h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Mediaeval Crossbow - A1128827
Author: Ictoan S.H.A.D.O.W. Secretary - AWE - WAWi - U173821

Well, it's either submit it for PR or continue rewriting it for the next year!Has been to WW but didn't get much response there (though what there was , was good!). So, comments please!

SO - first in for the blood-letting.

Very good. You got all the way to the last line of the article before using a personal pro-noun.

I think you should change the title to ... say "Longbow and Crossbow - a comparison." But thats just me.

I have always suffered under the belief that bows were more popular in England, because they were easily dismantled and hidden, and thus were more popular amongst poachers with a taste for venison. Possibly I invented this - I was exposed to Robin Hood at an early age.

Another thing that annoys archers is the constant representation of them holding the bows in their left hand and drawing with their right. As I'm sure you know use of a bow depends on whether you are right or left eyed, and something like 85% of people are left eyed. (I'm one of the odd ones - but you knew that.)

I can't spot any typos after VV's sterling work (yes I've been following) so all in all this looks good to me.

Oh McKay! A compliment!!!!!


Ictoan's off down to the capital today, so I doubt he will get on line to see any comments today.

I'm just going to have another run through. (it seems that early mornings are the best time for me to spot typos )

Oh, I think I agree about the title thingy too.

Right. The following are more personal preferences and I'm happy for you to tell me to bog off Icky...here they come!

In the Terminology section, Draw Weights. It needs a fullstop at the end. The same goes for the Quarrel section too.

In the Prod section under Terminology, you have this Sometimes these are actually two separate pieces.

Would this sound better as something like…. Occasionally it has been known for the Prod section to come in two separate pieces.

In the Crossbow Prior to 11 Century section, you refer to the Norman conquest. Should conquest have a capital C?

Under Comparison section, you have…… The French did in fact use longbow archers themselves, but the time required to train them and the effort involved was not considered worth it. Especially when you could hire the Genoese (well respected European mercenary crossbowmen). Perhaps this could be re-worded too? Perhaps something along the lines of ……. The French did in fact use longbow archers themselves, but the time required to train them and the effort involved was not considered worth it as the Genoese (well respected European mercenary crossbowmen) were much cheaper to employ than training new archers.


MENAI STRAITS, a 14 mile channel of the Irish Sea, separating Anglesey from Caernarvonshire, North Wales.

Might look better as…
MENAI STRAITS. A 14 mile channel of the Irish Sea, separating Anglesey from Caernarvonshire, North Wales.


See! There wasn't that many!

!

Typos:- Range

The crossbow bolts is smaller and offers less resistance.>
The crossbow bolt is smaller and offers less resistance.

On even ground, the longest verified longbow shot was somewhere in the low 300yards (perhaps as much as 350 but this is unconfirmed). >
On even ground, the longest verified longbow shot was somewhere in the low 300 yards (perhaps as much as 350 but this is unconfirmed).


Watermusic

Wow! That was positive!
Thanks all, and as McKay says a lot of work already done by VV, lil, Odo, RF et al.

I was kinda waiting for someone like Trin Tragula to come along and tell me that the Latin I quoted actually said something rude, but I guess I am ok on that!

Will rework and as soon as! I also wanted to add a load more stuff, but I think most people will have lost the will to live by the end of what is there!

all!

McKay,
"say "Longbow and Crossbow - a comparison."
Well, I see where you are both coming from on this, but the aim of the article was to cover the Crossbow and counter some of the misinformation circulating about it. Most of this relates to its abilities as compared to the longbow, hence over reliance on the longbow.

But if that is not the article people feel I have written, then fair enough. There is a *lot* of info about the crossbow and if the title was changed then people may not realise that the article covers the crossbow in quite some detail, or so I feel.

VV
"In the Prod section under Terminology, you have this Sometimes these are actually two separate pieces."
What I meant to convey is that the prod is sometimes manufactured in one piece, and sometimes in two. The 2part version is usually for large/heavier crossbows and the term 'prod' applies both to the all in one and the individual parts of the 2 parter. But you are right, the current version is weak.

Watermusic,
!

