sure it has something to do with water resistance slowing down the bulltet. .

I know that there are some specially made guns that do work underwater. I only know that because I came across a site that had images of some Russian guns like that. The bullets are (sometimes? often? always?) shaped like needles.

Here's one
http://world.guns.ru/handguns/hg140-e.htm

And what the site says about its underwater properties:
"To be effective underwater, SPP-1 uses special proprietary ammunition, with rimmed bottlenecked cases 40mm long, sealed from water. Unusually long bullets are made from mild steel, and are drag-stabilized underwater; on air, bullets are not stabilized at all, so the effective range "above the air" is limited, but the "lethality range" is about 15 to 20 meters. When underwater, lethality range degrades with the increase of the depth: at 5 meters depth, the effective range is about 17 meters; at 20 meters depth, the effective range is only about 11 meters."

Google helps (http://www.google.fi/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fworld.guns.ru%2F+unde rwater&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:fi:official&client=firefox-a)you to find more interesting (http://world.guns.ru/assault/as100-e.htm) stuff (http://world.guns.ru/handguns/hg172-e.htm).

[HenryHankovitch]

Can somebody please explain how a spear, or harpoon gun works?

And/or explain why conventional firearms wont work underwater? I'm pretty sure it has something to do with water resistance slowing down the bulltet. But, why doesn't that work on a Harpoon gun (or maybe it does?).

But, I figure someone from here might know.

The problem comes from overpressure. Any firearm works by converting a physically small amount of propellant into a very large volume of gas. As the gas expands, it pushes the bullet down the barrel. Overpressure happens when you have too much pressure inside of the cartridge and chamber, either from a "hot load" with too much powder, or powder which "explodes" instead of burning smoothly, OR if something is blocking the bullet from going down the barrel.

Having a water-filled barrel doesn't usually prevent the round from firing (assuming the ammo hasn't been underwater long enough to allow water to seep inside the casing). But the overpressure in the chamber leads to a variety of failures. Either the slide doesn't lock back completely, thus not chambering the next round; or the round casing bulges from the overpressure and potentially jams the weapon, or some other similar problem. In theory the gun could explode--the metal of casing and breech failing structurally--but I don't know whether that's actually been demonstrated.

Additionally, because the bullets themselves are not designed to go through water efficiently, they lose energy very quickly, and can even deform or come apart as they go through the water.

[Psyx]

Can somebody please explain how a spear, or harpoon gun works?
And/or explain why conventional firearms wont work underwater? I'm pretty sure it has something to do with water resistance slowing down the bulltet. But, why doesn't that work on a Harpoon gun (or maybe it does?).
But, I figure someone from here might know.


Spearguns basically use a big rubber band to catapult the spear forwards. They aren't very accurate. You might kill someone at 10m; but you might be struggling to hit them at that range. 'Proper' spearfishers snorkel down, have to get as close as possible to a fish on a lung-full of air and shoot it. Some people pretend doing the same thing with SCUBA gear is sport... I digress...


Firearms work by exploding* a charge, and giving the force of the explosion only one way to easily escape: By pushing a bit of metal down the barrel, which also -by the joys of equal and opposite reaction - drives back the bolt and cycles the mechanism for the next shot. The only reason that you don't get a face-full of gun parts is because it's easier for the charge to propel the bullet than to blow bits of the breach everywhere.

Now: If you fill the barrel with water and THEN pull the trigger; things are different. The explosion has to move the bullet and a whole lot of water, too. There's a good possibility that the easiest way for the pressure to relieve itself is by blowing bits of the breach open. This is why you don't fire firearms with water in the barrel. Ever.

There are two rifles that I can immediately think of that are suitably over-engineered as to be supposed to be safe to fire with a barrel full of water: The AK-47 and the Steyr Aug. I still personally wouldn't want to try it, though.

If the firearm manages to function, and the bullet goes out the right way, then there are still issues:

The water adds a lot of drag to the action of the weapon, so it probably won't cycle properly. You'd probably have to re-charge the weapon after each discharge.

You aren't going to hit anything more than a few yards away, and you won't kill anything much further than that. Bullets are aerodynamic, and not designed to go through a much, much denser medium.

You're going to love cleaning it afterwards. If it's salt water it's also going to corrode your weapon. Many firearms today are gas operated, rather than blow-back. This will make them certain not to cycle, and even more of a chore to clean. I would not dip any firearm I cared about in salt water.

At significant depth, the water pressure will ensure that some finds its way into the ammunition, and then it won't work.

***

The only designated underwater firearms that I can think of are the H&K P11(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_&_Koch_P11 and http://world.guns.ru/handguns/hg209-e.htm), and a couple of Soviet designs: The pistol that I assume has already been mentioned, and an AK-variant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADS_amphibious_rifle

The best way of using a firearm underwater would probably be to put it in a good waterproof bag and figure out a way to operate the trigger and safety when the bad is compressed through pressure, put it against what you want to kill, and pull the trigger. Don't try to use it again! Or...use a knife or a speargun.


*I know it's not an explosive in there, just to cut of the pedantry.

[Storm Bringer]

a question of a idle mind:

the Minie ball came into usage in the 1840s (ish), but is thier any reason why, if it had been thought of, it could not have been invented eariler. from my understanding of the tech, the only thing that prevented it form being invented eariler was that no one had thought of it.

am i right, or am i missing something? is thier some critical element of the Minie ball or the rilfes of the time that prevented it form working any eariler?

[Eorran]

This is why you don't fire firearms with water in the barrel. Ever.

