Hellenistic/Roman Crossbows

jolo said:
While I don't doubt any of the numbers, I doubt the practicality in a real war situation - teamwork usually doesn't work too well in a messy war situation, considering the amount and realism of training at that time.

It worked well enough to be standard procedure in a number of Italian armies, and these were hardly impractical or unused to war. That said, the operations were usually trained at the team level, with one crossbowman training with one pavesiere and one or two loaders/spearmen. We should not underestimate the quality of training at a time when combat was a far more common experience than today.

Additionally, I suppose the complicated mechanism of especially the larger crossbows also caused trouble every once in a while, so that maximum firing rates were rarely achieved.

That was probably true for all weapons. At any rate, shooting a longbow at 6 aimed shots per minute (or up to 20 instinctive ones, according to re-enactors) would be very tiring and probably couldn't be kept up for long. I doubt the mechanisms were really an issue, though. We can't know for certain today, of course, but reconstructed medieval weapon systems consistently perform better than expected, and reality has a way of weeding out bad technology on the battlefield.

Crossbows with similar punch and reach I'd also usually imagine to be much heavier than longbows, decreasing mobility or, if horses are used, increasing costs.

If you carry a war crossbow, you are heavy infantry. That's the way it is. If you want a weapon for a scourt or ranger, get a bow.

There were lighter types for skirmishing, but these didn't really come into widespread use until the later 14th/early 15th century. THese were easy and quick enough to use that they were carried by light caalry for skirmishing duty. Looks kind of funny.

Also, if necessary, you can shoot practically anything with a longbow - like makeshift arrows. Try that with a crossbow.

Actually, a crossbow is more forgiving of bad workmanship. Longbows rely on an arrow's even flex and balance to a much greater extent, and accuracy with bad shafts sucks. Crossbows are much more brute-force weapons and aerodynamic qualities matter only later along the flight path.

I've written an article on crossbows for an RPG and talked to a lot of archers for that, and the picture that I got was more or less this: Both bow and crossdbow have their good and bad points, and both crossbowmen and archers are often convinced their type is superior (though crossbowmen are usually more enlightened about it because most of them shoot both.) Bows are faster and lighter, crossbows pack more pounch over short distances and can be used from cover. But the main difference lies in the learning curve. I can personally attest to the fact that crossbows are easy compared to bows. Learning to use a bow takes much longer. However, it seems that the crossbow hits diminishing returns much sooner, too. Training put into bows pays greater dividends at high levels. That would mean that poorly trained crossbowmen will outperform poorly trained bowmen, well-trained crossbowmen match well-trained bowmen, but excellent crossbowmen not be a patch on excellent bowmen. Sounds convincing enough to me, though I've never been good enough at either to judge the latter two.
 
I dug up this old post while searching for information on the solenarion/majra. It apparently achieved some popularity among the Arabs, Turks, Byzantines, and Koreans. The advantage over the conventional bow seems to be a lighter arrow that can be carried in greater quantity, smaller arrows are harder to see in flight, and that it couldn't be shot back by an enemy not quipped with the majra tube. There are also claims to its alleged penetration advantage, but I haven't seen any substantiation.

Do the claims of their advantages hold water? And if so, why weren't these weapons more wide spread?
 
I wouldn't call Sfakteria shredding like confetti: more like being pinned down by twice their own number of Athenian hoplites and being pelted with missiles from all sides till the Spartans negotiated a surrender. I don't know of any occasion when peltasts defeated hoplites unaided

Probably the best example of a peltast force annihilating a superior armored opponent would be the Almogavars wiping out the Duke of Athens army at Cephisus. It was basically a mirror image of Agincourt. Heavy knights lured into marshy terrain then butchered as they floundered. Again, Agincourt wasn't so much a statement of the Longbows overwhelming superiority as it was French tactical idiocy.

The Romans learned their basic fighting model from centuries of combat experience on the Iberian penninsula. Also, penetration. I would love to see some simulations of longbow fire into trotting heavy infantry. I would guess maybe 2-3 aimed shots before the infantry is in javelin range, followed by the charge and then melee. There MAY just have been a reason the most powerful army in antiquity used what it did ;).

As far as Romans not being able to build crossbows.... Really? Roman engineering is STILL some of the finest you will ever see. I am quite certain they were more than capable of building effective crossbows.
 
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