OK, changes made!
Section on the 'Prod' rewritten to make it clearer, hopefully!
Paragraph about French longbow archers rewritten to make VV happy. (I know, no chance of that!).

Let me know

Anyone see that program on the longbow on Saturday? To fill you in on the longbow vs Crosbow debate. The crossbow had more hitting power at all ranges but a shorter overall range. It was roughly half as fast at firing. The loss of velocity in the longbow bolt made it's armour peircing range just 20 yards. So although the longbow had a faster rate of fire and a longer range, it wouldn't hurt a knight much at long range! So its only advantage over the crossbow as far as taking out knights was concerned was rate of fire. Crossbow deployment at Crecy was also totally incompetant as they were without pavices and out of range. When they retreated they were slaughtered by the knights. Simarly at Agingcourt with soaked wepons and no pavises it wasn't a fair test of their power.

Oh yes, I saw that program. A little 'light', and not that good on the facts.

Not getting at you, but correcting the 'facts' from the program.

"The crossbow had more hitting power at all ranges but a shorter overall range."
Wrong. The crossbow has a longer range and more hitting power. And it is more accurate.

"It was roughly half as fast at firing. "
Wrong. The quote 8 bolts a minute for crossbow vs. 12 arrows a minute for longbow is not like for like. To obtain a rate of 8 bolts per minute on a crossbow you need to be a *very* good crossbow person. To obtain 12 arrows per minute on the longbow was the *minimum* requirement and was not seen as anything special. Also, 8 bolts per minute is only acheivable on a hand spanned low poundage (100-150lb) crossbow. These were only used as battlefield weapons in the early days. the more normal battlefield weapons, the 400lb+ bows were lucky to get 2 or more off. The hand spanned bow was actually a sporting bow used for hunting deer and the like. You'd have been laughed off any 15th Century battlefield with one of them!

"The loss of velocity in the longbow bolt made it's armour peircing range just 20 yards. So although the longbow had a faster rate of fire and a longer range, it wouldn't hurt a knight much at long range! "
Debateable. Armour was not a solid seamless mass of metal. But then at long range they did not use armour piercing (short or long bodkin) arrows. They used flight arrows which were not designed to penetrate armour, but rather clatter down on the enemy to scare them. Oh, and longbows have arrows. They killed a lot of french knights at agincourt, and they were more than 20yds away.

So its only advantage over the crossbow as far as taking out knights was concerned was rate of fire.
Rate of fire *and* number of the field. Also see my note about the different methods of using the crossbow vs. the longbow. Its the machine gun vs. the sniper rifle.

Crossbow deployment at Crecy was also totally incompetant as they were without pavices and out of range. When they retreated they were slaughtered by the knights.
Thats a little unfair on the Genoese who were the top mercenary crossbowmen of their time, famed throughout Europe. Crecy had the damp strings and they were not allowed to retreat, but were ridden down by their own knights who were anxious to get at the enemy and considered the genoese mercenaries to be about on par with slaves.

Simarly at Agingcourt with soaked wepons and no pavises it wasn't a fair test of their power.
I think the whole bit about not having a pavise is a bit misleading. After all, the archers didn;t have them either. Also, the argument that the crossbowmen had no pavises is an argument from a negative. i.e. there is no record of them having pavises (they are not explicitly mentioned in any chronicle). To some that means they didn;t have them. But it could also mean that the person writing the chronicle just didn;t write about them. Not exactly the best argument.
The archers also suffer from soaked bowstrings, yet they had no such problem at agincourt. So it *is* a fair test.

Pavises were not that popular for the early days with the light bows, since the reload time was shorter. Pavises came in more with the heavier bows and the richer mercenary crossbowmen since they often employed a lad to carry it for them.

Y'see that program is exactly the sort of misinformation I was aiming my article at. With all the waffle and silly shots of him on his horse and stuff, there wasn;t actually enough program time to cover all the angles. It was a very light overview of the issues with a number of generalisations and assumptions in it. Good introductory but not factually correct.
He also based a lot of stuff on thingies chronicle. Began with F I think. That particular chronicle is somewhat suspect and is not treated as a reliable source by historians. Note many of his comments were along the lines of 'if xxxxxxx report is correct...'. Yes, and if it wasn;t then his argument fails.
Hence why I have chosen to ignore that particular source in my entry.

