There are so many interesting points and thoughts coming up here - thank you. Firstly I would have to highlight a couple of my oversights. We know that crossbow men (but not always men) did employ spanners, so people behind the scenes spanning and handing already drawn bows to them and this increases the potential rate of shooting of crossbows and allowed it to be done in better cover than given by being on the 'front line'. I also did not mention that of course crossbows can be spanned and held ready for a shot which is a massive advantage over a longbow which cannot. However also note that a steel limbed crossbow can be held all day, a composite cannot, so cannot sit there ready and waiting all day. I don't know how long you can safely leave a fully spanned composite, but I suspect they would want to get the shot off pretty fast, but still has a waiting/target selection advantage over longbows. Weight of bows is very interesting. Let's not pretend we actually know how heavy a war bow of the period was. Quite simply we don't and it could be that the bow Joe is shooting would be exceptionally heavy for the time. However unless he dropped weight really significantly he would still face the same problems, just to a lesser extent. We must also acknowledge that the bows that came up from the Mary Rose (100 years later) were coming in at an average weight of about the same as Joes and I doubt period ships were that easy to shoot from either. These bows were found in a naval context and were already falling out of use as a military weapon so we can draw inferences but not facts from these. My personal opinion is that we're likely pretty similar to the bows of 100 years before; but again that is my opinion, not a fact. Looking at the 'peek and shoot' difference between longbows and crossbows, of course every extra millisecond you are exposed disadvantages you over a quicker method, but I felt that there was not a massive difference between the two weapons. As regards the ease with which a person can be trained to shoot a crossbow. It is undeniable that you could span and shoot my windlass as I have seen my 10 year old daughter span it, that cannot be said for Joes bow. With a little training you could shoot proficiently and threateningly enough that at 50m the target person would dearly like to be somewhere else. After a couple of hours most people would be striking the target pretty often at this range. However crossbow archers were well paid, usually better than longbow archers and I am sure there are many reasons for this, but still there must have been very high levels of proficiency required for this better pay. But what we also know is during sieges it could be all hands to deck so to speak and walls would be manned by soldiers etc, but also by anyone who could be useful and that included women and children as well as men. Some of these roles would be hurling rocks etc down, spanning bows, fetching etc but also I am almost certain I have either read or seen on manuscripts women shooting crossbows. Of course Richard 1 was also famously shot by a (male) cook using a crossbow. So it is absolutely fair to say that the use of a crossbow was easier for the untrained and possible for those with lesser physical strength. That all said, I was very surprised about the lack of advantage of shooting down offered by the crossbow. As a final note, shooting down is not at all a problem in terms of the bolt falling off, you simply need to put your thumb on the back of the bolt and hold it in place - the nut and string will do you no harm. The spring clip to hold bolts was only invented around 1500, so prior to this your thumb was the answer. As a last point, if anyone is reading this who has a castle, I would love to arrange some filming looking at arrow slits and proper crenellations.
I believe the reason for the pay of a crossbow user being high is also largely down to their gear simply being more expensive. And while yes, it's much easier to train someone to use a crossbow than a bow, there is still a noticeable advantage to have from proper firing discipline. I'd also say that one other reason would be that archers were simpler to come by depending on where you are. Many people would have known how to use a bow at least reasonably well. At the very least well enough to be able to use a lower poundage bow with a fair degree of proficiency. The increased cost of the crossbow kit would make trained crossbow users less common and I believe the general availability of the weapon itself would also be lower. So if you only have a limited supplies of crossbows, naturally you're going to want the people who are using them to be the best at using them. There's probably other reasons but that's my thoughts on it.
@@Salted_Fysh They still had to be very effective though, otherwise it just wouldn't work economically, at all. If someone approaches you and offers you to do a job for 100$, and the other offers to do same, or even bit worse job for 400$, because he has much more expensive equipment... The choice is kind of nobrainer. No one would bother. And entire continental Europe bothered with crossbow a lot, so it had to be worthwhile. Rulers protected the yew trees, because they were very useful for prods. Protected the arbalester guilds, and gave them privileges (like having first dibs on any horn available on the market). And so on.
It would have been interesting to see if a 50lb or so hunting bow from that period would serve just as well when they're up close, especially if looking for accurate shot placement, an arrow from a 50lb to the face would ruin your day as much as one from 140lb. In 3d field archery we find ourselves shooting similar angles, much easier with the sort of poundage we use today.
@@lscibor well yeah, obviously crossbows are effective. But I'm saying the skill alone isn't necessarily the determining factor in the wage they get paid when compared to archers. It's more expensive to get and maintain the equipment. So even if you are not as skilled per se, you would still need to demand a higher price for your services. And since crossbows are useful (and people who use them usually come with a better kit), someone is going to pay it.
The big advantage of the crossbow is that you can hold your weapon at full draw in readiness without effort. You can wait, and ss soon as the archer appears and prepares to shoot, you can react to him faster.
@@Zigg33 Not to mention that archers wouldn't attempt to shoot downwards at targets close to the walls. That's why there are "murder holes" down at the lower levels. And rocks to drop, and explosives to throw, and boiling oil to pour on heads, etc. When the enemy is 5 stories below you, your best weapon is gravity! 🙂 The typical battle would be trebuchets or catapults firing from inside the walls at distant targets, Ballistas up on the towers like the ones in this video firing from hundred of yards away, and then individual archers scattered around taking whatever targets they thought they could hit as the masses came rushing in on the attack. Once a target got too close to shoot at easily, it was ignored in favor of the many other targets at a better distance. There were lots of others waiting for nice juicy targets to get right below them. No attackers would ever come at the walls like these targets were laid out. They would have been in big clumps, carrying giant scaling ladders or pushing battering rams. Most archers wouldn't even be taking individual aim, but just shooting at a group. That how the US won the Battle of Palo Alto in 1846. The Mexican artillery was slow enough to be able to see the cannonballs in the air. They had the advantage of greater range, but it was unusable bc the US troops would just see the balls coming and step out of their way! Whereas the US's only 2 pounder "Flying Artillery" had to rush up closer, but could get set up and fire, and then move to new positions, in less time than it took Santa Anna's forces to get their bigger guns trained on the new target(s). What could individuals do against stone walls, even if they did make it there alive? Without their breaching equipment, they'd just be sitting ducks for the grenades and flaming oil being dropped on them from above.
One advantage you may have overlooked a benefit with the crossbow is if you have someone that is trained while on the crossbow meaning they can hit the target they're aiming at. You could have several people feeding him loaded crossbows and the same guy shooting, with a longbow no matter how great you are you're going to have to stop and take a break it would be very hard to constant shooting for hours on end with a crossbow if you're just the guy shooting it that wouldn't be that big of a deal. And it would be much easier to train for military purposes if you had one person that did all the shooting and had other ones do the loading and hand them the weapon. At least that works well for defensive situations.
An elementary school sport team with a professional sport adult playing on each side: "just pass the ball to the adult". Which makes me consider: in a worst case scenario, women and children could reload the windlass.
In the days of flintlock musketry, the French used a similar system in Canada, the best shot fired and the rest of a squad system reloaded the shooter passed the fired musket to his left and took the reloaded musket from the right. with eight in the squad his rate of fire was phenomenal.
I'd be curious to see just how accurate the old style crossbows really can be, and how repeatable - your best shot with THEIR crossbow might miss badly if every one shoots noticeably different - doesn't matter how rapidly they are fed loaded crossbows if the first ones pulls left but the next one pulls right you can't correct for it. Though I'd think that accuracy of a crossbow you are familiar with aught to be better than the bow, no archers paradox, smaller projectile that is probably significantly less affected by the wind.
If you want volume of fire it might be worth having everyone firing their own crossbows. Against massed forces during an assault accuracy is less an issue.
It is pretty clear to me that the fraction of a second saved by popping up with a crossbow, and not having to pull on a bow at an awkward angle would be all the advantage you could ask for. Especially since you can give a crossbow to someone with very little experience and they will have some chance of being effective,
@@tiredanddepressed It was during the pause of the battle. Richard Lionheart was in his casual clothes without armor chatting outside the wall fortifications and as a trolling joke a teen cook did a potshot with a crossbow and shockingly hit the king in the shoulder before running off. Eventually the wound festered and the king died.
One thing that sticks out in the video, is just the mechanical advantage; Joe is tensing up and doing hard work, everytime he wants to give a shot. Tod is methodically reloading with the windlass; but in a siege that might actually be a meaningful difference. Suppose you had to man that piece of wall for hours, while an enemy attempted to storm it -- exhaustion would be an extremely real problem.
I'm not sure the overall amount of work winding the windlass is actually less than the strain of pulling the longbow. Where it would definitely make a difference, though, is in missed shots. Every time Joe _tries_ for a shot and his target moves or he has to dodge return fire, he's doing a full-body workout and then controlling his de-tensioning as well. With the crossbow Tod can load it once and miss five opportunities before finally pulling the trigger, and only his thumb gets tired from holding his bolt in place.
Interestingly the records show that for the attacking force (proportions of different soldier types unknown) 1 arrow a minute was shot per man present. assuming this is normal, then the sow reload time of the crossbow is actually not at all the disadvantage it appears to be and the ease becomes a massive advantage
crossbows are easier to operate so you can have more firepower than using longbows since anyone can use 1 basically. Being behind a wall also helps people using crossbows since they can reload safely. Crossbows were known to have an advantage defending inside walls while longbows were better in the open when you needed more arrows per minute
This is actually one of the coolest videos I've seen in my entire life. Having a tower to work off of for light theory crafting and testing like this is so cool. Experimental archaeology in fine form!
Think that last shot perfectly illustrates "why they were so good" - even if just once in a specific scenario a guy who makes things for a living and shoots crossbows every so often managed to outshoot a bow guy who's been doing it for most of his life. And you both only took a few shots and were being friendly and safe about it. I wonder what the results could be if Todd had been regularly shootin' his contraption for a decade straight.
Actually that is a very good point. Almost all of my crossbow shooting is done for my films, so I really don't shoot that much. I have a good eye, but still the last time I shot down like this was 3 years ago and there were no practice shots for this film
I mean, there was a reason the french hated English longbowmen probably more than any other English soldier. Crossbows were at a steep disadvantage if they were forced to fight in wet weather- crossbow strings could not be removed and protected from the wet like bow strings, which was part of the problem in battles like agincourt. Also a trained longbowman is probably going to release 4 or 5 arrows to the crossbows 1, I would consider that fire superiority, which even in those times would have counted for something.
That's exactly my thought. And it's magnified in the hardware. Dude is literally holding a block of wood. I'm sure you could design a crossbow to work better similar to how a bow with an easier draw might work better.
@@lasagnahog7695 you can look it up on you tube, there is a crossbow that is made out of an AR 15 lower. The trigger mechanism is isolated from the string so it's easier to pull and it's capable of firing an arrow completely through a car door. "Tactical Crossbow vs Car Door"
Would you say the crossbow has an advantage for the attacker on the ground? A bow, you cant draw it, and wait for the archer up above to pop their head out to shoot... a crossbow you can load it, point it at the opening and ... wait. You can react to the archer up there poking his body out to shoot.
what if the defenders have a dummy head that they can poke out to make the crossbows prematurely loose? I've seen similar tactics in modern sniper warfare.
Interesting thought, though with the range gained by elevation and lost by shooting upwards I think it would be of relatively small gain. Not one you are going to object to if you can have it of course, but having to hold that bolt in (as most crossbow historically don't seem to have methods to retain the bolt) would probably make your movement across the battlefield more awkward by more than enough to offset the gain at all I'd guess. Though it would be nice to see Tod and Joe try some of the match shooting type concepts firearms folk love - run to barrel A, shoot, back to Barrel B, shoot these 3 targets type stuff.
@@VuurBarbaarDefinitely a better aim than with a bow. Especially with less training. It also doesn't take that much training to become proficient enough to be useful with a crossbow, compared to a bow.
This is where the arrowslit is a game changer. A crossbowman stand ready and pick their shots, aiming for gaps in armour. Get them a stool and they can be ready to shoot all day without tiring.
This is so true, a crossbowman could be taking aim with a loading crossbow, waiting for his perfect shot, A bowman couldn't hold his bow at full draw for very long whilst sighting his shot.
i think, aiming for gaps etc is so dificult that volume is the answer, of course aim etc but more bolts at the same time is higher change to hit then try to aim for weak spots, other side, not many at the battle field had perfect armor (full armor or half plate etc) maby long bows for far targets, light bown mid, and light crosbows for close? what you think
@@WozWozEre Useless in a target shooting situation I could agree with, but not really in a battlefield/siege where even if you miss remotely nearby you make their footing harder or add to the scary 'I don't want to walk this way' type thinking... I highly doubt many folks today could pick up even the low end warbow and shoot it more than once - we generally tend towards such sedentary lives, but that wasn't true of the people before mass mechanisation. So while the Peasant/Serf of yore wouldn't have Joe's accuracy or strength and so ability to shoot the highest end bows multiple times in quick succession I'd bet most of them could shoot the lower end warbow more than often enough to be very useful and with enough accuracy to matter too. Shooting a bow in the right direction isn't that hard... Yes trained bowmen definitely makes a much bigger difference to more novice ones when compared with crossbow users but it doesn't mean you MUST be a trained archer with years of experience to actually be useful. You just have to be strong enough to actually pull the bow.
No matter how good I was at shooting arrows with a longbow at the start of the siege, by week 6 of rationing I'd be glad to be using the less energy consuming crossbow.
