December 28, 2024 • 52 mins
In this classic invention-themed episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Rob and Joe discuss the origins and ingenuity of the crossbow. (originally published 11/16/2023)
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. It is Saturday.
We have another Vaald episode for you. This is going
to be part two of our series The Invention of
the Crossbow listen originally published eleven sixteen, twenty twenty three.
So let's go ahead and dive right in.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,
and we're back with part two of our series on
the invention of the crossbow. In the previous episode, we
talked about some evidence of the crossbows invention in ancient China,
some differences between the crossbow design and regular bow design,
some differences in the physics of how they work, and
(00:57):
what different kinds of advantages they would have had in
history oracle usage. And today we're back to talk about
crossbows some more. Now, there is a subject I brought
up in the previous episode. I think I think it
at least teased it that I wanted to come back
to in detail, and that is the moral coding of crossbows,
(01:17):
specifically in storytelling, especially in movies, in modern movies. So
I was reading a very interesting paper about this that
was like a history slash film studies paper called x
marks the Plot crossbos in Medieval Film by Peter Berkolder,
(01:38):
published in the journal Studies in Popular Culture in twenty fifteen,
and it starts with what I think is a pretty
good example. So there's a scene many of you out
there will remember from the first Lord of the Rings movie.
It's from Fellowship of the Ring, which came out in
two thousand and one. It's when the heroes are at
riven Dell the fellowship is formed. For those unfamiliar with
the story, it's when the adventurers from various people's around
(02:01):
Middle Earth pledged to band together into a fellowship to
carry out a mission to destroy the story's mcguffin, a
wicked and powerful magic ring, to protect the people from
its demonic owner, Lord Sauron. So it's sort of the
ultimate good guy vibes a scene the good characters are
all pledging camaraderie, pledging to help each other in the
service of doing good. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
In fact, I reference this scene in the last episode.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
You did Yes yeah, about how Legolis says it's my bow,
not my string. Yeah, it's not. Actually the string that stretches.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Though we will get back to that concept later on
in this episode when we get back into the technical
specifications of various crossbow designs, because sometimes it is the string.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Oh I can't wait. Okay, So, but you got the
characters in the scene. You got Frodo. That's the young
hobbit who commits to taking the Ring to Mordor to
destroy it. He's your classic courage against impossible odds character.
Frodo is not a warrior. He's just like a young,
almost helpless little guy at first. But he has courage
(03:06):
and he wants to do the right thing, so he's
going to go destroy the ring. But then the other
characters say they're going to help him. Gandalf the Wizard,
holding the magic staff in his hand, he says, Frodo,
you're not going to do it alone. I will help,
And then Erra Gorn, the man, the sort of king
of men in Middle Earth, says, you will have my sword.
I don't remember it. Does Sean Bean say the same
(03:27):
thing or something like that, but aer Gorne at least
says you'll have his sword. Legalis the Elf says you'll
have my bow. Gimli the dwarf says, and my axe,
and then Mary and Pippen, the perpetually second breakfasting Hobbits,
also offer the help of their intelligence. Yes, yes, but
in this scene, each of the principal heroes of the story,
(03:48):
they offer their commitment through the metaphor of the weapon
they carry, And this is basically in a medieval technological regime.
But the author of this paper notes that it's interesting
that it's sort of trying to like show the whole
span of recognizable medieval weapons, but none of these characters
offers up a crossbow to help, despite the fact that
(04:11):
berker Holder calls the crossbow quote one of the most
readily accessible personal weapons of the Middle Ages.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
And I should say I still hold this to be true.
I think a crossbow is an excellent weapon for a dwarf.
I think everything lines up that dwarves should be using
crossbows by the dozen. You know, it's just a perfect
weapon for imagining them use some sort of arranged weapon
within an enclosed dwarven environment. It seems to fit there.
You know, their their build, their basic demeanor, their technological proficiency.
(04:42):
I think everything lines up. I think I think Gimli
should have had a crossbow.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Fair enough, though the acts makes sense to me, it
seems at home in his hands. But this paper argues
that the absence of a crossbow among the ranks of
the good guys in the movie is neither unique nor happenstance.
The point of this paper is that throughout modern film
there is a consistent principle that in settings with roughly
(05:09):
medieval European technology regimes, good guys do not carry crossbows.
The crossbow is the weapon of the wicked, the barbarous,
the treacherous, the cruel. And Secondly, in this paper, the
author argues that this implicit moral gloss on different types
of medieval weapons is not necessarily a modern invention. In
the case of the crossbow, there are elements of this
(05:31):
particular vilification of it going back to the medieval period itself.
So in the first half of the paper, the author
goes through this extensive list of movies with medieval technology
regimes that implicitly associate the crossbow with wickedness, and note
that these stories include both comparatively realistic period dramas or
(05:53):
historical films, as well as high fantasy and other stories
with fully fictional settings and magic that just rely on
the conventions of medieval technology. One thing he notes is
that crossbows are often used to establish setting for medieval films,
along with other visual cues like knights in armor, castles, catapults, etc.
(06:15):
And this is true even in settings where it would
be strictly anachronistic, for example, in stories about King Arthur,
which if you're trying to sort of situate those roughly historically,
that'd probably be something like fifth century Britain, where there's
really no evidence that crossbows were popular, even though they
had already been invented by this point. It doesn't seem
like century Britain had a lot of crossbows in it,
(06:38):
if any. But it's sort of like a shorthand. You
see knights in armor, you see crossbow, you think, Okay,
I know where I am. It gets you to the
correct mental setting very quickly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah, And I don't know if you gets into this
at all, but I think one of the other things
about the crossbow and films is that there is a
gun like quality to the crossbow, where the makes the
visual language of say, armored guards or armored goons, whatever
the case may be. With crossbows like read very similarly
(07:10):
to modern tyrannical enforcement agencies.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
I think you might make that comparison. We'll see when
we look at a few of the examples.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Okay, let's see what do you got. Let's let's look
at some films.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
I'm not going to list all the examples burke Holder
gets into in this paper, because I suspect most listeners
will in fact already recognize the crossbow as evil pattern themselves,
but it's just worth naming a few. One he gets
into that I've never seen is the nineteen ninety five
film First Night, which has Sean Connery as King Arthur,
So this is an Arthurian legend film. Sean Connery is
(07:44):
Arthur Richard Gear as Lancelot, and in this movie, he says,
the heroes, such as Lancelot are repeatedly shown demonstrating their
skill with the sword, and this is a recurring theme.
The sword is often represented as a kind of virtuous
and honest weapon. And meanwhile, in this film, the villain,
a character named Prince Malagant played by Ben Cross, commands
(08:06):
gangs of marauders who are all armed with crossbows, which
he says are treated almost like six shooters from a
Western film. And also he says. In this story, the
heroic King Arthur is killed by a barrage of crossbow bolts.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah. I think this comparison to Cowboy flicks is pretty solid.
Reminds me of the scene in the western The Cowboys
in which Bruce Dern's character is a scoundrel is beat
up by John Wayne's character with fisticuffs, and then afterwards
he shoots John Wayne's character in the back. Clearly, if
this had been a medieval setting, he would have used
(08:43):
a crossbow.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Right, John Wayne would have the sword and the bad
guy would have the crossbow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, I think I saw First Night, but I've forgotten
all of it. This is no ex caliber, but I
have to stress that Ben cross was always great.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Uh huh. Next movie. I also haven't seen this one.
Another Arthurian legend film. This is the two thousand and
four film King Arthur, which not only shows Arthur's Saxon
enemies using crossbows. Apparently, at one point of this movie,
one of the heroes picks up a crossbow from the ground,
only to like look at it and toss it away
(09:17):
in disgust.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
I did not see this one. This was a strange
decade for films, but Ivan Clive Owen as author, that's
got to be good.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
To come back to Lord of the Rings. We've established
that the heroes don't use crossbows, but Burke Older mentions
that the only time we actually see crossbows used in
the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the film the Peter
Jackson films, is by the Forces of Evil. He says,
crossbows are used by the urik Hi during their attack
on Helm's Deep.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Those are elite orcs though you know, so, yeah, give
it to him. He's in the elite weaponr here.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Another interesting thing he points out is how in some movies,
the use or discarding of a c crossbow can signal
a change in the same character's moral or factional valance.
So maybe a character uses a crossbow when acting as
a villain or when we're supposed to wonder if they're
a villain, and then they stop using the crossbow when
(10:16):
they become good or are revealed as good. An example
cited here is Lord Arthur in the movie Army of Darkness,
where he apparently uses I didn't remember this detail, but
he apparently uses a crossbow when you assume he is
an enemy of Ash, But then when he becomes an
ally of ash, the crossbow goes away and instead we
see crossbows used by the dead, heites, the you know,
(10:36):
the bad the monsters of the movie.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Oh yeah, I forgot this scene as well. There's so
many other scenes that definitely stick in your mind that
this is a nice, nice, subtle example of what you're
talking about here.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
One more, this is not an example the author here
brings up, But I was just thinking about the most
prominent appearance of the crossbow in HBO's Game of Thrones adaptation,
which as a show is notable, especially in early seasons,
for moral ambiguity and you know what might be called
grim dark realism. There's kind of a in many ways.
It resists the kind of classic hero villain tropes and
(11:08):
the clear delineation between those two. And yet even in
Game of Thrones, this crossbow pattern holds true. It is
Its most salient use is as a weapon of torture,
used by King Joffrey, one of the nastiest and most
sadistic characters on the show. The other main example I
could think of was it is later used by a
more sympathetic character, but in an act of patricide when
(11:30):
that character is at his lowest point. So it's still
it's a pretty like negatively coded weapon in Game of Thrones.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah, absolutely, In both of these are cases where the
Lanisters are using them, and Lanisters are always at least
in a little bit in the gray area, if not
outright villains.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Yeah. Now, the author does try to acknowledge some counter examples,
and I think it's interesting to look at movies that
violate the pattern. One he mentions, Oh boy, I think
you're going to be excited about this. Rob is Rutger
howerd and Lady Hawk from nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Lady Hawk a movie that is never as good as
I remember it being whenever we watch it. Yeah, but
I still love it, like you gotta love Lady Hawk.
It's just kind of it's it's it's just pure romance,
it's beauty.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
I had the same experience. I remember, it's been years
since I watched it, but I remember wanting to like
it before I watched it, watching it and thinking wasn't
actually that great, but then still kind of loving it
for some reason.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, But anyways, so Rutger Hower in this movie, he
plays a renegade knight who uses a crossbow. He is
sort of the hero of the story, but the author
notes that he is portrayed as a kind of rebel
or renegade character, so so, you know, maybe it's more
fitting that he uses the crossbow because he's more he's
more outside the balance of the normal medieval night type hero.
