Got a Real World Weapons or Armour Question? Mk XII

[Mr. Mask]

It's worth mentioning here though because it has some historical resonance. One of the things were are trying to figure out right now in the HEMA world is what the context of the fight books, especially the unarmored fencing (what the Germans call 'blossfechten') really is precisely. There has been a lot of analysis of criminal and medical (barbers) records from England, France, Flanders, towns in the Holy Roman Empire and Italy show that while fights and informal duels were quite common, often with weapons and not unusually with swords, yet very serious injuries were rare. One ratio I've seen (which hasn't been published yet) looks like 150 fights to 1 death in Medieval France and 200 to 1 a major Italian city (Florence) in Italy in the same period. When this changed (when mortality from dueling rose dramatically in France in the 16th Century for example) the authorities started to really crack down.

G

What sort of injuries were common? With those kinds of disagreements, the goal is to humiliate and scare your opponent. Similar to social brawling, there's a conscious desire to not use lethal force.

[Galloglaich]

Exactly.


I'll venture that the vast majority of people who throw punches do so without wanting to kill anybody. While brawling for status and/or to settle disputes can indeed cause serious injuries and death, a fair amount of the time it doesn't. I know folks who tend to fight dozens of times a year - maybe more - and rarely if ever receive anything worse than bruises, bloody noses, and black eyes. These things hurt, of course, but they're not a huge health risk.

I have to agree with Incanur ... lets just say that I have ... certain strong evidence that in the punk subculture in one big city back in the 80's it was pretty routine for young men (and sometimes women) to get in fights almost every weekend but serious injuries were rare. Nobody wanted to go to jail, the purpose of encounters between little factions or different (sub)cultural groups is usually to quickly establish dominance and disperse before the police show up (or before the bouncers kick everybody out of the show). In California in the 90's the same thing existed on a larger scale with the gang world that overlapped with the punk scene over there. Not all gangs or gang members were real 'killers', and not all gangs were or are as tough or dangerous as they usually portray on TV, (but they are a pain in the ass and bring bad drama everywhere).

Usually there are sort of venues (like zones where there are a lot of bars, big outdoor concerts, or big punk shows, or certain types of parties) where that kind of somewhat limited mayhem can take place. Part of being a good survivor is being able to tell the difference from a crowded zone (with lots of witnesses) where people are drinking and a somewhat limited brawl could jump off pretty easily* vs. a lonely street where people are likely to get mugged or killed. The latter is where all those hard core survival rules are really more applicable, the former is pretty easy to avoid if you don't want to put yourself in the mix - but are places where if you do get in a fight, escalating things can actually be more rather than less dangerous.

Not that really bad things couldn't happen, in those areas where people drink (like the French Quarter here in New Orleans or on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, just to cite two examples among many), bad things do happen, from what I've seen more often with inexperienced people who push their luck.

But if you have never lived that kind of life you would be surprised how easy it is to adapt to and learn to survive, and frankly enjoy, without getting badly hurt or in too serious of trouble with the police, though in both cases that is kind of a matter of time. Eventually that kind of life does catch up with you.

It's worth mentioning here though because it has some historical resonance. One of the things were are trying to figure out right now in the HEMA world is what the context of the fight books, especially the unarmored fencing (what the Germans call 'blossfechten') really is precisely. There has been a lot of analysis of criminal and medical (barbers) records from England, France, Flanders, towns in the Holy Roman Empire and Italy show that while fights and informal duels were quite common, often with weapons and not unusually with swords, yet very serious injuries were rare. One ratio I've seen (which hasn't been published yet) looks like 150 fights to 1 death in Medieval France and 200 to 1 a major Italian city (Florence) in Italy in the same period. When this changed (when mortality from dueling rose dramatically in France in the 16th Century for example) the authorities started to really crack down.

G

* there are also similar parties and social venues where much more truly dangerous violence can take place - but these things are usually part of a pattern which is known by a lot of people in advance. Some places and some people like to play this much more dangerous kind of game, so the stakes are raised if you are decide to take the risk of going to parties like that.

[Spiryt]

Armour not constructed as a single piece would be another major complication - a number of sources report mail being pretty much impervious to cutting/slashing attacks.

There are period sources about mail being sliced open, quite interesting, although usually it stills does the job, so saves the wearer from harm.

Here's an example of what I would regard as a good test: English Longbow Testing.
As with most bow/crossbow tests however, the lethality is calculated in the same manner as firearm/body armour tests with joules/penetration/ballistic material deformation as the main measure of success or failure.

This test is without doubt one of the better out there.

I just wish he would release few arrows to the target itself, or just the gambeson. It's always good to see what happens when armor is not there, and how medium behaves in general.

With so many test attempts, with different targets, it would be useful.

Minor complain would be that those calculations seem a bit bonked, bow efficiency of 0.9 is way too high in any meaning of the word.

And I seriously doubt that 110 bow would be sufficient to match point blank 75 pounder energies at 200 yards.... Arrows just slow down way to easily.