@@tods_workshop I still think if you two tested how many shots you can get off without a break, you would probably be able to fire more shots with a crossbow than a bow
@@tods_workshopi dont think the cumulative work IS the same. You put the work into spanning the crossbow, but then a mechanism holds it in place. Every fraction of a second that the longbow is held at full draw in order to aim is extra work being done by the bowman. Across an entire day of shooting those fractions of extra effort would add up
@@tods_workshop spanning the crossbow could fairly easily be outsourced to a non-combatant that also helps you being a gofer for new bolts, or water or whatever. And really, the ability to snapshot the crossbow under potential enemy counterfire. preload and prep in relative unseen safety, and then pop up and shoot is massively safer than awkwardly having to aim in fairly clear view where the enemy can see ahead of time exactly which crenellation you're going to pop up by. I have a mental imagery of a crossbowman sitting down behind the crenellation, winding up the crossbow in a vertical positioning along the floor, and then when sufficiently many of them are ready, popping out, all but shooting from the hip
Being unable to reach the closer targets is the reason behind machicolations in structures actually designed primarily for defence. Ideally you'd also have overlapping cones of fire, so that while you might be unable to fire at someone at the base of your tower/wall, your mate in the next tower could, a factor that continued into the gunpower age, hence the design of Star Forts. (Edited to remove point mentioned in pinned comment)
also the problem with keeping the bolt in place while aiming downwards is easy to solve. just some sticky substance at the rear of the slit, not glue strength. just enough to overcome the friction. since it would be only at the start of the acceleration, it would take nothing from the energy of the shot.
I so appreciate the perspective Joe gives here. I have experience shooting heavy bows, but seeing these cross shaped arrow slits in castles never made me think of the issues it would give me shooting out of it! Having Joe explain the issues that come with it makes me go "oh yeah, how did I not see that, it's obviously not ideal, nor easy to train" I think you are doing great work here
Lundis - no sorry! I climbed the staircase 6 or 7 times that day and my thighs killed me for days. Also the steepness of the stairs would actually be very dangerous were someone to slip as they would tumble down and take all the skittles below them down too
I keep thinking back to the fact it took years to train up enough on a war bow to be useful in the combat space, but training on a crossbow to competency was much shorter.
That's why ranged infantry lost their "prestige" back then when you could just train random peasants with a crossbow and be competent within a few days, compared to bowmen actually needing masters/teachers, train for months and years, etc.
@@ClarenceSampang Not quite a few days, but your point stands. It probably took a couple months to get a crossbowman to military proficiency. Comparing that to longbowmen taking from 10 years old to fighting age makes a hell of a difference, and sorta makes up for the slower rate of fire.
I think you're under estimating that advantage provided by the crossbow to be able to crouch and pop up to take shots. Any advantage you can get in a life and death situation you're gonna take it.
I think with a lighter bow Joe could shoot faster but not as fast as Tod . The fire rate on the other hand Joe can shoot 10 a min. This is a great video idea. 3 men with 1 shooter and 2 loaders Vs Joe with an 80lb bow.
@@WozWozEreyeah because people need time to notice you react aim and shoot even half a second faster can be a difference between you going back to cover and not making it
Great video. This is probably why they had both archers and crossbowmen garrisoning fortifications so they can balance out each other's flaws...and this combination was commonly (or at least not uncommonly) used across both western and eastern Eurasia.
wow, I never spotted (or rather, heard) it in the normal series with Joe Gibbs, but the sounds of EFFORT as he draws back that bow! it's like someone's slowly letting air out of a balloon, and really goes to show just how HARD pulling that thing back really is! I have to agree fully that the biggest advantages of Crossbowmen on crenelations has to be that they can do it for longer, and can hold shots longer. I really did NOT notice those effort sounds during the normal testing
@@MedievalTrebuchet If they do that I'd prefer they get safety gear. An accidentally release bolt or arrow shattering on a wall with throw shrapnel everywhere.
If you watch the Chalus Castle siege scene in the 2010 Robin Hood movie with Russell Crowe, you can see how even the actors playing the part of the defending Garrison also struggled with how to effectively return fire from the battlements much in the same way you did. There are multiple instances where you see the defenders hang out at awkward angles to get low angle shots with their crossbows.
They are ignoring the fact that there would be enormous hoardings around the tops of the towers. Everyone thinks these naked castles were defended, they had huge wooden defensive structures on top of the walls. They had much better defended firing positions within the hoardings. Apparently these towers were built late and never really meant as real defensive structures so don't even have crenelations or other defensive features like a simple dry moat...
@@christophersteen1873 Seeing as how they are using fire to destroy the gate, I would assume a good chunk of the Hoardings have already been burned via other methods like incendiary pitch arrows.
The ability for a crossbow to do snapshots, shots of opportunity might be more advantageous from the ground actually. 🤔 if you have a loaded crossbow down there you can aim up at the battlements for long periods of time and when Joe stepps out to draw and aim his bow you can shoot him through the face in an instant.
Also a bow compared to a crossbow needs a lot more training to sucessfully make a shot hit what you wanna hit. Crossbow is more like "point to enemy, done". So especialy if you want to equip a lot of less trained persons to defend a castle, that might be a quite efficient way of doing it.
The crossbow's advantage really must've been the ability to have it ready to fire whenever, to have it ready to make that perfect shot instead of needing to expose yourself too long to fire.
The bow could do the same thing while behind the crenulation have bow drawn step out shoot then back behind the crenulation to reload the archer would only be exposed for a couple seconds.
The main advantage of the crossbow over the bow is that it is easier and less physically strenuous to train a novice how to use the weapon compared to a bow which takes far more practice, expertise, skill, and time to cultivate true mastery. The average novice wielding a bow and aiming at an individual target was far less effective at hitting their target and far more likely to become physically exhausted than a novice using a crossbow. That, and the crossbow had a higher tensile strength, projectile speed, and maximum range which made it easier to penetrate the defenses of heavy targets like knights clad in plate armor. This came especially handy in defensive, fortified positions where the crossbow excelled over the bow at more accurately and powerfully striking down enemy archers, crossbowmen, sappers, engineers, knights, or officers. Additionally, the crossbow's bolt had a longer range, higher projectile speed, and more concentrated dense mass with a terminal velocity higher than the bow due to the mechanics of lower air resistance granting higher penetrative power. The crossbow's main disadvantages are mostly related to its slow rate of fire and high economic cost to produce which made it difficult to mass produce for large armies of conscripts and levies fighting in open field terrain where the mobility, speed, maintenance, and industrial cost of the bow were preferable over the crossbow.
@@eclipse_434 and that only worked in sieges (both attaccking and defending) Meanwhile on the battlefield the fact crossbow wasnt able to volley fire as easily as a bow meant only drilled person could use it. Which is why crossbow were only used by mercenary, standing forces, or huge operations (like the crusade) where they add all the time in the world to drill
Absolutely fascinating as ever thanks Tod. So many interesting aspects in just 12 minutes! The insights from having a real archer (Joe) is just invaluable. Within a few minutes i learnt it was actually physically difficult for him to shoot down that steeply. Something i had never read or considered before. Thanks again and Merry Christmas to you both!
You are discovering many things those of us who archery hunt from tree stands have had to adjust for - there is a disadvantage when the target gets too close and in addition it requires a lot of training to be good shooting from height down vs. shooting on level ground ( aim point changes and your draw length to anchor point also changes). Oh, and longbows - yeah, lower limb hitting is a common issue.
I hadn't considered that there of course people doing pretty much this when they hunt. Probably because there is no bow hunting here, but thanks for your insights
This is why treestand archers draw, anchor, and then bend at the waist instead of lowering the bow arm. And all this has to happen without spooking deer. It’s still a challenge!
Those extra split seconds you get while shooting a crossbow could mean life or death when you're been shot at. Plus its less strenuous than a longbow if you wanna be shooting for a long time. Thank you for the video, its really great as always!
I think the most important advantage the crossbow has is that it can be aimed continuously and effortlessly. If you know someone is behind cover, you can aim at said piece of cover and wait until there is an opportunity to shoot your opponent. This is just not possible with a powerful bow. The need to draw the bow first and then lose the arrow immediately means there is always a delay between a target presenting itself and you being able to shoot it. So practical accuracy in a siege ( or skirmishes in forests for that matter ) should be much higher for the crossbow.
Also in larger castles they would build machicolation to be able to drop stuff without having to be exposed and could probably be used to fire at closer targets
Also, Towers that project outwards from a wall, the person in front of you on the wall may have a hard time shooting you, but not someone else 90 degrees from you to the side on a tower.
And even just small towers like this one had many effective weapons for use on attackers at the base of their walls. Cue up this video to 1:35 and freeze frame. Note the stone funnel for flaming oil, just to the left of the double windows on the right side of the tower. One can even still see the remains of where the cauldron would have been, right above the down facing port. I'm sure the lower levels would have lots of "murder holes"(defensive slits? I like that better. Killing hordes or armed attackers trying to kill you is hardly murder! 🙂) to shoot through too. We just can't see them in the video.
An important thing to bear in mind which was only touched on at the end is endurance. A longbow can shoot much faster, but it's exhausting. It's arrows are also bigger, more expensive, and less storable than crossbow bolts. The ability of a crossbowman to put a steady stream of projectiles in the enemies face over hours and days will be much greater than a longbowman's, even with the longbow having a much faster peak shooting rate (because that peak rate can't be kept up for any length of time). What matters in a siege, after all, is the weakest defence you can put up continuously; not the strongest barrage you can muster for a few minutes.
Don't forget you have to have had years learning the longbow. Very short time to use the crossbow. Also a longbow man could take over for a crossbow man but not the other way around
Not to mention if the longbowman throws out his back or pulls a muscle somewhere cause of the awkward position, that's going to affect his ability to shoot all that much more, or worst case, take him out of the fight entirely for a few days.
@@gardenman3 Commonly said. But some crossbowmen - especially the ones using the complicated contraption Todd was handling - were paid far more than longbowmen and basically treated like prized military engineers. That certainly means that they weren't viewed as amateurs or easily replaceable. Of course that doesn't mean it wasn't _possible_ to use a crossbow without much training, but it does mean that expert crossbowmen were hugely valued, from which it's fair to conclude that they drastically outperformed an untrained crossbowman.
@@QuantumHistorian I don't think we can conclude they outperform in that way - I suspect the crossbow mercenaries that tend to be the source of the high paid claims (at least to my understanding) get paid that much because they bring the relatively complex weapons and logistical teams to support themselves - the weapon costs way more than a stick that is only 9/10ths broken and that allows the organised group that have them ready to go to name their price to some extent - the kingdoms looking for more defensive firepower are not in the position to really say no easily - their Rival kingdoms might hire them instead!
@@QuantumHistorian "El Victorial" biography of Castilian knight Pero Nino describes him as master marksmen and very strong man, able to span mightiest arbalest from his girdle/belt, even with a fever. Describes this feat as worthy of a knight and warrior, and mentions many times that ability to span a strong crossbow from a belt was desired trait for a crossbowman. So it would be strength and constant training just as with bowmen, really. For an ability to span mighty bow much faster than with some devices, that could be easily damaged or dropped too. "winded" crossbows, on the other hand, tend to be routinely considered more armor piercing that bows or lighter crossbows.
The amount of information and respectful debate in these comments astounds me. Great reads! Loved the video. Can't wait to see what you've got in the pipeline next. Many thanks!
Yep. They're within 15 yards of the base of your tower, but that might place them 50 yards from the archers of the towers to each side of you; putting them into a crossfire. But issues with engaging closer attackers is also why castles had hoardings or matriculations that could allow archers to, in effect, fire down through the floor to hit enemies closer to the wall. (Not to mention those same openings allowed defenders to drop things straight down on people up against the base of the wall)
Not just that, but arrow loops lower down in the walls would have no problems hitting the closer target. Enemies who are farther than 30 meters or so are the concern of the archers at the top of the wall, but the ones that get closer can more easily be aimed at by the archers closer to ground level. That's part of why you have arrow loops at different heights.
While they mentioned dropping things from the tower, I contend that the "safe zone" doesn't exist. I'm confident I could throw a fist-sized rock at a target twelve yards away. Or a javelin or dart of some kind. Maybe even a much larger rock, given the range boost from throwing off a tall platform.
Don't forget the Batter at the base of towers and walls which can be approached by land. The wall was progressively thickened as it neared the base to deflect any stones dropped from above into the faces of approaching attackers.
@@jonathan_60503 And these towers used to have them too, as wooden structuctures around the tops of the towers, but they have long since rotted away and for some reason todd has forgotten about hoardings in this video, though they fix and resolve almost all these issues. With hoardings you would not be seen by the attackers, you keep the interior dark etc so you can't be easily shot, they just don't even touch on the reality of the advantages you have while shooting from a prepared position.
Awesome stuff as always. Another little perk of the crossbow is your marksman doesn't have to be in peak physical condition to use it. If you're tired, injured, sick, malnourished from being under siege, you can still shoot.
I think the pop-up-and-down advantage of the crossbow is more significant than you mentioned. Todd and Joe appear at 9:26.5 (ish). Todd disappears at 9:28 (ish) and Joe at 9:29 (ish). So, this is roughly 1.5 vs 2.5 seconds of exposure. For a single shot, this is not that much practical difference as the probability of getting shot in that time frame is rather low. However, if over a few hours each person has 50 shots, this means the crossbowman would have been exposed for 1 min 15 seconds and the longbowman for 2 min 5 seconds, with the difference in time growing with the number of shots. I can see this having a significant impact on survival rates for long sieges.
In reality, they would use neither approach. The men on the tower would rely on armor for defense and rapid volley fire over aimed shots. For aimed shots they would step forward select a target and step back. Hitting a head is difficult to hit reliably with a modern firearm and with the height leather armor is effective against arrows. Commanders would look through the crenellations to direct volley fire at an approaching army, and switch to other things like the battery when they are closer. As an approaching army would be spread out there are likely targets to engage that are farther out. While the exposure difference may appear dramatic, in actual combat an arrow fired immediately may not even make it before the archer steps back. It leaves very little time for aiming
Isn't the point more that you can wait at full draw with a crossbow? Meaning for the attackers a crossbow is even better than for the defenders? Imagine having to shoot someone, even if they expose themselves for 3 to 5 seconds, with a longbow. You'd already be too late.