Sorry if I sound a tad annoyed but I am.

Froissart's Chronicles , that's the fella. And you need to know how history was seen back in the 14th Century. It wasn;t a list of facts and accurate descriptions, but rather a story telling tradition, based in fact. Hence it is often difficult to tell, after 700 yrs, which bits are exact facts, which bits embellished to make the patron happy, and which bits altered for narratice reasons.

Very well-written article. I'll have another read-thru for typos later...

Thanks for the compliment and any and all comments welcomed!

You've done well on it Icky. Weldone


I think you just need to sit tight now and wait till someone wants to recommend it.

Mine's been in here with nothing being done to it for about 2 weeks now.

Who are these supposed professionals?

Why are the laymen better than the experts in this case?

Youve done well to mention the longbow. However i have a few points:

Greater accuracy - i tend to disagree here. The crossbow was far easier to fire, which meant that any idiot could use it without much fuss. The longbow however needed great strength to draw the arrow before releasing, meaning that lots and lots of practice went into using them. I therefore tend towards saying that the longbow was more accurate then the crossbow simply because of who was using it, although apart from that they were identical near enough.

It would be like comparing a sniper rifle with an AK47 - again i disagree. A well trained archer could shot his long bow around 7-10 times a minute, all with good to great accuracy. The crossbow needed to be cocked (unless you could afford the nifty winch) meaning fewer shots for relative same accuracy.

The comparison:

Reliabilty - whilst i tend to agree you could keep it drawn, why would you want to? the tension in the string is loosened and again, rate of fire and in turn accruacy becomes and issue. Plus a cross bow with metal components is likely to rust or suffer from frost.

Ease of use - they were trained everyday.. but it was worth it.

accuracy - hmm not entirely sure. Definition of arbalister as footnote please. Saves having to look at the bottom.

Agincourt - you could mention how the bad terrain forced the french knights to fight on foot, who found the ground difficult once they got in range of the english long bow men. Once they'd got half way they knew they were all dead, as the english could loose at will without fear of cavalry. Bit of a massacre.


I like it even if it does slag the long bow a bit. Give me a long bow over a cross bow anyday!

The angle at which a longbow is fired means that in any sort of crosswind it is a lot less accurate than a crossbow. Trust me, I've shot both. However, the greater rate of fire on the crossbow means more targets will be hit due to the saturation effect of the arrows 'raining' down.

"Who are these supposed professionals?
Why are the laymen better than the experts in this case?"
Can you clarify? Are you asking why my article disagrees with a TV program? I have quoted my sources at the bottom of the entry if you would care to check them.

"Greater accuracy - i tend to disagree here. The crossbow was far easier to fire, which meant that any idiot could use it without much fuss. "
Any idiot can pick one up and get the bolt roughly near where it should be, yes, but you still need to train.

"The longbow however needed great strength to draw the arrow before releasing, meaning that lots and lots of practice went into using them. "
Actually, it is technique as much as pure strength, but yes, you do need a lot of upper body strength. However, it is always a laugh watching some big bloke picking up a 100lb longbow and completely failing to draw it, since he does not know the technique.

"I therefore tend towards saying that the longbow was more accurate then the crossbow simply because of who was using it, although apart from that they were identical near enough."
Methinks you are a longbow fan
But I am comparing the weapons, not the users. However, on accuracy, I personally, after 12 months of shooting a crossbow, could acheive equal or greater accuracy over a given distance to a longbow archer with several years experience. It still takes a lot of practise to be good. I suppose I should say somewhere that accuracy, outside of competetive use, was not the point of the longbow. It wasn't designed for that.

"It would be like comparing a sniper rifle with an AK47 - again i disagree. A well trained archer could shot his long bow around 7-10 times a minute, all with good to great accuracy. The crossbow needed to be cocked (unless you could afford the nifty winch) meaning fewer shots for relative same accuracy."
See the bit about rate of shooting. The 'nifty winch' was but one method and was not used on hand spanned bows, cos it was slower. 7-10 times a min would have seen you going without food in the armies of the time. 12 was the minimum. 7 shots a min would be a very poor archer. Or one taking a lot of time to aim and risking breaking his/her bow.