(12:48):
And also here the author notes that he, you know,
uses the crossbow early in the movie, but then he
goes on to explain the prodigies of his family's house sword,
and then he uses that more in the later parts
of the film.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
M So again, perhaps an example of casting aside the
villainous crossbow and picking up the noble sword.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Okay, yeah, one more example. I had to mention another
movie for I haven't seen a lot of these are
like medieval movies from the two thousands that never got
in front of my eyes. But apparently the good guys
used crossbows in the medieval sci fi time travel movie
Timeline from two thousand and three, based on the novel
by Michael Crichton. Again, I haven't seen it, but the
(13:26):
author here notes that the movie flopped, and I laughed
out loud when I read that, because I was like, wait,
is he saying that it flopped because it depicted crossbows
coming to the rescue. Unclear.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
There's probably no real connection here, but it is worth
notable that Lady Hawk and Timeline were both directed by
Richard Donners, so I don't know, maybe he just really
liked crossbos or had some sort of like there's so many,
so many factors that go into I guess making these
kind of decisions for film. You know, could have been
something where it's like, well, the crossbows are easier to
block and use. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
So it's not absolutely universal. You can think of a
few counter examples, but I do think by and large
this is very true throughout the language of modern films
with historical and fantasy medieval settings. I would have to
agree it is remarkably consistent how the crossbow, in contrast
to other medieval weapons like the sword and the traditional bow,
(14:20):
is used to convey the negative traits of the person
who wields it.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah, I think this is this is absolutely true when
you look at the all the examples here, and I'm
certainly not going to set around and come up with
a bunch of counter examples, but I think one counter
example is worth mentioning because it has folkloric origins and
then also resonates through media, and that's Swiss folk hero
(14:45):
William Tell. This was a fourteenth century mountaineer, assassin and
crossbow marksman, again of Swiss folklore and legend. The legends
range from shooting an apple off of a person's head.
If you're aware of nothing else concerning this character, you
probably know about that little episode just because it's been
portrayed in cartoons and so forth. But other things he
(15:07):
gets into, like he slays a chimera, so he does
all sorts of stuff. But his more realistic exploits position
him as an assassin of evildoers and tyrants with a crossbow,
a weapon that, as we've discussed before, democratizes ranged lethal violence,
you know, and certainly factors into for instance, in the Chinese.
(15:28):
One of the Chinese examples we mentioned the last episode
a way that people outside of an actual military group
could potentially do harm or fight back against their overlords.
So I think it's you know, it's worth considering this
as a notable folkloric exception to the rule. And of
(15:49):
course there are also numerous depictions of this in film
and television, including the late nineteen eighties TV series crossbow,
which I remember seeing some in syndicate later on. And
I also distinctly remember seeing a vhsawbit. You know, maybe
it was just like a few episodes cobbled into a movie.
I'm not sure, but I remember seeing that on the
video shelf as a kid. And then there are other
(16:13):
older adaptations from the fifties. There is a nineteen ninety
eight TV series that looks really bad. There's a nineteen
thirty four movie The Legend of William Tell, so certainly
a figure with staying power within Swiss Swiss culture, but
also seems to resonate beyond it into other media. Two
(16:41):
more examples do come to mind because I imagine people
write in there's The Walking Dead's Darryl Dixon always using
that crossbow to shoot zombies. I'm not sure. I guess
he's kind of positioned as an antihero in some respects,
like he is kind of like a neutral character who's
you know, obviously he's not gonna side with the zombies,
but you know, he has his own kind of like
(17:01):
rogue outsider energy. And then let's not forget what hold up?
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yes, sorry, I don't mean to derail, but I've never
seen that much Walking Dead. Do some people side with zombies?
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Well, I think in later seasons that I have not seen,
there are certainly individuals who become more like the zombies
through their cruelty and their and their wretchedness. And there
are some that find ways to use zombies and become
more zombie like in their use of them. So in
a sense, there are those who side with zombies. But yeah,
(17:33):
Walking deads mostly about like humans being horrible and zombies
just being zombie. Zombies are kind of neutral, like you
can't hate the zombie for being a zombie, but there
are plenty of reasons to hate most of the human
characters in my experience.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Oh yeah, I think that's a classic zombie movie thing,
where usually the villain is other living humans and the
zombies are more like the setting. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
But Darryl Dixon a favorite character of many on the
TV show, I don't think he's in the comics at all.
But the other one that came to mind, and this
is what movie I've not seen, But I again, just
remember seeing that the VHS box art all the time.
Patrick Swayzey's Next of Kin from nineteen eighty nine. I
think he uses a bow in it as well, but
there are also scenes where's he's using a crossbow. There's
(18:15):
some sort of an action sequence in a cemetery where
he's running around with that crossbow.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
I've never seen this one either.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yeah, well it has it has Bill Paxton in it,
and it also has a nissance.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Wow. Okay, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Not supposed to be very good.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
It exists. Well, so, uh, to come back to the
points made in Burkeholder's paper, we sort of already raised this,
but it's interesting to contrast the villainous associations in film
of the crossbow with the sword, which is almost always
used to convey admirable traits and moral virtue. And of
(18:50):
course this seems like if you really think about it,
it's it's kind of a silly way to split things up.
Like they're both weapons, and so they could both be
used for evil, like just as easily a sword or
a traditional bow could be used for murder or something
else evil, and a crossbow could be used by whatever.
We see the good characters using swords for in this movie,
(19:11):
I don't know, self defense or defensive others or something.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah. Absolutely, I mean a sword carries a great deal
of symbolic power, But at the end of the day,
it is a murder weapon and a symbol of terror.
No one is out there hunting a deer with a
long sword.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
That's well, I was gonna say that's true, but I
don't know. Maybe some people hunt deer with swords. It
seems unlikely.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
It's unlike it would be a highly ineffective weapon to
use that way for hunting. Yeah, it was clearly not
designed as such, but the long sword was designed with
clear intention, the long sword, the dagger that dirt. Most
of these these implements, they are made to kill and
mutilate human beings.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
So one wonders, like, where do these associations come from?
How come it is in these modern stories, especially on film,
that the sword is seen as good and the crossbow
is seen as bad. And a question raised in this
paper is was the crossbow scene as fundamentally more evil
than other weapons at the time when its use was common,
(20:09):
especially in war in say medieval Europe. And the answer
is complicated, but to some extent, and in some cases, yes,
there are medieval writings that indicate something uniquely bad about
the crossbow. But I want to stress this was clearly
not everyone's opinion, and it certainly didn't stop people, especially
(20:29):
armies and militias, from using it. One extremely famous example
of a medieval work vilifying the crossbow in particular over
other weapons, and you'll see this example cited very often,
is from the Alexiad, a biography of the eleventh to
twelfth century Byzantine emperor Alexios, the first Komnena, written by
(20:49):
his daughter, the Byzantine Princess and a Komnena.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Listeners of the show might remember our episode on Greek Fire.
We cite this source as well in that ap and
I believe we had Annie Reese come on and read
it in the cold open.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Oh yeah, well, thanks again to Annie for that. We
didn't get her on hand today, so I'm going to
have to read from it myself for this time. But yes,
so there is so. Anna Kamneno was writing this work
while she was in exile in a monastery in the
later years of her life, and a passage of this
work that has attracted a lot of attention is Anna's
(21:27):
eyewitness account of the arrival of crusaders in Constantinople in
the years ten ninety six and ten ninety seven. The
account is very vivid and it contains some confusing claims.
So I'm going to read what she says about the crossbow,
and the translation that I'm using here is the one
block sited in a book that I mentioned in the
(21:47):
last episode, but I'll mention it again here The medieval
crossbow by Stuart Ellis Gorman from Pen and Sword Military
Press in twenty twenty two. So this is what Anna
Komnena writes. Us bow is a weapon of the barbarians,
absolutely unknown to the Greeks, and by barbarians. There she's
referring to Western European crusaders, probably especially the Franks. She
(22:11):
goes on. In order to stretch it, one does not
pull the string with the right hand while pushing the
bow with the left away from the body. This instrument
of war, which fires weapons to enormous distances, has to
be stretched by lying almost on one's back. Each foot
is pressed forcibly against the half circles of the bow,
and the two hands tug at the bow, pulling with
(22:33):
all one's strength towards the body. At the midpoint of
the string is a groove shaped like a cylinder, cut
in half and fitted to the string itself. It is
about the length of a fair sized arrow, extending from
the string to the center of the bow. Along this groove,
arrows of all kinds are fired. They are short, but
extremely thick, with a heavy iron tip. In the firing,
(22:54):
the string exerts tremendous violence and force, so that the missiles,
wherever they strike, do not rebound. In fact, they transfix
a shield, but through a heavy iron breastplate, and resume
their flight on the far side. So irresistible and violent
is the discharge. An arrow of this type has been
known to make its way right through a bronze statue,
(23:15):
and when fired at the wall of the very great town,
its point either protruded from the inner side, or buried
itself in the wall and disappeared altogether. Such is the
crossbow a truly diabolical machine. Now Ellis Gorman makes a
few observations about this passage. First of all, even though
it is clearly exaggerating in some cases about like the
(23:37):
power of a handheld crossbow bolt, saying that it will
go through a city wall, or like through straight through
a bronze statue and come out the other side, it
does give a clear description of how the crossbow works.
And I thought it was interesting where she describes people
having to lie on their backs on the ground in
order to disband it or to pull back the mechanism
to lock with the trigger, like you were talking about
(23:59):
in the last episode, possibly with the ancient Chinese example.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I think, yeah, yeah, about there being like different different
ways of loading some of these different crossbows, and one
of them was like laying down and having to use
your feet to pull it back in a position.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Ellis Gorman says it's confusing why she says the crossbow
was unknown in Byzantium, because other evidence indicates it was
probably known at least somewhat, if not widely, used in
Imperial Rome, and the Byzantine Empire was descended from the
eastern half of the Roman Empire. But it's possible that
the technology had fallen out of favor in Byzantium, had
(24:35):
been and had been forgotten by many. But the point
of the passage, more than to create a continuous history
of military technology, was to praise her father and to
condemn the barbarity of the Western European crusaders, So her
comments about the crossbow seemed kind of aimed at that purpose.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, she has a clear agenda here, because otherwise, if
you take her literally, it's like she's saying crossbow absolutely diabolical,
our secret fire weapon, totally above board.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, so it's possible. It's just like here it is
described as particularly a worse weapon than others because it
is the weapon used by people she saw as wicked
and barbaric. So coming back to Burkeholder's paper, he discusses
at some length this passage by anakom Nina, but he
also points out medieval sculpture depicting crossbows in the hands
(25:26):
of demonic figures. So, for example, at the church of
Saint Sirnaan in Toulouse, France, there is a twelfth century
pillar that has sculptures of demons squatting on top of
it clutching crossbows and bolts, and there are others as well.