@@stysner4580 No…. all things being equal the first shot would matter except…. crossbows take much longer to reload and the loader’s attention will be on turning a crank. Crossbows are primarily used because they require little training and the loading job can be distributed to noncombatants. Medieval warfare consisted of group actions making individual aimed shots somewhat uncommon. Rather than aiming at a man on the tower volleys were fired at the tower.
@@kwonekstrom2138 All things remain equal then if you bring shields and reloaders as the attackers. Shields are relatively cheap and can even be improvised on location if necessary. The attackers can move a lot while the defenders have finite positions to be at making aiming at them (especially in volleys) way easier. The defenders might have to aim at a different location every time while the attackers can wait for someone to pop up and let loose immediately.
Very interesting seeing the practicality of theory and novel writing (e.g. Bernard Cornwalls Grail series). Amazing effort Tod and Joe to create that realism element that adds another dimension to historical siege actions. Someone give these men a castle to play with.
That shot at 0:48 where the archer draws the bow and points it straight at the cameraman. Legitimately frightening. I could see the intimidation factor for someone attacking a castle. Also, balls of steel on that cameraman. I’d have been sweating at that.
Yeah! The camera had movement, indicating it was manned. That was terrifyingly unsafe seeming. This channel is usually safer, so I'm left a bit confused/worried.
@orandilu989 I took a closer look, and unless I'm mistaken, it seems like the archer pulls the arrow back to simulate drawing the bow but never actually nocks the arrow. Still frightening, but more safe than having an arrow nocked in your direction!
@@LordTutTut excellent observations! Upon rewatching he isn't even pulling the bowstring back at all, just the arrow in his hand. Can't believe I missed that the first time! Great form by the archer for a nice camera shot 😁
This scene actually frightened me and even did not notice that he is not drawing the bow at all. Imaging the nervousness of attackers, I'd rather have a pot cover on my hand.
I do not envy them trucking what would be necessary to catch the misses up to the top of that tower. What goes up at less than escape velocity must come down, and where it will come down is not easy to accurately account for with every shot. "Know what is behind your target" applies here as much as it does with firearms.
@@corwinhyatt519 You could set up something on top of the tower to catch most of the arrows (like even a tarp might do it with blunt arrows), but there's the other issue as well that the owner of those towers probably won't like you hitting the crenellations either.
Ozstraya In the 70s Tech school a few lads made a crossbow that weekend they shot a bolt into the sky and pinned it in the power line dead centre it stayed there for 20 years until re wiring '
First, fortifications were rarely just bare stone - there would have been wooden barricades and fences giving further protection to the defenders, possibly allowing bowmen to hang out from the stonework. Secondly, you do not need to shoot from the middle of the open space; you could be partially covered by the stone as you shoot through the smallest degree of space between the stones. Lastly, reduce weight of bow or span but use heavier projectiles thus using height to provide the extra velocity (also meaning spent projectiles are less effective to the beseigers).
Thanks and yes your are correct that 'proper' castles would often have additional hoarding etc, however this tower never had that. Interestingly shooting down does (potentially) increase velocity, but not much. Gravity is 10m/s/s and the travel time from tower top to bottom is about 0.2s so in fact the downward start point would add around 2m/s to the arrow speed which is is around 60m/s anyway, so not massively different and then of course drag will knock some speed off anyway so yes it does make a difference but very little. I agree that a lower poundage bow would be helpful, but we have no evidence they did this.
Very good point. If I had to defend a castle with woman and children inside I will for sure try to use them to my advantage. They may be weaker then battle hardened soldiers but that really doesn’t count that much for reloading crossbows. As far as I know, we have historical records showing they were used for bringing the defenders water/food or arrows and stones for the castles defense. Now I’m really interested if we have any sources in which they reload crossbows
Would be interesting to see what difference a lighter bow would make and would they use different arrows at a shorter distance, especially firing downward?
i have 2 bows and 2 crossbows, no where near as strong as the ones you're firing, my big crossbow is 175lbs and my strongest bow is 55lbs but this was super interesting, keep up the great work my dude
Honestly, this really does make me wonder about actual historical draw weights of bows. We only are working from one specific historical example for weights (Mary Rose) and that was a very specific environment. I know as a very amateur hobbyist with a little leaning I can shoot down and over a wall pretty comfortably with a 70-80 lbs bow (albiet a short Turkish style with a thumb draw, haven't tried a longbow yet) at a pretty steep angle. If the arrows aren't punching through plate at 140lbs anyway, and you're still hunting for gaps in the armor, would a 70lbs bow also serve that role equally well? I can't remember if you tested maille with a 70lbs bow, but it would do an absolute horror show on cloth and flesh as bow hunting has long established.
To be fair, the weight calculcations are not just based on the Mary Rose bows. It was either Will or Joe in a previous vid who explained that based on the socket diameter of historic arrow heads and known draw lengths/arrow lengths, with the weight you get for the resulting shaft you can pretty well estimate the poundage of a ballistically efficient bow to move that arrow. But there's no reason they wouldn't have used lighter bows for situations as such...
@@GCCRACER Oh that's awesome, I'll need to dig back through those videos to find those. That actually makes an interesting consideration. I wonder if they all just used universally heavy bows, or if they did employ lighter bows would they just use over spined arrows for those lighter bows and hope for the best?
@@timothym9398 I think the bows were universally pretty heavy, at least for the English and Welsh. Many cultures with a tradition of mounted archery would often use similar draw weights to the English on foot, but lighter bows when mounted. Mounted archery equipment and techniques would be surprisingly helpful for a situation like this: th-cam.com/video/E_dHqDNsGc0/w-d-xo.html But remember, in this test Joe shooting only from the roof. In an actual castle, you would also have arrow loops halfway down the wall, from which archers would easily be able to hit even the closest target.
@timo - you make some good points and in fact yes a 80lbs bow will go through mail and a 140 won't go through plate, so you could ask yourself 'why bother with the heavy'. The subject of a film next year most likely
Excellent video! The incident in 1450 was more of a raid due to vendetta than a siege. It lasted only six hours with Stafford's raiders departing specifically because they were unprepared to conduct a siege. Likewise, Harcourt's withdrawal to the church, upon warning of Stafford's approach, was hasty and improvised. While the church crenellation may have been decorative, it was far superior to Harcourt's unfortified manor house which Stafford burned to the ground. In this sense, the video recreates what the likely conditions were during the raid where only one of Harcourt's men was killed. The narrow tower windows would engage closer targets. However, by the time of this incident, proper fortifications with crenellated stone towers and walls employed pivoted mantlets over the crens where the mantlet pivots mounted on the adjacent merlons. In some cases, the mantlets had arrow loops such that mantlet could remain closed while a defender shot through. If not, then the mantlet could be propped open partially, affording a slit over the cren. In either case, a crossbowman would be able to rest the crossbow for better stability and then pick and choose targets for precise shots. If one observes Italian crossbow re enactment and competitions commemorating victorious defensive events, the crossbow shooters employ rests. Eventually, hoardings replaced the crenellation mantlets while besiegers adopted wheeled mantlets and mantlet walls themselves. In Stafford's 1450 surprise raid, while some defenders may had time to grab arms and armor and make for the tower, it is quite likely that Harcourt had far fewer men, the majority of them unarmored, and armed mostly with swords, daggers, with bows and crossbows primarily intended for hunting ...
It would be great if you would test out the fletched javelins from these towers, as in medieval art they were often seen in siege situations or thrown from ships
Makes you think about "Arrow slits" in castle walls, may not be as easy as I have allways assumed it would be. Great film as allways Tod & Joe, experimental history at it's best, challenging assumptions 👍.
A good justification for building hoardings before an expected siege. Gives your defenders more angles and options for attacking the enemy without exposing themselves to angles that would be as susceptible to missiles. Edit: There are a few archery techniques out of Eastern archery(Turkish/Turkic) that are for shooting downward where you draw the bow from behind your your head to be able to get an angle to shoot downwards that could be used both at short range on horseback and when shooting from the top of a wall or fortification, but those bows being much shorter are probably much more conducive to awkward positions on ramparts than a longbow.
On the subject of shooting at someone close to the walls: Standing on something to get higher up would change the angle a bit to make a shot more manageable. On the subject of being an exposed target in between the crenulations. It depends a lot on the background. If you siluett against a clear sky you'll make an easier target then if you have a dark background for instance if the tower had a wooden superstructure like many castles had. If you are lurking in the shadows you might have time to take a well aimed shot.
9:08 For the exact reason you are doing it yoursel, but need Joe to shoot the bow: training time/consistency required in order to hit the target. Wonderfull video, thanks to both of you.
I'm a bit of a longbow fanboy but I think the crossbow might have come into its own with untrained people who could be quickly taught how to load it for a shooter. Something like a goats foot lever
I just think that fundamentally the crossbow is easier and quicker to learn. Muscles for a longbowman will take years to develop. What could an amateur do? Crossbow? Take 100 shots and you'll have a reasonable idea what's going on. So for untrained people, crossbows (and later, muskets), were the easy choice. Trained? I'll take longbows over either.
@@peterwolf4230 definitely longbow attacking a defensive structure and in open battle but defending a castle I think the crossbow was favoured for certain reasons. I think it was Warwick castle held thousands of bolts in barrels I believe
The spanning horse (Spannbock), a furniture size goat foot that could load a 1000# xbow with one quick pull. These were common in castles & watchtowers
@@peterwolf4230 An advantage of a crossbow in a defensive situation is, that you could shoot accurately it all day if need be. Even a trained longbowman would start tiring out after a few consecutive arrows especially at certain angles of fire. Firearms obviously also had a much greater armor penetration potential and were more effective against cavalry.
@@Tony.795 The other advantage of a crossbow, at least a munitions grade crossbow with a steel prod, was storage. Cover the prod in wax or oil, stick the crossbow in the armory, and forget about it beyond the occasional inventorying until you're besieged. A longbow wouldn't last too long with that treatment, but a steel crossbow prod will be fine. Also, crossbow bolts could have wooden fletches, which will not deteriorate in storage as quickly as feathers will.
As always, your videos do not miss in providing entertainment and that ever wonderous look into experimental history. *KNOWING* that a thing was done, because historical documents exist to tell us gives us a dim insight. *SEEING* how a thing would have likely have been done... it provides an entirely different level of appreciation in what it must have been like hundreds of years ago to stand on that tower, and have to shoot at people trying to do the same to you.
I'm not going to repeat what others have said here regards the endurance of a crossbow versus an archer. Just want to say Seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year to you all :)
Some guys in life and death scenarios would definitely lean out of cover if thet had to, especially if they were very well armed. I also see a huge advantage of the crossbow plain as day. We have a trained archer struggling to shoot off the battlements in a completely safe situation acheiving similar results to some old Todd (sorry Todd).
I think a major thing is, this structure is missing arrow slits and machicolations. The argument between Longbow and crossbow, in my opinion boils down into training and ease of use. It taking a fair amount of practice and strength building to be able to pull a war bow and hit the target. Then the eventual transition from crossbow to blackpowder. The execution of loading aiming and firing being quite similar between the two. What might be an interesting experiment is get some Lads together who have never done any form of archery and see how much time training it would take to get them to a war bow level. Compared to using a crossbow.
*I had my crossbow ready for hunting the same day I bought it. *It took me years to get really good with a compound with sights. *I finally learned how to be accurate with a traditional bow in adulthood, with plenty of practice and research. God arranging certain magazine articles to fall under my eyes really helped, especially the one in which the Rev. Stacy Groscup discussed how he shot a bow.
I think you have beautifully demonstrated why hoardings and, later, machicolations, were popular features of castles: They are specifically designed to remove the problem (for arbalesters, at least) of being unable to get the right angle for a shot without over-exposing oneself.
The other advantage the Crossbow has that didn't get mentioned besides the awkward angles is that anyone can use the Crossbow. Unlike Joe's long bow where you need specific training just to draw it and even more training to become proficient at it, the Crossbows biggest advantage is that anyone can pick it up and shoot it effectively with little to no training. Great video as always Tod so thank you to you and Joe both and Merry Christmas to you both! 👍👍
A normal person can shoot a 40 pound draw weight bow after a few hours of instructions and training just fine. Not as accurately and effective as an experienced person with a >100 pound bow, but plenty deadly enough if it hits you in the right spot. Crossbows probably benefit from training a lot too.
@TheUncleRuckus yeah that makes sense. let people without armstrength now be able to take a turn on the tower. older people, kids, people with disabilities etc. If all the elves at Helm's deep had crossbows then the women in the caves could've reloaded for them or taken over if they died.
Damn, that looks as though Joe would eventually do himself a mischief. The archers of the time will have known their limitations and surely wouldn't have risked injury trying to target the nearest attackers. I'll wager they were quite disciplined in 'managing' their sweet spot.
@@Tony.795 I kinda agree, but archers were a prized commodity and can only imagine they would step outside of their comfort zone through sheer last-gasp necessity. An archer who fooks his back is effectively useless. All good discussion points though given we will never know, but watching Joe in a contorted position it's hard to imagine them doing it as a matter of routine.
i am really surprised, much like Tod i'd have thought with a crossbow you'd be able to just go full sniper elite and own just about everything and everyone from up there, but i guess that's why it's always better to actually try these things out than to just guess how they might go. great video! :)
Well, aiming down was always a problem for me too, shooting wooden toy crossbows back in the day. Bows, not so much, but they were fairly lightweight. Besides you two using proper weapons, I would personally be too much afraid of hitting the wall with both the bow and crossbow limbs, so there might be a bit of that going on with you as well, where its hindering you more than it realistically would. Youre just hesitant to put your fairly expensive pieces of kit in harms way. Be that as it may, there is a limit as to how far down can one reliably hit targets. In a real castle, that problem is solved with not aiming that close at all though, as there is always someone in the other tower or wall part to do that for you, as you will do for them, hopefully :D And I guess, if things really get that bad, there are always rocks to throw over the top?