There are two rifles that I can immediately think of that are suitably over-engineered as to be supposed to be safe to fire with a barrel full of water: The AK-47 and the Steyr Aug. I still personally wouldn't want to try it, though.
...
You're going to love cleaning it afterwards. If it's salt water it's also going to corrode your weapon. Many firearms today are gas operated, rather than blow-back. This will make them certain not to cycle, and even more of a chore to clean. I would not dip any firearm I cared about in salt water.


Question - what do groups like Navy SEALs, Special Boat Service, etc. carry with them for firearms if they're insertion / extraction call for being in the water? Even if their guns don't work in the water, I imagine they'd want something that can be carried through the water and still be useful, no?

[HenryHankovitch]

Question - what do groups like Navy SEALs, Special Boat Service, etc. carry with them for firearms if they're insertion / extraction call for being in the water? Even if their guns don't work in the water, I imagine they'd want something that can be carried through the water and still be useful, no?

Depending on the group and the situation, I believe it's a combination of:

1) quick-removal covers and plugs of various sorts,
2) ruthless drilling in tipping water out of the barrel and clearing the action immediately upon leaving the water, and
3) weapons which have been tested/modified for such use, like the AUG mentioned above. You can probably find various manufacturer's promo videos floating around the YouTubes depicting their products being brought out of the water and immediately fired.

[fusilier]

a question of a idle mind:

the Minie ball came into usage in the 1840s (ish), but is thier any reason why, if it had been thought of, it could not have been invented eariler. from my understanding of the tech, the only thing that prevented it form being invented eariler was that no one had thought of it.

am i right, or am i missing something? is thier some critical element of the Minie ball or the rilfes of the time that prevented it form working any eariler?

Basically you are correct. Interestingly a lot of the earlier "minie guns" actually used the tige system. There was a spike at the bottom of the barrel, and the bullet was "hammered" over it and expanded. There was also a slightly earlier system where there were only two grooves in the rifle barrel, and the ball had a lip around it that fit the grooves. However, all these systems are roughly concurrent with each other. There seems to be have been a concerted effort in the first half of the 19th century to make faster muzzle-loading rifles. (Another slightly later system would be the whitworth system).


There is another issue though: manufacturing tolerances. At this time bullets were made by machine (I believe the process is swaging), although molds for hand casting were issued for emergency purposes. I was informed by a knowledgeable fellow reenactor, that at the beginning of the American Civil War 1-in-5 minie bullets would not fit down the barrel of the gun they were intended for (they were too big), by the end of the war the ratio had improved to 1-in-10. If you look at the ordnance manual, a .58 caliber musket fired a minie ball that measured .575" in diameter. Whereas a .69 caliber smoothbore musket fired a .65(!) caliber ball. So the tolerances on a smoothbore were huge (this is probably why you may hear stories of people getting surprising accuracy out of a replica smoothbore weapon, they're not firing a military load with crazy amounts of windage).

There is actually a lot of thought that went into the minie ball. First of all, people had started thinking of using something that wasn't actually a ball. Elongated, pointed, and rounded shapes. This isn't trivial, even if you did think of such a shape, it would have been mercilessly pounded out of shape during loading without a countersunk ramrod head. Then the idea of a hollow base to allow for expansion. And it's not obvious that a hollow base will expand, the British used a wooden plug, and the French used a metal cup to force the expansion of the base -- but both were unnecessary. Finally, even the physics behind the expansion is a bit confusing. Apparently the force of the propellant filling the base of the bullet, is not what causes it to expand. My understanding is a bit hazy, but what I think is happening is that the hollow base allows some compression along the barrel axis of the bullet, which is compensated by the lead swelling outward and increasing the diameter of the bullet. It has something to do with the nature of lead, and not simply an expansive force filling the cavity.

[Norsesmithy]

Depending on the group and the situation, I believe it's a combination of:

1) quick-removal covers and plugs of various sorts,
2) ruthless drilling in tipping water out of the barrel and clearing the action immediately upon leaving the water, and
3) weapons which have been tested/modified for such use, like the AUG mentioned above. You can probably find various manufacturer's promo videos floating around the YouTubes depicting their products being brought out of the water and immediately fired.

Most weapons will fire fine completely submerged, though bullets have a pathetic range underwater, often less than 10 feet, slower bullets actually going father, of course, if it only goes 10 feet before stopping, it isn't dangerous the whole way, most rifles would be better used as platforms for bayonets underwater, instead of being fired. It's when you've got a gun half full of water out in the air that things break.

With most modern weapons, it's pretty easy to quickly drain the barrel and other pieces subject to intense force, but some older designs (M14, M1 Garand, SKS, etc) are hard to drain, and not suitable for frogman style amphibious maneuvers (which is why the SEALS used the G3 extensively before they adopted the M16 and carbine variants).

With AK, CETME, and M16 pattern weapons, you just have to point the muzzle down, and open the bolt a touch. Much quieter and faster than completely clearing the action.

If you've got the right plugs, you can fire without removing them, and that way is the fastest, but it also is a single use type situation, and so it's probably better to train to drain it every time, and reduce the chance of forgetting that you've already shot out your plugs.

[Yora]

"Dear Diary: It has been an entire day without crossbows. After nine days, they seem to be gone now. I hope we will not see them again for a long time."





:smallamused:

[Aroka]

"Dear Diary: It has been an entire day without crossbows. After nine days, they seem to be gone now. I hope we will not see them again for a long time."





:smallamused:

Are crossbows better than longbows... underwater!?

[Karoht]

"Dear Diary: It has been an entire day without crossbows. After nine days, they seem to be gone now. I hope we will not see them again for a long time."


