November 16, 2023 • 52 mins
In this invention-themed episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Rob and Joe discuss the origins and ingenuity of the crossbow.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
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
(00:37):
what different kinds of advantages they would have had in
historical 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, or I think it
at least teased it, that I wanted to come back
to in detail, and that is the moral coding of crossbows,
(00:58):
specifically in like 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 Crossbows in Medieval Film by Peter Burkholder,
(01:18):
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
(01:41):
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 scene. The good characters are all
pledging camaraderie, pledging to help each other in the service
of doing good. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
In fact, I reference this scene in the last episode.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
You did yees yeah about how Legolis says it's my bow,
not my string. Yeah, it's not actually the string that stretches.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Is the string. 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 and he wants to do the right thing,
(02:47):
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 Erragorn, the 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 thing
(03:08):
or something like that, But Eric Gorn 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,
(03:29):
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
(03:51):
berker Holder calls the crossbow quote one of the most
readily accessible personal weapons of the Middle Ages.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
You know, it's just.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
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. I think everything lines up. I think
I think Gimli should have had a crossbow.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
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 a unique
nor happenstance. The point of this paper is that throughout
modern film there is a consistent principle that in settings
(04:48):
with roughly 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
(05:11):
this 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
(05:32):
dramas or 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
(05:52):
in armor, castles, catapults, etc. 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
(06:13):
by this point. It doesn't seem like century Britain had
a lot of crossbows in it, 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 2 (06:30):
Yeah, And I don't know if you gets into this
at all, but I think one of the other things
about the crossbow in films is that there is a
gun like quality to the crossbow, where that makes the
visual language of say, armored guards or armored goons, whatever
the case may be, with crossbows like read very similarly
(06:50):
to modern tyrannical enforcement agencies.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
I think you might make that comparison. We'll see when
we look at a few of the examples.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Okay, let's see what do you got.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Let's get some films. 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
(07:21):
legend film. Sean Connery is 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. Meanwhile,
in this film, the villain, a character named Prince Malagant
(07:44):
played by Ben Cross, commands 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 2 (08:01):
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
(08:23):
a crossbow.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Right, John Wayne would have the sword and the bad
guy would have the crossbow.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, 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 (08:37):
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
(08:57):
in disgust.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I did not see this one was a This was
a strange decade for films. But I mean, Clive Owen
as author, that's got to be good.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
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 2 (09:27):
Those are elite orcs though you know so, yeah, give
it to him, he's in the elite weaponr here.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Another interesting thing he points out is how in some movies,
the use or discarding of a crossbow can signal a
change in the same character's moral or factional valence. So
maybe a character uses a crossbow when acting as a
villain or when we're supposed to wonder if they're a villain,
(09:54):
and then they stop using the crossbow when they become
good or are revealed as good. An example, sit here
is Lord Arthur in the movie Army of Darkness, where
he apparently used 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, the
(10:16):
bad the monsters of the movie.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
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 (10:27):
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
(10:48):
the clear delineation between those two. And yet even in
Game of Thrones, this crossbow pattern holds true. It is
as its most salient use is as a weapon of torture,
used by King Jeoffrey, 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
(11:10):
that character is at his lowest point. So it's still
it's a pretty like negatively coded weapon in Game of Thrones.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, absolutely, in both of these 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 (11:28):
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 gonna be excited about this. Rob is Rutger Hower
and Lady Hawk from nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Lady Hawk a movie that is never as good as
I remember it being whenever I rewatch it. Yeah, but
I still love it, like you gotta love Lady Hawk.
It's just kind of it's it's just pure romance, it's beauty.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
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. Yeah. 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
(12:14):
kind of rebel or renegade character, so so you know,
maybe it's more fitting that he uses the crossbow because
he's more outside the balands of the normal medieval night
type hero. 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
(12:35):
family's house sword, and then he uses that more in
the later parts of the film.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
So again, perhaps an example of casting aside the villainous
crossbow and picking up the noble sword.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
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
use 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
(13:06):
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 2 (13:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
I don't know, 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
(13:58):
the traditional bow, is used to convey the negative traits
of the person who wields it.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Yeah, I think this is this is absolutely true when
you look at the you know, all the examples here,
and I'm certainly not gonna 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 William Tell. This was a fourteenth century mountaineer, assassin
(14:29):
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 aboubout that little episode just because it's been
portrayed in cartoons and so forth. But other things he
gets into, like he slays a chimera, so he does
(14:50):
all sorts of stuff. But his his more realistic exploits
position him as an assassin of evildoers and tyrants with
a crossbow, a a weapon that, as we've discussed before,
democratizes ranged lethal violence, you know, and certainly factors into,
for instance, in the Chinese one of the Chinese examples
we mentioned the last episode a way that people outside
(15:14):
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 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
(15:39):
syndication later on, and I also distinctly remember seeing a
VHS sawbit. 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 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
(16:02):
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 more examples do come to
mind because I imagine people write in there's The Walking
(16:25):
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 rogue outsider energy. And then
let's not forget what up?