You are right that we were worried about hitting the structure and practice would likely reduce that a bit, but the concern would still be there as a limb tip striking the stone would likely remove the weapon from the battle
I think the limbs of the longbow being visible over the walls long before the shot, would be a potentially deadly give away, for anyone trying to kill archers on the walls. I also wonder how hard or easy it is to shoot through arrow slits or murder holes
I think this helps paint the picture of how this kind of warfare occurred. I think media and our view of modern warfare show events occuring so quickly. When these events were a slow, grinding slog not fast paced rapid assaults. It shows how teams of men could operate near the base of the walls installing equipment to drag siege towers into place or carry out undermining. How ladder teams could survive at their attacks. I also think this demonstrates the importance of towers projecting out of the walls to allow enfilading fire. Also how vulnerable towers spaced too far apart could be. It is a great illustration of the difficulties faced by by soldiers before the widespread use of gunpowder weapons.
I imagine the crossbow's rate of fire could be improved by having one or two "loaders" per shooters... Also the thought of tripping in one of those stairways is not a good one ;-)
Yea, a couple of kids/youths/women/non-fighting men standing back in safety just loading bow after bow could really make the actual archers much more effective.
My only question is would they have spent the money beforehand to buy three crossbows for each defender? If you had a surplus of weapons it would be a splendid strategy, but would it seem like a worthwhile investment in the months before the fight when you're looking to balance your budget?
I think, in more of a siege than a storming, the crossbows real advantage is that you can walk around with it loaded, spot someone and take a shot. You don't have to knock and draw an arrow. Also anyone can shoot a crossbow, even a maid or a cook could in theory.
As arrows verses armour has shown, some form of steel covering can reduce the chance of a wounding hit by a huge amount, so a simple helm & chest plate could suffice to allow a cross-bow to be shot at very short range. Edit: If there are archers firing at a particular area, very few people would be brave/stupid enough to come near, so simply firing near soldiers is enough to keep them away.
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That is why modern forts (in the age of canons and muskets) were constructed in such way, with bastions to provide clear lines of fire along each wall. That is why castles began to have towers in corners, slightly pushed out, so you can shoot from one tower along the wall, and protect other tower (which then evolved into roundel, then into bastion / bulwark). I wonder if proper machicolations or hoardings would help in shooting at enemies at close range?
This test highlights one of the often touted advantages of a crossbow over a war bow- the quality of the troops needed to effectively fight. (No offense, Todd!😆). The fact that a competent, physically average older crossbow man is as effective (maybe more so under the conditions) as a master archer in his physical prime is a big force multiplier on an army scale. Younger stronger troops can be used as foot soldiers instead of being used as archers, which could be important, especially if you are recruiting from limited populations like a barony or small kingdom.
Firstly - clearly I am mortally offended! But yes you make a good point. I have a good eye, but I basically only shoot crossbows for my films, so not often and the last time I shot down like this was 3 years ago, so agreed; point made
You have said it before, the advantage of the crossbow is the learning curve, or lack of, if you have 10 trained archers and 30 peasants you have 40 xbowers .. but you still only have 10 archers. The xbow gave untrained users the ability to have a reasonable chance fairly quickly of actualy hitting something with minimal training, it also to me, seems like an easy way to increase volume of fire, and if nothening else it could help to give cover to your trained archers.
@@VuurBarbaar im thinking if you have the unskilled just pop and fire in the general direction, they are going to cover, that should hopefully allow the archers a few moments longer to aim with less risk, youd have to randomize the timing of coordinated volleys or theyd get used to it, but you could catch someone coming out of cover to soon
@@jeffandrews8578 I don't think you can really aim in the usual sense with a heavy warbow. It's draw and let loose in one motion due to it's drawweight. That leads to another advantage of a crossbow, namely that it doesn't cause near as much exhaustion in a long term scenario.
I think that also depends a lot on the population you're pulling from. If it's the era where all englishmen were required to do archery practice every sunday, the far cheaper and common longbow would probably be just as effective with a militia than the complex crossbow.
Cool video. Joe pointed out one thing. That you want to keep torso straight when shooting. What if instead bending in the waist like he did, he would have move his hips back like you do with RDL in the gym. Like that you can keep torso nice and straight and lean down significantly without compromising strength of you draw (potentially, have no experience in archery whatsoever)
The biomechanical issue of the longbow vs crossbow in this setting is huge and understated. Tod for some reason literally says the main reason crossbows are soo good in a defending siege to himself! and just ignores it. You can leave the area of harm, to arm your weapon and then return to perform a quick snipe (meaning your much much safer compared to the longbow). This is much much safer then clearly what the longbow had to do, exposing himself for a long time and having to load in view as well. And all this is ignoring the tiring effects of utilizing the long bow (likely leading to bad behaviors and exposing your self more and taking risker decisions). Its clear shooting in these awkward positions is extremely tiring for such a heavy long bow, if you had to perform 100 shots, his ability is going to drop off a cliff, while the cross-bow will not. Lastly shooting a longbow requires training, and arguably a hastily defended castle, is going to be manned with all sorts of people mostly from people whom never shot longbows, and this clearly is an opening for crossbows where anyone can pick it up and shoot it. This demonstration at least proved why cross-bows are used in defense, I think Tod needs to flush his mind and watch this again with a clarity.
I totally agree that you can retire, load and then expose to take a shot, but it was not that different in timing to Joe. So that did slight difference didn't excite me much. What I found far more intriguing is that Joe was physically in danger from his own actions causing him an injury and I was not. That is an advantage. The point about crossbows being easier to use is clearly the case and there are lots of documented cases of non-combatants and even women folk defending castle walls during sieges - Richard 1 was shot by a cook.
@@tods_workshop I wouldn't underestimate the difference in timing and exposure, at least I notice a difference of atleast 2-3 seconds, which can be considerable, if there let's say is an enemy crossbow man trained with his weapon at the location.
@@tods_workshop I'd imagine a bowmans performance would start to deteriorate much quicker than a crossbowmans. A crossbowman firing bolts for hours on end wouldn't be too far off, especially with helpers.
@@tods_workshop I wonder if it would change if you put a 70-90 lbs bow in Joe's hands instead of the 140. I imagine he would have a lot more flexibility and variety of movements once you backed away from the splitting edge of power for the longbow. Using that powerful of a bow requires near perfect form to prevent injury. Back it off a bit and less than perfect form might allow him a few easier options for shooting angles.
Just stumbled across your channel. Now I am not an expert, but I have just recently come back from a visit to the UK. While there we visited Bodiam Castle in East Sussex and my friend and I discussed this very issue. In Bodiam, the guard slits in the walls give clues to the type of weapon used. Down low, at short range, the space looks like a crossbow man would be stationed, short range, say attackers coming over the drawbridge. as you work your way up the walls, the area is the side an archer would stand with a short bow, say shots across the moat then lastly, you would have your longbow men on top shooting for distance. Again, not an expert but makes sense.
I could be completely wrong, but I think that defenders on top of a tower like this one wouldn’t really take the time to take aim at individual enemies. Rather than just peak, fire and take cover as quickly as possible.
Well, they didn't exactly defend against an ocean of enemies, so some amount of aiming would be required. Although maybe the extremely low casulties together with the high number of arrows used actually speak for your idea and they literally just shot those arrows out there without caring much about actually hitting something.
Nice job Tod, as usual informative and entertaining. Think the main advantage of the crossbow is that it need much less training then the longbow. Technically you could just pluck any farmer from the field show him the crossbow, and maybe a few hours later he could shoot it. Of course he would not hit as well as a trained crossbowman or archer,. but the guys down there would not know that. So you would go into cover seeing a few crossbowmen pop up on the tower. As some have mentioned like with early rifles you could have people in the back reading the crossbows for the people shooting it, so they would always get a ready weapon. But I do not remember seeing any mention of that practice in castle defense.
I think the biggest advantage to a crossbow in defense of a castle isn't really anything to do with how you use it but who is using it. You can just wack a pile of crossbows in storage and basically anyone who happens to be in the castle can get results from using it. Generally speaking you're not leaving all your well trained archers to hold the fort unless you already know someones coming.
I'm kinda conflicted on that one in the English context. In the eras where it was law for every man to practice with a bow the relative training gap may be less than what one would expect. It would certainly still be there, but in some of the eras we're talking about proficiency with a bow wasn't an entirely uncommon skillset. Now perhaps not the big boy warbows, but basic rabbit bows weren't terribly uncommon.
@@timothym9398 It's not just the training, it's also the physical fitness. Castles were not just fortifications, but also homes and refuges for the elderly, children and women. Realistically, I think Tod is more of a representative example of the kind of guys you would have manning the castles than Joe is. Especially if there's a war going on and field armies are on the move. Joe is basically the iconic English longbowman making up the numbers in the King's army. Meanwhile Tod is the "Joe we have at home".
I think the key is, "archers of the better sort," as Richard II put it, were never common. So if you need some ordinary guy to defend the keep, you'll be better off giving him the crossbow.
Thing is you can have non trained individuals/ young men loading 3-4 crossbows and one experienced "archer" firing the crossbow and handing it off to be reloaded. The rate of fire would be pretty high with only one person "exposed" with the most experienced individual able to take the shots.
Thanks for another fantastic video. I guess that one advantage Tod has with his crossbow is that his weapon doesn't require the level of practice and fitness that the bow requires. Now we just need to get someone with a handgonne to join in this series. 👍
Great video, thank you! I'm with you Tod, I think crossbows are very cool, but always still wondering how they get so much credit over a bow (because they're great! thanks Joe by the way, your longbow skills are AWESOME!). There's always more to learn and I appreciate you showing us what you've learned and for keeping an open and honestly inquisitive mind as you try things and discover
Ease of use: A lifetime of dedication vs. three days of training. Crossbows heavily outnumber bows as soon as you get into an urbanised/militia context, where a bow is reliant on good craftsmanship, proper (rare) natural materials and extensive training crossbow can be quickly massproduced by people who aren't experts from materials readily available, issued to people who never held one or just have some passing familiarity with it and still be used effectively, especially in a defensive scenario.
There are so many interesting points and thoughts coming up here - thank you. Firstly I would have to highlight a couple of my oversights. We know that crossbow men (but not always men) did employ spanners, so people behind the scenes spanning and handing already drawn bows to them and this increases the potential rate of shooting of crossbows and allowed it to be done in better cover than given by being on the 'front line'. I also did not mention that of course crossbows can be spanned and held ready for a shot which is a massive advantage over a longbow which cannot. However also note that a steel limbed crossbow can be held all day, a composite cannot, so cannot sit there ready and waiting all day. I don't know how long you can safely leave a fully spanned composite, but I suspect they would want to get the shot off pretty fast, but still has a waiting/target selection advantage over longbows.
Weight of bows is very interesting. Let's not pretend we actually know how heavy a war bow of the period was. Quite simply we don't and it could be that the bow Joe is shooting would be exceptionally heavy for the time. However unless he dropped weight really significantly he would still face the same problems, just to a lesser extent. We must also acknowledge that the bows that came up from the Mary Rose (100 years later) were coming in at an average weight of about the same as Joes and I doubt period ships were that easy to shoot from either. These bows were found in a naval context and were already falling out of use as a military weapon so we can draw inferences but not facts from these. My personal opinion is that we're likely pretty similar to the bows of 100 years before; but again that is my opinion, not a fact.
Looking at the 'peek and shoot' difference between longbows and crossbows, of course every extra millisecond you are exposed disadvantages you over a quicker method, but I felt that there was not a massive difference between the two weapons.
As regards the ease with which a person can be trained to shoot a crossbow. It is undeniable that you could span and shoot my windlass as I have seen my 10 year old daughter span it, that cannot be said for Joes bow. With a little training you could shoot proficiently and threateningly enough that at 50m the target person would dearly like to be somewhere else. After a couple of hours most people would be striking the target pretty often at this range. However crossbow archers were well paid, usually better than longbow archers and I am sure there are many reasons for this, but still there must have been very high levels of proficiency required for this better pay.
But what we also know is during sieges it could be all hands to deck so to speak and walls would be manned by soldiers etc, but also by anyone who could be useful and that included women and children as well as men. Some of these roles would be hurling rocks etc down, spanning bows, fetching etc but also I am almost certain I have either read or seen on manuscripts women shooting crossbows. Of course Richard 1 was also famously shot by a (male) cook using a crossbow. So it is absolutely fair to say that the use of a crossbow was easier for the untrained and possible for those with lesser physical strength.
That all said, I was very surprised about the lack of advantage of shooting down offered by the crossbow. As a final note, shooting down is not at all a problem in terms of the bolt falling off, you simply need to put your thumb on the back of the bolt and hold it in place - the nut and string will do you no harm. The spring clip to hold bolts was only invented around 1500, so prior to this your thumb was the answer.
As a last point, if anyone is reading this who has a castle, I would love to arrange some filming looking at arrow slits and proper crenellations.
Well said
I believe the reason for the pay of a crossbow user being high is also largely down to their gear simply being more expensive. And while yes, it's much easier to train someone to use a crossbow than a bow, there is still a noticeable advantage to have from proper firing discipline.
I'd also say that one other reason would be that archers were simpler to come by depending on where you are. Many people would have known how to use a bow at least reasonably well. At the very least well enough to be able to use a lower poundage bow with a fair degree of proficiency.
The increased cost of the crossbow kit would make trained crossbow users less common and I believe the general availability of the weapon itself would also be lower. So if you only have a limited supplies of crossbows, naturally you're going to want the people who are using them to be the best at using them.
There's probably other reasons but that's my thoughts on it.
@@Salted_Fysh They still had to be very effective though, otherwise it just wouldn't work economically, at all.
If someone approaches you and offers you to do a job for 100$, and the other offers to do same, or even bit worse job for 400$, because he has much more expensive equipment... The choice is kind of nobrainer. No one would bother.
And entire continental Europe bothered with crossbow a lot, so it had to be worthwhile. Rulers protected the yew trees, because they were very useful for prods. Protected the arbalester guilds, and gave them privileges (like having first dibs on any horn available on the market). And so on.