:smallamused:

Crossbows, Kangaroos, Wallabys, oye oye oye!!!
*cookie for anyone naming the reference*

Anything is possible when your thread smells like old spice and doesn't talk about crossbows. I'm on a horse.

Truth be told I was interested in the conversation and it eventually came to it's natural end. And now we discuss firing guns underwater. Ah, the cycle of thread topics.

[Psyx]

Question - what do groups like Navy SEALs, Special Boat Service, etc. carry with them for firearms if they're insertion / extraction call for being in the water?

I imagine that unless they are likely to be needed straight from the water that they put them in waterproof containers, too.

To be fair; Firing automatic weapons which might still have water in the barrel is one of the least dangerous things these people do.

I believe I saw a mythbusters recently where a few handguns were fired submerged under a foot or so of water. They weren't very good, and of course at those depths the rounds wouldn't be leaking in any water.

[Theodoric]

The Dutch Commando Corps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korps_Commandotroepen) has switched to HK416 (http://www.defensie.nl/actueel/nieuws/2010/07/16/46168104/HK416_nieuwe_wapen_commando_s)'s and specially modified Glock 17 pistols, so the can immediatly (or much sooner than previously, at least) use their weapons after coming out of water, a substance of which we have a lot of here. Us Dutch don't let water tell us what to do.

[Yora]

I've seen some promotional demo videos about firing weapons submerged in water. The M16 just exploded, but I think it was an HK that performed very well. Could have been a 416.

[Stephen_E]

A interesting point on weapons that were techically feasible weel before there time.

The Sten gun.
It was used for a time travel book plot with a pro-confedarate person taking back a model and plans to just before the ACW.
Essentailly the Sten gun was such a simple weapon that it was capable of been manafactured with pre-ACW technolgy. At least that was the claim, and from the limited knowledge I have of the weapon it seems reasonable.


Stephen E

[Galloglaich]

Are crossbows better than longbows... underwater!?

Only for indirect fire... or is it direct? I can't remember!?!?!?!??!!

G.

[valadil]

The thread got a little heated so I took a break from it. Just wanted to get my thoughts in before we all forgot about bows and crossbows.

Unless your projectile is ignoring gravity it is always going to arc. However the distance that it arcs is not always appreciable. My definition of shooting straight or flat is shooting at a distance where the arc affects the projectile but, not enough to matter.

I spent a lot of time shooting a 30lbs recurve bow, usually at 20 meters. I didn't have to change my aim at 10 meters. The drop from gravity was not appreciable. Or at least it wasn't at my skill level. If all my arrows are in a 2 inch radius group, dropping them half an inch from gravity doesn't really make a noticeable difference. (Note: I haven't done any math to see if a half an inch is actually how far they'd drop. If anyone does want to model this, I was firing at 214 f/s) For my purposes I was shooting flat at those distances.

At 30 meters though the arrow did drop more and I had to hold my arm up higher than I was used to. This should come as a surprise to nobody.

Anyway, I would believe that a heavier bow could shoot effectively flatter for a longer distance than my 30lbs bow. Maybe you could ignore gravity up till 50m, maybe 100. Well, 100m is probably optimistic. But I do believe that there is some distance where the drop due to gravity is insignificant enough that the person launching the projectile can safely ignore it.

--

Regarding balance. I've been taking classes on using the longsword in the Lichtenauer tradition (https://sites.google.com/site/kunstbruder/). I haven't been doing it for very long, but they've already taught balance. They have us put all our weight on the front foot. That leaves the rear foot free to move anywhere. If I need to back up, I shift my weight back and pull my body over the back foot. The front foot is treated like a loaded spring.

I'm not going to insinuate that this is the only way to do things. But it seems to work pretty well for my instructor.

[Jacob_Gallagher]

The Sten gun.
It was used for a time travel book plot with a pro-confedarate person taking back a model and plans to just before the ACW.
Essentailly the Sten gun was such a simple weapon that it was capable of been manafactured with pre-ACW technolgy. At least that was the claim, and from the limited knowledge I have of the weapon it seems reasonable.

Pretty much a handwave, unfortunately. The Sten worked because it was built in factories designed to mass-produce machinery. There was no real equivalent in the mid-1800s. Gunsmiths built weapons individually, and in any case the ammunition would be hard to replicate as both the Union and Confederacy seriously did not like brass-cased ammunition, preferring to stay with the archaic paper cartridges.

Not to mention that the South didn't have nearly enough industrialization to produce advanced firearms from that era (they relied on old smoothbore muskets while the Union was experimenting with breechloaders and Henry Rifles), let alone firearms from eighty years in the future.

[Stephen_E]

Pretty much a handwave, unfortunately. The Sten worked because it was built in factories designed to mass-produce machinery. There was no real equivalent in the mid-1800s. Gunsmiths built weapons individually, and in any case the ammunition would be hard to replicate as both the Union and Confederacy seriously did not like brass-cased ammunition, preferring to stay with the archaic paper cartridges.

Not to mention that the South didn't have nearly enough industrialization to produce advanced firearms from that era (they relied on old smoothbore muskets while the Union was experimenting with breechloaders and Henry Rifles), let alone firearms from eighty years in the future.

Gunsmiths indivudally made guns because the guns required it.

---------- From Wiki
The Sten required a minimum amount of machining and manufacturing effort by using simple stamped metal components and minor welding. Much of the production could be performed by small workshops and the firearms assembled at the Enfield site. Over the period of manufacture the Sten design was further simplified: the most basic model, the Mark III, could be produced from five man-hours work. Some of the cheapest versions were made from only 47 different parts. It was distinctive for its bare appearance (just a pipe with a metal loop for a stock), and its horizontal magazine. The Mark I was a more finely finished weapon with a wooden foregrip and handle; later versions were generally more spartan, although the final version, the Mark V, which was produced after the threat of invasion had died down, was produced to a notably higher standard.
-------------

The Southern USA did have a manafacturing base, although considerably smaller than the North, and the point about the Sten is that it's construction wasn't advance, it was the idea that was advanced.

