In the Annals of St Bertin there's mention of an attack by the Danes (Vikings) on a region of Francia in 859 AD, where the peasants formed an association to defend themselves and fought off the Vikings, and drove them off without the assistance of the Carolingian rulers.
This is reported by the Carolingians as brave but immoral, because Charlemagne had banned any such associations or militias, and military service was reserved for aristocrats only.
The response of the Frankish leadership was to come in and massacre the peasants who had defended their own land. Peasant autonomy and self-defense of any kind could not be tolerated.
> Les Danois dévastent les pays au-delà de l'Escaut. Le commun peuple des pays entre Seine et Loire, conjuré entre soi, résiste courageusement aux Danois établis sur la Seine ; mais sa conjuration étant conduite sans prudence, il est facilement défait par nos grands.
Which I would translate (using some true-to-heart adaptation given author period) by:
Danes (norsemen) raid country further the Escaut (probably that river in the north). Commoners from between Seine et Loire (in the center so), which were seceding at the time (secede is way too modern but best bears the sense IMO), bravely resist to Danes camping by the Seine; this secession however being lead without much thought, is easily defeated by our rulers (kings or dukes I'd say, and probably over months).
These annals are telegraph styled, written by multiple authors, etc. They are kind of notes. Yet they are one of the best material over this period of French history :)
Do you have a source for this? This sounds like a fishy story to me based on my understanding of medieval society:
1. Peasants are often called up for military duty as levies (conscripts), to supplement the knights and men-at-arms. Especially when there wasn't a standing army.
2. Authority wasn't so centralized -- these local matters would be the authority of local lords, not the king.
"Peasant autonomy and self-defense of any kind could not be tolerated."
In the United States, "gun control" (restrictions on gun rights) is universally classified as a liberal/left policy and the absence of "gun control" is classified as a conservative/right policy.
Without entering into a discussion of these politics I would like to point out that those classifications are completely backwards.
The US Second Amendment (and associated US gun rights, court interpretations, etc.) are extremely liberal, from an historical perspective.
I wonder if one day in the distant future, humans will each have their own autonomous mutually assured destruction devices hovering around them at all times, almost like a guardian angel.
Do you have more detail on this? Is there supporting detail from other sources? It's not clear from my brief reading that the association was conclusively for self-defense and held no insurrectionary or political aspect.
> the peasants formed an association to defend themselves and fought off the Vikings ... military service was reserved for aristocrats only ... The response of the Frankish leadership was to come in and massacre the peasants
Strange that the peasants could fight back a group of Vikings ("the toughest warriors ever" according to National Geographic[0]) but not a bunch of aristocrats.
One thing to keep in mind when imagining "Knight vs Peasant" combat is that it's not like they would be fighting in some sort of idealized battle arena. Knights have horses and peasants do not, which means that barring exceptional circumstances, the knight has the initiative to determine when and where combat happens. People without horses have an extremely difficult time fighting people with horses, beyond just the reality of actual combat. If the horsemen want to raid your supply lines or burn down your countryside or disrupt your trade networks, how do you stop them? They can concentrate forces much more quickly than a foot army can form or react. In the 11th century a few hundred Norman knights conquered Sicily and southern Italy. Even through the 1860s a few thousand Comanche controlled a large portion of the American southwest because there was no good way to fight them.
Knights and aristocracy held their power through force, so there is no question that knights could overwhelmingly defeat peasants.
However, what is often missed in the depictions of peasants is that they were much stronger than modern folk, they did kill animals quite often, they did fight other peasants quite often.
Free peasants were a different story from bound peasants, mountain peasants a different story from low lands.
I know because my grandparents were peasants from a mountainous region, you did not want to mess with those peasants.
I could go all they about the acts of aggression, strength and bravery I've witnessed (same on the contrary).
Such a peasant would not fight in pitch battle, but would simply burn their crops, take their cattle and sheep up the mountain and return in autumn when armies would go back home.
They would setup ambushes, mostly targeting guides, but they were quite opportunistic.
It was remarkable reading Xenophon's account of fighting mountain people in ancient times -- while I did feel his disgust for them, the sense was that they could be quite dangerous when fighting on their home turf.
Have a look at what's called the 'infantry revolution' started by the Swiss and later the German Landsknechts. Starting in the 1300s, the role of knights in battles got lessened by this, until they were basically only a flanking tool in most armies. It was basically a reinvention of the Greek phalanx.
I always wonder how much a liability a horse was during medieval combat. Sure speed and maneuverability are great but up close it seems that horse is quite vulnerable to attacks on the legs for example with long bladed weapons. You can’t really protect horse’s legs with armor
A good counter example is the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. There, the English archers not only defeated the French nobility in melee' but captured a good many of them, a total catastrophe for France. Though this battle may be the exception that proves the rule, more than anything.