It would have been interesting to see if a 50lb or so hunting bow from that period would serve just as well when they're up close, especially if looking for accurate shot placement, an arrow from a 50lb to the face would ruin your day as much as one from 140lb.
In 3d field archery we find ourselves shooting similar angles, much easier with the sort of poundage we use today.
@@lscibor well yeah, obviously crossbows are effective. But I'm saying the skill alone isn't necessarily the determining factor in the wage they get paid when compared to archers. It's more expensive to get and maintain the equipment. So even if you are not as skilled per se, you would still need to demand a higher price for your services. And since crossbows are useful (and people who use them usually come with a better kit), someone is going to pay it.
The big advantage of the crossbow is that you can hold your weapon at full draw in readiness without effort. You can wait, and ss soon as the archer appears and prepares to shoot, you can react to him faster.
They are also far easier to train someone to be proficient enough to defend a tower/fortification compared to a longbow.
exactly lindybeige. Are easier to train. And this tower is not best suited for crossbows.. crossbowmen can shoot trough machiculations, archers can't.
Richard the Lionheart seething lol
@@Zigg33 Not to mention that archers wouldn't attempt to shoot downwards at targets close to the walls. That's why there are "murder holes" down at the lower levels. And rocks to drop, and explosives to throw, and boiling oil to pour on heads, etc. When the enemy is 5 stories below you, your best weapon is gravity! 🙂
The typical battle would be trebuchets or catapults firing from inside the walls at distant targets, Ballistas up on the towers like the ones in this video firing from hundred of yards away, and then individual archers scattered around taking whatever targets they thought they could hit as the masses came rushing in on the attack. Once a target got too close to shoot at easily, it was ignored in favor of the many other targets at a better distance. There were lots of others waiting for nice juicy targets to get right below them.
No attackers would ever come at the walls like these targets were laid out. They would have been in big clumps, carrying giant scaling ladders or pushing battering rams. Most archers wouldn't even be taking individual aim, but just shooting at a group. That how the US won the Battle of Palo Alto in 1846. The Mexican artillery was slow enough to be able to see the cannonballs in the air. They had the advantage of greater range, but it was unusable bc the US troops would just see the balls coming and step out of their way! Whereas the US's only 2 pounder "Flying Artillery" had to rush up closer, but could get set up and fire, and then move to new positions, in less time than it took Santa Anna's forces to get their bigger guns trained on the new target(s).
What could individuals do against stone walls, even if they did make it there alive? Without their breaching equipment, they'd just be sitting ducks for the grenades and flaming oil being dropped on them from above.
@@beowulfsrevenge4369 And therein lies the crossbow's biggest advantage.
Thanks a lot. My castle is currently besieged and this video has greatly helped
El asedio continúa o ya lo repeliste ?
@@Livan-bd6hb I think he lost
So did you break the siege ?
Probably lost 😢 slow intertet
the siege is just over. Was able to hold on and repel them. Now to repair the crenellations
One advantage you may have overlooked a benefit with the crossbow is if you have someone that is trained while on the crossbow meaning they can hit the target they're aiming at. You could have several people feeding him loaded crossbows and the same guy shooting, with a longbow no matter how great you are you're going to have to stop and take a break it would be very hard to constant shooting for hours on end with a crossbow if you're just the guy shooting it that wouldn't be that big of a deal. And it would be much easier to train for military purposes if you had one person that did all the shooting and had other ones do the loading and hand them the weapon. At least that works well for defensive situations.
An elementary school sport team with a professional sport adult playing on each side: "just pass the ball to the adult". Which makes me consider: in a worst case scenario, women and children could reload the windlass.
In the days of flintlock musketry, the French used a similar system in Canada, the best shot fired and the rest of a squad system reloaded the shooter passed the fired musket to his left and took the reloaded musket from the right. with eight in the squad his rate of fire was phenomenal.
I'd be curious to see just how accurate the old style crossbows really can be, and how repeatable - your best shot with THEIR crossbow might miss badly if every one shoots noticeably different - doesn't matter how rapidly they are fed loaded crossbows if the first ones pulls left but the next one pulls right you can't correct for it. Though I'd think that accuracy of a crossbow you are familiar with aught to be better than the bow, no archers paradox, smaller projectile that is probably significantly less affected by the wind.
Also, I think you can pick up shooting with a crossbow in a few hours even, while bowmen trained for years and years.
If you want volume of fire it might be worth having everyone firing their own crossbows. Against massed forces during an assault accuracy is less an issue.
It is pretty clear to me that the fraction of a second saved by popping up with a crossbow, and not having to pull on a bow at an awkward angle would be all the advantage you could ask for. Especially since you can give a crossbow to someone with very little experience and they will have some chance of being effective,
Richard I. was supposedly killed by a cook with a crossbow.
Demonstrated by Richard the Lionheart, being killed by a teenage cook and all
@riograndedosulball248 wait really?? Holy shit I didn't know that?! They must have been desperate if they were using a cook
@@tiredanddepressed It was during the pause of the battle. Richard Lionheart was in his casual clothes without armor chatting outside the wall fortifications and as a trolling joke a teen cook did a potshot with a crossbow and shockingly hit the king in the shoulder before running off. Eventually the wound festered and the king died.
@@rubba6818reminds me how Pyrrhus of Epirus was killed by a desperate mother throwing a roof tile at him 💀
One thing that sticks out in the video, is just the mechanical advantage; Joe is tensing up and doing hard work, everytime he wants to give a shot. Tod is methodically reloading with the windlass; but in a siege that might actually be a meaningful difference. Suppose you had to man that piece of wall for hours, while an enemy attempted to storm it -- exhaustion would be an extremely real problem.
Sieges were often days, weeks or months, so if your soldiers are doing less work per shot, they're burning less energy and need less food.
I'm not sure the overall amount of work winding the windlass is actually less than the strain of pulling the longbow. Where it would definitely make a difference, though, is in missed shots. Every time Joe _tries_ for a shot and his target moves or he has to dodge return fire, he's doing a full-body workout and then controlling his de-tensioning as well. With the crossbow Tod can load it once and miss five opportunities before finally pulling the trigger, and only his thumb gets tired from holding his bolt in place.
They more or less said it in the last video. Joe was pretty much spend after the one quiver he brought, and was starting to get visibly exhausted.
Interestingly the records show that for the attacking force (proportions of different soldier types unknown) 1 arrow a minute was shot per man present. assuming this is normal, then the sow reload time of the crossbow is actually not at all the disadvantage it appears to be and the ease becomes a massive advantage
crossbows are easier to operate so you can have more firepower than using longbows since anyone can use 1 basically. Being behind a wall also helps people using crossbows since they can reload safely.
Crossbows were known to have an advantage defending inside walls while longbows were better in the open when you needed more arrows per minute
This is actually one of the coolest videos I've seen in my entire life. Having a tower to work off of for light theory crafting and testing like this is so cool. Experimental archaeology in fine form!
After watching this I see why actual castles have areas to shoot across the approaches. by pushing out the towers. Another brilliant video Tod! Thanks
Yea, and why hoardings and machicolations(!!!) were invented and used.
In the age of black powder this same idea was stretched to its limit with star forts
You'll notice Todd's test used none of these defensive features, nor did he have them both shoot from a lower storey.
@@iivin4233 well,they are trying to understand a specifict incident,not the best or all scenario
@@vde1846 MACHICOLATIONSSSSS!!!!!!
Think that last shot perfectly illustrates "why they were so good" - even if just once in a specific scenario a guy who makes things for a living and shoots crossbows every so often managed to outshoot a bow guy who's been doing it for most of his life. And you both only took a few shots and were being friendly and safe about it. I wonder what the results could be if Todd had been regularly shootin' his contraption for a decade straight.
Actually that is a very good point. Almost all of my crossbow shooting is done for my films, so I really don't shoot that much. I have a good eye, but still the last time I shot down like this was 3 years ago and there were no practice shots for this film
I mean, there was a reason the french hated English longbowmen probably more than any other English soldier. Crossbows were at a steep disadvantage if they were forced to fight in wet weather- crossbow strings could not be removed and protected from the wet like bow strings, which was part of the problem in battles like agincourt. Also a trained longbowman is probably going to release 4 or 5 arrows to the crossbows 1, I would consider that fire superiority, which even in those times would have counted for something.
@@jacobpgood724 agreed but i think its more in the easiness to replace a crossbowman to a longbowman the amount of time and training make a difference
That's exactly my thought. And it's magnified in the hardware. Dude is literally holding a block of wood. I'm sure you could design a crossbow to work better similar to how a bow with an easier draw might work better.
@@lasagnahog7695 you can look it up on you tube, there is a crossbow that is made out of an AR 15 lower. The trigger mechanism is isolated from the string so it's easier to pull and it's capable of firing an arrow completely through a car door. "Tactical Crossbow vs Car Door"
Would you say the crossbow has an advantage for the attacker on the ground? A bow, you cant draw it, and wait for the archer up above to pop their head out to shoot... a crossbow you can load it, point it at the opening and ... wait. You can react to the archer up there poking his body out to shoot.
nice point, still wonder how good you can aim with it tho, (iff not heavy trained in it)
Don't forget xbows weight a lot, and holding it pointing up for more than a few moments would be tiring
what if the defenders have a dummy head that they can poke out to make the crossbows prematurely loose? I've seen similar tactics in modern sniper warfare.
Interesting thought, though with the range gained by elevation and lost by shooting upwards I think it would be of relatively small gain. Not one you are going to object to if you can have it of course, but having to hold that bolt in (as most crossbow historically don't seem to have methods to retain the bolt) would probably make your movement across the battlefield more awkward by more than enough to offset the gain at all I'd guess. Though it would be nice to see Tod and Joe try some of the match shooting type concepts firearms folk love - run to barrel A, shoot, back to Barrel B, shoot these 3 targets type stuff.
@@VuurBarbaarDefinitely a better aim than with a bow. Especially with less training.
It also doesn't take that much training to become proficient enough to be useful with a crossbow, compared to a bow.
That POV from the attackers view is amazing, really helps to imagine how it would feel besieging a fortification.
Reminded me of the French from Monty python
@@umfize Your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries
would be fucking terrifying
@@Jack-uy7ietis but a scratch
Gave me flashbacks to a previous life as a peasant
This is where the arrowslit is a game changer. A crossbowman stand ready and pick their shots, aiming for gaps in armour. Get them a stool and they can be ready to shoot all day without tiring.
This is so true, a crossbowman could be taking aim with a loading crossbow, waiting for his perfect shot, A bowman couldn't hold his bow at full draw for very long whilst sighting his shot.
i think, aiming for gaps etc is so dificult that volume is the answer, of course aim etc but more bolts at the same time is higher change to hit then try to aim for weak spots,
other side, not many at the battle field had perfect armor (full armor or half plate etc) maby long bows for far targets, light bown mid, and light crosbows for close? what you think
And that crossbow man could have been trained, from scratch, that very day. Someone with a days experience of heavy warbow shooting would be useless.
Well....we don't know until they test it. Tod, are you listening???
@@WozWozEre Useless in a target shooting situation I could agree with, but not really in a battlefield/siege where even if you miss remotely nearby you make their footing harder or add to the scary 'I don't want to walk this way' type thinking... I highly doubt many folks today could pick up even the low end warbow and shoot it more than once - we generally tend towards such sedentary lives, but that wasn't true of the people before mass mechanisation. So while the Peasant/Serf of yore wouldn't have Joe's accuracy or strength and so ability to shoot the highest end bows multiple times in quick succession I'd bet most of them could shoot the lower end warbow more than often enough to be very useful and with enough accuracy to matter too. Shooting a bow in the right direction isn't that hard... Yes trained bowmen definitely makes a much bigger difference to more novice ones when compared with crossbow users but it doesn't mean you MUST be a trained archer with years of experience to actually be useful. You just have to be strong enough to actually pull the bow.
No matter how good I was at shooting arrows with a longbow at the start of the siege, by week 6 of rationing I'd be glad to be using the less energy consuming crossbow.
You are right that it is a bit more slow and steady and the peek work is lower, but the cumulative work is the same
@@tods_workshop I still think if you two tested how many shots you can get off without a break, you would probably be able to fire more shots with a crossbow than a bow
@@tods_workshopi dont think the cumulative work IS the same. You put the work into spanning the crossbow, but then a mechanism holds it in place. Every fraction of a second that the longbow is held at full draw in order to aim is extra work being done by the bowman. Across an entire day of shooting those fractions of extra effort would add up
@@tods_workshop spanning the crossbow could fairly easily be outsourced to a non-combatant that also helps you being a gofer for new bolts, or water or whatever.
And really, the ability to snapshot the crossbow under potential enemy counterfire. preload and prep in relative unseen safety, and then pop up and shoot is massively safer than awkwardly having to aim in fairly clear view where the enemy can see ahead of time exactly which crenellation you're going to pop up by.
I have a mental imagery of a crossbowman sitting down behind the crenellation, winding up the crossbow in a vertical positioning along the floor, and then when sufficiently many of them are ready, popping out, all but shooting from the hip
I'm thinking if they didn't have a specific shooting style, shooting the bow might have really messed up your back
Being unable to reach the closer targets is the reason behind machicolations in structures actually designed primarily for defence. Ideally you'd also have overlapping cones of fire, so that while you might be unable to fire at someone at the base of your tower/wall, your mate in the next tower could, a factor that continued into the gunpower age, hence the design of Star Forts.
(Edited to remove point mentioned in pinned comment)
MACHICOLATUONS!
@@dash4800 I read that in Shad's voice.
@@nitt3rz as you should
This is really interesting to see, the crossbow removes all the biomechanical problems of the bow you will encounter in an non-ideal position
Not to mention you waste more energy under duress.
also the problem with keeping the bolt in place while aiming downwards is easy to solve. just some sticky substance at the rear of the slit, not glue strength. just enough to overcome the friction. since it would be only at the start of the acceleration, it would take nothing from the energy of the shot.