As the excert from Wiki points out, most of the production was done it workshops, not big mass-production factories.
The dislike for brass ammo is indeed a valid point, but much of the dislike was based on not enough gain for the additional cost.
Given the advantages of a submachinegun in ACW style warfare, I think the equation would shift enough that it might indeed be sellable to the appropriate people.

I don't know enough to say that it definitely could be done, but I think you are overly dismissive to pass it off as "a handwave".

Stephen

[Norsesmithy]

I don't doubt that the sten gun is eminently manufacture-able with 1860s tech and industrial base. I just don't see a source for sufficient quantities of uniform enough brass cartridges needed to supply units armed with Sten Guns.

Not in the Union, and especially not in the south.

[Subotei]

Anyway, I would believe that a heavier bow could shoot effectively flatter for a longer distance than my 30lbs bow. Maybe you could ignore gravity up till 50m, maybe 100. Well, 100m is probably optimistic. But I do believe that there is some distance where the drop due to gravity is insignificant enough that the person launching the projectile can safely ignore it.



Wikipedia gives some info on point blank ranges (essentially the range where you can ignore gravity - where if you point, you hit) and some simple maths to work it out. Assuming the arrow/bolt is let go at 1.5 m off the ground horizontally at 45 m/s, point blank is 20 m. At 100 m/s it is around 50 m. In reality this will be a little lower as the simple maths ignores air resistance. If you're aiming at a man size target and dont really care where you hit, you would in effect extend this somewhat.

[Telonius]

Got an interesting one for the experts here.

Suppose you're a bandit living somewhere in the Turkish or Persian highland areas, somewhere around 1800-1600 BCE. What are some weapons that you'd reasonably be expected to have? I'm particularly interested in something you'd use in close-quarters combat or something like a duel. Short-range would work too - maybe something a sneaky jerk would use in a duel dishonorably.

[Yora]

What you most probably would have at hand is a spear and a knife. These weapons are ancient and can be virtually found in every place and time people lived.

[Galloglaich]

Got an interesting one for the experts here.

Suppose you're a bandit living somewhere in the Turkish or Persian highland areas, somewhere around 1800-1600 BCE. What are some weapons that you'd reasonably be expected to have? I'm particularly interested in something you'd use in close-quarters combat or something like a duel. Short-range would work too - maybe something a sneaky jerk would use in a duel dishonorably.

Akinakes

G.

[Yora]

Apparently the Akinakes first appeared almost 1000 years later.

[Crow]

Apparently the Akinakes first appeared almost 1000 years later.

Haha, I misunderstood and thought they were talking about the Abenaki indians.

I was getting ready for the great Viking vs. Injun discussion!

[fusilier]

I don't doubt that the sten gun is eminently manufacture-able with 1860s tech and industrial base. I just don't see a source for sufficient quantities of uniform enough brass cartridges needed to supply units armed with Sten Guns.

Not in the Union, and especially not in the south.

I agree, supply of brass cartridges would be a serious problem. They were very expensive, and there was little industry set up to make them.

I'm not so sure that the sten gun would be that easy to manufacture. Stamped metal and welding facilities could be found in the 1940s in bicycle shops. Stamping presses certainly existed in the 1860s, but I don't know how widespread they were. However, the only welding available in the 1860s was forge welding, and I don't know how suitable that would be for stamped parts.

[fusilier]

a question of a idle mind:

the Minie ball came into usage in the 1840s (ish), but is thier any reason why, if it had been thought of, it could not have been invented eariler. from my understanding of the tech, the only thing that prevented it form being invented eariler was that no one had thought of it.

am i right, or am i missing something? is thier some critical element of the Minie ball or the rilfes of the time that prevented it form working any eariler?

Concerning the topic of the Minie ball. I just came across a reference to the "Nessler Ball" (or bullet). Apparently during the mid-1850s, this was a sort of minie ball for *smoothbore*(!) muskets. And was said to extend the effective range of muskets considerably. It's description sounds like a short minie ball. It was popular with European armies, especially in the 1850s, as a stop-gap measure, but for some reason was never adopted by the US during the Civil War. Here's a link to some more info:

http://www.civilwarguns.com/9910b.html

Can't seem to find out too much info about it, but that article mentions a test. If anybody knows anything else, I would be interested to hear.

[Joran]

a question of a idle mind:

the Minie ball came into usage in the 1840s (ish), but is thier any reason why, if it had been thought of, it could not have been invented eariler. from my understanding of the tech, the only thing that prevented it form being invented eariler was that no one had thought of it.

am i right, or am i missing something? is thier some critical element of the Minie ball or the rilfes of the time that prevented it form working any eariler?

As far as I know of, no, there's nothing to prevent the Minie ball from being developed earlier. Once industry got good enough to create standardized rifles, the Minie ball could have been developed. I don't believe the Minie ball required any special machinery or metal alloy; it was just a conical bullet made of lead that spread out the base when fired.

Revolutionary rifles differed in calibers between .40 to .60 and required special bullet molds for each rifle. If the Minie ball existed, perhaps rifles would have been better standardized.

The other major invention that helped improve rate of fire and reliability was the percussion cap, but apparently, fulminates weren't discovered until 1800.

[crazedloon]

I am prolly talking out my rear end without being an expert or the like however.