But he tempers these observations by pointing out that medieval
European personifications of death and disease and sin, these sort
(25:49):
of demonic embodiments are often wielding other weapons as well,
like swords and traditional bows, so you shouldn't read too
much into the cases where they are holding crossbows.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Joe I had to look up one of these demons
with the crossbow. Of course, I can't not look this up.
And it's pretty fabulous because it's like a gargoyle esque figure,
you know, on a corner, part of a pillar motif,
and the demon appears to be sort of squatting but
also sort of loading a crossbow, like he's pushing down
with his feet and pulling up on the string with
(26:22):
his hands or claws. But also there's something kind of
perverse about it, like the demon's kind of humping the
crossbow as well.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
M yeah, that checks out. Now. If you read sources
about historical views on crossbows, it is very often pointed
out that the Catholic Church produced a sort of ban
on the use of crossbows in war at the second
lateran council in eleven ninety three condemning quote the hateful
(26:52):
and death bringing art of crossbowmen. However, Burkholder adds a
lot of context to this that shows how this just
this fact in isolation could be misleading. So some context is.
First of all, the church's ban on the crossbow only
originally applied to use against fellow Christians, and then later
(27:13):
in the same century, the church amended that band to
say okay, you can even use the crossbow against fellow
Christians as long as it is quote a just war. Okay,
I assume the people using it would always claim it
was a just war.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Yeah, they should probably got a warning on the side
of the crossbow, just in case, only for use in
just war.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Also, according to some scholars, this band was essentially completely ignored,
like Christian armies just continued to use crossbows to fight
each other all the time. Also, the church's proclamation didn't
just attempt to ban crossbows, it attempted to ban regular
bows as well, and this was also generally ignored. And
(27:54):
then also Burkelder cites some other scholars named Contamine and
Strickland who point out that one among multiple possible utilities
of these bands, one of them was that it was
possibly just being used by military leaders to quote keep
deadly missile weapons out of the hands of non elites.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Well, this absolutely checks out with a lot of what
we've been discussing. Yeah, it's okay if we have the crossbows,
we just don't want the people we're oppressing to have
the crossbows. I was reading about this as well in
Vincent van Derven's Crossbows and Christians from a twenty twelve
edition of Medieval Warfare. There's a quote from this very
church ruling from eleven thirty nine. I wanted to read
(28:37):
it here, doing my best attempt at a Michael Palin
accent from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Yes, quote,
we prohibit to under anathema that murderous art of crossbowmen
and archers, which is hateful to God to be employed
against Christians and Catholics from now on.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Who being naughty in my sight? Yeah, not bad Michael
palein rob but still we Apparently this this ruling was
not much heated. It was mostly ignored. But anyway, there's
there's a brief passage where Burkeolder cites another scholar named
Van Kreveld to describe some of the possible mental justifications
(29:20):
people had for especially demonizing the use of crossbows. Again,
you know, it's not hard to see why any any
deadly weapon would have negative connotations attached to it, But
like why the crossbow more than like a regular bow
or more than a sword when comparing missile weapons which
would include regular bows to swords. One thing that gets
(29:42):
mentioned in this paper is that it in some ways
quote threatened an idealized form of close quarter combat. So
maybe not that there's actually anything beautiful or noble about
people like swinging swords at each other and bashing each
other with handheld weapons, but that was an activity that
had been idealized in literature and storytelling and thus had
(30:06):
more poetic drama to it, totally apart from the reality
of that physically happening.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yeah, and it again, it makes sense that this kind
of view would be very it would very much be
a top down viewpoint, whereas something like William Tell that
would be something that arises from the people as opposed
to from the powers that be. Though saying that, without
again not being an expert on William Tell, you can
also imagine the case where, you know, the people would
(30:35):
have their folk hero, and then the powers that be
might be like, well, yeah, but he was using a crossbow.
What does that tell you about this guy?
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah. Another possible mental motivation for this focus on the
crossbow as like the weapon of a villain, is the
idea that it somehow gives users a supposed unfair advantage.
That the idea and again we talked about this in
the last episode. It's not like you didn't have to
train to use a crossbow like it did take skill,
(31:03):
and it did take training, but it probably didn't take
the level of like muscular physical fitness required, and probably
maybe not the same amount of practice required for a
traditional bow that you would, you know, draw and hold
with just the strength of your arms, or maybe a
sword as well.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's fascinating to think about about this though,
because of course the crossbow is eventually replaced by advances
in gunpowder technology and of course the coming of the
age of the gun and reading the gun by any
of these moral standards, like the gun is inherently a
coward's weapon and a weakling's weapon, but of course it
(31:46):
comes to rule the day.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
That's true. But some sources do say that a lot
of the ways the crossbow is viewed and treated in
culture do end up sort of mapping on to early
uses of gunpowder weapons. I wanted to mention one more
thing that might be motivating sort of demonization of the
crossbow in compared to the longbow in films, which is
(32:11):
a sort of inherited bias in favor of the English
in the depiction of English versus French conflicts, where in
reality both sides actually did use crossbows at various times,
but the use of crossbows by the Continental armies by
the French is more. I think that it did actually
(32:31):
happen more, and it certainly is emphasized more in historical
accounts that the French had crossbows. So like, for example,
the author of this paper mentions movies about Joan of
Arc which depict Joan's French armies carrying crossbows against the
longbow armed English, and that how showing things like this
(32:52):
feels like it's sort of violating the normal language of cinema,
if like, the audience is supposed to be on Joan's
side and they're the ones that have crossbows.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
You know, real quick. Coming back to Monty Python and
the Holy Grail, there of course is a scene where
they encounter the French, and if memory serves, the frenchmen
do not have crossbows, but they do wield an unfair
ranged weapon against our English knights, and that, of course
is insults. So perhaps there's some connective tissue there. I'm
(33:24):
not sure.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
It leads to one of my favorite details in that
whole movie that is quite easy to miss. Actually it's
not even a spoken line. It's the fact that John
Cleee playing a Lancelot, after they get insulted by the French,
he draws his sword and starts hitting the castle with
the sword. I think it's one of the best gags
in the movie. But to sum it up, is there
(33:48):
a bias in contemporary historical sources about the use of
crossbows that treats them in this same way, that views
them as villainous. It's not universal, but there are some
sources like that, and it may be that those sources
have been influential and have sort of come through and
become inherited as part of the language of medieval films.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Yeah, this is going to be very interesting to think
about just in general, as we all continue to watch
films that have at least a medieval flavoring to them,
or to read books that have medieval flavoring to them.
I was just reading from a fantasy novel last night,
and there's a scene where people were being shot out
by cross with crossbows, and of course it's it's like
(34:32):
rogues and assassins who were using the crossbow. Yeah, and
certainly on future episodes of Weird House Cinema. Now, to
come back to the crossbow itself, First of all, I
just want to pick up a few odds and ends
(34:54):
that I didn't get to discussing, just sort of the
history and innovation of the crossbow, particularly first of all,
more in the West. According to Fagan and Rowley Conley,
the Romans have for them an early explicit textual reference
to the crossbows, and they would have been in use
by the Roman army by the fourth century CE. The
(35:15):
Viagettius actually refers to these in the book Concerning Military Matters,
but the authors here point out that in the bow
drawing mechanisms varied. We've discussed some of these already, laying down,
you know, strap putting your feet into straps, you know,
kind of like bootholes on the end of the crossbow.
There was also the Greek belly bow, or the gastrofeties.
(35:40):
This described in the first century CE, and was loaded
by bracing the crossbow against the ground and forcing the
butt of the thing into your belly. I don't know
if that makes complete sense. I included an illustration here
for you, Joe.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Mm, well, I'm seeing the figure in the illustration you're
providing where it's like he's almost like lean he's leaning
down on the crossbow with his belly on it, with
the bottom against the ground. So he's like pressing, and
I guess I don't understand how the pressing would cause
it to be spanned or to be what you might
(36:13):
call a loaded or cocked. I guess maybe one way
of interpreting this, though I don't know, is like if
there are two actual shafts that can slide across each other,
so by pressing on one, he is sliding it down
the length of the other, and that draws back the string.
I guess that's possible.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Yeah, Basically, it looks like he's giving himself an incorrect
Heimlich maneuver with the crossbow with the business end pointed
at the ground. On the end of the crossbow, the
business end of the crossbow, there's this shaft and is
that is pushed down. As that's forced down, it's gonna
push the you see it, It would slide ice and
push the push that it would draw the bow and
(36:52):
then it would lock.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
That makes sense now, yeah, okay, because a lot of
the later like medieval European mechanisms, I'm thinking for spanning,
it would involve more of a pulling mechanism, where say
a common one is again the belt hook, which we
talked about last time, say, the combination of a belt
hook with a stirrup at the end of the crossbow.
So you would hook something that's attached to the string
(37:17):
to a loop or a hook on your belt, and
then you would push down with your foot in a
stirrup on the shaft of the crossbow at the stirrups
at the end of the crossbow, so that pulls the
bow towards your foot and it pulls the string back
with the strength of your legs and your body away
from it.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah. Now, the authors mentioned that there were also Greco
Roman mentions of crossbows going back to the third and
even fifth centuries BCE. The third century BC example seems
pretty valid. This is described and sustibious. But the fifth
century BCE mentioned seems to be a catapult or a
siege weapon rather than a handheld weapon. Again, getting back
(37:56):
to that something we mentioned in the last episode, but
apparently looking back at some of these ancient texts, if
you get into this gray area when you're trying to
determine are we talking about a crossbow here or are
we talking about some form of catapult?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Yeah, and that ambiguity doesn't stop there. By the way
I've read that historical study of crossbows is in multiple
ways complicated by ambiguity and confusion about the names used
for weapons and texts and trying to understand exactly what
they're talking about.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah, now one more sort of like cocking or drawing
mechanism of note, you also have the goat foot lever
that appeared on a number of crossbows, and this was
basically a lever device that was used to draw the bow.
