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“If the crossbow was at a disadvantage in open battle, it was supremely suited to the castle-based hostilities so central to medieval warfare.” With this statement, Hardy and Strickland, two of the leading experts on the subject, summarize an opinion held by many historians and history buffs: that the longbow is a battle weapon, while the crossbow is a siege weapon. But is this really the case? Some recent experiments raise questions about this claim, and if we look closely at the available literature, there is actually very little research on how archers and crossbowmen were historically employed in sieges. In particular, there are many unanswered questions about the practical and tactical use of crossbows.
00:00 The most common arguments
03:34 Unwieldy longbow, handy crossbow?
07:58 Crossbow - weapon of the Marksmen?
12:16 Reloadtime - disadvantage of the Crossbow:?
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Bibliography
Bradbury, Jim, The Medieval Archer, Woodbrige 1985.
Crowley, Anna B., Appendix, in: Hardy, Robert/Strickland, Matthew, The Great Warbow. From Hastings to the Mary Rose, Somerset 2011, pp. 408-414.
DeVries, Kelly, “Catapults Are Not Atomic Bombs: Towards a Redefinition of ‘Effectiveness’ in Premodern Military Technology”, in: War in History 4, No. 4 (November 1997), pp. 454-470.
Devries, K., Medieval Military Technology, 1994.
Durand, Pierre, L'expérimentation de tir dans les châteaux: de nouvelles perspectives pour la castellologie, in: BM 156 (1998), pp. 257-74.
Green, David, The Hundred Year’s War: A People’s History, Padstow 2014.
Payne-Gallwey, Ralph, The Crossbow: Its Military and Sporting History, Construction and Use, London 1903.
Prestwich, Michael, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience, (1996, repr. Hong Kong, 2006.
Purton, Peter, A History of the Early Medieval Siege c.450-1200, Woodbridge 2009.
Rogers, Clifford J., Tactics and the Face of Battle, in: Tallet, Frank/Trim, D. J. B. (Ed.), European Warfare 1350-1750, Cambridge 2010.
Rogers, Clifford J., The Efficacy of the English Longbow, 1998.
Hardy, Robert/Strickland, Matthew, The Great Warbow. From Hastings to the Mary Rose, Somerset 2011.
Soar, H., Gibbs, J., Jury, C., Stretton, M., Secrets of the English War Bow. Westholme, 2010, pp. 127-151.