While it's just about possible for a very strong man with a two handed blow to achieve 200J with an axe or sword, you only need a good archer (or a crossbow) to achieve their respective energies.

Energies above 100J you either need some some strong bow and, in turn, skilled archer, or big crossbow.

So it's pretty hard in either case.

I also can't see a reference to any other considerations like how much energy is transmitted to the underlying material - sure you may need 200J to penetrate a mail coif, but you probably need considerably less energy to cause his brains to start leaking out of his ears.

People sometimes get 'knocked down' pretty badly in 13th century reenactment - hard glaive thrust to the liver will do the damage.

But it's something entirely survivable and can not even disable one from combat for too long, so are even the broken bones.

While liver being skewered by said glaive is entirely not survivable.

The 120J for a bodkin also seems a bit high, given that the previous longbow test linked calculated a 74.1J input and only the short bodkin (but both broadheads) failed to cause probable death by NIJ standards against high quality riveted mail.

Composition of target etc. can make absolutely all difference in the world.

It's also very, very probable that this mail wouldn't pass as 'high quality' in actual medieval, at all. It's very hard to get hands on something like that today. And the one used look Indian made.

Lastly, 18 gauge plus 8mm inside diameter is rather light mail - you can easily see it's loose, and 'empty' spaces are large and visible.

So in the end, those differences in penetration aren't weird at all, as there's so many things to explain them.

[Galloglaich]

What sort of injuries were common? With those kinds of disagreements, the goal is to humiliate and scare your opponent. Similar to social brawling, there's a conscious desire to not use lethal force.

This is something we are trying to figure out right now, and the research is very much still being done - I'm one of the people working on it for a lecture in September and then (if I can make the deadline) a paper next year. It's still too early to really say anything definitively but right now it looks like in Germany, people are often struck with the flat of a blade in the early parts of a fight. Bruises and minor cuts result. More serious fights quickly lead to stabbings and maiming cuts.

It's confusing and hard to categorize though because the legal records include many incidents where no actual contact was actually made (people clashed swords, or somebody threw something, but nobody was hit) as well as placing almost an equivalent 'weight' to verbal insults and things like tipping off someone's hat or making a threatening gesture; while the barbers records (mostly from Italy) include a lot of marginal injuries which aren't categorized (i.e. we don't know of it was a contusion or a cut or a thrust). However some records are very detailed and have multiple witness testimony so while the aggregate is tricky to sort out, we can look at some specific cases, the hard part is to guess how representative they are.

There is a notable difference in the law which I suspect impacts how fights went. In the HRE, striking someone that had insulted you quickly with the flat of your blade could stop a further escalation of the fight and was likely to be deemed legal or a 'fair fight', whereas in England or Italy it was important to be perceived as acting in self defense. English coroners records for example are full of cases where a guy was killed in which the other guy (who killed him) claims to have been backing away when the victim 'fell on their sword'.


Once they do escalate, the 'serious' fights seem to have a very high lethality rate as I've indicated from some French and Burgundian records upthread a way. This is also corroborated by the German records I've seen. The most lethal were stabs to the abdomen. The quickest death from cuts or stabs to the neck.

G

[Incanur]

Regardling yew longbow efficiency, managing 74 J with a 75lb bow at an arrow weight of over 13 grains per lb stands roughly consistent with high-end figures from tests of Mary Rose reproduction bows. The hypothetical 110lb bow at under 10 grains per lb most likely wouldn't perform as well as estimated, but Matthew Strickland and Robert Hardy argue convincingly that 150-160lbs was the average from the Mary Rose. The heaviest arrow tested delivered over 80 J at maximum range, which was 67% of its initial kinetic energy. That's from a 150lb bow.

Regardling injuries, as mentioned and linked to earlier, sixteenth-century English coronor's rolls include a notable number of quickly or immediately incapacitating sword cuts to the head, some of which penetrated beyond 3 inches.

[Spiryt]

Bow launching arrow with energy in Joules being roughly equivalent to bow's draw weight in pounds is generally surprisingly accurate and convenient 'quick and dirty' approximation.

As long as we talk about roughly 'standard' arrows, so weighing in that range of ~ 9 to 15ish grains per pound of draw. Lighter ones will obviously have lesser energy, especially from self-bows, and heavier ones will have more, at expense of velocity, accuracy and so on.

Better bows could pull off more, sluggish ones less, efficiency will lower with very heavy bows, due to sort of diminishing returns between draw weight and bow arms bulk,. but as 'quick and dirty' thing, it works.

[Galloglaich]

Everything I've read, and been told personally is that 120 lbs is probably closer to the realistic high end for the English bows than some of those higher estimates, though you will hear aggressive assertions to the contrary by some folks.

G

[Incanur]

Everything I've read, and been told personally is that 120 lbs is probably closer to the realistic high end for the English bows than some of those higher estimates, though you will hear aggressive assertions to the contrary by some folks.

