Longbow v crossbow (and handgun) - historical discussion

[Atheling]

You know, I've been over this ground possibly a hundred times..... that's why I'm staying stum 

Darrell.

[jon_1066]

This was not a fixed thing either was it?  So during the medieval period you have changes in arms and armour over time and also location.  So you can't look at the Wars of the Roses and apply that to the before the Hundred Years War or the crusades.

There are a few interweaving strands in the history.  Did plate armour become more common because it was better or because it became cheaper to make than chainmail?  Was it a reaction to more powerful warbows or were more powerful warbows a reaction to more readily available armour?

The mounted knight lost its pre-eminence on the battlefield such that by the time of the Wars of the Roses the gentry are fighting on foot mostly.  Is this due to the difficulties of protecting a horse from longbows?  

Shields also become scarce - did this imply they weren't needed to protect from arrows or just that two handed weapons were required to actually do much damage to a heavily armoured opponent?

Troops became more heavily armoured through time such that by the end of the hundred years war even lowly archers would have some plate armour.  Compare that to a Norman crossbowman who would have had a quilted jacket or similar.

So when is your game set?  Does it seek to cover the whole period?  I think bows of all sorts would be effective against unarmoured opponents.  Against someone in full harness then the difference are probably minimal since to kill someone you are looking at hitting a joint or into a visor.

My take - longbows are effective against cavalry due to high rate of fire that crossbows don't have.  Both are equally a nuisance against men-at-arms in full harness on foot but not decisive - eg foot men-at-arms closed with the English at Agincourt.   Both would decimate unarmoured levies - eg Towton.  Crossbowmen need pavise to stand against longbows.  Powerful longbows needed a social system in place to train the necessary troops.  This develops throughout the medieval period such that it is only by the time of the hundred years war that sufficient can be raised to form massed ranks of the most powerful bows and they give the French a nasty surprise at Crecy.

[Atheling]

This was not a fixed thing either was it?  So during the medieval period you have changes in arms and armour over time and also location.  So you can't look at the Wars of the Roses and apply that to the before the Hundred Years War or the crusades.

Well, technically the Hundred Years War ended in 1453 and Wars of the Roses started in 1455 so they kind of overlap.

I do take your point though.

As I said earlier, I've been 'round and 'round in circles with this particular debate for years and I don't wish it on anyone! The truth of the matter is very complex IMHO. One has to take into account that the Warbow was used primarily to cause disruption in an advance/charge, causing exhaustion etc and it put the enemy advancing at a real disadvantage when they finally got into melee. It is obviously much more complex than my example.

Just look at the Wars of the Roses and count how many battles were won by the protagonist forced to advance first. Not many.

Now, I said I'd keep stum and I will do so from now on! 

Enjoy folks 

Darrell.

[Charlie_]

Shields also become scarce - did this imply they weren't needed to protect from arrows or just that two handed weapons were required to actually do much damage to a heavily armoured opponent?

That's one I've often pondered. You often read about how full plate had become so good that shields were no longer needed. Seems a bit off - surely when advancing into an arrowstorm like at Agincourt, holding a shield is going to greatly reduce the chances of arrows finding the weak points in your armour - even if the armour was doing a good job anyway, a shield can only improve your chances even more! And I don't think two-handed weapons were ESSENTIAL to defeating fully armoured opponents, though very advantageous. I guess it's a case of weighing up priorities. You could take a shield, but then might wish you had a bigger weapon. With a big weapon, you wouldn't be as well protected as with a shield, but still your armour would MOSTLY do the job. So I guess everyone decided to go for the big weapon! I wonder how much of it was following fashions?
Also, I wonder why simple shields weren't used more and just discarded when melee was joined - advance with shield raised to lessen the chance of arrow injury, then throw it away and charge in with poleaxe.

So when is your game set?  Does it seek to cover the whole period?  I think bows of all sorts would be effective against unarmoured opponents.  Against someone in full harness then the difference are probably minimal since to kill someone you are looking at hitting a joint or into a visor.

