Archers VS Crossbowmen

this video was made possible thanks to your donations on patreon so thank you ever so also Metatron merchandise available through teespring link in the description below hey number ones great to have you here archers and crossbowmen are two of the most iconic representations of medieval soldiers probably second only to the figure of the medieval knight in shining armor in people's minds now in the Middle Ages some countries preferred one over the other to give two examples the English are particularly famous for their long bowmen in England although it wasn't the only country to use long bone in medieval times had a policy whereby people had to practice archery on a regular basis so archery was a literal part of medieval English culture and society an example of a very famous military crossbowmen call where the january's crossbowmen who acted as defenders of the Republic of Genoa but also as mercenaries fighting for other Italian and European powers now on this video we'll will compare these two different kinds of missile troops analyzing their weapons training and battlefield tactical deployment the bow and arrow as a ranged weapons system are in fact one of the early kinds of weapons used for hunting by humans predating recorded history and were common to many prehistoric cultures the bow and arrow appear around the transition from the upper paleolithic to the Mesolithic after the end of the last glacial period use of the bow seems to have spread to almost every inhabited region so it was a very common weapon or hunting tool what makes the longbow such a powerful weapon isn't in its power or draw weight the size of the longbow together with a weights constructed allows it to reach very high poundage of draw weight increasing its range and penetrative power the crossbow is similar in principle to the bow but it achieves the storage of potential energy by the means of a prod which is the name of the bow like element in the front of the main frame of the weapon now it is during the Middle Ages that crossbows became very popular in Europe however again although the bow is a much older weapon system than the crossbow handheld crossbows we're already news in China as far back as at least six in 50 BC where some crossbow locks made of cast bronze have been found the earliest textual evidence of the handheld crossbow used in battle dates to the 4th century BC and held crossbows with complex bronze trigger mechanism have also been found with the Terracotta Army in the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi the first emperor of China just like with a bow draw weight poundage increases financially in medieval times making medieval crossbows much more of a effective and definitive weapon now one thing that often is overlooked and I'd like to underline here is that a bows draw must be maintained manually by the archer pulling the book bowstring and this is done using his fingers his arm and his back muscles so holding together that frame demands a significant amount of physical strength and stamina and it cannot be done for very long in fact it can't really be done for more than a few seconds when we're talking about war bows and this is a very important thing because oftentimes when we look at the movies for example and generally speaking fantasy the bow and arrow is usually used by the weaker kind of characters whether it be a very thin female warrior whether it be very thin elves now I'm not saying that that wouldn't be possible of course it would be possible and that is because draw weight significantly changes you can have 40 pounds of draw weight bows you can have a hundred and twenty pounds draw weight bows and even more so the thing is that yes if you have a bow that is very weak then a weak person could use it but a bow like that would have basically no penetrative power against any kind of armor to be honest even padding can stop both whereas in the movie or in role-playing games we see very weak characters using very weak bows and the reason why we know that with bows is because they hold them even during conversation so they keep the frame pulling by the string and they're just talking to you which would be absolutely impossible with an actual war bow with proper poundage and when they finally released the arrow the it has so much strength that he can actually go through mail our mic and go through padding it can even go through breastplate and shields it's ridiculous so that does not work now a crossbow however uses a locking mechanism to maintain the draw so this is a big advantage towards the crossbow in my opinion because you can literally pull the string into lock and then walk around all day with your crossbow always ready to shoot and this is important it's a big advantage for the crossbow because the crossbow can always be ready to shoot with a bow it's realistically a lot more difficult I mean even if we sort of step away from the battle further for the historical battles and jump into even movies and role-playing games if you walk around with a crossbow it is always ready to shoot you can literally just hold it in one hand while you're doing something else with your other hand or you're checking a map or something and then you hear a noise and boom you're ready to shoot immediately with a bow it's more difficult realistically I mean yes you can walk around ready but that is only if you're literally expecting something to happen because the moment you don't have your arrow in your hand and it's in your quiver then you need to take the arrow pull the string aim and shoot whereas with a crossbow you can just aim and shoot and that is an important thing and talking about aiming this is again something that is a an almost advantage 1/2 advantage I think the idea of also being able to aim for longer because again if you don't have this problem or having to hold with your own bat muscle strength the position in order to aim it also allows you to aim for longer clearly this though I call it 1/2 advantage because yes it could help with accuracy but on the other hand it will significantly reduce the rate of fire if we want to use that word if you take too long to aim but again arrows are limited including on a battlefield so I think you do want every shot to count so the air of perhaps aiming for a bit longer so that you can have a more precise shoot or loose losing of arrows could still be considered an advantage even if it means shooting less arrows per minute if you will another important thing is and then upon a question is how long does it take to reload the weapon and be again ready to lose another volley well here's the thing in this case the bow takes the cake because with a bow you can as you know you're holding the string you