I'll be one of those folks. I take it you haven't read The Great Warbow. According to Matthew Strickland, Robert Hardy, and company, the Mary Rose bows top out at 172-180lbs and average at 150-160lbs. This roughly matches the regulation infantry bow numbers from various Chinese regional sources. See Stephen Selbey's Chinese Archery. Cavalry bow examination figures, on the other hand, tend to fall into the 80-120lb range. Reconstructions and measurements of composite bows from Turkey to China present the same picture. Given the mediocre efficiency of even the best yew longbows tested, an average of 150lbs or more strikes as necessary to explain the countless glowing accounts of English strength and prowess.

It's important to remember that draw weight varied according to the archer's strength. For instance, a seventeenth-century Chinese source says that a weak archer draws 80lbs, an average one 125-140lbs, a strong one 150-160lbs, and an exceptionally strong one over this last amount. Eighteenth-century Chinese sources indicate that significant numbers of troops could only pass examination with rather weak bows, as low as approximately 70lbs. (This wasn't considered acceptable.) English texts don't give numbers but they make it clear strength varied. Certainly some archers would have used 120lb bows, or maybe even 80lbs ones, though anything lower gets into the extreme low end. Similarly, some would have draw 180lbs or perhaps even more. Sir John Smythe wrote that there were many who could shoot flight arrows up to 440 yards.

At an average of 120lbs, English archery would have been rather lacking compared with Middle Eastern and Asian archery. It's not inconceivable, but I think the great renown English archers won stands more consistent with higher numbers. In fact, I even find merit in the argument that the Mary Rose bows likely had lower draw weights than the peak of English archery in the fifteenth century. Naval combat hardly calls for the same level of power as trying to stop an armored cavalry charge.

[Matthew]

Everything I've read, and been told personally is that 120 lbs is probably closer to the realistic high end for the English bows than some of those higher estimates, though you will hear aggressive assertions to the contrary by some folks.

It all depends on the hypothetical data sample, I suppose. For the sake of argument, if the King of England had 1,000,000 able bodied men practising with the long bow on holidays and Sundays, how many of them are going to be drawing over 90 lbs? Very high end draw weights are going to be few and far between, but if we consider that maybe only 1% of this total are in military service as "long bowmen", then we can expect a higher average and the proportion of very high end draw weights to be higher. Narrowing the numbers down to an elite crew of c. 100 aboard a royal flagship (0.01% of the available manpower) and we can expect the numbers to be higher again. So, the average and high end average is going to depend on the total number of bows considered.

[Mr. Mask]

G:

Spoiler

Show

This is something we are trying to figure out right now, and the research is very much still being done - I'm one of the people working on it for a lecture in September and then (if I can make the deadline) a paper next year. It's still too early to really say anything definitively but right now it looks like in Germany, people are often struck with the flat of a blade in the early parts of a fight. Bruises and minor cuts result. More serious fights quickly lead to stabbings and maiming cuts.

It's confusing and hard to categorize though because the legal records include many incidents where no actual contact was actually made (people clashed swords, or somebody threw something, but nobody was hit) as well as placing almost an equivalent 'weight' to verbal insults and things like tipping off someone's hat or making a threatening gesture; while the barbers records (mostly from Italy) include a lot of marginal injuries which aren't categorized (i.e. we don't know of it was a contusion or a cut or a thrust). However some records are very detailed and have multiple witness testimony so while the aggregate is tricky to sort out, we can look at some specific cases, the hard part is to guess how representative they are.

There is a notable difference in the law which I suspect impacts how fights went. In the HRE, striking someone that had insulted you quickly with the flat of your blade could stop a further escalation of the fight and was likely to be deemed legal or a 'fair fight', whereas in England or Italy it was important to be perceived as acting in self defense. English coroners records for example are full of cases where a guy was killed in which the other guy (who killed him) claims to have been backing away when the victim 'fell on their sword'.


Once they do escalate, the 'serious' fights seem to have a very high lethality rate as I've indicated from some French and Burgundian records upthread a way. This is also corroborated by the German records I've seen. The most lethal were stabs to the abdomen. The quickest death from cuts or stabs to the neck.

G

Will your lecture be on Youtube EDU at some point?


That is a right mess of information. An interesting point which differs from today, is they're using real weapons to handle these disputes. When suitably careful, it doesn't end up so bad, smacking people with the side of a blade to say, "I could have cut your head off just then" and other such pleasantries. But... you don't need to try hard to get deadly injuries. Bludgeoning each other with fists, it's fairly hard to get a fatality, unless you make use of something (brick wall, etc.), or stomp your opponent while they're on the ground (which requires the fight to last long enough for them to be grounded and stomped), there's more leeway before things get fatal.

It's interesting that it was a society which tries to resolve social issues violently, yet doesn't want to kill or maim the other party, yet uses killing tools for this purpose.

[xeo]

Not quite armour or weapons...but does anyone know how long Crusaders kept using the war cry of "Deus Vult"? It's heavily identified with the First Crusade and the Latin Kingdoms in the Holy Land but did it die out with them? Or did later crusaders, like the Order of San Stefano, continue to use it as well as their own war cries?