Crossbow - armor-piercing weapon was the RPG of Middle Ages. There were constant attempts to ban crossbows.
Second Lateran Council banned use of crossbow against Christians.
> And Western knights did not like it. Their armor protected them from most weapons they would face with the exception of the longbow, a weapon that took years to learn and decades to master. But crossbows could slice right through the armor at greater range than even a longbow, and shooters could be trained in hours or days.
>Second Lateran Council banned use of crossbow against Christians.
Not sure if this is actually true. The council (specifically Canon 29) refers to ballistarii and sagittarii. Ballistarii may mean either crossbowmen or slingers, while sagittarii means archers. So there is no way of reading this as referring to crossbowmen alone- the ban is either against both crossbowmen and archers, or it's against slingers and archers and doesn't mention crossbows at all.
Some commentators suggest that this canon is intending to prohibit archery contests- similarly, Canon 14 of the council condemns tournaments. Others point out that at the time of the council, the Pope was at war with King Roger of Sicily, whose armies employed large numbers of Muslim archers (not crossbowmen). The canon means that the Papal armies could shoot at Roger's Muslim soldiers, but Roger's Christian officers would be excommunicated if they ordered their men to shoot back...
A crossbow has several advantages, but it's main advantage is NOT power or armor piercing ability. That is likely a myth perpetuated by armchair historians with poor grasp of physics.
The main advantage of a crossbow is that it's easy to use. Richard Lionheart, the English king, was famously killed by a boy wielding a crossbow. You need no more than 2 weeks to be proficient with a crossbow. To do that with an English longbow you'd need 7 years.
There are various methods of drawing a crossbow that don't require great strength. Here's a (not exhaustive! Missing is for example latchet crossbow.) list of 9 ways to draw a crossbow:
In the video, Tod Cutler shows 9 mechanisms used to span a crossbow, some of them require a specially modified crossbow and some don't. Crucially, he shows the numbers for mechanical advantage. Keep in mind the input number will vary. Cranequin is an amazing mechanism, but you only use a single hand. A windlass doesn't have such an impressive ratio, but you can use both hands. A belt may let you use your back muscles as well.
Videos of Joe Gibbs, a 170lb man who can draw a 200lb longbow, show how much effort it is. In one of the videos - I can't locate which one it is - he explains it's no coincidence medieval illustrations show people bending forward when drawing a bow. He draws this way and it lets him put a little more extra into the arrow.
Crossbow can be kept loaded for a long time, and you can line up your shot. This is especially important in sieges. Also, they have a controlled release. My observation is that missile weapons evolved to have more and more controlled release over the ages. Slings and atlatls required lots of skill to use, bow is a bit more controlled, crossbow even more controlled (less things to mess up). Slings were even more powerful than bows but even more training was required.
======================
Now to the power issue. The myth is that they hit extra hard. A light crossbow (loaded by hands, or using a goat's foot lever) actually has power comparable to a short bow. Something like 60-80lbs. Witness a nominally 350lbs failing to penetrate a steel helmet:
Can a 350lb Medieval Crossbow Penetrate Steel Helmets? (16 / 14ga)
Why? The answer is short power stroke. Just because a bow or crossbow can be drawn with a certain force doesn't mean they impart that force to the arrow! Power stroke is the distance between the end of the bowstring, when fully loaded, and between the front of the bow. Crossbows are inefficient when it comes to transferring energy, especially the ones made using medieval technology and metallurgy. Steel bows are nowhere near as flexible as good wood or modern alloys. This was proven time and again using a chronometer (projectile speed meter).
Heavy crossbows, meaning those loaded with a windlass, hit about as hard as a war longbow, which is 100-120lbs. My numbers are from Tod's Workshop youtube channel.
Both a longbow and a heavy crossbow are strong enough to pierce mail armor - piercing is actually its weakness. Mail is good against slashing blades and blunt objects. Even a light crossbow punctures mail. But they fail spectacularly at puncturing plate:
It is 14/15 century, so pretty late medieval tech (Swiss). Crossbows don't get bigger than that. It's practically a very mobile siege weapon.
Another downside of short power stroke is that the crossbow bolt (arrow) accelerates much more rapidly than a bow arrow. So it must be sturdier to withstand the forces, which is why bolts were so thick. A thick projectile has more air resistance and worse armor penetration.
So yes, crossbow is the RPG weapon, but in the sense of "Role Playing Games" and not "Rocked Propelled Grenade".
And here is how much of expertise you need to make crossbows the medieval way:
A Castle Fit For Fighting | Secrets of the Castle (2/5) | Absolute History
I hope I've proved that power was not the advantage of crossbows. The weapon had many advantages, and the basic shape of the weapon and its trigger is used to this day in rifles because it's so good.