@chengkuoklee5734 not true...but hey what do I know since I'm not only a combat veteran but have also been into archery nearly 40 years
@@thecursed01 most crossbows will have a metal tongue reaching over the string to hold the arrow in place, don't they?
@bl4cksp1d3r .... probably...and I am totally not too dumb to have thought of that...
I so appreciate the perspective Joe gives here.
I have experience shooting heavy bows, but seeing these cross shaped arrow slits in castles never made me think of the issues it would give me shooting out of it!
Having Joe explain the issues that come with it makes me go "oh yeah, how did I not see that, it's obviously not ideal, nor easy to train"
I think you are doing great work here
Thank you
Now have Tod run up the stairs so we can get authentic time for the archers response time to the enemy. :3
They must have had knees of steel.
They'd turret-load Tod by trebuchet . . .
You monster Lundis!
Why not store the crossbows already up top?
Lundis - no sorry! I climbed the staircase 6 or 7 times that day and my thighs killed me for days. Also the steepness of the stairs would actually be very dangerous were someone to slip as they would tumble down and take all the skittles below them down too
I keep thinking back to the fact it took years to train up enough on a war bow to be useful in the combat space, but training on a crossbow to competency was much shorter.
That's why ranged infantry lost their "prestige" back then when you could just train random peasants with a crossbow and be competent within a few days, compared to bowmen actually needing masters/teachers, train for months and years, etc.
@@ClarenceSampang Not quite a few days, but your point stands. It probably took a couple months to get a crossbowman to military proficiency. Comparing that to longbowmen taking from 10 years old to fighting age makes a hell of a difference, and sorta makes up for the slower rate of fire.
I think you're under estimating that advantage provided by the crossbow to be able to crouch and pop up to take shots. Any advantage you can get in a life and death situation you're gonna take it.
That half second less exposure when someone is shooting at you is HUGE.
I think with a lighter bow Joe could shoot faster but not as fast as Tod .
The fire rate on the other hand Joe can shoot 10 a min. This is a great video idea. 3 men with 1 shooter and 2 loaders Vs Joe with an 80lb bow.
@@WozWozEre Yeah and it seems more like a couple of seconds actually. That's a significant advantage I would guess.
Even blind firing without putting anything at danger would be possible with a crossbow.
@@WozWozEreyeah because people need time to notice you react aim and shoot even half a second faster can be a difference between you going back to cover and not making it
5:20 that's what you got heavy rocks for.
Great video. This is probably why they had both archers and crossbowmen garrisoning fortifications so they can balance out each other's flaws...and this combination was commonly (or at least not uncommonly) used across both western and eastern Eurasia.
wow, I never spotted (or rather, heard) it in the normal series with Joe Gibbs, but the sounds of EFFORT as he draws back that bow! it's like someone's slowly letting air out of a balloon, and really goes to show just how HARD pulling that thing back really is! I have to agree fully that the biggest advantages of Crossbowmen on crenelations has to be that they can do it for longer, and can hold shots longer. I really did NOT notice those effort sounds during the normal testing
I suppose one is basically holding the weight of a 10 stone man with every shot, it's a lot of muscle work :)
This is why hoardings were so important: they let you lean out and shoot down at those ranges you otherwise couldn't.
It would be really cool to see Joe and Tod shoot a longbow and crossbow from hoardings, or down through machicolations
@@MedievalTrebuchet If they do that I'd prefer they get safety gear. An accidentally release bolt or arrow shattering on a wall with throw shrapnel everywhere.
@@LeutnantJokeror they could get the modern simulator fir the hoardings like a scaffolding tower.
And moats or sloped walls, that keep the attackers far out where you can actually hit them
@@MedievalTrebuchet it took way too long for machicolations to be mentioned
This is actually ace man I so happy there are people making these sore of videos. Really brings history to life keep up the good stuff lads
If you watch the Chalus Castle siege scene in the 2010 Robin Hood movie with Russell Crowe, you can see how even the actors playing the part of the defending Garrison also struggled with how to effectively return fire from the battlements much in the same way you did. There are multiple instances where you see the defenders hang out at awkward angles to get low angle shots with their crossbows.
They are ignoring the fact that there would be enormous hoardings around the tops of the towers. Everyone thinks these naked castles were defended, they had huge wooden defensive structures on top of the walls. They had much better defended firing positions within the hoardings. Apparently these towers were built late and never really meant as real defensive structures so don't even have crenelations or other defensive features like a simple dry moat...
@@christophersteen1873 Seeing as how they are using fire to destroy the gate, I would assume a good chunk of the Hoardings have already been burned via other methods like incendiary pitch arrows.
The ability for a crossbow to do snapshots, shots of opportunity might be more advantageous from the ground actually. 🤔 if you have a loaded crossbow down there you can aim up at the battlements for long periods of time and when Joe stepps out to draw and aim his bow you can shoot him through the face in an instant.
Also a bow compared to a crossbow needs a lot more training to sucessfully make a shot hit what you wanna hit. Crossbow is more like "point to enemy, done". So especialy if you want to equip a lot of less trained persons to defend a castle, that might be a quite efficient way of doing it.
The crossbow's advantage really must've been the ability to have it ready to fire whenever, to have it ready to make that perfect shot instead of needing to expose yourself too long to fire.
The bow could do the same thing while behind the crenulation have bow drawn step out shoot then back behind the crenulation to reload the archer would only be exposed for a couple seconds.
@@lasko24 Certainly not with the weight of bow they were using here.
The main advantage of the crossbow over the bow is that it is easier and less physically strenuous to train a novice how to use the weapon compared to a bow which takes far more practice, expertise, skill, and time to cultivate true mastery. The average novice wielding a bow and aiming at an individual target was far less effective at hitting their target and far more likely to become physically exhausted than a novice using a crossbow. That, and the crossbow had a higher tensile strength, projectile speed, and maximum range which made it easier to penetrate the defenses of heavy targets like knights clad in plate armor. This came especially handy in defensive, fortified positions where the crossbow excelled over the bow at more accurately and powerfully striking down enemy archers, crossbowmen, sappers, engineers, knights, or officers. Additionally, the crossbow's bolt had a longer range, higher projectile speed, and more concentrated dense mass with a terminal velocity higher than the bow due to the mechanics of lower air resistance granting higher penetrative power. The crossbow's main disadvantages are mostly related to its slow rate of fire and high economic cost to produce which made it difficult to mass produce for large armies of conscripts and levies fighting in open field terrain where the mobility, speed, maintenance, and industrial cost of the bow were preferable over the crossbow.
@@eclipse_434 and that only worked in sieges (both attaccking and defending)
Meanwhile on the battlefield the fact crossbow wasnt able to volley fire as easily as a bow meant only drilled person could use it.
Which is why crossbow were only used by mercenary, standing forces, or huge operations (like the crusade) where they add all the time in the world to drill
@@stylesheetra9411battlefield fights being the rarest of any fight at the time.
Absolutely fascinating as ever thanks Tod. So many interesting aspects in just 12 minutes! The insights from having a real archer (Joe) is just invaluable. Within a few minutes i learnt it was actually physically difficult for him to shoot down that steeply. Something i had never read or considered before. Thanks again and Merry Christmas to you both!
You are discovering many things those of us who archery hunt from tree stands have had to adjust for - there is a disadvantage when the target gets too close and in addition it requires a lot of training to be good shooting from height down vs. shooting on level ground ( aim point changes and your draw length to anchor point also changes). Oh, and longbows - yeah, lower limb hitting is a common issue.
I hadn't considered that there of course people doing pretty much this when they hunt. Probably because there is no bow hunting here, but thanks for your insights
This is why treestand archers draw, anchor, and then bend at the waist instead of lowering the bow arm. And all this has to happen without spooking deer. It’s still a challenge!
Those extra split seconds you get while shooting a crossbow could mean life or death when you're been shot at. Plus its less strenuous than a longbow if you wanna be shooting for a long time. Thank you for the video, its really great as always!
I think the most important advantage the crossbow has is that it can be aimed continuously and effortlessly. If you know someone is behind cover, you can aim at said piece of cover and wait until there is an opportunity to shoot your opponent. This is just not possible with a powerful bow. The need to draw the bow first and then lose the arrow immediately means there is always a delay between a target presenting itself and you being able to shoot it. So practical accuracy in a siege ( or skirmishes in forests for that matter ) should be much higher for the crossbow.
So happy you guys explored this. I have been pondering what bow to invest in after I had crenelations installed for home defense.
In larger castles, multiple overlapping fields of fire meant that other defensive areas could target attackers closer and visa versa
Also in larger castles they would build machicolation to be able to drop stuff without having to be exposed and could probably be used to fire at closer targets
@@14KoniAK Good point
Also, Towers that project outwards from a wall, the person in front of you on the wall may have a hard time shooting you, but not someone else 90 degrees from you to the side on a tower.
And even just small towers like this one had many effective weapons for use on attackers at the base of their walls. Cue up this video to 1:35 and freeze frame. Note the stone funnel for flaming oil, just to the left of the double windows on the right side of the tower. One can even still see the remains of where the cauldron would have been, right above the down facing port.
I'm sure the lower levels would have lots of "murder holes"(defensive slits? I like that better. Killing hordes or armed attackers trying to kill you is hardly murder! 🙂) to shoot through too. We just can't see them in the video.
@@95ellington That is an important point given how they felt exposed in the video yes
Loved the video man very interesting i give the edge to crossbow because it also takes less training
An important thing to bear in mind which was only touched on at the end is endurance. A longbow can shoot much faster, but it's exhausting. It's arrows are also bigger, more expensive, and less storable than crossbow bolts. The ability of a crossbowman to put a steady stream of projectiles in the enemies face over hours and days will be much greater than a longbowman's, even with the longbow having a much faster peak shooting rate (because that peak rate can't be kept up for any length of time). What matters in a siege, after all, is the weakest defence you can put up continuously; not the strongest barrage you can muster for a few minutes.
Don't forget you have to have had years learning the longbow. Very short time to use the crossbow. Also a longbow man could take over for a crossbow man but not the other way around
Not to mention if the longbowman throws out his back or pulls a muscle somewhere cause of the awkward position, that's going to affect his ability to shoot all that much more, or worst case, take him out of the fight entirely for a few days.
@@gardenman3 Commonly said. But some crossbowmen - especially the ones using the complicated contraption Todd was handling - were paid far more than longbowmen and basically treated like prized military engineers. That certainly means that they weren't viewed as amateurs or easily replaceable. Of course that doesn't mean it wasn't _possible_ to use a crossbow without much training, but it does mean that expert crossbowmen were hugely valued, from which it's fair to conclude that they drastically outperformed an untrained crossbowman.
@@QuantumHistorian I don't think we can conclude they outperform in that way - I suspect the crossbow mercenaries that tend to be the source of the high paid claims (at least to my understanding) get paid that much because they bring the relatively complex weapons and logistical teams to support themselves - the weapon costs way more than a stick that is only 9/10ths broken and that allows the organised group that have them ready to go to name their price to some extent - the kingdoms looking for more defensive firepower are not in the position to really say no easily - their Rival kingdoms might hire them instead!
@@QuantumHistorian "El Victorial" biography of Castilian knight Pero Nino describes him as master marksmen and very strong man, able to span mightiest arbalest from his girdle/belt, even with a fever.
Describes this feat as worthy of a knight and warrior, and mentions many times that ability to span a strong crossbow from a belt was desired trait for a crossbowman.
So it would be strength and constant training just as with bowmen, really. For an ability to span mighty bow much faster than with some devices, that could be easily damaged or dropped too.
"winded" crossbows, on the other hand, tend to be routinely considered more armor piercing that bows or lighter crossbows.
I love genuine experiments like this. It's so much fun to see how all these weapons, armor, and strategies really work.
Thank you so much for doing what you do! please don't stop
The amount of information and respectful debate in these comments astounds me. Great reads!
Loved the video. Can't wait to see what you've got in the pipeline next. Many thanks!
Maybe this is why most castles had enfilading fire positions?
Yep. They're within 15 yards of the base of your tower, but that might place them 50 yards from the archers of the towers to each side of you; putting them into a crossfire. But issues with engaging closer attackers is also why castles had hoardings or matriculations that could allow archers to, in effect, fire down through the floor to hit enemies closer to the wall. (Not to mention those same openings allowed defenders to drop things straight down on people up against the base of the wall)
Not just that, but arrow loops lower down in the walls would have no problems hitting the closer target. Enemies who are farther than 30 meters or so are the concern of the archers at the top of the wall, but the ones that get closer can more easily be aimed at by the archers closer to ground level. That's part of why you have arrow loops at different heights.
While they mentioned dropping things from the tower, I contend that the "safe zone" doesn't exist. I'm confident I could throw a fist-sized rock at a target twelve yards away. Or a javelin or dart of some kind. Maybe even a much larger rock, given the range boost from throwing off a tall platform.
Don't forget the Batter at the base of towers and walls which can be approached by land.
The wall was progressively thickened as it neared the base to deflect any stones dropped from above into the faces of approaching attackers.
@@jonathan_60503 And these towers used to have them too, as wooden structuctures around the tops of the towers, but they have long since rotted away and for some reason todd has forgotten about hoardings in this video, though they fix and resolve almost all these issues. With hoardings you would not be seen by the attackers, you keep the interior dark etc so you can't be easily shot, they just don't even touch on the reality of the advantages you have while shooting from a prepared position.
Awesome stuff as always. Another little perk of the crossbow is your marksman doesn't have to be in peak physical condition to use it. If you're tired, injured, sick, malnourished from being under siege, you can still shoot.
I think the pop-up-and-down advantage of the crossbow is more significant than you mentioned.
Todd and Joe appear at 9:26.5 (ish). Todd disappears at 9:28 (ish) and Joe at 9:29 (ish).
So, this is roughly 1.5 vs 2.5 seconds of exposure. For a single shot, this is not that much practical difference as the probability of getting shot in that time frame is rather low. However, if over a few hours each person has 50 shots, this means the crossbowman would have been exposed for 1 min 15 seconds and the longbowman for 2 min 5 seconds, with the difference in time growing with the number of shots. I can see this having a significant impact on survival rates for long sieges.