release you shoot your first arrow and then you take your next one from your quiver or like they would do in battle you would just put them on the ground so you can just you know lose the first take the the next one loose take the next one loose doing it properly clearly so you need to bring it all the way back to your ear and everything but it is definitely quicker than reloading a crossbow so the crossbow has the advantage of being always ready to shoot but after the first arrow or bolt has been shot then it takes longer to reload a crossbow than it does to reload a bow so again in this in this case the archer is better however we do need to keep in mind that for example professional crossbow men like the general East crossbowmen but usually you had a little crew so you have the crossbow man himself you have someone who takes a tear of the pavese or pelvis shield and then you had another member of the crew who was taking care of reloading the crossbow sometimes you could even have two crossbows so that's something again you could do even in a fantasy setting so you can imagine that if you have a very rich character who is like it I don't know a knight a hero and he's got a lot of money then he could buy two crossbows and he can have one of his servants to always have one ready so he shoots the first gives it to his servant the servant passes him the next one he shoots and in the meantime the servant is reloading so again that's something that was done it certainly it could be done still doesn't make the crossbow men as quick as the archer and of course you need to pay all these other people they need to take care of the shield etc but it does help a little bit in how quickly a crossbow man can continue shooting probably the most important aspect of this comparison is training so the huge difference between the amount of time you need to train an effective archer and the amount of time you need to train an effective crossbowmen for battle is humongous it's incredible and is my opinion as a history enthusiast that this is the actual reason why many Republic's in Italy or for example the kingdom of Bohemia became crossbow countries so heavy crossbow users rather than choosing to deploy archers on the battlefield so to cut a long story short to train an effective archer you need years you need years to develop the sort of strength you need to utilize a war bow effectively on the other hand to train an effective crossbowmen you need I'm gonna say weeks it is important on the line though to use these weapons for a bowl you need strength and accuracy for a crossbow you need accuracy so clearly to develop accuracy you do need time okay so if you just gave a crossbow to a soldier and given two weeks he won't be very good at hitting targets but it can still use the crossbows if you give a wall bow to a and an archer and have him trained with a bow for two weeks it won't even be able to pull the string that's the main difference so of course professional crossbowmen like the general use crossbowmen who actually shot and trained for years would still be probably the only ones who could really would be a much more effective kind of crossbowmen than those who will be training like in a month but still they can use those weapons they can operate the crossbows effectively in battle again not as accurately but they can still point and shoot in fact this is interesting because again if we dive into the world of role-playing games we see the generally speaking rumbling games in the majority or on planes whether it be Daniels and Dragons or Dragon Age Origins or Dark Souls you need strength to use swords the bigger the more strength you need and you need Xterra t to use bows and generally speaking missile weapons now the reality is the exact opposite you need strength to use bows and you need externally to use sauce simply because a sword is much more of a technical weapon and the fitter you are the quicker you can move the better you'll be able to be at exploiting the gaps in the armor of your opponent if you are fighting against someone in armor and you don't have a mace or generally speaking to just place a proper hit and recover from it you don't really need to be a brute to use a sword as I have mentioned in many videos including this one which is probably the most in-depth analysis that I did which was a collaboration with Matt Eastern from scholars auditorium but for Bo's why do you need the Xterra T the reason why we often see this in role-playing games is because usually these are squishy characters roguelike and they jump and they're thieves and they're elves and they do this and they do that and that's why we we interlocked we juxtapose these two concepts you use a bow you knee dexterity but in reality no you need strength because you do if you don't have enough strength you can't pull the string back enough to generate in the story enough power to use the weapon on the other hand in a battle Archer is a very stationary kind of Troop they just plant that Palisades stick the arrows on the ground and start shooting so unless you're a mounted Archer I'm gonna say you need no zero dexterity to use a and bow effectively but you do need a lot of strength to pull the string so I'd like to finish with a question for you if you wear a medieval nobleman and you had a lot of money and you needed to raise an army would you rather raise an army of archers would you rather raise an army across bowmen if it were me I would choose the crossbow man but that's just personal preference I'm not stating here the crossbow men are superior to archers are not because we do know that they have met on the field and the archers have performed very very well oftentimes victory was not a matter of who chose what but how they use these different kinds of cause and troops and Ally troops on the other hand just as personal preference if I were a medieval nobleman I would invest on crossbowmen and the crossbow is my favorite kind of ranged weapon please let me know what you think in the comments below well I never wants well I hope that you enjoyed this video if you did please remember thumbs up and subscribe to my channel for more content from the Metatron become another one if you are still not one and thank you so much for stopping by and remember them that one has spread his wings goodbye you

Channel: Metatron

Views: 242,116

Rating: 4.9161487 out of 5

Keywords: metatron, nerdy, geeky, italian, japan, italy, language, d&d, larp, mmorpg, history, samurai, ninja, sword, armour, armor, bushido, rome, ancient, weapons, gaijiin, warrior, linguist, gear, archery, bow, bowmen, crossbow, crossbowmen, medieval, vs, versus, shield, army

Id: xD3Lw8GJbPg

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 09 2019