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Alyrium Denryle wrote:

Sure and they were used like that at first (see for example the various Italian condottieri, they all employed longbowmen to some degree). But eventually the longbow was not good enough or worth it vs the musket and the longbow became a luxury item.

If I remember properly, Longbowmen were still used for skirmishing during the English Civil War, but eventually it just was not worth it anymore to have the entire male english population training with longbows from the age of 7...

Trivia: The last recorded kill in combat by a longbowmen happened during the battle of Dunkirk. Yes, that battle of Dunkirk. One of the British officers involved in the rearguard fighting was a hobby archer and decided to use his bow. Managed to hit a German soldier in the chest.

Crossbows, particularly the heavy ones that used steel or composite prods, were expensive to make. However they could be stockpiled and you could train a peasant in basic military crossbow archery in a week. If you wanted speople really good at naval archery, or picking off moving targets with 300 kg draw-weight siege crossbows, you had to train them longer or they needed experience. You could fill out an army with the first group, and hire a number of specialist mercenaries if you needed them, or form such a group from within your pre-existing more experienced men.

I don't think you could fill out an army with the first group. Certainly not something that would actually threaten competent foes on the battlefield. Different thing if you were defending a city.

But even that is a far cry from training every english man-child to draw a 45-60 kg draw-weight longbow at 10-15 arrows a minute while putting the arrows in the area you want them, from the age of 7. Those are the people the english filled out the ranks of their army with. The rank-and-file, majority of the army. Much more expensive.

Hmmm. Were they really any more expensive than the Genoese, who too trained for years? I don't think this has ever really been established.

Thanas wrote:

Alyrium Denryle wrote:

Crossbows, particularly the heavy ones that used steel or composite prods, were expensive to make. However they could be stockpiled and you could train a peasant in basic military crossbow archery in a week. If you wanted speople really good at naval archery, or picking off moving targets with 300 kg draw-weight siege crossbows, you had to train them longer or they needed experience. You could fill out an army with the first group, and hire a number of specialist mercenaries if you needed them, or form such a group from within your pre-existing more experienced men.

I don't think you could fill out an army with the first group. Certainly not something that would actually threaten competent foes on the battlefield. Different thing if you were defending a city.

Why? Are we talking about maneuverability, or that melee troops could close and rout the crossbowmen before the crossbowment could rout the melee guys?

We are talking about combined arms tactics here. Crossbowmen fought in groups, each group covering the next and you also had people carrying pavises or pushing bigger versions of them. Meanwhile, you needed cavalry or infantry covering the crossbowmen themselves. This is not something poorly trained conscripts can do well.

In sieges this doesn't matter that much for obvious reasons.

Trivia: The last recorded kill in combat by a longbowmen happened during the battle of Dunkirk. Yes, that battle of Dunkirk. One of the British officers involved in the rearguard fighting was a hobby archer and decided to use his bow. Managed to hit a German soldier in the chest.

He was something of a nutcase...but I guess his methods worked.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php ... d-and-bow/

Also, didn't they use bows and arrows in sensitive areas like ammo warehouses, where gunfire would be somewhat unwise?

Hmmm. Were they really any more expensive than the Genoese, who too trained for years? I don't think this has ever really been established.

Well we know from enrollment lists that at Crecy, newly recruited longbowmen got paid 6 pence per day, while more experienced mounted (yes, mounted. Could fight like dragoons.) got paid IIRC 10-12 pence. Do you happen to know the rate of pay for genoese crossbowmen during the same period? Either way, 6 pence a day adds up when you have 5-10 thousand of them.

I don't think you could fill out an army with the first group. Certainly not something that would actually threaten competent foes on the battlefield. Different thing if you were defending a city.

Well, you could fill out a mostly feudal army. You wouldnt want them to back up an early Tercero or anything. But most battles were sieges anyway to the extent they directly engaged the enemy rather than just wait for them to starve, and attacking or defending such men would be perfectly adequate. And if nothing else, they can certainly dig siege works.

Trivia: The last recorded kill in combat by a longbowmen happened during the battle of Dunkirk. Yes, that battle of Dunkirk. One of the British officers involved in the rearguard fighting was a hobby archer and decided to use his bow. Managed to hit a German soldier in the chest.

Ah yes. Him. He was gloriously insane.

Alyrium Denryle wrote:

Hmmm. Were they really any more expensive than the Genoese, who too trained for years? I don't think this has ever really been established.

Well we know from enrollment lists that at Crecy, newly recruited longbowmen got paid 6 pence per day, while more experienced mounted (yes, mounted. Could fight like dragoons.) got paid IIRC 10-12 pence. Do you happen to know the rate of pay for genoese crossbowmen during the same period? Either way, 6 pence a day adds up when you have 5-10 thousand of them.