[Brother Oni]

Can anyone give me a detailed breakdown on the types of arms and tactics used during the Wat Tyler Rebellion, in 1381 in England?

Still keeping an eye out for things and I found this interestingly documentary on the 100 Year's War and it indicates the famous English defensive formation that allowed them to fare so well against the French was first seen at the Battle of Dupplin Moor 1332.

It consisted of a central block of infantry (or dismounted knights) flanked by two wings of archers, forming a crescent moon shape. The formation allowed enfilade fire by the archers (suitably protected from the infantry by higher ground and/or field works) on an engaged French host.

[Galloglaich]

G: Will your lecture be on Youtube EDU at some point?

It will be on youtube, like last years, associated with the event (a fencing tournament in Boston).

...

It's interesting that it was a society which tries to resolve social issues violently, yet doesn't want to kill or maim the other party, yet uses killing tools for this purpose.

Yes, it seems strange from a modern perspective, it's also odd to think of their obsession with honor that is taken to such lengths. To be honest the more I learn about this world, the more I realize how little we really understand it.

It all depends on the hypothetical data sample, I suppose. (snip) if we consider that maybe only 1% of this total are in military service as "long bowmen", then we can expect a higher average and the proportion of very high end draw weights to be higher. Narrowing the numbers down to an elite crew of c. 100 aboard a royal flagship (0.01% of the available manpower) and we can expect the numbers to be higher again. So, the average and high end average is going to depend on the total number of bows considered

Yes, good point. I will freely admit, I don't know that much about bows* or English history. I've read strong, convincing arguments that the realistic average is closer to an 80lbs draw, and of course the Great Warbow and it's adherents, as so ably summarized by Incanur, that they were 160lbs draw. And then there are people who insist that there is no such thing as a longbow.

We know those types of bows have been around since the Neolithic, they seem to have become a really important military weapon in the British Isles in the 12th and 13th Century and certainly show a lot more in records by the 14th century on the Continent (esp. in Burgundy, Englands closest ally during most of the 100 years war.) During this period it seems like the weapon itself was refined and were becoming more powerful. This may have peaked in the 16th century when they started getting replaced by firearms.

People I trust who know more than I do about bows have convinced me that once the "English Warbow" variant of the "longbow" (both modern provisional terms which were not in use as widely in the period as they are today) appeared, the 'sweet spot', very roughly, was 120 lbs. This is at best a good guess. But they have talked me into it in between all these other things.

Still keeping an eye out for things and I found this

Do we have any evidence that tactics like this or longbows were used in the Wat Tyler rebellion?

G

* I did buy one though as well as a crossbow to re-acquaint myself with archery....

[Brother Oni]

Yes, it seems strange from a modern perspective, it's also odd to think of their obsession with honor that is taken to such lengths. To be honest the more I learn about this world, the more I realize how little we really understand it.

Given the lengths that other cultures will go to 'preserve' their honour, I think that it can be understood if you have a suitable frame of reference.

Do we have any evidence that tactics like this or longbows were used in the Wat Tyler rebellion?

It's unlikely that such tactics were used, since there was only really one set piece battle during the rebellion (Battle of North Walsham), for which there are no eye witness accounts. It's got another example of a fighting cleric though: Henry le Despenser.

After dispersing at Smithfield where Wat Tyler was killed, the rebel leaders were systematically hunted down, captured and executed, so very few battlefield tactics were really needed.

That said, it was a contemporary tactic, and both the Assize of Arms 1252 and the Second Archery Law of 1363 (enforcing 2 hours compulsory practice on a Sunday) would reinforce the fact that quite a far few longbowmen were around.

Doing a bit of digging, it suggests that the 100 Years War was a bit quiet during 1381, since both the English and the French had problems trying to pony up money for the war effort (French problems included a three way regency for the newly crowned 12 year old Charles VI not to mention a revolt of their own.).

* I did buy one though as well as a crossbow to re-acquaint myself with archery....

I know you have a fibreglass pulley crossbow - what's the bow if you don't mind my asking?

[Galloglaich]

Oh it makes sense to me... what I meant is today we usually tend to think of honor as something associated with Asian or Middle Eastern societies. But among those rowdy lads we were talking about earlier, honor was a 'thing'. Today it only seems to exist in the lower classes in our society, and often in a pathological way. It seems there is both a good and a bad side to a strong focus on honor, there were times when it has gotten out of hand and the obsession with it led to damaging feuds and senseless killings of youths, but there are is also arguably some cultural value to maintaining personal honor, in terms of social cohesion, friendship, even certain physiological effects it seems. These days we have gone very far in the opposite direction.

One thing that strikes me in those medieval legal records is that insulting someone, even a boss insulting his employees, was considered a crime potentially as serious striking someone or even attacking them with a weapon. When I think about the way I was talked to in some of the jobs I had as a youth, I find this rather amazing, and fascinating.

It's unlikely that such tactics were used, since there was only really one set piece battle during the rebellion (Battle of North Walsham), for which there are no eye witness accounts. It's got another example of a fighting cleric though: Henry le Despenser.