It's supposed to cover the whole medieval period, though there is definitely a bias towards the 15th century, as that's the period I am most interested in. Though these rules are pretty much just for me and my friends to use, I'm not claiming anyone else might be interested. I'd just like to provide a flexible rules system to give the most realistic represtentation of medieval warfare on the tabletop, sophisticated but not weighed down with unnecessary details... and how bows of all sorts and their use and effect on the battlefield fit into this, that's the big question right now!

The truth of the matter is very complex IMHO. One has to take into account that the Warbow was used primarily to cause disruption in an advance/charge, causing exhaustion etc and it put the enemy advancing at a real disadvantage when they finally got into melee. It is obviously much more complex than my example.

Yes, the 'disruption' effect of longbow fire I'd love to represent properly on the tabletop.

[Patrice]

A serious advantage - quick mass production of ammunition.
Though that's a tricky thing to represent on the tabletop...

Yes, it must be resolved before. The cost of training and of ammunition comes into the weapons budget / army lists /scenario.

[Cubs]

That's one I've often pondered. You often read about how full plate had become so good that shields were no longer needed. Seems a bit off - surely when advancing into an arrowstorm like at Agincourt, holding a shield is going to greatly reduce the chances of arrows finding the weak points in your armour - even if the armour was doing a good job anyway, a shield can only improve your chances even more!

Well, I assume you're focussing primarily on Western Europe, and if that's the case then shields did indeed fade away during the 15th century, probably because armour just got so effective throughout that period. I think you probably have a chicken and egg scenario with a man at arms needing both hands to wield the heavy polearms favoured to tackle the armour, and also the armour itself becoming so good a shield was not required. But shields were still used for centuries in other countries - Scots Highlanders, Zulus, Mahdists etc..

It wasn't just the thickness of the armour, it was also the quality of steel it was made from, the evolution of the shape of Italian and German armour to deflect blows and the various techniques of layering cloth, leather and metal to form a very solid barrier. Even those who favoured the sword as a primary weapon during the WOTR seem to have done so without a shield. 

However, I think you are right in that trends and phases of evolution come and go in weapon and armour development and sometimes you look a few steps back and find that previously abandoned technologies are adopted again, because they become effective again (but not necessarily for the same reasons). Think of the pike, obsolete in the ancient world and suddenly effective again in the renaissance. Armoured cavalry dipping in and out of favour. And keeping on track, imagine the sort of mayhem a few thousand longbowmen would have wreaked at Waterloo! Their weapons would have been more accurate, with a greater range and a much better rate of fire than any musket.

[Hobbit]

Something that I don't think anyone has mentioned thus far (apologies if I've overlooked it) is the relative draw weights of warbow vs. crossbow.

I've seen a couple of guys shoot 150lb warbows; as far as I'm aware that is about the limit of a manually drawn weapon. Both guys were lifetime archers, it took enormous effort and the arrow had to be released as soon as the bow reached its maximum practical draw (no aiming).

On the other hand I've seen a relative newbie place accurate shots with a 300lb crossbow. It took only a few seconds to reload with the aid of a goatsfoot. There's a video of someone doing the same here:

Now whilst the rate of shooting isn't as great as theoretically possible with a warbow it certainly is much faster than I think many might expect.

[Charlie_]

On the other hand I've seen a relative newbie place accurate shots with a 300lb crossbow. It took only a few seconds to reload with the aid of a goatsfoot. There's a video of someone doing the same here:

Nice find! Here's the same guy with a heavier windlass crossbow. You can see how much longer it takes to draw... But still, only 36 seconds! Presumably it's much more powerful, or has longer range.


I think that shows how it's definitely worth having two classes of crossbow in my wargame rules - light and heavy.

[janner]

Some big things with firearms:
1. It's much quicker to train someone to shoot a musket than a bow
2. A musket shoots just as well when the firer is fatigued. Bowmen will quite rapidly be unable to fire with full power.
3. Musket balls are much quicker and cheaper to make than arrows.