I'll have a look but from what I remember genoese crossbowmen commanded much higher pay throughout history.

Well, you could fill out a mostly feudal army. You wouldnt want them to back up an early Tercero or anything. But most battles were sieges anyway to the extent they directly engaged the enemy rather than just wait for them to starve, and attacking or defending such men would be perfectly adequate. And if nothing else, they can certainly dig siege works.

No, here is the problem - a crossbow needs regular maintenance with special tools. If you do not have the tools, you cannot field crossbowmen in the field over a campaign. Also, the training of the longbowmen varied wildly. For example, the crossbowmen of the french fleet (mostly contracted italian mercenaries) outshot the longbowmen left at home to defend against raiding.

A few notes from looking through a few notes:
- Like the longbow, training with the crossbow was mandatory in most Italian cities for youth and males.
- Genoese crossbowmen were paid in Gold, not in silver.
- A galley crewed by 400 men, of which 200 were crossbowmen, cost 900 florins per month.

While not exactly the same, we know the florin was valued at six shillings. This gives us 4500 shillings per month. Given that a pence is a fraction of a shilling, I can only conclude that Genoese crossbowmen were billed much higher than the longbows. (However, this includes a warship. But even if three quarters of this money was due to the ship, that still means that 200 crossbowmen were paid quite handsomely).

A bit of a nooby question:
What 'proportion' of ranged and melee combat would a professional combatant expect to see during the age where crossbows were widespread and being replaced by muskets? I read mention of melee charges to finish off an enemy, but how much of an occurance were they? Did the pike-wielding formations exist during this time?

Impossible to say, really. But the crossbow only disappeared after the thirty years war really.

Pikes were starting to make a comeback as early as the start of the 1300s (Bannockburn and the Golden Spurs), both as a weapon of offense and of defense.*

*Good pike tactics include knowing how to attack with pikes, because if you just sit there and bristle at the enemy, they can pepper you with arrows or bullets all day long. Being able to advance with pikes in hand, quickly enough that the enemy may have to fight you in close quarters, requires a bit more practice than just standing there and pointing your spear at the enemy.

The Swiss were quite good at offensive pike warfare, which is one of the reasons they became famous in the 1400s. Use of firearms to break up pike units from a distance was fairly common in the 1500s, which led to the pike-and-shot symbiosis that dominated European warfare up into the Thirty Years' War. Pikemen protected gunners from hand to hand combat, and bore the brunt of any aggressive assault on enemy lines, while the gunners tried to disrupt the enemy pike blocks and fend off enemies with guns.

By and large, the transition from bows/crossbows to firearms as the dominant weapon in European combat seems to have taken place over the course of the 1500s. By 1600 and the Thirty Years' War of 1618-48, there were still bow-armed units... but most armies didn't include many of them, and the norm was firearms almost everywhere.

Comeback? They never disappeared.

Kinda silly to talk about this without including cannon; the end of the pike was also the hayday of the infantry accompanying gun, which itself would then go mostly extinct with the death of pikes and deep formations. Took machine guns and tanks to bring it back. Ricochet fire from even the smallest cannon was pretty devestating to pikemen, since its just not possible to strongly armor legs; though a good breastplate actually may well stop a small cannon ball. By stop I mean of course that guy dies as his chest is crushed, but not folks behind him are okay as his body has caught the shot.

Makes me wonder just how much armor was directly melted down into cannons.

Thanas wrote:Comeback? They never disappeared.

My impression is that while spear and shield walls never went away, things that, say, Alexander of Macedon would recognize as a pike formation did go out of style in Europe during the early Middle Ages, at least in Western Europe. I take it I am mistaken?

Sea Skimmer wrote:Kinda silly to talk about this without including cannon; the end of the pike was also the hayday of the infantry accompanying gun, which itself would then go mostly extinct with the death of pikes and deep formations.

While artillery was on my mind when I talked about guns, looking back at my wording I see how it kind of got blurred out and I effectively implied that all this was due to muskets. To expand on what you say...

Honestly, yeah, improved artillery techniques in the early 17th century probably did more to make push of pike obsolete than any other single innovation, because they made it so much more dangerous to put troops in deep formations, for the reasons you describe. Cannons started firing faster around that time, and becoming more portable, increasing the pressure to adopt a firepower-friendly formation of longer, thinner infantry lines.

Simon_Jester wrote:

Thanas wrote:Comeback? They never disappeared.

My impression is that while spear and shield walls never went away, things that, say, Alexander of Macedon would recognize as a pike formation did go out of style in Europe during the early Middle Ages, at least in Western Europe. I take it I am mistaken?