This 'fighting bishop' Henry le Despenser is quite an interesting character, quite the staunch partisan of the established order. I was fascinated to learn just now reading his wiki that he led a failed 'Crusade' against Flanders which was defeated by the Flemish city of Ypres! I didn't even know about that. Yet another example of a Crusade by Christian Europeans against other Europeans. I am starting to suspect that most of the Crusades were of this type.

I bought a simple fiberglass bow (with some nice wood trim) not very powerful, technically I bought it for my wife, but also to refamiliarize myself with archery. I'm planning to get one of these though pretty soon:

http://www.grozerarchery.com/index_m.htm

G

[Matthew]

This 'fighting bishop' Henry le Despenser is quite an interesting character, quite the staunch partisan of the established order. I was fascinated to learn just now reading his wiki that he led a failed 'Crusade' against Flanders which was defeated by the Flemish city of Ypres! I didn't even know about that. Yet another example of a Crusade by Christian Europeans against other Europeans. I am starting to suspect that most of the Crusades were of this type.

A good many were, but not on the same scale as something like Louis IX. Basically, "crusade" became a weapon in the arsenal of the Pope shortly after the second crusade, to be deployed against heretics [i.e. Christian enemies of the Pope] whenever useful. Of course, when you have multiple popes this gets quite crazy. That said, the crusade as a weapon against heretics was prefigured by the giving of Papal banners for the same purpose, as with William the Conqueror, who was authorised by the Pope to invade England and depose Harold precisely on the same basis [i.e. he was declared to be the wrong sort of Christian]. The "crusade" (and to be fair this word is largely a modern construct that encompasses a bunch of different but related ideas about Papal authorised wars) was an expression of an ongoing process by which successive Popes were able to transform religious authority into military action and political capital.

[Galloglaich]

I think if you add up the numbers, the size of the armies, the amount of people killed, the acereage of land devastated, numbers of cities destroyed, the money spent and so on, the European vs. European Crusades may actually rival the European vs. Central Asian / Arab / North African Muslim ones.

The three big intra-European Crusades which quickly come to mind are the 100 year + Northern Crusades, against pagans in the Baltic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_crusades

...the Cathars Crusade which essentially depopulated a good part of Southern France for 20 years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade

...and the catastrophically failed Hussite Crusades which devastated much of Bohemia and then in turn, a great deal of Germany when the heretics went on their reprisals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussite_Wars

On top of all these, I keep running into dozens of smaller ones like this one I'd never even heard about in Flanders, which increasingly makes me start to think the biggest victims of the Crusades were other Europeans.

G

[Incanur]

I've read strong, convincing arguments that the realistic average is closer to an 80lbs draw, and of course the Great Warbow and it's adherents, as so ably summarized by Incanur, that they were 160lbs draw.

80lbs would make English archery almost laughable. That was considered the minimum respectable amount for a horse archer in eighteenth-century China. As mentioned, a seventeenth-century Chinese text assigns an 80lb draw weight to weak archers. A survey of Ottoman bows estimates average draw weight at 111lbs. Again, that's for a culture making heavy using of mounted archery. Thus you have English archers using bows that are both weaker and less efficient than Middle Eastern and Asian bows.

120lbs, maybe. But 80lbs gets downright silly.

[Galloglaich]

80lbs would make English archery almost laughable. That was considered the minimum respectable amount for a horse archer in eighteenth-century China. As mentioned, a seventeenth-century Chinese text assigns an 80lb draw weight to weak archers. A survey of Ottoman bows estimates average draw weight at 111lbs. Again, that's for a culture making heavy using of mounted archery. Thus you have English archers using bows that are both weaker and less efficient than Middle Eastern and Asian bows.

120lbs, maybe. But 80lbs gets downright silly.

Perhaps but I'm sure you know, draw weight is only one of many factors which determine how effective a bow is. Size, draw length, the type and weight of arrows used (apparently quite different between English and Central Asian weapons) the method of release (fingers or thumb rings) and the physical properties of the bow itself all play an important role.

I know very little about the Chinese military but my understanding of the Ottomans and the Tatars, is that they a lot of the time had two bows, one for long range (often using very small dart-like flight arrows) and one for fast shooting. Both with different power. We have varying accounts of this (some people even argue that they didn't always, or ever, shoot from horseback which I find a little ridiculous).

We also know the Mughals used steel bows extensively which we really don't even understand at this point - I've yet to see a plausible explanation of how they really worked or why they were used. On paper they seem to be non-starters, but there is ample evidence that they were widely used in the 16th and 17th Century.

The bottom line is I just think despite all the admirable research efforts in longbows and recurve's in particular in the last 20 years or so we really don't know that much yet about the use of bows (and even less about crossbows) in warfare in the medieval and early modern period, let alone back into antiquity (the Parthians and Sassanids and the Cretans and so forth).

G

[Incanur]

Size, draw length, the type and weight of arrows used (apparently quite different between English and Central Asian weapons) the method of release (fingers or thumb rings) and the physical properties of the bow itself all play an important role.

