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Crossbows outrange Longbows?
Yeomanbowman:
Hello Erik,
Gerald recounts a tall tale of the Welsh elm hand bow and finishes with, "It is difficult to see what more you could do, even if you had a crossbow". Clearly the implication is that at this time the xbow was regarded as the more powerful weapon. Being of Welsh/Norman descent he would have been very familiar with the Norman xbow.
BTW I think Badger may have his estimation of the draw-weight of a 15th C field crossbow too low, the best being fitted with steel prods at this point. 600lbs is easily achievable and the poundage Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey quotes. The rate of shooting must have been demoralisingly slow with or without a pavise.
Rod:
--- Quote from: JW_Halverson on April 05, 2009, 07:28:14 pm ---The accounts of Agincourt I have read state the Italian mercenary crossbowmen were getting nicely aerated/perforated long before they could return fire. They turned and marched back out of range of the longbowmen where the French reneged on payment and slaughtered the crossbowmen instead of paying their wages.
--- End quote ---
This is a version I have not heard before and though it is quite amusing to imagine an orderly withdrawal and pay negotiations taking place in the heat of battle, the contemporary accounts are unanimous in reporting that (at Crecy) the French rode down the Genoese when they attempted to fall back under the English barrage of arrows, having been sent forward without the protection of their pavises which had been leftl on the baggage train.
Rod.
bow-toxo:
--- Quote from: Yeomanbowman on May 06, 2009, 05:15:22 am ---Hello Erik,
Gerald recounts a tall tale of the Welsh elm hand bow and finishes with, "It is difficult to see what more you could do, even if you had a crossbow". Clearly the implication is that at this time the xbow was regarded as the more powerful weapon. Being of Welsh/Norman descent he would have been very familiar with the Norman xbow.
--- End quote ---
Thanks for the info. It is a little puzzling in a period when hand held crossbows were bent up using a belthook. I wouldn't think that a crossbowman then could manage a pull of much more than 200 pounds and it seems unlikely that would achieve penetration of a 3 inch oak door. Gerald was familiar enough with handbows to know what they were normally made of.
Yeomanbowman:
Gerald actually claimed the penetration was a hand span so 4" but he was prone to the odd bit of exaggeration. He recounts a 'factual' tale of a human/horse chimera as the result of an unholy union between an Irish man ad a horse :o
There is a difference between range and penetration of course. As an extreme example a flight arrow would have great range yet poor penetratrative powers despite the high velocity. A bolt is thick, short, heavy and stiff and would not break as readily as an arrow with an oblique strike against armour pro-rata.
Jumping forward a century or so, I think the French had a vested interest in scapegoating the largely foreign xbow men. They ineptly deployed them without pavises and blamed the rain for weakening the xbow strings. However, Payne-Gallwey soaked a period sting for hours and no ill effect was detected.
Rod:
Payne-Gallwey casts doubt upon this "soaked string" hypothesis having tested strings by soaking them.
He makes the quite sensible observation that an unfitted loose string that has been allowed to unwind to some degree is prone to absorbing far more moisture than a well waxed string that is taut under tension, where the effect of soaking is slight.
He also speculates that the type of crossbow current at the time of Crecy (with a composite wooden prod) to which the "soaked strings anecdote refers, as Len has said, not Agincourt where the crossbowmen were held in the rear, not advanced, may well have been slack braced as compared to the later bows of much higher poundage and therefore more prone to suffering from a soaking.
Rod.
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