Well reasoned along with a great explanation, cheers!
In reality, they would use neither approach. The men on the tower would rely on armor for defense and rapid volley fire over aimed shots. For aimed shots they would step forward select a target and step
back.
Hitting a head is difficult to hit reliably with a modern firearm and with the height leather armor is effective against arrows.
Commanders would look through the crenellations to direct volley fire at an approaching army, and switch to other things like the battery when they are closer. As an approaching army would be spread out there are likely targets to engage that are farther out.
While the exposure difference may appear dramatic, in actual combat an arrow fired immediately may not even make it before the archer steps back. It leaves very little time for aiming
Isn't the point more that you can wait at full draw with a crossbow? Meaning for the attackers a crossbow is even better than for the defenders? Imagine having to shoot someone, even if they expose themselves for 3 to 5 seconds, with a longbow. You'd already be too late.
@@stysner4580 No…. all things being equal the first shot would matter except…. crossbows take much longer to reload and the loader’s attention will be on turning a crank.
Crossbows are primarily used because they require little training and the loading job can be distributed to noncombatants.
Medieval warfare consisted of group actions making individual aimed shots somewhat uncommon. Rather than aiming at a man on the tower volleys were fired at the tower.
@@kwonekstrom2138 All things remain equal then if you bring shields and reloaders as the attackers. Shields are relatively cheap and can even be improvised on location if necessary. The attackers can move a lot while the defenders have finite positions to be at making aiming at them (especially in volleys) way easier. The defenders might have to aim at a different location every time while the attackers can wait for someone to pop up and let loose immediately.
Very interesting seeing the practicality of theory and novel writing (e.g. Bernard Cornwalls Grail series). Amazing effort Tod and Joe to create that realism element that adds another dimension to historical siege actions. Someone give these men a castle to play with.
For the guys closer to the wall you could just toss out plumbata by the bucket
and rocks if the get too close
But would he not be armoured in the period? Plumbata will not penetrate most of him so the vulnerable area is very small.
Rock is great! It's a side product of digging ditch! It's free and it hurts.
or hot oil or rocks or anything but thats not the discussion
@@myonionsmatter7843 Careful with the hot oil.
That shot at 0:48 where the archer draws the bow and points it straight at the cameraman. Legitimately frightening. I could see the intimidation factor for someone attacking a castle. Also, balls of steel on that cameraman. I’d have been sweating at that.
Yeah! The camera had movement, indicating it was manned. That was terrifyingly unsafe seeming. This channel is usually safer, so I'm left a bit confused/worried.
@orandilu989 I took a closer look, and unless I'm mistaken, it seems like the archer pulls the arrow back to simulate drawing the bow but never actually nocks the arrow. Still frightening, but more safe than having an arrow nocked in your direction!
@@LordTutTut excellent observations! Upon rewatching he isn't even pulling the bowstring back at all, just the arrow in his hand.
Can't believe I missed that the first time! Great form by the archer for a nice camera shot 😁
This scene actually frightened me and even did not notice that he is not drawing the bow at all. Imaging the nervousness of attackers, I'd rather have a pot cover on my hand.
This gives me PTSD from games like mount and blade.
The reverse scenario would be really interesting. How long can you poke your target out till Joe Gibbs hit it from below?
I do not envy them trucking what would be necessary to catch the misses up to the top of that tower. What goes up at less than escape velocity must come down, and where it will come down is not easy to accurately account for with every shot. "Know what is behind your target" applies here as much as it does with firearms.
@@corwinhyatt519 You could set up something on top of the tower to catch most of the arrows (like even a tarp might do it with blunt arrows), but there's the other issue as well that the owner of those towers probably won't like you hitting the crenellations either.
@@romaliop Yep or the windows below them.
Altogether this is sounding like an experiment better suited to a plywood simulation of a tower in a much emptier field.
@@romaliop It will be much more practical to empty a large enough area behind the tower and protect the windows.
Ozstraya In the 70s Tech school a few lads made a crossbow that weekend they shot a bolt into the sky and pinned it in the power line dead centre
it stayed there for 20 years until re wiring '
First, fortifications were rarely just bare stone - there would have been wooden barricades and fences giving further protection to the defenders, possibly allowing bowmen to hang out from the stonework. Secondly, you do not need to shoot from the middle of the open space; you could be partially covered by the stone as you shoot through the smallest degree of space between the stones. Lastly, reduce weight of bow or span but use heavier projectiles thus using height to provide the extra velocity (also meaning spent projectiles are less effective to the beseigers).
Thanks and yes your are correct that 'proper' castles would often have additional hoarding etc, however this tower never had that. Interestingly shooting down does (potentially) increase velocity, but not much. Gravity is 10m/s/s and the travel time from tower top to bottom is about 0.2s so in fact the downward start point would add around 2m/s to the arrow speed which is is around 60m/s anyway, so not massively different and then of course drag will knock some speed off anyway so yes it does make a difference but very little. I agree that a lower poundage bow would be helpful, but we have no evidence they did this.
Plus real crenelation would have arrow slits for shooting downwards.
A crossbow, you can shoot it even if you are a kid or a woman. You can have a kid or woman reloading them while you shoot. Etc.
Very good point. If I had to defend a castle with woman and children inside I will for sure try to use them to my advantage. They may be weaker then battle hardened soldiers but that really doesn’t count that much for reloading crossbows. As far as I know, we have historical records showing they were used for bringing the defenders water/food or arrows and stones for the castles defense. Now I’m really interested if we have any sources in which they reload crossbows
Would be interesting to see what difference a lighter bow would make and would they use different arrows at a shorter distance, especially firing downward?
i have 2 bows and 2 crossbows, no where near as strong as the ones you're firing, my big crossbow is 175lbs and my strongest bow is 55lbs but this was super interesting, keep up the great work my dude
Honestly, this really does make me wonder about actual historical draw weights of bows. We only are working from one specific historical example for weights (Mary Rose) and that was a very specific environment. I know as a very amateur hobbyist with a little leaning I can shoot down and over a wall pretty comfortably with a 70-80 lbs bow (albiet a short Turkish style with a thumb draw, haven't tried a longbow yet) at a pretty steep angle. If the arrows aren't punching through plate at 140lbs anyway, and you're still hunting for gaps in the armor, would a 70lbs bow also serve that role equally well? I can't remember if you tested maille with a 70lbs bow, but it would do an absolute horror show on cloth and flesh as bow hunting has long established.
To be fair, the weight calculcations are not just based on the Mary Rose bows. It was either Will or Joe in a previous vid who explained that based on the socket diameter of historic arrow heads and known draw lengths/arrow lengths, with the weight you get for the resulting shaft you can pretty well estimate the poundage of a ballistically efficient bow to move that arrow.
But there's no reason they wouldn't have used lighter bows for situations as such...
@@GCCRACER Oh that's awesome, I'll need to dig back through those videos to find those. That actually makes an interesting consideration. I wonder if they all just used universally heavy bows, or if they did employ lighter bows would they just use over spined arrows for those lighter bows and hope for the best?
@@timothym9398 I think the bows were universally pretty heavy, at least for the English and Welsh. Many cultures with a tradition of mounted archery would often use similar draw weights to the English on foot, but lighter bows when mounted. Mounted archery equipment and techniques would be surprisingly helpful for a situation like this:
th-cam.com/video/E_dHqDNsGc0/w-d-xo.html
But remember, in this test Joe shooting only from the roof. In an actual castle, you would also have arrow loops halfway down the wall, from which archers would easily be able to hit even the closest target.
@timo - you make some good points and in fact yes a 80lbs bow will go through mail and a 140 won't go through plate, so you could ask yourself 'why bother with the heavy'. The subject of a film next year most likely
Excellent video!
The incident in 1450 was more of a raid due to vendetta than a siege. It lasted only six hours with Stafford's raiders departing specifically because they were unprepared to conduct a siege. Likewise, Harcourt's withdrawal to the church, upon warning of Stafford's approach, was hasty and improvised.
While the church crenellation may have been decorative, it was far superior to Harcourt's unfortified manor house which Stafford burned to the ground. In this sense, the video recreates what the likely conditions were during the raid where only one of Harcourt's men was killed. The narrow tower windows would engage closer targets. However, by the time of this incident, proper fortifications with crenellated stone towers and walls employed pivoted mantlets over the crens where the mantlet pivots mounted on the adjacent merlons. In some cases, the mantlets had arrow loops such that mantlet could remain closed while a defender shot through. If not, then the mantlet could be propped open partially, affording a slit over the cren. In either case, a crossbowman would be able to rest the crossbow for better stability and then pick and choose targets for precise shots. If one observes Italian crossbow re enactment and competitions commemorating victorious defensive events, the crossbow shooters employ rests.
Eventually, hoardings replaced the crenellation mantlets while besiegers adopted wheeled mantlets and mantlet walls themselves.
In Stafford's 1450 surprise raid, while some defenders may had time to grab arms and armor and make for the tower, it is quite likely that Harcourt had far fewer men, the majority of them unarmored, and armed mostly with swords, daggers, with bows and crossbows primarily intended for hunting ...
It would be great if you would test out the fletched javelins from these towers, as in medieval art they were often seen in siege situations or thrown from ships
And that's the plan.
@@tods_workshop might as well try out how effective plumbata would be in siege defence.
Makes you think about "Arrow slits" in castle walls, may not be as easy as I have allways assumed it would be. Great film as allways Tod & Joe, experimental history at it's best, challenging assumptions 👍.
I think we need to try these
A good justification for building hoardings before an expected siege. Gives your defenders more angles and options for attacking the enemy without exposing themselves to angles that would be as susceptible to missiles.
Edit: There are a few archery techniques out of Eastern archery(Turkish/Turkic) that are for shooting downward where you draw the bow from behind your your head to be able to get an angle to shoot downwards that could be used both at short range on horseback and when shooting from the top of a wall or fortification, but those bows being much shorter are probably much more conducive to awkward positions on ramparts than a longbow.
The hoardings were basically permanent, they wouldn't be taking them down and putting them up over and over again...
Amazing video. I am highly fond of the crossbow but man I love the British Longbow so much. Superb to see them both being equally effective.
On the subject of shooting at someone close to the walls: Standing on something to get higher up would change the angle a bit to make a shot more manageable.
On the subject of being an exposed target in between the crenulations. It depends a lot on the background. If you siluett against a clear sky you'll make an easier target then if you have a dark background for instance if the tower had a wooden superstructure like many castles had. If you are lurking in the shadows you might have time to take a well aimed shot.
9:08 For the exact reason you are doing it yoursel, but need Joe to shoot the bow: training time/consistency required in order to hit the target.
Wonderfull video, thanks to both of you.
I'm a bit of a longbow fanboy but I think the crossbow might have come into its own with untrained people who could be quickly taught how to load it for a shooter. Something like a goats foot lever
I just think that fundamentally the crossbow is easier and quicker to learn. Muscles for a longbowman will take years to develop. What could an amateur do?
Crossbow? Take 100 shots and you'll have a reasonable idea what's going on.
So for untrained people, crossbows (and later, muskets), were the easy choice.
Trained? I'll take longbows over either.
@@peterwolf4230 definitely longbow attacking a defensive structure and in open battle but defending a castle I think the crossbow was favoured for certain reasons. I think it was Warwick castle held thousands of bolts in barrels I believe
The spanning horse (Spannbock), a furniture size goat foot that could load a 1000# xbow with one quick pull.
These were common in castles & watchtowers
@@peterwolf4230 An advantage of a crossbow in a defensive situation is, that you could shoot accurately it all day if need be. Even a trained longbowman would start tiring out after a few consecutive arrows especially at certain angles of fire. Firearms obviously also had a much greater armor penetration potential and were more effective against cavalry.
@@Tony.795 The other advantage of a crossbow, at least a munitions grade crossbow with a steel prod, was storage. Cover the prod in wax or oil, stick the crossbow in the armory, and forget about it beyond the occasional inventorying until you're besieged. A longbow wouldn't last too long with that treatment, but a steel crossbow prod will be fine. Also, crossbow bolts could have wooden fletches, which will not deteriorate in storage as quickly as feathers will.
As always, your videos do not miss in providing entertainment and that ever wonderous look into experimental history. *KNOWING* that a thing was done, because historical documents exist to tell us gives us a dim insight. *SEEING* how a thing would have likely have been done... it provides an entirely different level of appreciation in what it must have been like hundreds of years ago to stand on that tower, and have to shoot at people trying to do the same to you.
I'm not going to repeat what others have said here regards the endurance of a crossbow versus an archer. Just want to say Seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year to you all :)
And back at you
Some guys in life and death scenarios would definitely lean out of cover if thet had to, especially if they were very well armed.
I also see a huge advantage of the crossbow plain as day. We have a trained archer struggling to shoot off the battlements in a completely safe situation acheiving similar results to some old Todd (sorry Todd).
I think a major thing is, this structure is missing arrow slits and machicolations. The argument between Longbow and crossbow, in my opinion boils down into training and ease of use. It taking a fair amount of practice and strength building to be able to pull a war bow and hit the target. Then the eventual transition from crossbow to blackpowder. The execution of loading aiming and firing being quite similar between the two.
What might be an interesting experiment is get some Lads together who have never done any form of archery and see how much time training it would take to get them to a war bow level. Compared to using a crossbow.
*I had my crossbow ready for hunting the same day I bought it.
*It took me years to get really good with a compound with sights.
*I finally learned how to be accurate with a traditional bow in adulthood, with plenty of practice and research. God arranging certain magazine articles to fall under my eyes really helped, especially the one in which the Rev. Stacy Groscup discussed how he shot a bow.
Oh, sorry, let those scenarios show that the crossbow may be time-consuming, but very user-friendly.
I think you have beautifully demonstrated why hoardings and, later, machicolations, were popular features of castles: They are specifically designed to remove the problem (for arbalesters, at least) of being unable to get the right angle for a shot without over-exposing oneself.