I looked at looking at images of it. I guess
the goat foot comes because it kind of looks like
(38:44):
a cloven hoof. There's like sort of two hooks or
grooves in it.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Yeah, and so in addition, so like the belt hook one,
you would be trying to span the crossbow just by
using the strength of your body. But a lot of
these mechanisms have a machine with some kind a mechanical advantage,
like a lever or later you would have you know,
you could get a really powerful crossbow if you use
objects like a windlass or a cranicquin that would give
(39:09):
you the ability to essentially crank the string back.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
And that's the kind of crossbow that a dwarf should
be using. I mean that just seems perfect. Certainly a
gnome in Dungeons and Dragons needs a crossbow that has
cranks on it, cranks, levers, the whole nine.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Yards, lots of moving parts. Yeah, it makes it more
like a modern machine.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Now with military technology, and certainly with the crossbow. You know,
it often comes down to trade offs, right. So in
the last episode we definitely discussed the reloading limitations of
the crossbow, and this was a problem that innovators threw
themselves that pretty early on. The crossbow packs power and
it offers reasonable accessibility, but is there a way to
(39:50):
speed it up again to be able to fire perhaps
more crossbow bolts before too many arrows are fired at
you by archers and so forth? Are there ways to
do that while retaining the advantages of the crossbow to
some measurable degree. And so this is where we get
into the topic of the Chinese repeating crossbow. I was
(40:10):
looking at a couple of sources on this. One of
them is Mechanism Analysis of Ancient Chinese Crossbows by Dong Atol,
published in the journal Mechanical Sciences in twenty twenty. I
was also looking at Structural analysis of ancient Chinese crossbows
from twenty twelve in the Journal of Science and Innovation
by Su and Yan and the innovation in broad strokes
(40:33):
seems to go back perhaps as early as four hundred BCE,
at least in principle, though there are essentially two different
repeating crossbows from two different eras that you see mentioned.
So this first one, this four hundred BCE one. This
is sometimes referred to as the Chuse State repeating crossbow,
and the evidence for this comes from archaeological finds in
(40:56):
jung Ling Hube that have been dated to this period.
According to dong at all So, this area was known
as the Cheo State during the Warring States period that
would have spanned four seventy five through to twenty one BCE.
So this, this contraption seemed to have had a vertical
magazine on top of the crossbow of twenty arrows that
(41:17):
drop down into firing position via gravity, and then you
would you would draw back, fire, draw back, and every
time you would draw back with an empty slot for
a crossbow bolt, it would drop into place. Sounds pretty advanced,
sounds potentially useful, right. However, the thing to keep in
mind about the Cheo State crossbow is that it's small.
(41:39):
It's only thirty centimeters long, it's less than a foot,
and the bow is so short that it would have
depended on the elasticity of the bow string rather than
the bending of the bow.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Huh, So it's more like a slingshot almost.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Yeah, And they say that it would have only had
a range of about twenty to twenty five meters, so
I think somewhere in the range of twenty two yards.
But on the other hand, you'd have something like rapid
fire or you know, automatic or semi automatic fire as such.
You know, this wouldn't have been a weapon of warfare
or self defense, they stressed, but rather a novelty invention
(42:15):
that could have best been used at best could have
been used to hunt small birds. The authors also describe
it as a quote toy of personal invention.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
That's interesting, so more of a demonstration of principle or
demonstration of ingenuity than something that would have been especially
useful in this form.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Right, Like I guess if there were a Dungeons and
Dragon's weapon, it would just do zero damage across the board.
But it's interesting. So I should also point out that
the author's stress that there are no historical writings that
mention this particular crossbow, and that the idea of that
being like a toy of personal invention. It reminds me
even of our invention episodes on the wheel. You know,
(42:55):
in certain cultures before the wheel could actually really be
capitalized upon for transportation and so forth, you know, or
other applications. There are still evidence that it was around,
sometimes just as a novelty, as a toy. There are
various reasons that an idea or technological innovation just cannot
be you know, used, that cannot be employed for anything
(43:19):
other than amusement, or at least for a certain period
of time.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Right. I'm almost tempted to wonder if in some scenarios,
like making a toy version of a mechanical device would
be kind of like taking a patent out, like you know,
you're not making this device at scale that it would
be or in a way that would be used for anything.
But you can you can show the principle in small
scale in a toy.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Now.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
The second variety of Chinese repeating crossbow is the zugew
or zuge New repeating crossbow, named for Zuge Lang apparently
one through two thirty four CE, military leader and prime
minister of Schuhan during the Three Kingdoms period. He's also
apparently the main hero of the fictional Romance of the
(44:06):
Three Kingdoms, a fourteenth century historical novel, in that he's
portrayed as a sage and a military mastermind. However, apparently
he did not actually create invent this crossbow. His name
is associated with it in some records, and it just
has kind of stuck. But this version of the repeating
(44:26):
crossbow did see use and was powerful enough to serve
as a lethal weapon, sometimes aided by poisoned bolt heads.
Military historian Chris McNabb describes it as follows in a
twenty twenty issue of MHQ, the Quarterly Journal of Military History.
Quote it featured a top mounted magazine in which multiple
(44:48):
bolts were stacked in a large operating handle. When drawn
to the rear, the handle both cocked and at the
full extent of the draw released the bowstring, firing the
bolt that had dropped automatically into the flight groove. There
was no separate trigger. The crossbowmen then drove the handle forward,
pushing the whole mechanism to the front. To re engage
(45:08):
the string for firing as the next bolt took its
place in the flight grove ready to go. Now he
cites a fire rate of ten bolts in twenty seconds
compared to a more standard and again very general crossbow
fire rate of three or four bolts in a minute.
But as impressive as this is, the trade off was
limited power and range, thus the need for poison tips
(45:31):
on some of your bolt heads. Still, one can imagine
using this as kind of like a nuisance or shock
weapon alongside other defensive weaponry. Now, Needham discusses the box
and tube crossbow used around twelve fifty seven that featured
a vertical drop magazine atop the crossbow. This was noted
for its convenience and steadiness. It apparently could also be
(45:54):
used easily at night because you didn't actually have to
see what you were doing with the loading. That raises
questions about what you're shooting at. I don't know that
that's more properly eliminated. I guess you can imagine a
scenario where there's moonlight in play and you're in the shadows.
And it's also worth noting, especially in the writings of
Needham about Chinese history and technology that the repeated fire
(46:18):
innovations would continue during the gunpowder era of Chinese weaponry,
and Nitam mentions the nine dragon guns that could shoot
nine arrows at a time off a single ignition. This
was part of the fifteenth century Frontier arsenal. They also
made use of a form of multi barrel gun that
this is much later on, but it was apparently in
(46:38):
line with the European concept of the roboticon or late
medieval volley gun of the same time period. Now I
have one more kind of mystery weapon to bring up here.
This is one that came up pretty early in my research,
but coming to it last here because I couldn't really
get a straight answer on it. And it concerns something
(46:58):
called the panjagon. So this would have been a either
a bow or a crossbow, or some sort of a
bow technique. It's uncertain associated with the Sasanian Empire. This
would of course an Iranian empire from two twenty four
to six fifty one. We've discussed this empire on past
(47:21):
episodes of the show. But yeah, it seems to have
been a weapon or a weapon system or just a strategy,
and it's unclear if descriptions are referring to a projectile
weapon or an archery technique. It's even been speculated though,
that it might have been a repeating crossbow of some form.
I was looking at a book by Cave Faruka titled
(47:42):
Sasanian Elite Cavalry AD two twenty four through six forty two.
I should note that this book has an illustration on
the front, and this may be like a stock illustration,
because I found it in some other places as well,
that shows a man on a horse when in armor
hiring some sort of strange weapon that has like five
(48:03):
arrow slots or five grooves, and they are like five
arrows flying out of the thing. So I assume that
that is supposed to be an artist depiction of the pandagon.
But the book itself goes into more detail here. So
the name means five device, but there are no known
(48:25):
surviving examples to go on. The author here writes that
it might have been a quiver system for accessing five
arrows in a row fairly quickly, rather than what was
apparently the typical Sesanian approach of holding three arrows in
the same hand as the bow while you were firing.
He speculates that it was likely intended whatever it was,
as a like a spread fire weapon or some sort
(48:48):
of a technique to spread your fire, while other, perhaps
more highly skilled archers, and certainly Roman accounts speak of
Sasanian archery skill could focus their fire. So you know,
you have say multiple arrows flying through the air, and
this proposes a certain threat. But then perhaps you have
more skilled archers that are actually doing the lethal work
(49:09):
alongside this. But ultimately who knows. Maybe it was some
sort of repeating crossbow, but the details are lost to history.
Apparently interesting, where are the repeating crossbows and dungeons and dragons?
Though not sure?
Speaker 3 (49:24):
I don't know. I've never come across one. I assume
that means they're not there.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
I mean they've got to be there. Someone has at
least home brewed or repeating crossbow right, and a quick
search on D and D beyond shows that there are
some references to them, So maybe the Darrow use them
in the under Dark. Looks like they maybe show up
in Water Deep, but they don't have a prominent place
in the player's handbook or anything.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
This might be a bit a dumb question, but how
do you get lumber in the under dark? Because they
don't have trees down there, right, it's just big mushrooms.
So do you use mushroom fiber as lumber to make
your you know, your wooden structures and tools, or do
you have to go to the surface to get trees
for lumber.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
Well, you've answered your own question, because yes, you use
the mushrooms. There's a particular mushroom that is called zerka
wood or zerk wood that is the primary building material
of the under Dark.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
Man, you know all the answers. I didn't know there
was an answer to that.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
I ran a campaign in the under Dark for a while,
so the Underdark I have a lot of answers on.
But other parts of the D and D world, I'm
my knowledge is a little more vague and.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
Spread out, And I guess we end where we began
with with D and D. Well, does that do it
for you with the Crossbow robe.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
I think so. I mean, there are a lot of
things in the history of the Crossbow that, you know,
we didn't have time to touch on, but I think
we had all the most important things. But we'd love
to hear from anyone out there if you have examples
of what we've been talking about. In you know, medieval
flavored media concerning the crossbow. If you yourself are a
crossbow enthusiast, then I'm sure you have some insight to
(51:00):
share with us. Everything's fair game will remind you that
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast
with episodes. Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail
on Mondays. On Wednesdays we'll usually do a short form
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on Weird House Cinema. Will remind you that if you
(51:22):
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Speaker 3 (51:39):
Has been lost to us huge thanks as always to
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Speaker 2 (52:03):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. It is Saturday.