If I am not mistaken, miniballs have little benefit over simply round shot in a smooth bore musket becuase it can not take advantage of the spin. I wouldn't be surprised if you also got a tumble out of the miniball.

Add on to that that the speed of loading a miniball though not significantly lower is slower since you have assure you load the ball correctly. Without too significant of an improvement (if any) over a normal ball there is no reason to slow your load speed down and increase the difficulty in crafting the bullet.

[fusilier]

I am prolly talking out my rear end without being an expert or the like however.

If I am not mistaken, miniballs have little benefit over simply round shot in a smooth bore musket becuase it can not take advantage of the spin. I wouldn't be surprised if you also got a tumble out of the miniball.

Add on to that that the speed of loading a miniball though not significantly lower is slower since you have assure you load the ball correctly. Without too significant of an improvement (if any) over a normal ball there is no reason to slow your load speed down and increase the difficulty in crafting the bullet.

I'm guessing you are referring to the Nessler ball?

I found a photo here:
http://britishmilitariaforums.yuku.com/topic/2641

As for the issue of entering the ball (bullet) into the muzzle the correct way, that's not a major problem with military ammunition, because of the way it is packaged in the paper cartridge. It would take more effort to turn the ball the wrong way during loading.

Most modern descriptions of a round ball "bouncing" down the tube of a smoothbore musket barrel, stem from military practice of using an undersized ball (to ensure that it could actually be loaded). If you look at the suggested loads from modern manufacturers, you will notice a bigger ball and a significantly thick patch (also, a smaller amount of propellant). As long as the walls of the barrel are true, this may result in tolerable accuracy out to about 100 yards (if anecdotal evidence is to be believed).

The issue of ball spin may still be a problem in such a situation (I honestly don't know, so forgive me while I talk out of my hat). The Nessler ball however, has parallel sides. As it will expand to fit the sides of the bore, this will probably prevent it from being able to gain any unwanted spin (i.e. the only spin it could produce would be around it's axis, like a rifle bullet). From the very little evidence I have read, it worked! It was not as effective as a rifle, but it was better than a round ball. It also seems to have better range for a given elevation: flatter shooting - like a crossbow! ;-) Note that the powder load reportedly used with the Nessler ball is also less than what used with the round ball. Indicating that it probably had less windage.

So my guess is, if it expanded to fill the bore, it would not tumble during flight - barring any accidents in the shape of the bullet or the interior of the bore.

[Mike_G]

I agree, supply of brass cartridges would be a serious problem. They were very expensive, and there was little industry set up to make them.

I'm not so sure that the sten gun would be that easy to manufacture. Stamped metal and welding facilities could be found in the 1940s in bicycle shops. Stamping presses certainly existed in the 1860s, but I don't know how widespread they were. However, the only welding available in the 1860s was forge welding, and I don't know how suitable that would be for stamped parts.

I think introducing the Sten would be difficult, as you'd run right smack into doctrine, theory and tradition. The Henry was a tough sell form those reasons.

I think an early breechloader, like the Chassepot or Dreyse or even the Martini-Henry, which are only about 10 years in the future, and some of which can use paper cartridges would be an easier upgrade, would prove better over the existing muzzle loaders, but would fill the role generals expected of a rifle, as opposed to the new, undeveloped role of SMG.

[Norsesmithy]

I agree, supply of brass cartridges would be a serious problem. They were very expensive, and there was little industry set up to make them.

I'm not so sure that the sten gun would be that easy to manufacture. Stamped metal and welding facilities could be found in the 1940s in bicycle shops. Stamping presses certainly existed in the 1860s, but I don't know how widespread they were. However, the only welding available in the 1860s was forge welding, and I don't know how suitable that would be for stamped parts.

Sure, the real sten was stamped, but the fact is, that if you can make springs, you can make a "sten" or sten analog. You could rivet, or bolt, or interlock and pin to hold the thing together, in the end, it doesn't really make any difference. Much more complex firearms than Stens are copied by artisans in the Kyber Pass using bloomery steel and 18th century metalworking techniques.

Mike's point about the incompatibility of weapon system and doctrine is a good one.

[fusilier]

Sure, the real sten was stamped, but the fact is, that if you can make springs, you can make a "sten" or sten analog. You could rivet, or bolt, or interlock and pin to hold the thing together, in the end, it doesn't really make any difference. Much more complex firearms than Stens are copied by artisans in the Kyber Pass using bloomery steel and 18th century metalworking techniques.

Mike's point about the incompatibility of weapon system and doctrine is a good one.

Yeah, I would agree. But then the "simplicity" of the sten starts to disappear. There are also issues with using black-powder in fully automatic weapons (not insurmountable ones), or with setting up the industry to produce new propellants.

However, weapons like the Henry and Spencer did exist and were fielded in small numbers. The Dreyse needle rifle had been in use since the 1840s, and prototypes of the Chassepot had been made. The US Sharpshooters used the breechloading Sharps rifle (and originally the Colt revolver rifle) during the war. So there were single shot breechloaders in use, and their use basically convinced the US to adopt them, almost immediately after the war.

Doctrine would be a serious issue, but it wouldn't be the first time that new weapons had run into old doctrine. It would be interesting to speculate about what effect it would have on doctrine. Off the top of my head, a lightweight sub machine gun may make a decent cavalry weapon. Short range, spray and pray tactics, basically describe how revolvers were supposed to be used during the era. The range is much shorter than what was expected of an infantry weapon -- except maybe an outdated smoothbore musket.

[RationalGoblin]

It's not exactly a weapons or armor question I have (well, I do, but that's one of a few questions), rather a tactics one.