Yes, and composite bows generally perform better in any area that matters. The only thing I've heard in the longbow's favor is that it's less finicky about proper release than shorter bows. This might make it more accurate than short composite bow, except that higher arrow speed also increasing accuracy and composites shoot faster. Beyond that longbows only win in reliability.

I know very little about the Chinese military but my understanding of the Ottomans and the Tatars, is that they a lot of the time had two bows, one for long range (often using very small dart-like flight arrows) and one for fast shooting. Both with different power.

What are the sources for this? Friar John of Plano Carpini said Mongols were supposed to carry two bows or at least one good one. Bertrandon de la Broquière described Turkish archers as accurate, fast, and reasonably strong, but curiously thought European (Anglo-Burgundian?) archers shot farther and had arrows better suited for penetrating armor. Turkish composites obviously have a much longer maximum range, so I can only conclude that de la Broquière never saw the Turks practicing long-range shooting. By his description, they preferred fast and accurate shots at moderate or close range.

We have varying accounts of this (some people even argue that they didn't always, or ever, shoot from horseback which I find a little ridiculous).

That is ridiculous. As you see in Friar John of Plano Carpini, Mongol soldiers certainly kept on shooting when dismounted, but they primarily shoot from the saddle.

We also know the Mughals used steel bows extensively which we really don't even understand at this point - I've yet to see a plausible explanation of how they really worked or why they were used.

Steel bows aren't so mysterious. Though they performed worse than composite, they weren't as sensitive to moisture and temperature and could be kept strung indefinitely. They may also have been cheaper to produce. They seem to have been used mainly for defense of fortifications. In that case, you don't necessarily need a ton of power - particularly when you've got gravity on your side. Also, given the performance of some steel crossbows, I doubt steel bows were as inferior as people often think.

[Matthew]

I think if you add up the numbers, the size of the armies, the amount of people killed, the acereage of land devastated, numbers of cities destroyed, the money spent and so on, the European vs. European Crusades may actually rival the European vs. Central Asian / Arab / North African Muslim ones.

The three big intra-European Crusades which quickly come to mind are the 100 year + Northern Crusades, against pagans in the Baltic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_crusades

...the Cathars Crusade which essentially depopulated a good part of Southern France for 20 years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade

...and the catastrophically failed Hussite Crusades which devastated much of Bohemia and then in turn, a great deal of Germany when the heretics went on their reprisals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussite_Wars

On top of all these, I keep running into dozens of smaller ones like this one I'd never even heard about in Flanders, which increasingly makes me start to think the biggest victims of the Crusades were other Europeans.

Very difficult to even begin speculating, and depends heavily on what is counted and not counted. It is worth noting that outside of the big crusade expeditions there were numerous small scale endeavours just as with inward turned crusades. That said, my point was really that very large scale crusades were almost always directed against non-Christians, or at least intended to be during planning and recruitment.

[Galloglaich]

Yes, and composite bows generally perform better in any area that matters.... Beyond that longbows only win in reliability.

What are the sources for this? Friar John of Plano Carpini said Mongols were supposed to carry two bows or at least one good one.

You noted Carpini here who as you say mentions the use of two bows; the Russian Primary Chronicle, the Chronicle of Novgorod, and several of the other Chronicles from the Russian city-states (Pskov and Tver) mention this practice, Jan Dlugosz is another major source who mentions this, so do some letters by Matthias Corvinus, there is also a first hand account of John of Bollingbroke's (later King Henry IV of England) expedition to Lithuania in the 1390's (in which he brought 300 English longbowmen with him, and encountered Tartars before and during the siege of Vilnius). The various chronicles of the Teutonic Knights including the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle get into the Mongol tactics including the two bows thing and also some detail about their signaling with arrows and some details of their dirty tricks like use of chemical and biological weapons (Dlugosz covers this quite a bit as well). There is also a 14th Century Genoese document which covers trade journeys down the Silk Road in a great deal of detail which includes some stuff about the Mongol / Tatar military tactics, but I can't remember what it was called right now (and don't have my bibliographies handy since I'm at work). Finally the Mongols records themselves, notably the Jami' al-tawarikh which is a 14th Century Mongol / Persian book of history from the Mongol point of view.

, Bertrandon de la Broquière described Turkish archers as accurate, fast, and reasonably strong, but curiously thought European (Anglo-Burgundian?) archers shot farther and had arrows better suited for penetrating armor. Turkish composites obviously have a much longer maximum range, so I can only conclude that de la Broquière never saw the Turks practicing long-range shooting. By his description, they preferred fast and accurate shots at moderate or close range.

Well, these 'curious' discrepancies between many eyewitnesses and what we think we understand today is one of the reasons why I say we don't really know how they were used or how they worked.

But I can explain this I think, at least provisionally. For very long range shots both the Turks and the Mongols / Tatars used very light flight-arrows like little darts, which weighed as little as 20 grams or less, and in some cases were shot with runners. For closer range they used arrows which were still pretty light, around 40 grams on average. By contrast the arrows shot by an English type longbow were heavier, 60-80 grams, and arguably would be more effective at piercing shields and light armor (and say, killing horses) especially at their maximum effective range. Of course the English also used flight arrows but did not make as wide use of them, apparently.