If power is what you're after, check out staff slings (Fustibalus). This thing is SCARY, it cracks coconuts at a distance.
People who suggest that knights could be defeated by peasants in one-on-one or even one-on-many combat often overlook that many (or most?) knights spent their time practicing how to kill people in combat. Peasants on the other hand were busy tending to their land or cattle or doing whatever they had to survive. The modern analogy for adult peasant fighting an adult knight would be a bar fight between a random bystander and a UFC fighter. Now imagine the UFC fighter is wearing armor (and is trained to fight in armor) and is equipped with a deadly weapon of his choice (and has been training to fight with it). If you think there is a remote chance for any outcome besides death of the knight’s opponent (also death at the moment and in a form of the knight’s choosing), try going to a local boxing gym (or jiu-jitsu club etc.) and challenging one of their trainers, then multiply the results by 10 (in trainer’s favor).
I can’t imagine how 10+ years of training could not give a knight an infinite advantage even if we equalize the combatants in terms of equipment.
Also knights were training to fight since they were children, so in our hypothetical bar fight the pro-fighter’s skills would be along the lines of those of Floyd Mayweather (who started training when he was 9). Surely the knight may be less gifted, but that matter should really concern other knights and not peasants :)
49 vs 9000 scenario described in the post seems grotesque but I think, limiting the number of slain civilians by knights’ stamina and assuming that any resistance is negligible is more than reasonable.
It's not clear that knightly training was as useful as UFC training. Ineffective martial arts were a big deal for literal decades before the Gracie family came along, I guess because people didn't want to put in a mouth guard and see what happens. How often did the knights actually see combat, as opposed to train for combat, and do non-lethal sparring? The one form of training which is of undoubted utility is group tactics, but it's unclear what the non-mounted training was for this sort of thing for most times/places.
You're also probably discounting what peasant style manual labor (and hobbies, which include beating the shit out of each other with fists, clubs, etc) does for your combat ability. Hand and wrist strength is a huge deal in pre-firearms days, and peasants were at least 3-4 standard deviations stronger in these ways than average people now (really: that much -I've fooled around with building hand strength and it's bonkers how strong people can get in this domain). People basically exerted their strength through simple hafted tools all day; makes them good at exerting their strength through simple hafted tools all day. Regarding group tactics; peasants had lots of games which could have helped them with this. For example, Hurling[0], and I'm sure there was lots of stuff like Calcio Storico[1].
The real advantage the knights had (beyond equipment, like horses and the morale of feeling superior to the peasant) was probably nutrition. They spent most of their downtime hunting, feasting and eating meat, and between wearing heavy armor and their strength oriented workouts, the knights were probably pretty jacked. 50 or 100lbs of muscle and fat and 6-8" of height helps a lot. I don't have references in front of me for this, but David Willoughby talks about some of this in his book, and I'm sure you can see it in skeletons of Nobles versus peasants (aka Nobles will have larger skeletons with 'deformities' at the muscle attachment points).
Medieval knights were typically very trim and fit; we have existing texts extolling knights to not over eat and go outside and exercise with stones. While kings performing the role of general tended to be fat, the actual men at arms up front doing the dirty work were probably in fantastic shape. There are historical accounts of knights in armor being capable of climbing siege ladders like a pair of monkey bars while wearing their armor.
I always think that the people now that become martial arts champions due to genetics, skill, training etc would be the king's champions 800 years ago. EG: Stipe Miocic would be the William Marshall equivalent - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Marshal,_1st_Earl_of_P...
Mindset would likely have played a big part, and battle then vs battle now were very different things. A peasant could absolutely kill a knight but probably not in battle, and the opportunity to do so would be unlikely to arise because the knight would probably not be in a position to be ambushed. For most peasantry the very thought of going after a knight would also be almost unimaginable.
Seems like a not-unreasonable comparison today would be "could a civilian kill an armored vehicle?"
At the famous Battle of Agincourt peasants slaughtered thousands of knights. It was a decisive blood bath against a vastly superior force that allowed Henry V’s conquest of France. This is confirmed by eye witness records both French and English.
Ehhh yes, but this gets complicated and interesting in the details. Have you read Keegan on Agincourt? Short story, the popular version of French knights getting bogged down in the mud and shot to pieces with arrows is mostly false, but the English peasants did play a critical role.
Far from being mowed down by longbowmen (although they absolutely would have taken a toll, especially on horses), the French cavalry was turned back by the stakes the archers planted in their positions. The stakes were likely mingled with the archers in a kind of thicket, rather than the fence you see in movies or video games, preventing the french knights from seeing the danger until the archers fell back and it was too late.
The French second wave, armored foot, was essentially invulnerable to arrows. But the French piled into dense columns to attack the English men-at-arms (they had no interest in fighting peasant archers, there’s no glory or loot in it). So the front of the column is in big trouble and is being pushed into the English spears by the men behind them, and those in the rear have no idea what’s happening up front so they keep pushing forward. This is how people die at rock concerts or on black friday.