I've heard that King Gustavus II Adolphus/Gustav II Adolf was a military genius, and I've read sparingly about his strategies (something to do with being more maneuverable then tercios), but I'd like to know more specifics of why he's considered one of the greatest military minds of the century, if not era.

Additionally, I've heard that Swedish-made weapons (specifically guns) of that era were particularly well made and prized. What made this so?

Finally, who is generally considered the best general of the Thirty Year's War after Gustav?

[Crow]

To your first question, because he is widely believed to be the father of "Fire & Movement". Whether this is true or not, or whether he just happened to be doing what everyone else was, and was the guy lucky enough to become famous for it, I don't know.

[a_humble_lich]

Doctrine would be a serious issue, but it wouldn't be the first time that new weapons had run into old doctrine. It would be interesting to speculate about what effect it would have on doctrine. Off the top of my head, a lightweight sub machine gun may make a decent cavalry weapon. Short range, spray and pray tactics, basically describe how revolvers were supposed to be used during the era. The range is much shorter than what was expected of an infantry weapon -- except maybe an outdated smoothbore musket.

Interesting, I had the complete opposite response. I would have thought it would be used as more of a defensive infantry weapon in the fashion of WWI machine guns. Not something that would be used to attacked, but as rather as support to keep the unit from being charged.

[Stephen_E]

IIRC Wallenstein was considered the 2nd best general of the 30 years war period.

Stephen E

[fusilier]

Interesting, I had the complete opposite response. I would have thought it would be used as more of a defensive infantry weapon in the fashion of WWI machine guns. Not something that would be used to attacked, but as rather as support to keep the unit from being charged.

That's the role of a heavy machine gun - and those were already being experimented with (Gatling, Agar, Williams). The French Mitrailleuse was viewed as a kind of replacement for cannister shot for artillery. The new rifled muzzle-loading cannons had poor dispersion of shot, so they used machine guns to provide close range (for artillery) support against infantry formations. That was the theory anyway, although they did seem to do a decent job at the Battle of Gravelotte in 1870.

Typically, I imagine, the defender wants to keep the attacker as far a way as possible. That's not to say sub-machine guns wouldn't be useful in repelling an attack, but that their light-weight, mobility, and short range, seem to make them better offensive weapons. Interesting that we are already debating their role. :-)

[fusilier]

Additionally, I've heard that Swedish-made weapons (specifically guns) of that era were particularly well made and prized. What made this so?

Finally, who is generally considered the best general of the Thirty Year's War after Gustav?

Swedish iron was considered to be very good when it came to making cast iron cannons. Cast iron cannons were cheaper than bronze, but more prone to exploding, so quality iron was considered key. I'm not sure if that applied to this time period though, as most field guns were bronze.

The Swedes under Gustavus were found of using small, light "regimental" or "battalion" guns. Small cannon that were fielded directly with the infantry units. He was not the first to do this, but he tended to use more of them than his opponents. Some of these cannon were even made from leather -- although in reality they were a composite construction.

Gustavus has a reputation for being unbeatable on the battlefield up to his death. Wallenstein was able to beat him at the Battle of Alte Veste, which did much to rally the Imperial side, even though he subsequently lost the Battle of Lutzen -- that is considered to have been a very close battle.

Some other notable Generals would be Tilly and Mansfeld, but I don't know how they would rank.

[Brainfart]

Found these videos on donning armour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP3LiwNWrk0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AVl6pWgvzc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVNnetI3_iU

[Psyx]

I think introducing the Sten would be difficult, as you'd run right smack into doctrine, theory and tradition. The Henry was a tough sell form those reasons.

I think that the logistical problems of providing ammunition would make it pretty untenable. Providing each man who had one with even two full magazines would be much more of an issue than providing the firearm itself.

[Xuc Xac]

Swedish iron was considered to be very good when it came to making cast iron cannons. Cast iron cannons were cheaper than bronze, but more prone to exploding, so quality iron was considered key.

To be specific, bronze has low metal-on-metal friction so an iron cannonball won't stick in a bronze cannon, but it might stick in an iron cannon. If you're using iron balls, you want your iron cannon to be stronger than normal so it doesn't explode if it jams.

[Norsesmithy]

That's not why iron cannons explode at all, it has to do with heat retention in the metal, and pourability (and therefore uniformity) when casting. Go back to the time of wrought iron, and it had much to do with the quality of your forge welds on the "staves" of the barrel.

[Avilan the Grey]

The Swedes under Gustavus were found of using small, light "regimental" or "battalion" guns. Small cannon that were fielded directly with the infantry units. He was not the first to do this, but he tended to use more of them than his opponents. Some of these cannon were even made from leather -- although in reality they were a composite construction.

Gustavus has a reputation for being unbeatable on the battlefield up to his death. Wallenstein was able to beat him at the Battle of Alte Veste, which did much to rally the Imperial side, even though he subsequently lost the Battle of Lutzen -- that is considered to have been a very close battle.

Some other notable Generals would be Tilly and Mansfeld, but I don't know how they would rank.

"Small" is relative. Even the "small" guns he used were bigger than than the artillery guns used by Napoleon, for example. They were, however, small enough that they could be adjusted / re-aimed by a number of foot soldiers in an emergency, and could be pulled between battles by two oxen or horses. Compare that with the standard size cannons of the day that required 6 horses or oxen to move in position, and were almost impossible to adjust during battle. That's why they were always captured by the winning side in a battle. Even if a Swedish force had to retreat, they could often keep most of their guns.

Gustaf placed his artillery both in separate positions, but also often gave a cannon or two to most infantry positions.