The comparison:

"Reliabilty - whilst i tend to agree you could keep it drawn, why would you want to? the tension in the string is loosened and again, rate of fire and in turn accruacy becomes and issue. Plus a cross bow with metal components is likely to rust or suffer from frost."
Really not sure of your point here, could you elaborate? As for rust etc, they had this stuff called called wax. And also oil.

"Ease of use - they were trained everyday.. but it was worth it."
Indeed so.

"accuracy - hmm not entirely sure. Definition of arbalister as footnote please. Saves having to look at the bottom."
OK.

"Agincourt - you could mention how the bad terrain forced the french knights to fight on foot, who found the ground difficult once they got in range of the english long bow men. Once they'd got half way they knew they were all dead, as the english could loose at will without fear of cavalry. Bit of a massacre."
Well, the article is not really about the tactics, hence link to the edited guide Agincourt article. But if people think it is worth adding, I shall. Although again, it is worth mentioning that the french came very close to the english king.

"I like it even if it does slag the long bow a bit. Give me a long bow over a cross bow anyday!"
It doesn't slag the longbow of, or I hope not. It tries to present a balanced view. The longbow is not all it is cracked up to be.

"The angle at which a longbow is fired means that in any sort of crosswind it is a lot less accurate than a crossbow. Trust me, I've shot both. However, the greater rate of fire on the crossbow means more targets will be hit due to the saturation effect of the arrows 'raining' down."
Good point and put better than I did! May I include it?
"However, the greater rate of fire on the crossbow"
I take it you meant longbow

Oops! Of course I meant longbow!

Sure you can use it, I wouldn't have put it here otherwise.

"Instantly recognisable to small boys everywhere, it has a layman's reputation for power and accuracy. Yet in supposedly knowledgeable circles, especially in the UK, it is often referred to disparagingly and attitudes tend towards condemning it as a waste of space and no match for the mighty Longbow."

Well I take you're saying that the layman term is more accurate in discription than the 'knowledgable circles'.

Why is the Longbow not better if say, a historian of arms, comes to that conclusion?


From this entry I did get the impression that the long bow is better to the crossbow in terms of design- Quicker to /shoot/, easier to reload, is weathered against rain in a continent that is paricularly damp. Although the wind will take a toll on the lightness of the arrows the barrage of arrows can be more effective than a crossbow bolt in doing damage over a wide area whereas the crossbow bolt which I've seen pierce a car door is clumsy when being charged.

But of course they both have positives and negatives and the fighting situation needs to be taken into consideration


HPB,
Archery Layman

"Any idiot can pick one up and get the bolt roughly near where it should be, yes, but you still need to train."
Possibly, but without doubt the archer would be better trained as opposed to our humble crossbowman. I mean sure one to one shooting they'd be equal, as you point out the archer has a greater rate of fire. He could hit the same target five times and make a cup of tea all with exactly the same amount of accuracy.

Technique - fully agree (should have mentioned but hey). A longbow just seems a much greater weapon because of who was using it. We both know that any idiot can pick up a cross bow and use it competantly with no guidance after a few practice rounds. The longbow takes longer learn, but because of this i tend to favor the longbow as the superior weapon.
(No offence to crossbow users of corse)

"But I am comparing the weapons, not the users" - i think the users are worth a mention basically because of the difference in the two users. Sure the crossbow may be easier, but the longbow archer was certainly more accurate. I beleive a longbow could be used competively, but a crossbow archer wouldnt have spent as long training.

Rate of fire(shooting) - Imagine them both in a situation on a battlefeild. An archer with longbow can take his time, choose his targets and loose, each arrow hitting its target. The crossbowman on the other hand has a single shot.

"Really not sure of your point here, could you elaborate? As for rust etc, they had this stuff called called wax. And also oil."
True, but supplying it for all troops would eventually cause problems. The non metallic parts of the longbow make it more effective in winter

Longbow isnt all its cracked upto be - id still rather have a longbow then a crossbow.