In my experience, number one is not correct. Training someone how to shoot a bow is a matter of minutes, mastering the skill and dealing with high poundage bows is a different matter however 
Number two is also problematic as muskets are weighty things, so loading and shooting them also induces fatigue.

[janner]

You know, I've been over this ground possibly a hundred times..... that's why I'm staying stum  

Darrell.

I know the feeling, especially as the same old chestnuts seem to appear each time

[Dr. Zombie]

I had promissed myself to stay out of this one. But here goes anyway.

Also another thing to consider is the English facination/love affair with the longbow.

The longbow really is mostly and english thing. It was not really widely used in the rest of europe. But since most wargames and miniatures tend to be made in Britain the longbow tends to feature quite a lot. Also in academia it really tends to be "Brits only" that focusses on this whole Logbow vs. Crossbow debate.

Gaming wise I think you have to consider what would you like shooting to represent. If you are doing shirmish style games then there is a big difference in the way a crossbow and a longbow is used. You can move around with a loaded crossbow and fire it "from the hip" where you would have to be stationary to fire a longbow.

But for mass battles I think the resulting chaos and mayhem of a unit being shot with 50 crossbow bolts or 50 longbow arrows is more or less exactly the same.

[Hobbit]

I was an ECW reenactor for about 20 years and during that time fired more (blank) musket shots than I can remember. You can teach someone the basics in a matter of minutes and they can become competent in a matter of hours, it is the broader drill and manoeuvre whilst in formation that tend to be the issue.

In ECW reenactment a competent musketeer can initially load and fire about every 20 seconds; this will quickly drop to about every 30 seconds and then tail off to somewhere near one a minute. One of the issues is that when firing as an organised body you're reduced to the rate of the slowest individual; if you're firing as individuals that is less of an issue.

Another issue is reliability. In reenactment we (fairly obviously) used modern, industrially produced, black powder and this was pretty reliable. Good quality matchcord was also very reliable and would remain alight and sufficiently hot under most normal conditions; heavy rain would very significantly reduce the ability of the match to burn well and you shouldn't underestimate the ability of one perfect raindrop to land in an open priming pan and ruin your day. Under decent conditions, with modern powder, fewer than 1 in 10 shots would misfire and this was usually down to the match missing the priming pan; this in turn was usually down to inexperience on the part of the individual. This sort of misfire can almost always be immediately resolved by simply trying again.

Poor powder, on the other hand, is a nightmare. If the powder just won't burn then you're stuffed; I remember once being issued with a very, very course grained powder (we later concluded that we'd been given blasting powder); the individual grains were simply too big for to ignite at the temperatures produced by match. The upshot (no pun intended) was having to pour water down the barrel and draw out the soggy powder and wadding with a worm (a corkscrew-like device on the end of the scouring stick). Under real battlefield conditions you could do this on the field and you could attempt to grind down the powder further if you had something suitable to hand. Incidents like this were very, very rare, but not unheard of.

Hope that gives a little bit of insight into how muskets of a slightly later era might work!

[Dr DeAth]

Well, technically the Hundred Years War ended in 1453 and Wars of the Roses started in 1455 so they kind of overlap.

Surely the intervening year of 1454 means they don't overlap, even 'kind of' 

But for mass battles I think the resulting chaos and mayhem of a unit being shot with 50 crossbow bolts or 50 longbow arrows is more or less exactly the same.

Agreed

[Atheling]

Surely the intervening year of 1454 means they don't overlap, even 'kind of' 

Agreed

OK, then I will argue that the Wars of the Roses, ie the dynastic in fighting between the so called Houses of York and Lancaster can be traced back to Henry IV's usurption of the throne and deposition of Richard II. so say, the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403- does that give you a satisfactory overlap?   

Darrell.

[Patrice]

I think that shows how it's definitely worth having two classes of crossbow in my wargame rules - light and heavy.

Yes. Then you have to decide where  is the difference between them, and it is always an arbitrary decision but wargame rules must be simple.
I have two categories in my skirmish games: light crossbows (including ancient, Pictish, and hunting), and medieval war crossbows (≥12th century).