Mostly out of ammo at this point, the English archers come out to gang up on stragglers at the edges of the columns. This is the “flank attack” that eye witnesses report. The peasants certainly didn’t charge the flanks of the columns en masse, they would have been slaughtered. But they could definitely pick off those who tried to escape the press out the sides. Without an escape route, the French columns turn into a panicked rout. This is where most of the French losses happen, either stampeded by their own or cut down or captured by the pursuing English knights.
The English don’t chase them far, however, because there’s still a second line of French men-at-arms which hasn’t been committed to the battle, and the English have a large number of captives to keep an eye on. In the event, the French don’t renew the attack, and send out their heralds to parley.
So yes, the English won a major victory and the peasants played a big role, but the popular version misses the actual mechanics of the battle. “Conquest of France” is also rather strong. Immediately after the battle Henry turned around and went home to London. His later advantage is more down to the long term consequences of the sheer amount of the French aristocracy killed in the battle rather than any immediate gains.
Most of the English soldiers who killed knights at Agincourt were longbowmen shooting from a distance and protected by both terrain and a line of sharpened stakes that prevented the French cavalry from charging them. That is not the kind of direct confrontation that the article is talking about.
The English peasants were a special lot. England had an archery mandate going back to at least the 13th century so we're not talking about random untrained peasants. Also lots of things went right for the English and wrong for the French at Agincourt.
longbows had a big role in the battle of Agincourt. It was part of a wider switch from very expensive defensive armor and warriors on expensive horses (that were eating a lot of grain) towards stuff that could kill at a distance. The middle ages isn't one monolithic period, it's quite a complex business. See https://www.britannica.com/technology/military-technology/Th...
What this article seems to barely touch upon is that the peasants spent most of their time eking out a living, the rich had free time and a culture of practicing their fighting skills at length, and from a young age, too. I would even say that the equipment was a secondary advantage, though still significant.
It’s not just weaponry, most of fighting is nutrition, I’m surprised the article doesn’t discuss that. Given that the article says the knights and their weaponry were correlated to wealth and power, I would expect the knights to be better fed than the peasants as well.
Surprised there is no specific mention of the misericorde (a long, narrow dagger that could get between the gaps in armor plates or the holes in visors): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misericorde_(weapon)
A Distant Mirror covered some peasant/commoner attempts at rebellion and they seemed to lead to same disastrous results, mostly because of a lack of discipline.
Here's a bit about the Battle of Roosebeke:
>As French lances pierced and axes hacked at the solid mass of bodies, many of whom lacked helmet or cuirass, the dead piled up in heaps. French foot soldiers, penetrating between the men-at-arms, finished off the fallen with their knives, “with no more mercy than if they had been dogs.” Under the attack of the Bourbon-Coucy wing, the Flemish rear turned and fled, throwing away their weapons as they ran. Philip van Artevelde, fighting in the front ranks, tried to rally them, but from his position could exercise no effective command. He lacked the assurance of the Black Prince at Poitiers to retain control from a hilltop above the battle. Borne backward by the mass as the rout spread, he was trampled and killed under the feet of his own forces, as was his banner-bearer, a woman named Big Margot.
It seems to me that a few peasants, or a group of them would ‘absolutely’ be able to defeat a knight in battle in a theoretical sense. You really only need to drag them off their horse and stab them.
But the situation is not like that in any real life instance, as the described situation in France depicts.
What the peasants are lacking isn’t so much arms and equipment, as discipline and organisation.
I think it was Metatron or maybe Shadiversity on youtube talked about this once and I remember one point in favour of the Knights is that they dedicate a lot of their lives to training while peasants don't, so one advantage that Knights have is that they are simply better trained, many having trained from a young age.
Surprised it doesn't mention Hussites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussites. Peasants (given they were armed with fire arms, one of the first large scale uses of firearms) defeated five(!!!) crusades.
Well the landsknechts of Germany and Swiss Pikeman were the ones who took down the heavily armored knights of the late Middle Ages. Most of them were from common stock. Probably not in a one on one fight though.
It makes one wonder how the modern equals would do?
Yes, we have street fights / protests between "soldiers" and pedestrians. Each equipped with their standard tools - lopsided as they may be. The question becomes more of a matter of context for a modern battle.
What is a modern knight and what is a modern peasant in 2020 and also, what locale?
(We could also use a booklist for this discussion - I keep bringing back scenes from Pillars of the Earth)
I wonder if modern peasants can fight and win against the knights.