The scots and the welsh still based their tactics around the pike. In fact, the tactics the English employed in the hundred years war were strongly influenced if not outright copied from welsh and Scottish tactics.

Also the Byzantines, who considering they held lower Italy might very well be considered western European, had pike infantry specifically designed to stop cavalry. (EDIT: Though they deployed them in a much more flexible and combined arms manner)

I dont get to talk about medieval archery and military finance with someone who knows, very often. Thank you Thanas.

A few notes from looking through a few notes:
- Like the longbow, training with the crossbow was mandatory in most Italian cities for youth and males.
- Genoese crossbowmen were paid in Gold, not in silver.
- A galley crewed by 400 men, of which 200 were crossbowmen, cost 900 florins per month.

While not exactly the same, we know the florin was valued at six shillings. This gives us 4500 shillings per month. Given that a pence is a fraction of a shilling, I can only conclude that Genoese crossbowmen were billed much higher than the longbows. (However, this includes a warship. But even if three quarters of this money was due to the ship, that still means that 200 crossbowmen were paid quite handsomely).

For the sake of math (because I am curious)
6 pence per day=15 shillings a month per archer for unmounted yeomen longbowmen recruited from the yeoman class.

If we assume that ALL 4500 shillings go to the crossbowmen, that comes to 22.5 shillings per month, per crossbowmen.
If we assume half (The ship would take a chunk, and the rowers would be paid less etc) goes to the crossbowmen, that comes to just over 11 shillings a month per crossbowmen. Either way, we get a nice range of pay for top-tier professional crossbowmen that is roughly comparable to yeoman longbowmen.

No, here is the problem - a crossbow needs regular maintenance with special tools. If you do not have the tools, you cannot field crossbowmen in the field over a campaign. Also, the training of the longbowmen varied wildly. For example, the crossbowmen of the french fleet (mostly contracted italian mercenaries) outshot the longbowmen left at home to defend against raiding.

Reference for that? I know of the raids, but the definition of "outshot" can be somewhat fungible. A longbow is well suited for massed archery on an open field. Less so for hitting single targets or fighting inside a port town.

What 'proportion' of ranged and melee combat would a professional combatant expect to see during the age where crossbows were widespread and being replaced by muskets? I read mention of melee charges to finish off an enemy, but how much of an occurance were they? Did the pike-wielding formations exist during this time?

That... depends. Close-in fighting was absolutely exhausting and no one really likes charging into a wall of spears and other pointy objects, so for example the massive full-speed infantry shock charges you see in movies are probably pure fiction outside of a few particular exceptions (be they events, or cultures with some strange customs). Especially because most of the infantry carried polearms (outside for example, dismounted knights).

My impression is that while spear and shield walls never went away, things that, say, Alexander of Macedon would recognize as a pike formation did go out of style in Europe during the early Middle Ages, at least in Western Europe. I take it I am mistaken?

Its popularity was somewhat reduced, but it never went away. As Thanas said, the Scotts and Welsh made heavy use of the Pike, though the formations were IIRC immobile and they had not figured out how to use a Schiltron to attack until the early 14th century (Falkirk, the Scottish schiltrons were immobile and got pincushioned by welsh bowmen... Bannockburn, and Robert Bruce figured out how to drill men to move in formation). There was a lot of wheel-reinvention going on, but the pike never really went away.

The English did something a bit different, and there is some debate as to the exact nature of the formation. In modern english it was called a Hedgehog. It was composed of mutually supporting infantry armed with various polearms, and longbows. Basically you have three lines of infantry, two in front, one held in reserve or to react to flanking attacks. Archers on the flanks, and between the forward infantry lines. Works best when you have a natural obstacle to protect the archer line from flanking attacks by cavalry.



An alternative is that archers and infantry were interspersed on the unit level. Each bowmen came inside SOME noble's retinue, along with that guy and his infantry men at arms (hired or feudal) and stayed with them such that each of two lines of infantry had its archers embedded within it to one degree or another. Thanas might know better than me which of these two alternatives is more widely accepted.

Alyrium Denryle wrote:For the sake of math (because I am curious)
6 pence per day=15 shillings a month per archer for unmounted yeomen longbowmen recruited from the yeoman class.

Where is that conversion rate from? IIRC the 15shillings = 180 pence is a modern thing. I don't know how it relates to medieval conversions.

If we assume that ALL 4500 shillings go to the crossbowmen, that comes to 22.5 shillings per month, per crossbowmen.
If we assume half (The ship would take a chunk, and the rowers would be paid less etc) goes to the crossbowmen, that comes to just over 11 shillings a month per crossbowmen. Either way, we get a nice range of pay for top-tier professional crossbowmen that is roughly comparable to yeoman longbowmen.