We have another Vaald episode for you. This is going
to be part two of our series The Invention of
the Crossbow listen originally published eleven sixteen, twenty twenty three.
So let's go ahead and dive right in.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,
and we're back with part two of our series on
the invention of the crossbow. In the previous episode, we
talked about some evidence of the crossbows invention in ancient China,
some differences between the crossbow design and regular bow design,
some differences in the physics of how they work, and
(00:57):
what different kinds of advantages they would have had in
history oracle usage. And today we're back to talk about
crossbows some more. Now, there is a subject I brought
up in the previous episode. I think I think it
at least teased it that I wanted to come back
to in detail, and that is the moral coding of crossbows,
(01:17):
specifically in storytelling, especially in movies, in modern movies. So
I was reading a very interesting paper about this that
was like a history slash film studies paper called x
marks the Plot crossbos in Medieval Film by Peter Berkolder,
(01:38):
published in the journal Studies in Popular Culture in twenty fifteen,
and it starts with what I think is a pretty
good example. So there's a scene many of you out
there will remember from the first Lord of the Rings movie.
It's from Fellowship of the Ring, which came out in
two thousand and one. It's when the heroes are at
riven Dell the fellowship is formed. For those unfamiliar with
the story, it's when the adventurers from various people's around
(02:01):
Middle Earth pledged to band together into a fellowship to
carry out a mission to destroy the story's mcguffin, a
wicked and powerful magic ring, to protect the people from
its demonic owner, Lord Sauron. So it's sort of the
ultimate good guy vibes a scene the good characters are
all pledging camaraderie, pledging to help each other in the
service of doing good. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
In fact, I reference this scene in the last episode.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
You did Yes yeah, about how Legolis says it's my bow,
not my string. Yeah, it's not. Actually the string that stretches.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Though we will get back to that concept later on
in this episode when we get back into the technical
specifications of various crossbow designs, because sometimes it is the string.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Oh I can't wait. Okay, So, but you got the
characters in the scene. You got Frodo. That's the young
hobbit who commits to taking the Ring to Mordor to
destroy it. He's your classic courage against impossible odds character.
Frodo is not a warrior. He's just like a young,
almost helpless little guy at first. But he has courage
(03:06):
and he wants to do the right thing, so he's
going to go destroy the ring. But then the other
characters say they're going to help him. Gandalf the Wizard,
holding the magic staff in his hand, he says, Frodo,
you're not going to do it alone. I will help,
And then Erra Gorn, the man, the sort of king
of men in Middle Earth, says, you will have my sword.
I don't remember it. Does Sean Bean say the same
(03:27):
thing or something like that, but aer Gorne at least
says you'll have his sword. Legalis the Elf says you'll
have my bow. Gimli the dwarf says, and my axe,
and then Mary and Pippen, the perpetually second breakfasting Hobbits,
also offer the help of their intelligence. Yes, yes, but
in this scene, each of the principal heroes of the story,
(03:48):
they offer their commitment through the metaphor of the weapon
they carry, And this is basically in a medieval technological regime.
But the author of this paper notes that it's interesting
that it's sort of trying to like show the whole
span of recognizable medieval weapons, but none of these characters
offers up a crossbow to help, despite the fact that
(04:11):
berker Holder calls the crossbow quote one of the most
readily accessible personal weapons of the Middle Ages.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
And I should say I still hold this to be true.
I think a crossbow is an excellent weapon for a dwarf.
I think everything lines up that dwarves should be using
crossbows by the dozen. You know, it's just a perfect
weapon for imagining them use some sort of arranged weapon
within an enclosed dwarven environment. It seems to fit there.
You know, their their build, their basic demeanor, their technological proficiency.
(04:42):
I think everything lines up. I think I think Gimli
should have had a crossbow.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Fair enough, though the acts makes sense to me, it
seems at home in his hands. But this paper argues
that the absence of a crossbow among the ranks of
the good guys in the movie is neither unique nor happenstance.
The point of this paper is that throughout modern film
there is a consistent principle that in settings with roughly
(05:09):
medieval European technology regimes, good guys do not carry crossbows.
The crossbow is the weapon of the wicked, the barbarous,
the treacherous, the cruel. And Secondly, in this paper, the
author argues that this implicit moral gloss on different types
of medieval weapons is not necessarily a modern invention. In
the case of the crossbow, there are elements of this
(05:31):
particular vilification of it going back to the medieval period itself.
So in the first half of the paper, the author
goes through this extensive list of movies with medieval technology
regimes that implicitly associate the crossbow with wickedness, and note
that these stories include both comparatively realistic period dramas or
(05:53):
historical films, as well as high fantasy and other stories
with fully fictional settings and magic that just rely on
the conventions of medieval technology. One thing he notes is
that crossbows are often used to establish setting for medieval films,
along with other visual cues like knights in armor, castles, catapults, etc.
(06:15):
And this is true even in settings where it would
be strictly anachronistic, for example, in stories about King Arthur,
which if you're trying to sort of situate those roughly historically,
that'd probably be something like fifth century Britain, where there's
really no evidence that crossbows were popular, even though they
had already been invented by this point. It doesn't seem
like century Britain had a lot of crossbows in it,
(06:38):
if any. But it's sort of like a shorthand. You
see knights in armor, you see crossbow, you think, Okay,
I know where I am. It gets you to the
correct mental setting very quickly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah, And I don't know if you gets into this
at all, but I think one of the other things
about the crossbow and films is that there is a
gun like quality to the crossbow, where the makes the
visual language of say, armored guards or armored goons, whatever
the case may be. With crossbows like read very similarly
(07:10):
to modern tyrannical enforcement agencies.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
I think you might make that comparison. We'll see when
we look at a few of the examples.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Okay, let's see what do you got. Let's let's look
at some films.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
I'm not going to list all the examples burke Holder
gets into in this paper, because I suspect most listeners
will in fact already recognize the crossbow as evil pattern themselves,
but it's just worth naming a few. One he gets
into that I've never seen is the nineteen ninety five
film First Night, which has Sean Connery as King Arthur,
So this is an Arthurian legend film. Sean Connery is
(07:44):
Arthur Richard Gear as Lancelot, and in this movie, he says,
the heroes, such as Lancelot are repeatedly shown demonstrating their
skill with the sword, and this is a recurring theme.
The sword is often represented as a kind of virtuous
and honest weapon. And meanwhile, in this film, the villain,
a character named Prince Malagant played by Ben Cross, commands
(08:06):
gangs of marauders who are all armed with crossbows, which
he says are treated almost like six shooters from a
Western film. And also he says. In this story, the
heroic King Arthur is killed by a barrage of crossbow bolts.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah. I think this comparison to Cowboy flicks is pretty solid.
Reminds me of the scene in the western The Cowboys
in which Bruce Dern's character is a scoundrel is beat
up by John Wayne's character with fisticuffs, and then afterwards
he shoots John Wayne's character in the back. Clearly, if
this had been a medieval setting, he would have used
(08:43):
a crossbow.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Right, John Wayne would have the sword and the bad
guy would have the crossbow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, I think I saw First Night, but I've forgotten
all of it. This is no ex caliber, but I
have to stress that Ben cross was always great.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Uh huh. Next movie. I also haven't seen this one.
Another Arthurian legend film. This is the two thousand and
four film King Arthur, which not only shows Arthur's Saxon
enemies using crossbows. Apparently, at one point of this movie,
one of the heroes picks up a crossbow from the ground,
only to like look at it and toss it away
(09:17):
in disgust.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
I did not see this one. This was a strange
decade for films, but Ivan Clive Owen as author, that's
got to be good.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
To come back to Lord of the Rings. We've established
that the heroes don't use crossbows, but Burke Older mentions
that the only time we actually see crossbows used in
the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the film the Peter
Jackson films, is by the Forces of Evil. He says,
crossbows are used by the urik Hi during their attack
on Helm's Deep.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Those are elite orcs though you know, so, yeah, give
it to him. He's in the elite weaponr here.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Another interesting thing he points out is how in some movies,
the use or discarding of a c crossbow can signal
a change in the same character's moral or factional valance.
So maybe a character uses a crossbow when acting as
a villain or when we're supposed to wonder if they're
a villain, and then they stop using the crossbow when
(10:16):
they become good or are revealed as good. An example
cited here is Lord Arthur in the movie Army of Darkness,
where he apparently uses I didn't remember this detail, but
he apparently uses a crossbow when you assume he is
an enemy of Ash, But then when he becomes an
ally of ash, the crossbow goes away and instead we
see crossbows used by the dead, heites, the you know,
(10:36):
the bad the monsters of the movie.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Oh yeah, I forgot this scene as well. There's so
many other scenes that definitely stick in your mind that
this is a nice, nice, subtle example of what you're
talking about here.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
One more, this is not an example the author here
brings up, But I was just thinking about the most
prominent appearance of the crossbow in HBO's Game of Thrones adaptation,
which as a show is notable, especially in early seasons,
for moral ambiguity and you know what might be called
grim dark realism. There's kind of a in many ways.
It resists the kind of classic hero villain tropes and
(11:08):
the clear delineation between those two. And yet even in
Game of Thrones, this crossbow pattern holds true. It is
Its most salient use is as a weapon of torture,
used by King Joffrey, one of the nastiest and most
sadistic characters on the show. The other main example I
could think of was it is later used by a
more sympathetic character, but in an act of patricide when
(11:30):
that character is at his lowest point. So it's still
it's a pretty like negatively coded weapon in Game of Thrones.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah, absolutely, In both of these are cases where the
Lanisters are using them, and Lanisters are always at least
in a little bit in the gray area, if not
outright villains.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Yeah. Now, the author does try to acknowledge some counter examples,
and I think it's interesting to look at movies that
violate the pattern. One he mentions, Oh boy, I think
you're going to be excited about this. Rob is Rutger
howerd and Lady Hawk from nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Lady Hawk a movie that is never as good as
I remember it being whenever we watch it. Yeah, but
I still love it, like you gotta love Lady Hawk.
It's just kind of it's it's it's just pure romance,
it's beauty.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
I had the same experience. I remember, it's been years
since I watched it, but I remember wanting to like
it before I watched it, watching it and thinking wasn't
actually that great, but then still kind of loving it
for some reason.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, But anyways, so Rutger Hower in this movie, he
plays a renegade knight who uses a crossbow. He is
sort of the hero of the story, but the author
notes that he is portrayed as a kind of rebel
or renegade character, so so, you know, maybe it's more
fitting that he uses the crossbow because he's more he's
more outside the balance of the normal medieval night type hero.