You can't own a knife in many countries without a license let alone a gun. It's all tracked. There are targeted missiles, drones, autonomous guns, surveillance, radar, bombs, tear gas, tasers, tanks, bullet and knife proof clothing, exoskeleton, etc available to the knights. Knights are many times more organized than they have ever been in history.
modern night would be a standard equiped military soldier from a first world country. modern peasant would be an average civilian from a third world country?
What is fascinating is that a switch to offensive weapons seem to have helped with bringing about a society with more equal opportunities as compared to feudalism: there was no point to maintain feudalism, when a few mounted and armored warriors could no longer defeat huge crowds of peasants. There were other factors as shortage of working hands due to the great plague, so that they had to pay for labor instead of the usual practice, but i guess you can't reduce anything that big to a single factor, as usual.
In ancient history you had a similar theme: The bronze age came with small elite armies and expensive charriots, later larger crowds of warriors with cheaper arms made of iron defeated them, and that also came with opportunities for more people and more egalitarian religions, more accessible syllabic writing system - lots of things became more inclusive.
Mel Gibsons Apocalypto has some great fight scenes, and probably one of the best foot chase scene on film. The ending scene is a sort of target practice of skilled warriors with a weapon vs an unarmed prisoners given a head start to try and escape. It becomes pretty apparent what a huge advantage a weapon in skilled hands is.
As with so many things I suspect it comes down to leadership and tactics - if you get to choose and prepare the ground a small lightly armed force could definitely defeat a much larger force of heavily armed mounted knights.
The Battle of Loudon Hill (1307) is a good example - look at the map:
This battle was included at the end of the Netflix movie 'Outlaw King', which although it includes a fair number of inaccuracies is perhaps better than most and at least is reasonably close to what happened (which is more than I can say for some comparable more famous movies):
Nice that they mention the brave Flemish peasants ;). Although the picture of the goedendag (=good day) is incorrect!
Flemish myself, in schools we learn about Battle of the Golden Spurs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Golden_Spurs). It's probably the battle we are most proud of, because us peasants stood up against a fancy French army.
As it was taught to me, we drove the enemy cavalry into a swamp, and were able to use our goedendag (accurate picture here: https://www.liebaart.org/figuren/goedendr.jpg) to push them off their horses and pierce through the chain mail.
[+] [-] cmrdporcupine|5 years ago|reply
This is reported by the Carolingians as brave but immoral, because Charlemagne had banned any such associations or militias, and military service was reserved for aristocrats only.
The response of the Frankish leadership was to come in and massacre the peasants who had defended their own land. Peasant autonomy and self-defense of any kind could not be tolerated.
[+] [-] jimmyhachahacha|5 years ago|reply
The French translation from Latin http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/historiens/anonyme/annales.htm [859] says:
> Les Danois dévastent les pays au-delà de l'Escaut. Le commun peuple des pays entre Seine et Loire, conjuré entre soi, résiste courageusement aux Danois établis sur la Seine ; mais sa conjuration étant conduite sans prudence, il est facilement défait par nos grands.
Which I would translate (using some true-to-heart adaptation given author period) by:
Danes (norsemen) raid country further the Escaut (probably that river in the north). Commoners from between Seine et Loire (in the center so), which were seceding at the time (secede is way too modern but best bears the sense IMO), bravely resist to Danes camping by the Seine; this secession however being lead without much thought, is easily defeated by our rulers (kings or dukes I'd say, and probably over months).
These annals are telegraph styled, written by multiple authors, etc. They are kind of notes. Yet they are one of the best material over this period of French history :)
[+] [-] agency|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] faanghacker|5 years ago|reply
1. Peasants are often called up for military duty as levies (conscripts), to supplement the knights and men-at-arms. Especially when there wasn't a standing army.
2. Authority wasn't so centralized -- these local matters would be the authority of local lords, not the king.
[+] [-] rsync|5 years ago|reply
In the United States, "gun control" (restrictions on gun rights) is universally classified as a liberal/left policy and the absence of "gun control" is classified as a conservative/right policy.
Without entering into a discussion of these politics I would like to point out that those classifications are completely backwards.
The US Second Amendment (and associated US gun rights, court interpretations, etc.) are extremely liberal, from an historical perspective.
[+] [-] briefcomment|5 years ago|reply
It would even the playing field in some ways.
[+] [-] jxramos|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jml7c5|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redis_mlc|5 years ago|reply
That varied by region.
Often English Lords were required to provide troops or arrows on demand, and those both came from the peasant class.
(Frankly, peasant men would have to be tough to work in the fields in the mid-day sun, so were ideal stock for battles.)
Otherwise what was the point in appointing nobility if they weren't contributing an army, but just collecting taxes?
[+] [-] miles|5 years ago|reply
Strange that the peasants could fight back a group of Vikings ("the toughest warriors ever" according to National Geographic[0]) but not a bunch of aristocrats.
[0] https://www.vikingmartialarts.com/vikingculture/2018/4/4/vik...