This was one of the innovations by the Swedish army at the time that made them superior on the battlefield, combined with the new formations that were easier to maneuver and more effective since all men in the formation could use their weapon against the enemy.

Lutzen would have been less close of a battle if Gustaf ("Gustavus") had not been killed in it; loosing your commanding general is not a good thing for an army...

Mansfield I do not remember much about, but Tilly was an a strange man; for one thing by the time of the 30 year war, he was well over 80 years old.

[fusilier]

"Small" is relative. Even the "small" guns he used were bigger than than the artillery guns used by Napoleon, for example. They were, however, small enough that they could be adjusted / re-aimed by a number of foot soldiers in an emergency, and could be pulled between battles by two oxen or horses. Compare that with the standard size cannons of the day that required 6 horses or oxen to move in position, and were almost impossible to adjust during battle. That's why they were always captured by the winning side in a battle. Even if a Swedish force had to retreat, they could often keep most of their guns.

Yeah, small is relative, and it is relative the guns typically used at the time. Although by caliber, the guns were even smaller than what was used in Napoleonic times. The Swedes appear to have adopted 3-pounder regimental guns, and I believe that a Napoleonic horse artillery gun was typically a 4 or 6 pounder. Nonetheless compared to something like a contemporary 16-pdr culverin, a 3-pdr gun is small.


Gustaf placed his artillery both in separate positions, but also often gave a cannon or two to most infantry positions.

This was one of the innovations by the Swedish army at the time that made them superior on the battlefield, combined with the new formations that were easier to maneuver and more effective since all men in the formation could use their weapon against the enemy.

The Dutch had already introduced a 3-pdr cannon for use in a similar role. The Swedes made it even lighter, and used it in larger numbers.



Lutzen would have been less close of a battle if Gustaf ("Gustavus") had not been killed in it; loosing your commanding general is not a good thing for an army...

Not so sure about that. My understanding is that Gustavus was killed sometime during the climax of the battle -- After the Saxon lines had broken. Certainly, his loss was serious blow to the protestant side. However, the Imperials were learning and developing new tactics themselves. Wallenstein did manage to defeat Gustavus at Alte Veste . . . a detail which seems to generally be overlooked.

[fusilier]

That's not why iron cannons explode at all, it has to do with heat retention in the metal, and pourability (and therefore uniformity) when casting. Go back to the time of wrought iron, and it had much to do with the quality of your forge welds on the "staves" of the barrel.

Yeah. If an iron cannon ball was going to get stuck in an iron cannon, it would probably first be noticed during loading. The windage was pretty large on these cannons, so as long as you are using a properly sized ball, it shouldn't "jam."

[Avilan the Grey]

Yeah, small is relative, and it is relative the guns typically used at the time. Although by caliber, the guns were even smaller than what was used in Napoleonic times. The Swedes appear to have adopted 3-pounder regimental guns, and I believe that a Napoleonic horse artillery gun was typically a 4 or 6 pounder. Nonetheless compared to something like a contemporary 16-pdr culverin, a 3-pdr gun is small.

Yes you are right, what we discuss here is physical size and weight, not necessarily caliber; I should have pointed that out.


The Dutch had already introduced a 3-pdr cannon for use in a similar role. The Swedes made it even lighter, and used it in larger numbers.

I think that the difference is that the Swedish army shifted it's entire artillery strategy, at once, while the Dutch added them as "special weapons". I am not very knowledgeable about the Dutch armed forces of the time though.


Not so sure about that. My understanding is that Gustavus was killed sometime during the climax of the battle -- After the Saxon lines had broken. Certainly, his loss was serious blow to the protestant side. However, the Imperials were learning and developing new tactics themselves. Wallenstein did manage to defeat Gustavus at Alte Veste . . . a detail which seems to generally be overlooked.

In the history books I have read, the defeat is not overlooked. It is possible in older works (that tend to sometimes be more into "glorifying" things). A "tactical arms race" had certainly started (as with all major long wars, no matter if it is WWI, WWII, the Napoleon wars or the 30 year or the 100 year war), of course.
One problem on the Imperial side was that Wallenstein and Tilly did not like each other and Wallenstein in particular fought as much for position as the Emperor's favorite general as for victories on the battlefield itself, while Gustaf ruled more or less supreme on the other side.

Anyway, the problem was that he died on a scouting mission, far from the main body of the troops (at least relatively speaking) and that meant that whatever decisions he was going to make when coming back to the main force never happened. Plus the whole "OMG the King is DEAD" part. It was certainly a very deep psychological wound, especially since he was rumored to be immortal.

[fusilier]

Yes you are right, what we discuss here is physical size and weight, not necessarily caliber; I should have pointed that out.

Yeah, by overall weight I would suspect you are right. There were even smaller cannons used at the time (all the way down to a robinet), but I don't know if they were used by the Swedish army.




I think that the difference is that the Swedish army shifted it's entire artillery strategy, at once, while the Dutch added them as "special weapons". I am not very knowledgeable about the Dutch armed forces of the time though.


In the history books I have read, the defeat is not overlooked. It is possible in older works (that tend to sometimes be more into "glorifying" things). A "tactical arms race" had certainly started (as with all major long wars, no matter if it is WWI, WWII, the Napoleon wars or the 30 year or the 100 year war), of course.
One problem on the Imperial side was that Wallenstein and Tilly did not like each other and Wallenstein in particular fought as much for position as the Emperor's favorite general as for victories on the battlefield itself, while Gustaf ruled more or less supreme on the other side.

Yes. It is important to realize that tactics had been evolving. What I see Gustaf as doing is more of a continuation of the evolution of the tactics, than a revolution in tactics. That's not to diminish either his contribution or his brilliance as a general, but his reforms can't be looked at in a vacuum.