(12:48):
And also here the author notes that he, you know,
uses the crossbow early in the movie, but then he
goes on to explain the prodigies of his family's house sword,
and then he uses that more in the later parts
of the film.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
M So again, perhaps an example of casting aside the
villainous crossbow and picking up the noble sword.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Okay, yeah, one more example. I had to mention another
movie for I haven't seen a lot of these are
like medieval movies from the two thousands that never got
in front of my eyes. But apparently the good guys
used crossbows in the medieval sci fi time travel movie
Timeline from two thousand and three, based on the novel
by Michael Crichton. Again, I haven't seen it, but the
(13:26):
author here notes that the movie flopped, and I laughed
out loud when I read that, because I was like, wait,
is he saying that it flopped because it depicted crossbows
coming to the rescue. Unclear.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
There's probably no real connection here, but it is worth
notable that Lady Hawk and Timeline were both directed by
Richard Donners, so I don't know, maybe he just really
liked crossbos or had some sort of like there's so many,
so many factors that go into I guess making these
kind of decisions for film. You know, could have been
something where it's like, well, the crossbows are easier to
block and use. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
So it's not absolutely universal. You can think of a
few counter examples, but I do think by and large
this is very true throughout the language of modern films
with historical and fantasy medieval settings. I would have to
agree it is remarkably consistent how the crossbow, in contrast
to other medieval weapons like the sword and the traditional bow,
(14:20):
is used to convey the negative traits of the person
who wields it.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah, I think this is this is absolutely true when
you look at the all the examples here, and I'm
certainly not going to set around and come up with
a bunch of counter examples, but I think one counter
example is worth mentioning because it has folkloric origins and
then also resonates through media, and that's Swiss folk hero
(14:45):
William Tell. This was a fourteenth century mountaineer, assassin and
crossbow marksman, again of Swiss folklore and legend. The legends
range from shooting an apple off of a person's head.
If you're aware of nothing else concerning this character, you
probably know about that little episode just because it's been
portrayed in cartoons and so forth. But other things he
(15:07):
gets into, like he slays a chimera, so he does
all sorts of stuff. But his more realistic exploits position
him as an assassin of evildoers and tyrants with a crossbow,
a weapon that, as we've discussed before, democratizes ranged lethal violence,
you know, and certainly factors into for instance, in the Chinese.
(15:28):
One of the Chinese examples we mentioned the last episode
a way that people outside of an actual military group
could potentially do harm or fight back against their overlords.
So I think it's you know, it's worth considering this
as a notable folkloric exception to the rule. And of
(15:49):
course there are also numerous depictions of this in film
and television, including the late nineteen eighties TV series crossbow,
which I remember seeing some in syndicate later on. And
I also distinctly remember seeing a vhsawbit. You know, maybe
it was just like a few episodes cobbled into a movie.
I'm not sure, but I remember seeing that on the
video shelf as a kid. And then there are other
(16:13):
older adaptations from the fifties. There is a nineteen ninety
eight TV series that looks really bad. There's a nineteen
thirty four movie The Legend of William Tell, so certainly
a figure with staying power within Swiss Swiss culture, but
also seems to resonate beyond it into other media. Two
(16:41):
more examples do come to mind because I imagine people
write in there's The Walking Dead's Darryl Dixon always using
that crossbow to shoot zombies. I'm not sure. I guess
he's kind of positioned as an antihero in some respects,
like he is kind of like a neutral character who's
you know, obviously he's not gonna side with the zombies,
but you know, he has his own kind of like
(17:01):
rogue outsider energy. And then let's not forget what hold up?
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yes, sorry, I don't mean to derail, but I've never
seen that much Walking Dead. Do some people side with zombies?
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Well, I think in later seasons that I have not seen,
there are certainly individuals who become more like the zombies
through their cruelty and their and their wretchedness. And there
are some that find ways to use zombies and become
more zombie like in their use of them. So in
a sense, there are those who side with zombies. But yeah,
(17:33):
Walking deads mostly about like humans being horrible and zombies
just being zombie. Zombies are kind of neutral, like you
can't hate the zombie for being a zombie, but there
are plenty of reasons to hate most of the human
characters in my experience.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Oh yeah, I think that's a classic zombie movie thing,
where usually the villain is other living humans and the
zombies are more like the setting. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
But Darryl Dixon a favorite character of many on the
TV show, I don't think he's in the comics at all.
But the other one that came to mind, and this
is what movie I've not seen, But I again, just
remember seeing that the VHS box art all the time.
Patrick Swayzey's Next of Kin from nineteen eighty nine. I
think he uses a bow in it as well, but
there are also scenes where's he's using a crossbow. There's
(18:15):
some sort of an action sequence in a cemetery where
he's running around with that crossbow.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
I've never seen this one either.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yeah, well it has it has Bill Paxton in it,
and it also has a nissance.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Wow. Okay, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Not supposed to be very good.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
It exists. Well, so, uh, to come back to the
points made in Burkeholder's paper, we sort of already raised this,
but it's interesting to contrast the villainous associations in film
of the crossbow with the sword, which is almost always
used to convey admirable traits and moral virtue. And of
(18:50):
course this seems like if you really think about it,
it's it's kind of a silly way to split things up.
Like they're both weapons, and so they could both be
used for evil, like just as easily a sword or
a traditional bow could be used for murder or something
else evil, and a crossbow could be used by whatever.
We see the good characters using swords for in this movie,
(19:11):
I don't know, self defense or defensive others or something.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah. Absolutely, I mean a sword carries a great deal
of symbolic power, But at the end of the day,
it is a murder weapon and a symbol of terror.
No one is out there hunting a deer with a
long sword.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
That's well, I was gonna say that's true, but I
don't know. Maybe some people hunt deer with swords. It
seems unlikely.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
It's unlike it would be a highly ineffective weapon to
use that way for hunting. Yeah, it was clearly not
designed as such, but the long sword was designed with
clear intention, the long sword, the dagger that dirt. Most
of these these implements, they are made to kill and
mutilate human beings.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
So one wonders, like, where do these associations come from?
How come it is in these modern stories, especially on film,
that the sword is seen as good and the crossbow
is seen as bad. And a question raised in this
paper is was the crossbow scene as fundamentally more evil
than other weapons at the time when its use was common,
(20:09):
especially in war in say medieval Europe. And the answer
is complicated, but to some extent, and in some cases, yes,
there are medieval writings that indicate something uniquely bad about
the crossbow. But I want to stress this was clearly
not everyone's opinion, and it certainly didn't stop people, especially
(20:29):
armies and militias, from using it. One extremely famous example
of a medieval work vilifying the crossbow in particular over
other weapons, and you'll see this example cited very often,
is from the Alexiad, a biography of the eleventh to
twelfth century Byzantine emperor Alexios, the first Komnena, written by
(20:49):
his daughter, the Byzantine Princess and a Komnena.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Listeners of the show might remember our episode on Greek Fire.
We cite this source as well in that ap and
I believe we had Annie Reese come on and read
it in the cold open.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Oh yeah, well, thanks again to Annie for that. We
didn't get her on hand today, so I'm going to
have to read from it myself for this time. But yes,
so there is so. Anna Kamneno was writing this work
while she was in exile in a monastery in the
later years of her life, and a passage of this
work that has attracted a lot of attention is Anna's
(21:27):
eyewitness account of the arrival of crusaders in Constantinople in
the years ten ninety six and ten ninety seven. The
account is very vivid and it contains some confusing claims.
So I'm going to read what she says about the crossbow,
and the translation that I'm using here is the one
block sited in a book that I mentioned in the
(21:47):
last episode, but I'll mention it again here The medieval
crossbow by Stuart Ellis Gorman from Pen and Sword Military
Press in twenty twenty two. So this is what Anna
Komnena writes. Us bow is a weapon of the barbarians,
absolutely unknown to the Greeks, and by barbarians. There she's
referring to Western European crusaders, probably especially the Franks. She
(22:11):
goes on. In order to stretch it, one does not
pull the string with the right hand while pushing the
bow with the left away from the body. This instrument
of war, which fires weapons to enormous distances, has to
be stretched by lying almost on one's back. Each foot
is pressed forcibly against the half circles of the bow,
and the two hands tug at the bow, pulling with
(22:33):
all one's strength towards the body. At the midpoint of
the string is a groove shaped like a cylinder, cut
in half and fitted to the string itself. It is
about the length of a fair sized arrow, extending from
the string to the center of the bow. Along this groove,
arrows of all kinds are fired. They are short, but
extremely thick, with a heavy iron tip. In the firing,
(22:54):
the string exerts tremendous violence and force, so that the missiles,
wherever they strike, do not rebound. In fact, they transfix
a shield, but through a heavy iron breastplate, and resume
their flight on the far side. So irresistible and violent
is the discharge. An arrow of this type has been
known to make its way right through a bronze statue,
(23:15):
and when fired at the wall of the very great town,
its point either protruded from the inner side, or buried
itself in the wall and disappeared altogether. Such is the
crossbow a truly diabolical machine. Now Ellis Gorman makes a
few observations about this passage. First of all, even though
it is clearly exaggerating in some cases about like the
(23:37):
power of a handheld crossbow bolt, saying that it will
go through a city wall, or like through straight through
a bronze statue and come out the other side, it
does give a clear description of how the crossbow works.
And I thought it was interesting where she describes people
having to lie on their backs on the ground in
order to disband it or to pull back the mechanism
to lock with the trigger, like you were talking about
(23:59):
in the last episode, possibly with the ancient Chinese example.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I think, yeah, yeah, about there being like different different
ways of loading some of these different crossbows, and one
of them was like laying down and having to use
your feet to pull it back in a position.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Ellis Gorman says it's confusing why she says the crossbow
was unknown in Byzantium, because other evidence indicates it was
probably known at least somewhat, if not widely, used in
Imperial Rome, and the Byzantine Empire was descended from the
eastern half of the Roman Empire. But it's possible that
the technology had fallen out of favor in Byzantium, had
(24:35):
been and had been forgotten by many. But the point
of the passage, more than to create a continuous history
of military technology, was to praise her father and to
condemn the barbarity of the Western European crusaders, So her
comments about the crossbow seemed kind of aimed at that purpose.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, she has a clear agenda here, because otherwise, if
you take her literally, it's like she's saying crossbow absolutely diabolical,
our secret fire weapon, totally above board.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, so it's possible. It's just like here it is
described as particularly a worse weapon than others because it
is the weapon used by people she saw as wicked
and barbaric. So coming back to Burkeholder's paper, he discusses
at some length this passage by anakom Nina, but he
also points out medieval sculpture depicting crossbows in the hands
(25:26):
of demonic figures. So, for example, at the church of
Saint Sirnaan in Toulouse, France, there is a twelfth century
pillar that has sculptures of demons squatting on top of
it clutching crossbows and bolts, and there are others as well.