[+] [-] defen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raducu|5 years ago|reply
However, what is often missed in the depictions of peasants is that they were much stronger than modern folk, they did kill animals quite often, they did fight other peasants quite often.
Free peasants were a different story from bound peasants, mountain peasants a different story from low lands.
I know because my grandparents were peasants from a mountainous region, you did not want to mess with those peasants.
I could go all they about the acts of aggression, strength and bravery I've witnessed (same on the contrary).
Such a peasant would not fight in pitch battle, but would simply burn their crops, take their cattle and sheep up the mountain and return in autumn when armies would go back home. They would setup ambushes, mostly targeting guides, but they were quite opportunistic.
It was remarkable reading Xenophon's account of fighting mountain people in ancient times -- while I did feel his disgust for them, the sense was that they could be quite dangerous when fighting on their home turf.
[+] [-] m_mueller|5 years ago|reply
Edit: This YouTube series shows it best I think: https://youtu.be/6KbroTkaey0
[+] [-] koonsolo|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Golden_Spurs
[+] [-] questionfor|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Balgair|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Poitiers
[+] [-] chewz|5 years ago|reply
Second Lateran Council banned use of crossbow against Christians.
> And Western knights did not like it. Their armor protected them from most weapons they would face with the exception of the longbow, a weapon that took years to learn and decades to master. But crossbows could slice right through the armor at greater range than even a longbow, and shooters could be trained in hours or days.
https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/catholic-churc...
[+] [-] Ichthypresbyter|5 years ago|reply
Not sure if this is actually true. The council (specifically Canon 29) refers to ballistarii and sagittarii. Ballistarii may mean either crossbowmen or slingers, while sagittarii means archers. So there is no way of reading this as referring to crossbowmen alone- the ban is either against both crossbowmen and archers, or it's against slingers and archers and doesn't mention crossbows at all.
Some commentators suggest that this canon is intending to prohibit archery contests- similarly, Canon 14 of the council condemns tournaments. Others point out that at the time of the council, the Pope was at war with King Roger of Sicily, whose armies employed large numbers of Muslim archers (not crossbowmen). The canon means that the Papal armies could shoot at Roger's Muslim soldiers, but Roger's Christian officers would be excommunicated if they ordered their men to shoot back...
Text in Latin: http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/es/index3.htm
And in English: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/lateran2.asp
[+] [-] b0rsuk|5 years ago|reply
The main advantage of a crossbow is that it's easy to use. Richard Lionheart, the English king, was famously killed by a boy wielding a crossbow. You need no more than 2 weeks to be proficient with a crossbow. To do that with an English longbow you'd need 7 years.
There are various methods of drawing a crossbow that don't require great strength. Here's a (not exhaustive! Missing is for example latchet crossbow.) list of 9 ways to draw a crossbow:
Tod's Workshop
9 MEDIEVAL CROSSBOW DEVICES - How do they work?
-------------------
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IdfmaC_t-Q
In the video, Tod Cutler shows 9 mechanisms used to span a crossbow, some of them require a specially modified crossbow and some don't. Crucially, he shows the numbers for mechanical advantage. Keep in mind the input number will vary. Cranequin is an amazing mechanism, but you only use a single hand. A windlass doesn't have such an impressive ratio, but you can use both hands. A belt may let you use your back muscles as well.
Videos of Joe Gibbs, a 170lb man who can draw a 200lb longbow, show how much effort it is. In one of the videos - I can't locate which one it is - he explains it's no coincidence medieval illustrations show people bending forward when drawing a bow. He draws this way and it lets him put a little more extra into the arrow.
Crossbow can be kept loaded for a long time, and you can line up your shot. This is especially important in sieges. Also, they have a controlled release. My observation is that missile weapons evolved to have more and more controlled release over the ages. Slings and atlatls required lots of skill to use, bow is a bit more controlled, crossbow even more controlled (less things to mess up). Slings were even more powerful than bows but even more training was required.
======================
Now to the power issue. The myth is that they hit extra hard. A light crossbow (loaded by hands, or using a goat's foot lever) actually has power comparable to a short bow. Something like 60-80lbs. Witness a nominally 350lbs failing to penetrate a steel helmet:
Can a 350lb Medieval Crossbow Penetrate Steel Helmets? (16 / 14ga)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqGZl5MVFPg
Why? The answer is short power stroke. Just because a bow or crossbow can be drawn with a certain force doesn't mean they impart that force to the arrow! Power stroke is the distance between the end of the bowstring, when fully loaded, and between the front of the bow. Crossbows are inefficient when it comes to transferring energy, especially the ones made using medieval technology and metallurgy. Steel bows are nowhere near as flexible as good wood or modern alloys. This was proven time and again using a chronometer (projectile speed meter).