That is ridiculous. As you see in Friar John of Plano Carpini, Mongol soldiers certainly kept on shooting when dismounted, but they primarily shoot from the saddle.

I agree it is ridiculous but it's a point of view which does have some acceptance in Academia right now.

Steel bows aren't so mysterious. Though they performed worse than composite, they weren't as sensitive to moisture and temperature and could be kept strung indefinitely. They may also have been cheaper to produce. They seem to have been used mainly for defense of fortifications. In that case, you don't necessarily need a ton of power - particularly when you've got gravity on your side. Also, given the performance of some steel crossbows, I doubt steel bows were as inferior as people often think.

These are all reasonable guesses or assumptions, especially the last, but the fact is we don't really have any good primary source literary, let alone physical / forensic / archeological data to really explain how these things worked or why they were used by what was arguably the pre-eminent military power in the region, and one which clearly could afford whatever weapons they wanted.

Very difficult to even begin speculating, and depends heavily on what is counted and not counted. It is worth noting that outside of the big crusade expeditions there were numerous small scale endeavours just as with inward turned crusades. That said, my point was really that very large scale crusades were almost always directed against non-Christians, or at least intended to be during planning and recruitment.

I think the three Crusades I mentioned (Abigensian, Northern / Baltic, and Hussite) were all done on a very large scale both in terms of men and time... and your comment reminded me of another really big one - the IVth Crusade against the Holy Land which ended up being diverted, through Venetian scheming, into the sacking of (Christian) Constantinople.

G

[Brother Oni]

These are all reasonable guesses or assumptions, especially the last, but the fact is we don't really have any good primary source literary, let alone physical / forensic / archeological data to really explain how these things worked or why they were used by what was arguably the pre-eminent military power in the region, and one which clearly could afford whatever weapons they wanted.

There are modern-ish steel bows dating back from the 1950s that I mentioned before (Apollo Merlin).
These ones tended to be unreliable and prone to metal fatigue (archers used to wear peaked caps as protection when the top limb snapped and flew towards their head at high speed), so I'll repeat my earlier PSA of please don't shoot it if you find one.

As for their historical use, could it possible be a prestige item? Much like armour or swords, being able to afford that much quality metal for a bow was a status symbol?

[Matthew]

I think the three Crusades I mentioned (Abigensian, Northern / Baltic, and Hussite) were all done on a very large scale both in terms of men and time... and your comment reminded me of another really big one - the IVth Crusade against the Holy Land which ended up being diverted, through Venetian scheming, into the sacking of (Christian) Constantinople.

I would have to look into it, but I am pretty certain none of those three would rival the big crusades (first, second, third, seventh) in terms of men and resources marshalled, involving multiple armies of tens of thousands as they did, and in the latter cases occupying the revenues of multiple kingdoms. Even the fourth crusade was low on resources by comparison. Depends how you measure it, but even so for a hundred years and more money and men were poured into the Holy Land, and afterwards into naval expeditions around and about.

[Incanur]

To clarify, there's nothing curious about Bertrandon de la Broquière's assessment of European arrows as stronger. While I don't know of any hard evidence for it, Strickland and Hardy consider 100+g arrows standard for the English bow. (Surviving Manchu war arrows reach that weight.) Yew longbows shooting 100+g arrows match or exceed the efficiency of composites shooting 20-40g arrows. (However, 80lb longbows aren't likely to ever to hit harder than 111lb composites.) De la Broquière's claim of greater range for European archers, though, only makes sense if the Turks he saw didn't practice arcing shots. Note that he personally learned to shoot from saddle with a composite bow, apparently quite easily.

No doubt there's lots we don't know about historical warfare. Personally, as I've said, I find the weight of the evidence indicates that strong archers across time and space drew 150+lbs on foot and 100+lbs mounted. The English were famously strong archers - various French, Italian, and Iberian sources attribute might to the English arm - so it's completely consistent that they wielded heavy bows. Even a four-ounce arrows from a 150lb bow would only pierce thin and/or inferior plate armor at close range, so here again the numbers fit.

[Yora]

I've been freshening up my memory for a history exam by reading the summaries of certain events on wikipedia, and browsing around with all the convenient links, I noticed that the western warships in Japan in the mid to late 1800s all seem to have rather low numbers of guns. Many only 4 or 6. Yet the pictures do make them seem like quite big vessels.

Were such warships actually on the lower range for that age, or was it common to carry only such small numbers of guns because of advances in accurace and range? I've seen the restored Vaasa in Sweden, and while it was rather big and heavily armed for the perioid (too heavy, because it sank right after launch), it looked exactly like the classic pirate ships with dozens of cannons or even over 100.

[Brother Oni]

I've been freshening up my memory for a history exam by reading the summaries of certain events on wikipedia, and browsing around with all the convenient links, I noticed that the western warships in Japan in the mid to late 1800s all seem to have rather low numbers of guns. Many only 4 or 6. Yet the pictures do make them seem like quite big vessels.