But he tempers these observations by pointing out that medieval
European personifications of death and disease and sin, these sort
(25:49):
of demonic embodiments are often wielding other weapons as well,
like swords and traditional bows, so you shouldn't read too
much into the cases where they are holding crossbows.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Joe I had to look up one of these demons
with the crossbow. Of course, I can't not look this up.
And it's pretty fabulous because it's like a gargoyle esque figure,
you know, on a corner, part of a pillar motif,
and the demon appears to be sort of squatting but
also sort of loading a crossbow, like he's pushing down
with his feet and pulling up on the string with
(26:22):
his hands or claws. But also there's something kind of
perverse about it, like the demon's kind of humping the
crossbow as well.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
M yeah, that checks out. Now. If you read sources
about historical views on crossbows, it is very often pointed
out that the Catholic Church produced a sort of ban
on the use of crossbows in war at the second
lateran council in eleven ninety three condemning quote the hateful
(26:52):
and death bringing art of crossbowmen. However, Burkholder adds a
lot of context to this that shows how this just
this fact in isolation could be misleading. So some context is.
First of all, the church's ban on the crossbow only
originally applied to use against fellow Christians, and then later
(27:13):
in the same century, the church amended that band to
say okay, you can even use the crossbow against fellow
Christians as long as it is quote a just war. Okay,
I assume the people using it would always claim it
was a just war.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Yeah, they should probably got a warning on the side
of the crossbow, just in case, only for use in
just war.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Also, according to some scholars, this band was essentially completely ignored,
like Christian armies just continued to use crossbows to fight
each other all the time. Also, the church's proclamation didn't
just attempt to ban crossbows, it attempted to ban regular
bows as well, and this was also generally ignored. And
(27:54):
then also Burkelder cites some other scholars named Contamine and
Strickland who point out that one among multiple possible utilities
of these bands, one of them was that it was
possibly just being used by military leaders to quote keep
deadly missile weapons out of the hands of non elites.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Well, this absolutely checks out with a lot of what
we've been discussing. Yeah, it's okay if we have the crossbows,
we just don't want the people we're oppressing to have
the crossbows. I was reading about this as well in
Vincent van Derven's Crossbows and Christians from a twenty twelve
edition of Medieval Warfare. There's a quote from this very
church ruling from eleven thirty nine. I wanted to read
(28:37):
it here, doing my best attempt at a Michael Palin
accent from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Yes, quote,
we prohibit to under anathema that murderous art of crossbowmen
and archers, which is hateful to God to be employed
against Christians and Catholics from now on.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Who being naughty in my sight? Yeah, not bad Michael
palein rob but still we Apparently this this ruling was
not much heated. It was mostly ignored. But anyway, there's
there's a brief passage where Burkeolder cites another scholar named
Van Kreveld to describe some of the possible mental justifications
(29:20):
people had for especially demonizing the use of crossbows. Again,
you know, it's not hard to see why any any
deadly weapon would have negative connotations attached to it, But
like why the crossbow more than like a regular bow
or more than a sword when comparing missile weapons which
would include regular bows to swords. One thing that gets
(29:42):
mentioned in this paper is that it in some ways
quote threatened an idealized form of close quarter combat. So
maybe not that there's actually anything beautiful or noble about
people like swinging swords at each other and bashing each
other with handheld weapons, but that was an activity that
had been idealized in literature and storytelling and thus had
(30:06):
more poetic drama to it, totally apart from the reality
of that physically happening.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yeah, and it again, it makes sense that this kind
of view would be very it would very much be
a top down viewpoint, whereas something like William Tell that
would be something that arises from the people as opposed
to from the powers that be. Though saying that, without
again not being an expert on William Tell, you can
also imagine the case where, you know, the people would
(30:35):
have their folk hero, and then the powers that be
might be like, well, yeah, but he was using a crossbow.
What does that tell you about this guy?
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah. Another possible mental motivation for this focus on the
crossbow as like the weapon of a villain, is the
idea that it somehow gives users a supposed unfair advantage.
That the idea and again we talked about this in
the last episode. It's not like you didn't have to
train to use a crossbow like it did take skill,
(31:03):
and it did take training, but it probably didn't take
the level of like muscular physical fitness required, and probably
maybe not the same amount of practice required for a
traditional bow that you would, you know, draw and hold
with just the strength of your arms, or maybe a
sword as well.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's fascinating to think about about this though,
because of course the crossbow is eventually replaced by advances
in gunpowder technology and of course the coming of the
age of the gun and reading the gun by any
of these moral standards, like the gun is inherently a
coward's weapon and a weakling's weapon, but of course it
(31:46):
comes to rule the day.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
That's true. But some sources do say that a lot
of the ways the crossbow is viewed and treated in
culture do end up sort of mapping on to early
uses of gunpowder weapons. I wanted to mention one more
thing that might be motivating sort of demonization of the
crossbow in compared to the longbow in films, which is
(32:11):
a sort of inherited bias in favor of the English
in the depiction of English versus French conflicts, where in
reality both sides actually did use crossbows at various times,
but the use of crossbows by the Continental armies by
the French is more. I think that it did actually
(32:31):
happen more, and it certainly is emphasized more in historical
accounts that the French had crossbows. So like, for example,
the author of this paper mentions movies about Joan of
Arc which depict Joan's French armies carrying crossbows against the
longbow armed English, and that how showing things like this
(32:52):
feels like it's sort of violating the normal language of cinema,
if like, the audience is supposed to be on Joan's
side and they're the ones that have crossbows.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
You know, real quick. Coming back to Monty Python and
the Holy Grail, there of course is a scene where
they encounter the French, and if memory serves, the frenchmen
do not have crossbows, but they do wield an unfair
ranged weapon against our English knights, and that, of course
is insults. So perhaps there's some connective tissue there. I'm
(33:24):
not sure.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
It leads to one of my favorite details in that
whole movie that is quite easy to miss. Actually it's
not even a spoken line. It's the fact that John
Cleee playing a Lancelot, after they get insulted by the French,
he draws his sword and starts hitting the castle with
the sword. I think it's one of the best gags
in the movie. But to sum it up, is there
(33:48):
a bias in contemporary historical sources about the use of
crossbows that treats them in this same way, that views
them as villainous. It's not universal, but there are some
sources like that, and it may be that those sources
have been influential and have sort of come through and
become inherited as part of the language of medieval films.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Yeah, this is going to be very interesting to think
about just in general, as we all continue to watch
films that have at least a medieval flavoring to them,
or to read books that have medieval flavoring to them.
I was just reading from a fantasy novel last night,
and there's a scene where people were being shot out
by cross with crossbows, and of course it's it's like
(34:32):
rogues and assassins who were using the crossbow. Yeah, and
certainly on future episodes of Weird House Cinema. Now, to
come back to the crossbow itself, First of all, I
just want to pick up a few odds and ends
(34:54):
that I didn't get to discussing, just sort of the
history and innovation of the crossbow, particularly first of all,
more in the West. According to Fagan and Rowley Conley,
the Romans have for them an early explicit textual reference
to the crossbows, and they would have been in use
by the Roman army by the fourth century CE. The
(35:15):
Viagettius actually refers to these in the book Concerning Military Matters,
but the authors here point out that in the bow
drawing mechanisms varied. We've discussed some of these already, laying down,
you know, strap putting your feet into straps, you know,
kind of like bootholes on the end of the crossbow.
There was also the Greek belly bow, or the gastrofeties.
(35:40):
This described in the first century CE, and was loaded
by bracing the crossbow against the ground and forcing the
butt of the thing into your belly. I don't know
if that makes complete sense. I included an illustration here
for you, Joe.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Mm, well, I'm seeing the figure in the illustration you're
providing where it's like he's almost like lean he's leaning
down on the crossbow with his belly on it, with
the bottom against the ground. So he's like pressing, and
I guess I don't understand how the pressing would cause
it to be spanned or to be what you might
(36:13):
call a loaded or cocked. I guess maybe one way
of interpreting this, though I don't know, is like if
there are two actual shafts that can slide across each other,
so by pressing on one, he is sliding it down
the length of the other, and that draws back the string.
I guess that's possible.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Yeah, Basically, it looks like he's giving himself an incorrect
Heimlich maneuver with the crossbow with the business end pointed
at the ground. On the end of the crossbow, the
business end of the crossbow, there's this shaft and is
that is pushed down. As that's forced down, it's gonna
push the you see it, It would slide ice and
push the push that it would draw the bow and
(36:52):
then it would lock.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
That makes sense now, yeah, okay, because a lot of
the later like medieval European mechanisms, I'm thinking for spanning,
it would involve more of a pulling mechanism, where say
a common one is again the belt hook, which we
talked about last time, say, the combination of a belt
hook with a stirrup at the end of the crossbow.
So you would hook something that's attached to the string
(37:17):
to a loop or a hook on your belt, and
then you would push down with your foot in a
stirrup on the shaft of the crossbow at the stirrups
at the end of the crossbow, so that pulls the
bow towards your foot and it pulls the string back
with the strength of your legs and your body away
from it.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah. Now, the authors mentioned that there were also Greco
Roman mentions of crossbows going back to the third and
even fifth centuries BCE. The third century BC example seems
pretty valid. This is described and sustibious. But the fifth
century BCE mentioned seems to be a catapult or a
siege weapon rather than a handheld weapon. Again, getting back
(37:56):
to that something we mentioned in the last episode, but
apparently looking back at some of these ancient texts, if
you get into this gray area when you're trying to
determine are we talking about a crossbow here or are
we talking about some form of catapult?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Yeah, and that ambiguity doesn't stop there. By the way
I've read that historical study of crossbows is in multiple
ways complicated by ambiguity and confusion about the names used
for weapons and texts and trying to understand exactly what
they're talking about.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah, now one more sort of like cocking or drawing
mechanism of note, you also have the goat foot lever
that appeared on a number of crossbows, and this was
basically a lever device that was used to draw the bow.