Heavy crossbows, meaning those loaded with a windlass, hit about as hard as a war longbow, which is 100-120lbs. My numbers are from Tod's Workshop youtube channel.
Both a longbow and a heavy crossbow are strong enough to pierce mail armor - piercing is actually its weakness. Mail is good against slashing blades and blunt objects. Even a light crossbow punctures mail. But they fail spectacularly at puncturing plate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej3qjUzUzQg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMT6hjwY8NQ
And a longbow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBxdTkddHaE
And here is the most powerful traditional crossbow I've ever found on youtube
Shooting a 1257 lb Great Horn Composite Crossbow - version 2.0
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA5M0QKXtWU
It is 14/15 century, so pretty late medieval tech (Swiss). Crossbows don't get bigger than that. It's practically a very mobile siege weapon.
Another downside of short power stroke is that the crossbow bolt (arrow) accelerates much more rapidly than a bow arrow. So it must be sturdier to withstand the forces, which is why bolts were so thick. A thick projectile has more air resistance and worse armor penetration.
So yes, crossbow is the RPG weapon, but in the sense of "Role Playing Games" and not "Rocked Propelled Grenade".
And here is how much of expertise you need to make crossbows the medieval way:
A Castle Fit For Fighting | Secrets of the Castle (2/5) | Absolute History
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https://youtu.be/u6v-3Ai88oM?t=1218
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I hope I've proved that power was not the advantage of crossbows. The weapon had many advantages, and the basic shape of the weapon and its trigger is used to this day in rifles because it's so good.
If power is what you're after, check out staff slings (Fustibalus). This thing is SCARY, it cracks coconuts at a distance.
Slingshot VS. Shepherds Staff Sling
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bFQYNfJqqY
This is a very solid video with measurements.
[+] [-] questionfor|5 years ago|reply
I can’t imagine how 10+ years of training could not give a knight an infinite advantage even if we equalize the combatants in terms of equipment.
Also knights were training to fight since they were children, so in our hypothetical bar fight the pro-fighter’s skills would be along the lines of those of Floyd Mayweather (who started training when he was 9). Surely the knight may be less gifted, but that matter should really concern other knights and not peasants :)
49 vs 9000 scenario described in the post seems grotesque but I think, limiting the number of slain civilians by knights’ stamina and assuming that any resistance is negligible is more than reasonable.
[+] [-] scottlocklin|5 years ago|reply
You're also probably discounting what peasant style manual labor (and hobbies, which include beating the shit out of each other with fists, clubs, etc) does for your combat ability. Hand and wrist strength is a huge deal in pre-firearms days, and peasants were at least 3-4 standard deviations stronger in these ways than average people now (really: that much -I've fooled around with building hand strength and it's bonkers how strong people can get in this domain). People basically exerted their strength through simple hafted tools all day; makes them good at exerting their strength through simple hafted tools all day. Regarding group tactics; peasants had lots of games which could have helped them with this. For example, Hurling[0], and I'm sure there was lots of stuff like Calcio Storico[1].
The real advantage the knights had (beyond equipment, like horses and the morale of feeling superior to the peasant) was probably nutrition. They spent most of their downtime hunting, feasting and eating meat, and between wearing heavy armor and their strength oriented workouts, the knights were probably pretty jacked. 50 or 100lbs of muscle and fat and 6-8" of height helps a lot. I don't have references in front of me for this, but David Willoughby talks about some of this in his book, and I'm sure you can see it in skeletons of Nobles versus peasants (aka Nobles will have larger skeletons with 'deformities' at the muscle attachment points).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurling
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVJEvtkFKBc
[+] [-] ashtonkem|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gadders|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] commonturtle|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hedberg10|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fencepost|5 years ago|reply
Seems like a not-unreasonable comparison today would be "could a civilian kill an armored vehicle?"
[+] [-] austincheney|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smogcutter|5 years ago|reply
Far from being mowed down by longbowmen (although they absolutely would have taken a toll, especially on horses), the French cavalry was turned back by the stakes the archers planted in their positions. The stakes were likely mingled with the archers in a kind of thicket, rather than the fence you see in movies or video games, preventing the french knights from seeing the danger until the archers fell back and it was too late.
The French second wave, armored foot, was essentially invulnerable to arrows. But the French piled into dense columns to attack the English men-at-arms (they had no interest in fighting peasant archers, there’s no glory or loot in it). So the front of the column is in big trouble and is being pushed into the English spears by the men behind them, and those in the rear have no idea what’s happening up front so they keep pushing forward. This is how people die at rock concerts or on black friday.
Mostly out of ammo at this point, the English archers come out to gang up on stragglers at the edges of the columns. This is the “flank attack” that eye witnesses report. The peasants certainly didn’t charge the flanks of the columns en masse, they would have been slaughtered. But they could definitely pick off those who tried to escape the press out the sides. Without an escape route, the French columns turn into a panicked rout. This is where most of the French losses happen, either stampeded by their own or cut down or captured by the pursuing English knights.