The other advantage the Crossbow has that didn't get mentioned besides the awkward angles is that anyone can use the Crossbow. Unlike Joe's long bow where you need specific training just to draw it and even more training to become proficient at it, the Crossbows biggest advantage is that anyone can pick it up and shoot it effectively with little to no training.
Great video as always Tod so thank you to you and Joe both and Merry Christmas to you both! 👍👍
A normal person can shoot a 40 pound draw weight bow after a few hours of instructions and training just fine. Not as accurately and effective as an experienced person with a >100 pound bow, but plenty deadly enough if it hits you in the right spot. Crossbows probably benefit from training a lot too.
@TheUncleRuckus yeah that makes sense. let people without armstrength now be able to take a turn on the tower. older people, kids, people with disabilities etc.
If all the elves at Helm's deep had crossbows then the women in the caves could've reloaded for them or taken over if they died.
THAT is fantastic experimental archeology! I salute to Tod and Joe!
Damn, that looks as though Joe would eventually do himself a mischief. The archers of the time will have known their limitations and surely wouldn't have risked injury trying to target the nearest attackers. I'll wager they were quite disciplined in 'managing' their sweet spot.
Probably still hard to do in the heat of battle at times I'd imagine.
@@Tony.795 I kinda agree, but archers were a prized commodity and can only imagine they would step outside of their comfort zone through sheer last-gasp necessity. An archer who fooks his back is effectively useless. All good discussion points though given we will never know, but watching Joe in a contorted position it's hard to imagine them doing it as a matter of routine.
i am really surprised, much like Tod i'd have thought with a crossbow you'd be able to just go full sniper elite and own just about everything and everyone from up there, but i guess that's why it's always better to actually try these things out than to just guess how they might go. great video! :)
Well, aiming down was always a problem for me too, shooting wooden toy crossbows back in the day. Bows, not so much, but they were fairly lightweight. Besides you two using proper weapons, I would personally be too much afraid of hitting the wall with both the bow and crossbow limbs, so there might be a bit of that going on with you as well, where its hindering you more than it realistically would. Youre just hesitant to put your fairly expensive pieces of kit in harms way.
Be that as it may, there is a limit as to how far down can one reliably hit targets.
In a real castle, that problem is solved with not aiming that close at all though, as there is always someone in the other tower or wall part to do that for you, as you will do for them, hopefully :D
And I guess, if things really get that bad, there are always rocks to throw over the top?
You are right that we were worried about hitting the structure and practice would likely reduce that a bit, but the concern would still be there as a limb tip striking the stone would likely remove the weapon from the battle
Best medieval channel ever. You are great guys.
I think the limbs of the longbow being visible over the walls long before the shot, would be a potentially deadly give away, for anyone trying to kill archers on the walls. I also wonder how hard or easy it is to shoot through arrow slits or murder holes
Yes me lord!😁
Did they actually used longbows on castle walls? Seeing you need all the space you can get as this video showed, so they very likely used a short bow.
@@NecramoniumVideo they probably used both. Long bow first then switched over to short bows.
I think this helps paint the picture of how this kind of warfare occurred. I think media and our view of modern warfare show events occuring so quickly. When these events were a slow, grinding slog not fast paced rapid assaults. It shows how teams of men could operate near the base of the walls installing equipment to drag siege towers into place or carry out undermining. How ladder teams could survive at their attacks. I also think this demonstrates the importance of towers projecting out of the walls to allow enfilading fire. Also how vulnerable towers spaced too far apart could be. It is a great illustration of the difficulties faced by by soldiers before the widespread use of gunpowder weapons.
I imagine the crossbow's rate of fire could be improved by having one or two "loaders" per shooters...
Also the thought of tripping in one of those stairways is not a good one ;-)
so i guess three crossbows, one shooter, two loaders? interestingly, it would have the same weapon to shooter ratio as using 3 bows would have
Yea, a couple of kids/youths/women/non-fighting men standing back in safety just loading bow after bow could really make the actual archers much more effective.
My only question is would they have spent the money beforehand to buy three crossbows for each defender? If you had a surplus of weapons it would be a splendid strategy, but would it seem like a worthwhile investment in the months before the fight when you're looking to balance your budget?
@@timothym9398 I mean, it would still be three weapons for 3 people to operate. The question at that point is, can they afford bows or crossbows?
Enjoy the moment. Love your videos with Joe.
Alternative video title: “A guy who dislikes crossbows and a guy who can shoot a longbow talk about how good or bad the longbow is in a siege”
What a great demonstration. Thanks for the great work and effort.
I think, in more of a siege than a storming, the crossbows real advantage is that you can walk around with it loaded, spot someone and take a shot. You don't have to knock and draw an arrow. Also anyone can shoot a crossbow, even a maid or a cook could in theory.
As arrows verses armour has shown, some form of steel covering can reduce the chance of a wounding hit by a huge amount, so a simple helm & chest plate could suffice to allow a cross-bow to be shot at very short range. Edit: If there are archers firing at a particular area, very few people would be brave/stupid enough to come near, so simply firing near soldiers is enough to keep them away.
That is why modern forts (in the age of canons and muskets) were constructed in such way, with bastions to provide clear lines of fire along each wall. That is why castles began to have towers in corners, slightly pushed out, so you can shoot from one tower along the wall, and protect other tower (which then evolved into roundel, then into bastion / bulwark).
I wonder if proper machicolations or hoardings would help in shooting at enemies at close range?
This test highlights one of the often touted advantages of a crossbow over a war bow- the quality of the troops needed to effectively fight. (No offense, Todd!😆).
The fact that a competent, physically average older crossbow man is as effective (maybe more so under the conditions) as a master archer in his physical prime is a big force multiplier on an army scale. Younger stronger troops can be used as foot soldiers instead of being used as archers, which could be important, especially if you are recruiting from limited populations like a barony or small kingdom.
Firstly - clearly I am mortally offended! But yes you make a good point. I have a good eye, but I basically only shoot crossbows for my films, so not often and the last time I shot down like this was 3 years ago, so agreed; point made
You have said it before, the advantage of the crossbow is the learning curve, or lack of, if you have 10 trained archers and 30 peasants you have 40 xbowers .. but you still only have 10 archers. The xbow gave untrained users the ability to have a reasonable chance fairly quickly of actualy hitting something with minimal training, it also to me, seems like an easy way to increase volume of fire, and if nothening else it could help to give cover to your trained archers.
that last one sounds intresting(the rest already heard and say yes you are right)
@@VuurBarbaar im thinking if you have the unskilled just pop and fire in the general direction, they are going to cover, that should hopefully allow the archers a few moments longer to aim with less risk, youd have to randomize the timing of coordinated volleys or theyd get used to it, but you could catch someone coming out of cover to soon
@@jeffandrews8578 I don't think you can really aim in the usual sense with a heavy warbow. It's draw and let loose in one motion due to it's drawweight. That leads to another advantage of a crossbow, namely that it doesn't cause near as much exhaustion in a long term scenario.
I think that also depends a lot on the population you're pulling from. If it's the era where all englishmen were required to do archery practice every sunday, the far cheaper and common longbow would probably be just as effective with a militia than the complex crossbow.
Cool video. Joe pointed out one thing. That you want to keep torso straight when shooting. What if instead bending in the waist like he did, he would have move his hips back like you do with RDL in the gym. Like that you can keep torso nice and straight and lean down significantly without compromising strength of you draw (potentially, have no experience in archery whatsoever)
The biomechanical issue of the longbow vs crossbow in this setting is huge and understated. Tod for some reason literally says the main reason crossbows are soo good in a defending siege to himself! and just ignores it. You can leave the area of harm, to arm your weapon and then return to perform a quick snipe (meaning your much much safer compared to the longbow). This is much much safer then clearly what the longbow had to do, exposing himself for a long time and having to load in view as well. And all this is ignoring the tiring effects of utilizing the long bow (likely leading to bad behaviors and exposing your self more and taking risker decisions). Its clear shooting in these awkward positions is extremely tiring for such a heavy long bow, if you had to perform 100 shots, his ability is going to drop off a cliff, while the cross-bow will not. Lastly shooting a longbow requires training, and arguably a hastily defended castle, is going to be manned with all sorts of people mostly from people whom never shot longbows, and this clearly is an opening for crossbows where anyone can pick it up and shoot it. This demonstration at least proved why cross-bows are used in defense, I think Tod needs to flush his mind and watch this again with a clarity.
I totally agree that you can retire, load and then expose to take a shot, but it was not that different in timing to Joe. So that did slight difference didn't excite me much. What I found far more intriguing is that Joe was physically in danger from his own actions causing him an injury and I was not. That is an advantage. The point about crossbows being easier to use is clearly the case and there are lots of documented cases of non-combatants and even women folk defending castle walls during sieges - Richard 1 was shot by a cook.
@@tods_workshop I wouldn't underestimate the difference in timing and exposure, at least I notice a difference of atleast 2-3 seconds, which can be considerable, if there let's say is an enemy crossbow man trained with his weapon at the location.
@@tods_workshop And btw great video, definitely one of your more interesting and better ones!
@@tods_workshop I'd imagine a bowmans performance would start to deteriorate much quicker than a crossbowmans. A crossbowman firing bolts for hours on end wouldn't be too far off, especially with helpers.
@@tods_workshop I wonder if it would change if you put a 70-90 lbs bow in Joe's hands instead of the 140. I imagine he would have a lot more flexibility and variety of movements once you backed away from the splitting edge of power for the longbow. Using that powerful of a bow requires near perfect form to prevent injury. Back it off a bit and less than perfect form might allow him a few easier options for shooting angles.
always a great time with Joe Gibbs!
Crossbow, they can actually pierce armor
Just stumbled across your channel. Now I am not an expert, but I have just recently come back from a visit to the UK. While there we visited Bodiam Castle in East Sussex and my friend and I discussed this very issue. In Bodiam, the guard slits in the walls give clues to the type of weapon used. Down low, at short range, the space looks like a crossbow man would be stationed, short range, say attackers coming over the drawbridge. as you work your way up the walls, the area is the side an archer would stand with a short bow, say shots across the moat then lastly, you would have your longbow men on top shooting for distance. Again, not an expert but makes sense.
I could be completely wrong, but I think that defenders on top of a tower like this one wouldn’t really take the time to take aim at individual enemies. Rather than just peak, fire and take cover as quickly as possible.
Well, they didn't exactly defend against an ocean of enemies, so some amount of aiming would be required. Although maybe the extremely low casulties together with the high number of arrows used actually speak for your idea and they literally just shot those arrows out there without caring much about actually hitting something.
Nice job Tod, as usual informative and entertaining.
Think the main advantage of the crossbow is that it need much less training then the longbow.
Technically you could just pluck any farmer from the field show him the crossbow, and maybe a few hours later he could shoot it.
Of course he would not hit as well as a trained crossbowman or archer,. but the guys down there would not know that. So you would go into cover seeing a few crossbowmen pop up on the tower.
As some have mentioned like with early rifles you could have people in the back reading the crossbows for the people shooting it, so they would always get a ready weapon.
But I do not remember seeing any mention of that practice in castle defense.
I think the biggest advantage to a crossbow in defense of a castle isn't really anything to do with how you use it but who is using it. You can just wack a pile of crossbows in storage and basically anyone who happens to be in the castle can get results from using it. Generally speaking you're not leaving all your well trained archers to hold the fort unless you already know someones coming.
I'm kinda conflicted on that one in the English context. In the eras where it was law for every man to practice with a bow the relative training gap may be less than what one would expect. It would certainly still be there, but in some of the eras we're talking about proficiency with a bow wasn't an entirely uncommon skillset. Now perhaps not the big boy warbows, but basic rabbit bows weren't terribly uncommon.
@@timothym9398 And as suggested in the video, less heavy bows could've been more useful in such a situation anyway.
@@timothym9398 It's not just the training, it's also the physical fitness. Castles were not just fortifications, but also homes and refuges for the elderly, children and women. Realistically, I think Tod is more of a representative example of the kind of guys you would have manning the castles than Joe is. Especially if there's a war going on and field armies are on the move. Joe is basically the iconic English longbowman making up the numbers in the King's army. Meanwhile Tod is the "Joe we have at home".
That chamfer on the low part of the castellation really shows its functionality especially when considering close in defence.
I think the key is, "archers of the better sort," as Richard II put it, were never common. So if you need some ordinary guy to defend the keep, you'll be better off giving him the crossbow.
Thing is you can have non trained individuals/ young men loading 3-4 crossbows and one experienced "archer" firing the crossbow and handing it off to be reloaded. The rate of fire would be pretty high with only one person "exposed" with the most experienced individual able to take the shots.
So much fun watching you guys enjoying yourselfs!
Always good to get another video with Joe!
I don't often open youtube anymore, but nothing makes me smile as bright as seeing a Tod flick in my subscriber feed
As always loved the video and am intrigued to learn more! Hopefully you can find a thick walled castle soon!
Thanks for another fantastic video. I guess that one advantage Tod has with his crossbow is that his weapon doesn't require the level of practice and fitness that the bow requires.
Now we just need to get someone with a handgonne to join in this series. 👍
Great video, thank you! I'm with you Tod, I think crossbows are very cool, but always still wondering how they get so much credit over a bow (because they're great! thanks Joe by the way, your longbow skills are AWESOME!). There's always more to learn and I appreciate you showing us what you've learned and for keeping an open and honestly inquisitive mind as you try things and discover
Ease of use: A lifetime of dedication vs. three days of training.
Crossbows heavily outnumber bows as soon as you get into an urbanised/militia context, where a bow is reliant on good craftsmanship, proper (rare) natural materials and extensive training crossbow can be quickly massproduced by people who aren't experts from materials readily available, issued to people who never held one or just have some passing familiarity with it and still be used effectively, especially in a defensive scenario.
Great video! I cant say enough how much i enjoy watching the both of you.
I love to see videos like this, it really puts things into perspectivce to see practical tests like this, keep up the good work