I looked at looking at images of it. I guess
the goat foot comes because it kind of looks like
(38:44):
a cloven hoof. There's like sort of two hooks or
grooves in it.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Yeah, and so in addition, so like the belt hook one,
you would be trying to span the crossbow just by
using the strength of your body. But a lot of
these mechanisms have a machine with some kind a mechanical advantage,
like a lever or later you would have you know,
you could get a really powerful crossbow if you use
objects like a windlass or a cranicquin that would give
(39:09):
you the ability to essentially crank the string back.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
And that's the kind of crossbow that a dwarf should
be using. I mean that just seems perfect. Certainly a
gnome in Dungeons and Dragons needs a crossbow that has
cranks on it, cranks, levers, the whole nine.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Yards, lots of moving parts. Yeah, it makes it more
like a modern machine.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Now with military technology, and certainly with the crossbow. You know,
it often comes down to trade offs, right. So in
the last episode we definitely discussed the reloading limitations of
the crossbow, and this was a problem that innovators threw
themselves that pretty early on. The crossbow packs power and
it offers reasonable accessibility, but is there a way to
(39:50):
speed it up again to be able to fire perhaps
more crossbow bolts before too many arrows are fired at
you by archers and so forth? Are there ways to
do that while retaining the advantages of the crossbow to
some measurable degree. And so this is where we get
into the topic of the Chinese repeating crossbow. I was
(40:10):
looking at a couple of sources on this. One of
them is Mechanism Analysis of Ancient Chinese Crossbows by Dong Atol,
published in the journal Mechanical Sciences in twenty twenty. I
was also looking at Structural analysis of ancient Chinese crossbows
from twenty twelve in the Journal of Science and Innovation
by Su and Yan and the innovation in broad strokes
(40:33):
seems to go back perhaps as early as four hundred BCE,
at least in principle, though there are essentially two different
repeating crossbows from two different eras that you see mentioned.
So this first one, this four hundred BCE one. This
is sometimes referred to as the Chuse State repeating crossbow,
and the evidence for this comes from archaeological finds in
(40:56):
jung Ling Hube that have been dated to this period.
According to dong at all So, this area was known
as the Cheo State during the Warring States period that
would have spanned four seventy five through to twenty one BCE.
So this, this contraption seemed to have had a vertical
magazine on top of the crossbow of twenty arrows that
(41:17):
drop down into firing position via gravity, and then you
would you would draw back, fire, draw back, and every
time you would draw back with an empty slot for
a crossbow bolt, it would drop into place. Sounds pretty advanced,
sounds potentially useful, right. However, the thing to keep in
mind about the Cheo State crossbow is that it's small.
(41:39):
It's only thirty centimeters long, it's less than a foot,
and the bow is so short that it would have
depended on the elasticity of the bow string rather than
the bending of the bow.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Huh, So it's more like a slingshot almost.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Yeah, And they say that it would have only had
a range of about twenty to twenty five meters, so
I think somewhere in the range of twenty two yards.
But on the other hand, you'd have something like rapid
fire or you know, automatic or semi automatic fire as such.
You know, this wouldn't have been a weapon of warfare
or self defense, they stressed, but rather a novelty invention
(42:15):
that could have best been used at best could have
been used to hunt small birds. The authors also describe
it as a quote toy of personal invention.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
That's interesting, so more of a demonstration of principle or
demonstration of ingenuity than something that would have been especially
useful in this form.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Right, Like I guess if there were a Dungeons and
Dragon's weapon, it would just do zero damage across the board.
But it's interesting. So I should also point out that
the author's stress that there are no historical writings that
mention this particular crossbow, and that the idea of that
being like a toy of personal invention. It reminds me
even of our invention episodes on the wheel. You know,
(42:55):
in certain cultures before the wheel could actually really be
capitalized upon for transportation and so forth, you know, or
other applications. There are still evidence that it was around,
sometimes just as a novelty, as a toy. There are
various reasons that an idea or technological innovation just cannot
be you know, used, that cannot be employed for anything
(43:19):
other than amusement, or at least for a certain period
of time.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Right. I'm almost tempted to wonder if in some scenarios,
like making a toy version of a mechanical device would
be kind of like taking a patent out, like you know,
you're not making this device at scale that it would
be or in a way that would be used for anything.
But you can you can show the principle in small
scale in a toy.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Now.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
The second variety of Chinese repeating crossbow is the zugew
or zuge New repeating crossbow, named for Zuge Lang apparently
one through two thirty four CE, military leader and prime
minister of Schuhan during the Three Kingdoms period. He's also
apparently the main hero of the fictional Romance of the
(44:06):
Three Kingdoms, a fourteenth century historical novel, in that he's
portrayed as a sage and a military mastermind. However, apparently
he did not actually create invent this crossbow. His name
is associated with it in some records, and it just
has kind of stuck. But this version of the repeating
(44:26):
crossbow did see use and was powerful enough to serve
as a lethal weapon, sometimes aided by poisoned bolt heads.
Military historian Chris McNabb describes it as follows in a
twenty twenty issue of MHQ, the Quarterly Journal of Military History.
Quote it featured a top mounted magazine in which multiple
(44:48):
bolts were stacked in a large operating handle. When drawn
to the rear, the handle both cocked and at the
full extent of the draw released the bowstring, firing the
bolt that had dropped automatically into the flight groove. There
was no separate trigger. The crossbowmen then drove the handle forward,
pushing the whole mechanism to the front. To re engage
(45:08):
the string for firing as the next bolt took its
place in the flight grove ready to go. Now he
cites a fire rate of ten bolts in twenty seconds
compared to a more standard and again very general crossbow
fire rate of three or four bolts in a minute.
But as impressive as this is, the trade off was
limited power and range, thus the need for poison tips
(45:31):
on some of your bolt heads. Still, one can imagine
using this as kind of like a nuisance or shock
weapon alongside other defensive weaponry. Now, Needham discusses the box
and tube crossbow used around twelve fifty seven that featured
a vertical drop magazine atop the crossbow. This was noted
for its convenience and steadiness. It apparently could also be
(45:54):
used easily at night because you didn't actually have to
see what you were doing with the loading. That raises
questions about what you're shooting at. I don't know that
that's more properly eliminated. I guess you can imagine a
scenario where there's moonlight in play and you're in the shadows.
And it's also worth noting, especially in the writings of
Needham about Chinese history and technology that the repeated fire
(46:18):
innovations would continue during the gunpowder era of Chinese weaponry,
and Nitam mentions the nine dragon guns that could shoot
nine arrows at a time off a single ignition. This
was part of the fifteenth century Frontier arsenal. They also
made use of a form of multi barrel gun that
this is much later on, but it was apparently in
(46:38):
line with the European concept of the roboticon or late
medieval volley gun of the same time period. Now I
have one more kind of mystery weapon to bring up here.
This is one that came up pretty early in my research,
but coming to it last here because I couldn't really
get a straight answer on it. And it concerns something
(46:58):
called the panjagon. So this would have been a either
a bow or a crossbow, or some sort of a
bow technique. It's uncertain associated with the Sasanian Empire. This
would of course an Iranian empire from two twenty four
to six fifty one. We've discussed this empire on past
(47:21):
episodes of the show. But yeah, it seems to have
been a weapon or a weapon system or just a strategy,
and it's unclear if descriptions are referring to a projectile
weapon or an archery technique. It's even been speculated though,
that it might have been a repeating crossbow of some form.
I was looking at a book by Cave Faruka titled
(47:42):
Sasanian Elite Cavalry AD two twenty four through six forty two.
I should note that this book has an illustration on
the front, and this may be like a stock illustration,
because I found it in some other places as well,
that shows a man on a horse when in armor
hiring some sort of strange weapon that has like five
(48:03):
arrow slots or five grooves, and they are like five
arrows flying out of the thing. So I assume that
that is supposed to be an artist depiction of the pandagon.
But the book itself goes into more detail here. So
the name means five device, but there are no known
(48:25):
surviving examples to go on. The author here writes that
it might have been a quiver system for accessing five
arrows in a row fairly quickly, rather than what was
apparently the typical Sesanian approach of holding three arrows in
the same hand as the bow while you were firing.
He speculates that it was likely intended whatever it was,
as a like a spread fire weapon or some sort
(48:48):
of a technique to spread your fire, while other, perhaps
more highly skilled archers, and certainly Roman accounts speak of
Sasanian archery skill could focus their fire. So you know,
you have say multiple arrows flying through the air, and
this proposes a certain threat. But then perhaps you have
more skilled archers that are actually doing the lethal work
(49:09):
alongside this. But ultimately who knows. Maybe it was some
sort of repeating crossbow, but the details are lost to history.
Apparently interesting, where are the repeating crossbows and dungeons and dragons?
Though not sure?
Speaker 3 (49:24):
I don't know. I've never come across one. I assume
that means they're not there.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
I mean they've got to be there. Someone has at
least home brewed or repeating crossbow right, and a quick
search on D and D beyond shows that there are
some references to them, So maybe the Darrow use them
in the under Dark. Looks like they maybe show up
in Water Deep, but they don't have a prominent place
in the player's handbook or anything.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
This might be a bit a dumb question, but how
do you get lumber in the under dark? Because they
don't have trees down there, right, it's just big mushrooms.
So do you use mushroom fiber as lumber to make
your you know, your wooden structures and tools, or do
you have to go to the surface to get trees
for lumber.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
Well, you've answered your own question, because yes, you use
the mushrooms. There's a particular mushroom that is called zerka
wood or zerk wood that is the primary building material
of the under Dark.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
Man, you know all the answers. I didn't know there
was an answer to that.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
I ran a campaign in the under Dark for a while,
so the Underdark I have a lot of answers on.
But other parts of the D and D world, I'm
my knowledge is a little more vague and.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
Spread out, And I guess we end where we began
with with D and D. Well, does that do it
for you with the Crossbow robe.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
I think so. I mean, there are a lot of
things in the history of the Crossbow that, you know,
we didn't have time to touch on, but I think
we had all the most important things. But we'd love
to hear from anyone out there if you have examples
of what we've been talking about. In you know, medieval
flavored media concerning the crossbow. If you yourself are a
crossbow enthusiast, then I'm sure you have some insight to
(51:00):
share with us. Everything's fair game will remind you that
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast
with episodes. Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail
on Mondays. On Wednesdays we'll usually do a short form
monster fact or artifact episode, and on Fridays we set
aside most serious concerns just talk about a weird film
on Weird House Cinema. Will remind you that if you
(51:22):
are on social media these days, well, you know, check
us out. Our accounts are up and active again, so
you can follow what episodes are coming out on those accounts.
If you use Instagram, check out sdby on podcast. That
is our handle there. That is our newish handle, the
old one.
Speaker 3 (51:39):
Has been lost to us huge thanks as always to
our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
or just to say hello, you can email us at
contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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