The English don’t chase them far, however, because there’s still a second line of French men-at-arms which hasn’t been committed to the battle, and the English have a large number of captives to keep an eye on. In the event, the French don’t renew the attack, and send out their heralds to parley.
So yes, the English won a major victory and the peasants played a big role, but the popular version misses the actual mechanics of the battle. “Conquest of France” is also rather strong. Immediately after the battle Henry turned around and went home to London. His later advantage is more down to the long term consequences of the sheer amount of the French aristocracy killed in the battle rather than any immediate gains.
[+] [-] pdonis|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] User23|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Forge36|5 years ago|reply
Peasants had cloth boots which didn't get stuck into the mud as much so they didn't get as tired.
[+] [-] C1sc0cat|5 years ago|reply
An English longbowman was paid more in real terms than a Squaddie is today
[+] [-] z3phyr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelMoser123|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forgotmypw17|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randmeerkat|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wingman4l7|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] purple_ferret|5 years ago|reply
Here's a bit about the Battle of Roosebeke:
>As French lances pierced and axes hacked at the solid mass of bodies, many of whom lacked helmet or cuirass, the dead piled up in heaps. French foot soldiers, penetrating between the men-at-arms, finished off the fallen with their knives, “with no more mercy than if they had been dogs.” Under the attack of the Bourbon-Coucy wing, the Flemish rear turned and fled, throwing away their weapons as they ran. Philip van Artevelde, fighting in the front ranks, tried to rally them, but from his position could exercise no effective command. He lacked the assurance of the Black Prince at Poitiers to retain control from a hilltop above the battle. Borne backward by the mass as the rout spread, he was trampled and killed under the feet of his own forces, as was his banner-bearer, a woman named Big Margot.
[+] [-] Aeolun|5 years ago|reply
But the situation is not like that in any real life instance, as the described situation in France depicts.
What the peasants are lacking isn’t so much arms and equipment, as discipline and organisation.
[+] [-] dkersten|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamnemecek|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vondur|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ynac|5 years ago|reply
Yes, we have street fights / protests between "soldiers" and pedestrians. Each equipped with their standard tools - lopsided as they may be. The question becomes more of a matter of context for a modern battle.
What is a modern knight and what is a modern peasant in 2020 and also, what locale?
(We could also use a booklist for this discussion - I keep bringing back scenes from Pillars of the Earth)
[+] [-] damnencryption|5 years ago|reply
You can't own a knife in many countries without a license let alone a gun. It's all tracked. There are targeted missiles, drones, autonomous guns, surveillance, radar, bombs, tear gas, tasers, tanks, bullet and knife proof clothing, exoskeleton, etc available to the knights. Knights are many times more organized than they have ever been in history.
Recent incident in Nigeria where military massacred the protestors: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54630592
How do you protect yourself as a peasant against the Knights?
[+] [-] Beached|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 7sigma|5 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/8vYFFx4whoE
There's a reason why they used hammers in battle. Was more ffective to bash the armour than try to cut between the plates
[+] [-] MichaelMoser123|5 years ago|reply
What is fascinating is that a switch to offensive weapons seem to have helped with bringing about a society with more equal opportunities as compared to feudalism: there was no point to maintain feudalism, when a few mounted and armored warriors could no longer defeat huge crowds of peasants. There were other factors as shortage of working hands due to the great plague, so that they had to pay for labor instead of the usual practice, but i guess you can't reduce anything that big to a single factor, as usual.
In ancient history you had a similar theme: The bronze age came with small elite armies and expensive charriots, later larger crowds of warriors with cheaper arms made of iron defeated them, and that also came with opportunities for more people and more egalitarian religions, more accessible syllabic writing system - lots of things became more inclusive.
[+] [-] jungletime|5 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/rM8Fxd9svzA
[+] [-] arethuza|5 years ago|reply
The Battle of Loudon Hill (1307) is a good example - look at the map:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Loudoun_Hill
'Crossing the T' in a land battle!
This battle was included at the end of the Netflix movie 'Outlaw King', which although it includes a fair number of inaccuracies is perhaps better than most and at least is reasonably close to what happened (which is more than I can say for some comparable more famous movies):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3G-n_t_JE8
[+] [-] koonsolo|5 years ago|reply
Flemish myself, in schools we learn about Battle of the Golden Spurs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Golden_Spurs). It's probably the battle we are most proud of, because us peasants stood up against a fancy French army.
As it was taught to me, we drove the enemy cavalry into a swamp, and were able to use our goedendag (accurate picture here: https://www.liebaart.org/figuren/goedendr.jpg) to push them off their horses and pierce through the chain mail.