Anyway, the problem was that he died on a scouting mission, far from the main body of the troops (at least relatively speaking) and that meant that whatever decisions he was going to make when coming back to the main force never happened. Plus the whole "OMG the King is DEAD" part. It was certainly a very deep psychological wound, especially since he was rumored to be immortal.

Yes and no. The rumors that he had died (and there were attempts to keep it secret) certainly had an effect on morale, but the center had already run into trouble. The protestants did rally, and eventually won the battle, which I think is a testament to Gustaf's reforms. His units and subcommanders were able to keep themselves organized. His tactics didn't last much longer, but I think that had just as much to do with the fact that tactics continued to evolve as his untimely death.

[Jarrick]

Q: I'm currently designing a campaign setting based on late heian period japan. I've recently finished with the weapons section, but something about it keeps bugging me. Ive seen in various places (Inuyasha, Sengoku Basara, Warriors Orochi) people of the period using Scythes as weapons (Not Kama, but full-blown scythes). So my question is: Did the ancient japanese have scythes and were they used as weapons, or is this a creation of modern fantasy?

[Autolykos]

The tools used in Japan probably had much shorter blades than the ones used in Europe (because iron was so damn expensive there). So I don't think Japanese peasants would have tools looking like an European scythe. And if you *intend* to use it as a weapon, it is much more practical to place the blade straight on the shaft (like a naginata).
Having said that, the weapon closest to a scythe in Japan was probably the rokushakukama - same size of the haft, but a much shorter blade.

[Psyx]

"Did the ancient japanese have scythes and were they used as weapons, or is this a creation of modern fantasy?"

Not that I'm aware of, although I could be mistaken.

The closest that I recall is one of the shinobi clans (probably the Koga) were said to sometimes carry two-handed kama into battle. Mainly as a kind of standard and for intimidation purposes ['Hey: You're fighting frikkin' NINJA!'].

[Galloglaich]

I would suspect they actually did use the scythe in Japan, they certainly did in Germany, there is a famous section in Paulus Hector Mair where they show scythe fighting, and I think two or three other Renaissance era manuals.

Here is a video depicting Mairs sickle, scythe, and flegel (long handled flail) images.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97neHuFfPLI

Anything that can kill, was probably tried at least once. The scythe was a very ubiquitous tool which could be used to kill; like so many other farm implements, the sickle (kama in Japan) the staff, the flail, I think you see people looking at how to use thesse things seriously.

I know also in Europe it was fairly common to take a scythe blade, harden it and straighten it out and make the weapon into a Glaive.

G.

[Psyx]

rokushakukama

Isn't that a game where we take it turns to.... oh.... never mind...

[Jarrick]

Hmm... Rokushakukama, eh? Rokushaku means 6-shaku or about 6 feet, so that's a pole weapon with a kama head. Sounds like the Katakamayari (Sickle Spear, which is already included) stat-wise, so I dont think I need to add that. As for the two-handed ninja kama, I'd like more information on that if anyone knows where such could be found. Thanks for the responses, btw. I appreciate the help. :smallsmile:

[Raum]

The Western scythe was used for wheat and similar grains. I believe Japan's primary crop was (and still is) rice...which won't be gathered using the same methods. Swinging a scythe in a rice paddy probably wouldn't be very effective. :smallwink: In any case, I suspect the different crops caused the differences in tools as much as the poor iron resources.

[MarkusWolfe]

I'm interested in picking up and learning to use a Lowlander Claymore (the model I have my eye one has a blade 4 feet long). Before I go out and pay money for expensive lessons, are there any resources I can check out specifically for claymores, or if that is not possible, greatswords in general?

[Galloglaich]

There is a ton of stuff on longsword, which is a two handed sword about four feet long, there are also several manuals for the larger version of about five feet, and a little bit of material for the 'true' two hander of six feet long.

Your best bet would be to study German or Italian longsword, there are videos and books (both translations and interpretations) and plenty of training equipment etc. It's not an easy or simple thing to learn though, it's equivalent to learning karate or kung fu, or collegiate wrestling or boxing. Takes quite a committment.

G.

[Galloglaich]

And incidentally, fun fact, many Scottish soldiers fought as mercenaries in Germany and also in Italy in the Medieval and Renaissance periods, that is in fact where they got most of the blades for the "Claymores" which have survived.

G.

[Maeglin_Dubh]

With a four foot blade, the overall length of the weapon might put it a bit beyond the realm of a longsword as depicted in period manuals, but the manuals would be no less useful to you.

What is it you hope to use it for?

[MarkusWolfe]

Meh, just want to practice in public and look totally badass doing it, as well as be prepared for the zombie apocolypse.:smallbiggrin:

@G

That's very ironic, considering that when the Romans invaded Britain, they were using gladius short swords while the Celts wielded impressive 3 foot bladed longswords.....

Do those measurements you mention include the handle, or are they the blade alone? And perhaps more importantly, how similar are the techniques for the longswords to the original Britannic techniques? If I'm concerned with historical accuracy, should I be looking at the Doppelsöldner's Zweihänder instead? Who developed these massive swords first, and who developed the best techniques?

[Psyx]

Length of the entire bit of metal, not just the blade.

As regards the original Celt way of using the blade... we have no idea. Nothing was written down or survives. Our knowledge of even Roman fighting techniques is pretty sketchy. Nothing really crops up until the era of medieval fight manuals. We have only a few historical comments and the weapons themselves to base supposition on.

Likewise, we have no idea which techniques are 'best'. But bearing in mind that ones that don't work don't get passed on by dead people, it's safe to say that they all 'work'.