Hello. What makes the crossbow so powerful compared to bows, such as the mongolian and the english war bow. How is the tiny croosbow able to generate an equal or greater amount of force as the 7 foot yumi?
What makes the Crossbow so powerful?
- Thread starter Romanus696
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wolf_brother
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Easier to train with, easier to handle, easier to make, more rapid fire (in the hands of a novice) compared to an untrained longbowman... etc. etc.
The draw weight. The crossbow has an enormous amount of force stored inside it when it fires, far greater than any bow could produce. That's why a lot of crossbows had to be drawn wit a crank, or you had to hold the crossbow in place with your foot in order to load it and ready for fire. Whereas a Welsh longbow would have a draw weight of 120 pounds, a modern crossbow for comparison has a draw weight of closer to 150 pounds (i.e. you have to be able to pull back the string as if you were lifting 150 pounds in order to ready the bow for firing.
Combine that with the crossbow being able to store that energy while in order for a bow to maintain that power would require the archer to stand there and hold it, the greater accuracy, and how easy it was to train with (an army in a year rather than having to train men from birth as is the case with the longbow.)
Main downside was the lower rate of fire compared to a trained archer. Unless we are talking about the Chinese repeating crossbow.
When you draw back an ordinary bow it's all done by muscle power, and until you fire or unload as it were the archer has to use their own strength to hold it ready. And for the large longbows that takes a hell of a lot of effort and can't be done for long. With crossbows once the bowstring has been drawn back it's simply held in place mechanically until the trigger is pulled. This means it's much easier to keep drawn and ready to fire, although doing it for too long knackers the string, than the bow. Many crossbows also had a push-lever or windlass feature that helped reduce the effort needed to draw the string back in the first place as well. Both of these made using a crossbow much easier than a regular bow, which in the case of longbows took quite a few years to build up the physical strength and skills to be able to accurately fire them. Instead you now had a weapon that relatively unskilled common people could use after a little training and yet was powerful enough to put a bolt through a knight's armour and kill them, a great social leveller.
The training time compensates however. One of the reasons the Church banned crossbow use (though of course Europe ignored it) was that it allowed peasants to kill armored nobles.
Simpler weapon bsically. Training with a bow took a lot of strength, crossbows could be wound with relative ease and still pack a punch. Think of them like highly wound up slingshots. You could potenitally turn a group of peasants into an effective militia in an afternoon if you trained them with crossbows. Bows could take years to learn to use effectively.
Chinese repeaters had less force behind them. They had a more limited range, and were generally tipped with poison because the bolt was unlikely to kill on its own. They were best used either in large masses (armies) or behind fortifications.
And you can have a bow with a draw weight no human can draw by spanning the weapon mechanically with things like hooks or windlasses.
Training time was definitely key. The longbow was a devastating weapon (especially but not only against knights), but it required a lot of training (Edward III once said that to train a longbowman, you should start with his grandfather!) It also required special materials: pretty early (the 14th century?), the English set up a tax to encourage foreign traders to bring yew with them to England, and by the end of the 16th century, the yew was approaching extinction in northern Europe. Crossbows, on the other hand, could be made of steel (still expensive and rare, but less so than a tree that's rapidly becoming impossible to find).
Actually...crossbow was not a massed peasant weapon. It was predominantly used by wealthy specialists and urban militia (who were once again not anything like a levee en masse). It was also not all that easy to make though it required less expensive material than long bow staves.
So besides the ease of training, it definitely had other advantages (shooting accurately from cover (pavises) in sieges, for example, the mentioned draw weight (though crossbow energy transfer is a lot less efficient than a bow)...With a servant or two reloading the crossbowman could also be pretty fast and not tire nearly as fast as an archer. Also didn't need to be as strong. It was also widely used by marines well into the early 17th c.
All sorts of bows were not all that good against knights even before the advent of plate. It required a perfect setup for archers to defeat armoured men, and whenever there wasn't such a setup the archers typically got the worst of it. Once mass-produced Milanese harnesses started appearing, archers out of defended positions were invariably slaughtered by heavy cavalry.
So besides the ease of training, it definitely had other advantages (shooting accurately from cover (pavises) in sieges, for example, the mentioned draw weight (though crossbow energy transfer is a lot less efficient than a bow)...With a servant or two reloading the crossbowman could also be pretty fast and not tire nearly as fast as an archer. Also didn't need to be as strong. It was also widely used by marines well into the early 17th c.
All sorts of bows were not all that good against knights even before the advent of plate. It required a perfect setup for archers to defeat armoured men, and whenever there wasn't such a setup the archers typically got the worst of it. Once mass-produced Milanese harnesses started appearing, archers out of defended positions were invariably slaughtered by heavy cavalry.
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Two a minute would be fast for a crossbow, longbows can do fifteen.
And I think "perfect" is a little strong - but you definitely need to play your cards right, it's not rock-paper-scissors so much as better tactics > dead knights.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HagCuGXJgUs
15 a minute would be completely exhausting what at 100 lbs of draw, and crossbows could shoot a lot faster than 2, but that wasn't the point. They were weapons for aiming at short range with, more than anything.
Every famous bow victory over men at arms came against:
1. An army charging uphill in the mud against an enemy with secure flanks
2. A TIRED army charging uphill in the mud with no plan other than "charge"
3. Archers dug in behind trenches, stakes, and THEN men at arms to protect them.
4. Point-blank enfilading archery over prolonged periods of time.
That's nothing short of a perfect setup. I'm struggling, in fact, to think of a single battle where longbowmen were not only decisive, but even effective, outside of that setup (when it wasn't against Scotland).
Someone might correct me of course if they can think of something.
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As you can see in the video, the crossbow wasn't as slow to shoot as many people make out, but please keep in mind that the hand-spanned crossbow is a very quick weapon to span and shoot, much quicker that the other types of crossbow in use during the middle ages.
So with firing at third that rate (for the crossbow) is two shots in fifty one seconds.
And if memory serves, a fast rate of fire for a flintlock 18th century musket is a shot every fifteen seconds.
So with firing at third that rate (for the crossbow) is two shots in fifty one seconds.
And if memory serves, a fast rate of fire for a flintlock 18th century musket is a shot every fifteen seconds.
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Right. It's typically only used for hunting and cavalry. Even most lighter types used a belt-hook.
15 shots a minute for a longbow, however, means 15 bad shots, a tired archer, and running out of arrows. I doubt people really did it often.