Were such warships actually on the lower range for that age, or was it common to carry only such small numbers of guns because of advances in accurace and range? I've seen the restored Vaasa in Sweden, and while it was rather big and heavily armed for the perioid (too heavy, because it sank right after launch), it looked exactly like the classic pirate ships with dozens of cannons or even over 100.

Japanese naval power was negligible at that time (From what I can find, it suggests they were still essentially using junks with little or no cannon) and ships with more cannon were generally more useful in opposing the naval ambitions of the other western nations rather than to intimidate the Japanese.

Taking a look at the ships at the Perry Expedition, you have the USS Mississippi with 10 brand new shell firing Paixhans gun, the USS Plymouth and USS Saratoga armed with 4 shell guns and 18 cannon, and the USS Susquehanna armed with a variety of cannon (15).

Meanwhile the Japanese were still effectively in their isolation of the Edo period, so their cannon technology was over 200 years old.

The Mississippi and the Susquehnna were also both steam frigates, so there's less space on board for carrying cannon as it's taken up by the propulsion system.

Looking at the Vasa, it was built over 200 years before these ships, not to mention the cannon carried by the three ships above were all considerably bigger (32 pounders compared to the 24 pounder of the Vasa).

[warty goblin]

So I was home for a week's vacation last week. One of my longstanding hobbies has been making wooden swords. I'd work in steel, but Dad's a woodworker not a blacksmith, and since I'm using his tools...

Anyway, as an experiment, I tried laying out a sword using the geometrical methods Peter Johnsson outlined in the video Galloglaich linked a couple pages back.

Well, mostly. I only had a 2.75"x40" from which to cut the blank that I would shape into the blade and tang, so I had to set my pattern to fit those dimensions. High quality red oak isn't the cheapest of materials, though it's by far my favorite for shaping blades. When well dried and oiled they are immensely strong and are hard enough to take a reasonable facsimile of an edge.

The pattern I decided on was built out of nine intersecting circles, each of four inches radius. This neatly partitioned my board into ten sections of four inches, and so didn't waste any length. The edge and length of the guard was defined by the first vesica, which gave me a six inch hilt and a seven inch long guard. The pommel was determined by the fifth of the series of alternating squares inscribed in the first circle, which turned out to be two inches on a side. This meant that a third of the hilt's length was pommel, with the other two thirds being grip. Since I've never liked the aesthetics of square pommels I decided to use a two inch diameter circle for the pommel. I also used the fifth inscribed square to determine the width of the blade at the guard.

Unfortunately I did not have time to finish the entire project. I got the fuller cut, the blade shaped, and the pommel built, leaving the guard and the final shaping of the grip. Even more unfortunately my humble carpentry skills proved slightly inadequate, so the blade ended up losing half an inch of length at the tip, and a sloppy cut with a tablesaw necessitated moving the guard half an inch forwards.

Overall however the process of laying out the weapon was immensely satisfying, and far more comfortable to work in than simply pulling measurements out of thin air and hoping for an attractive end result. Throughout the layout process it was very enjoyable and slightly wondrous to use just compass and straightedge, and watch the form of the sword emerge as an aesthetically unified whole. I'm looking forwards to finishing the sword, and am definitely using this method for all future blades.

[Mr Beer]

But among those rowdy lads we were talking about earlier, honor was a 'thing'. Today it only seems to exist in the lower classes in our society, and often in a pathological way. It seems there is both a good and a bad side to a strong focus on honor, there were times when it has gotten out of hand and the obsession with it led to damaging feuds and senseless killings of youths, but there are is also arguably some cultural value to maintaining personal honor, in terms of social cohesion, friendship, even certain physiological effects it seems. These days we have gone very far in the opposite direction.

One thing that strikes me in those medieval legal records is that insulting someone, even a boss insulting his employees, was considered a crime potentially as serious striking someone or even attacking them with a weapon. When I think about the way I was talked to in some of the jobs I had as a youth, I find this rather amazing, and fascinating.

I get the impression that politeness in general and complex etiquette in particular go hand-in-hand with dangerous societies. In a place where every man carries cold steel and feels obliged to use it if slighted, I imagine two-bit punks are less keen to run their mouths all the time. Of course the flip side is you're more likely to get stabbed in the kidneys just going about your day.

[Galloglaich]

So I was home for a week's vacation last week. One of my longstanding hobbies has been making wooden swords. I'd work in steel, but Dad's a woodworker not a blacksmith, and since I'm using his tools...

Overall however the process of laying out the weapon was immensely satisfying, and far more comfortable to work in than simply pulling measurements out of thin air and hoping for an attractive end result. Throughout the layout process it was very enjoyable and slightly wondrous to use just compass and straightedge, and watch the form of the sword emerge as an aesthetically unified whole. I'm looking forwards to finishing the sword, and am definitely using this method for all future blades.

Wow that's really neat! Got any photo's?

G