I looked again and turns out that there might be a problem in the conversion I used because the italian florin varied wildly in its conversion rate to silver coins. It was worth about 20 silver coins in Italy in 1200s and 140 in 500. To trouble this even further I don't really know how these coins relate to the shillings. So I fear a simple conversion is useless here.

Reference for that? I know of the raids, but the definition of "outshot" can be somewhat fungible. A longbow is well suited for massed archery on an open field. Less so for hitting single targets or fighting inside a port town.

It was a throwaway line in a work by David Nichols iirc. I have to look further, might be a while.

An alternative is that archers and infantry were interspersed on the unit level. Each bowmen came inside SOME noble's retinue, along with that guy and his infantry men at arms (hired or feudal) and stayed with them such that each of two lines of infantry had its archers embedded within it to one degree or another. Thanas might know better than me which of these two alternatives is more widely accepted.

Given the difference in agincourt between nobles and their retinues refusing to commit warcrimes but the archers doing them eagerly I suspect that the theory of them being different units seems to be better founded. But I don't know who was the more important one.

Thanas wrote:Crossbows also demand a lot of muscle strength

Can't the crossbows be pulled by levers, belt hooks, or even winch, rendering strength issue moot? Or were these later inventions non applicable there?

Irbis wrote:

Thanas wrote:Crossbows also demand a lot of muscle strength

Can't the crossbows be pulled by levers, belt hooks, or even winch, rendering strength issue moot? Or were these later inventions non applicable there?

Sure, if you have those tools available - but still, it is not really that easy to pull a strong crossbow. Believe me, I've tried. As hard as a longbow? No. But does it demand training? Yes.

You say tools available - from armoury books I was under impression at least one method of fast draw was standard issue with crossbow? Did I misunderstand that part?

Still, you can draw crossbow using both hands and back [photo] unlike bow even without these, so I would think strength was lesser issue than with bow?

Irbis wrote:You say tools available - from armoury books I was under impression at least one method of fast draw was standard issue with crossbow? Did I misunderstand that part?

Depends on the crossbow.

Still, you can draw crossbow using both hands and back [photo] unlike bow even without these, so I would think strength was lesser issue than with bow?

That posture would look to be pretty more uncomfortable than using your shoulders. Lesser issue maybe but not a non-issue. You still need to be strong.

<<You say tools available - from armoury books I was under impression at least one method of fast draw was standard issue with crossbow? Did I misunderstand that part?

Still, you can draw crossbow using both hands and back [photo] unlike bow even without these, so I would think strength was lesser issue than with bow?>>

It all depends on the draw-weight. Low draw weights (and thus low armor penetration and range), you can use your hands and back. Higher and you need a belt and claw (puley system attached at the belt), even higher you start needing goats foot levers, then a ratchet system, then a complex winch mechanism. The farther down that list you go, the lower the ratio of Required Strength:Power.

Alyrium Denryle wrote:<<You say tools available - from armoury books I was under impression at least one method of fast draw was standard issue with crossbow? Did I misunderstand that part?

Still, you can draw crossbow using both hands and back [photo] unlike bow even without these, so I would think strength was lesser issue than with bow?>>

It all depends on the draw-weight. Low draw weights (and thus low armor penetration and range), you can use your hands and back. Higher and you need a belt and claw (puley system attached at the belt), even higher you start needing goats foot levers, then a ratchet system, then a complex winch mechanism. The farther down that list you go, the lower the ratio of Required Strength:Power.

The advantage being that you can make a relatively weak man shoot a crossbow with a draw weight higher than any dedicated archer could ever achieve.

The disadvantage being that he will tire sooner and will have a slower rate of fire. Just like everything, it is a trade off.

Alyrium Denryle wrote:It all depends on the draw-weight. Low draw weights (and thus low armor penetration and range), you can use your hands and back. Higher and you need a belt and claw (puley system attached at the belt), even higher you start needing goats foot levers, then a ratchet system, then a complex winch mechanism. The farther down that list you go, the lower the ratio of Required Strength:Power.

Still, as the amount of draw weight increases massively as you go down that list, pulling the crossbow stays an extremely taxing task, and pull times didn't get any shorter, neither. On top, especially the winch systems were notoriously prone to failure.

Sea Skimmer wrote:Kinda silly to talk about this without including cannon; the end of the pike was also the hayday of the infantry accompanying gun, which itself would then go mostly extinct with the death of pikes and deep formations. Took machine guns and tanks to bring it back.

And the napoleonic wars - the French under Napoleon had great light cannons accompanying their infantry columns.