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yeah? Sorry, I don't mean to derail, but I've never
seen that much Walking Dead. Do some people side with zombies?
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Well, I think in later seasons that I have not seen.
There are certainly individuals who become more like the zombies
their cruelty and 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, Walking
(17:14):
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 (17:24):
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 2 (17:33):
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 Swayze's Next of Ken from nineteen eighty nine. I
think he uses a bow in it as well, but
there are also scenes where he's using a crossbow. There's
(17:55):
some sort of an action sequence in a cemetery where
he's running around with.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
That cross I've never seen this one either.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah, well it it has Bill Paxton in it, and
it also has Nissance.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Okay, yeah, it's not supposed to be very good.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
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
(18:30):
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 or
something else evil, and a crossbow could be used by
whatever we see the good characters using swords for in
(18:51):
this movie, I don't know, self defense or defense of
others or something.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
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 (19:05):
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 to me.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
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 dirk most
of these, these these implements, they are made to kill
and mutilate human beings.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
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,
(19:49):
especially in war and say medieval Europe? And the answer
is complicated, but to some extent, and in some cases, yes,
there are medieval writings 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 armies and militias,
(20:10):
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 his daughter, the Byzantine Princess
(20:31):
Anna Komnena.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Listeners of the show might remember our episode on Greek Fire.
We cite this source as well in that episode, and
I believe we had Annie Reese come on and read
it in the cold open.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
M 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 Kamnena 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
(21:06):
is Anna's 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
(21:27):
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
Komneno writes. The crossbow 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
(21:51):
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
(22:13):
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,
(22:34):
the string exerts tremendous violence in 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,
(22:55):
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
(23:17):
power of a handheld crossbow bolt, saying that it will
go through a city wall, or like through it 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
(23:39):
in the last episode, possibly with the ancient Chinese example.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
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 (23:54):
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
(24:15):
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 seem kind of aimed at that purpose.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
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 (24:45):
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 of this passage by anakom Nina, but
he also points out medieval sculpture depicting crossbows in the
(25:06):
hands of demonic figures. So, for example, at the church
of Saint Sernan 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 like death and disease and sin,
(25:29):
these sort 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 2 (25:40):
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 putushing down
with his feet and pulling up on the string with
(26:02):
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 (26:10):
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 and
(26:32):
death bringing art of crossbowmen. However, Burkholder adds a lot
of context to this that shows how 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 in
(26:53):
the same century, the church amended that band to say, okay,
you can even use the crossbow against fellow Christians as
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 2 (27:07):
Yeah, they should probably go to warning on the side
of the crossbow just in case only for use in
just war.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Also, according to some scholars, this ban 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
(27:34):
then also Burkelder sites some other scholars named Contamine and
Strickland who point out that one among multiple possible utilities
of these bands, one of them it 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 2 (27:55):
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 were 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
(28:17):
it here, doing my best attempt at a Michael Palin
accent from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yes, quote, we prohibit.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
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 (28:36):
Who being naughty in my sight? Yeah, not bad, Michael
Palin rob But still apparently this ruling was not much heated.
It was mostly ignored. But anyway, there's a brief passage
where Burkeholder cites another scholar named Van Kreveld to describe
(28:58):
some of the possible mental justicifyations 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
(29:19):
to swords. One thing that gets 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
(29:43):
literature and storytelling, and thus had more poetic drama to it.
Totally apart from the reality of that physically happening.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah, and it again, it makes sense that this kind
of view would be very would very much be a
top down viewpoint, whereas something like William Tell that would
be something that arises from 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
(30:15):
have their folk hero and then the powers that be
might be like, wow, yeah, but he was using a crossbow.
What does that tell you about this guy?
Speaker 3 (30:21):
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
(30:41):
to use a crossbow. Like it did take skill, 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
(31:03):
as well.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, yeah, 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
(31:26):
comes to rule the day.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
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 a sort of demonization of
the crossbow in compared to the long bow in films,
(31:50):
which is 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
(32:10):
did actually 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
(32:32):
like this 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 2 (32:43):
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.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
I'm not sure. 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 Cleae, 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,
(33:28):
is there 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
(33:50):
medieval films.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
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 rogues
(34:12):
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 that
(34:34):
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 Conway, 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 Viagettius
(34:56):
actually refers to these in the book Concerning Military Matter,
but the authors here point out that even 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 gastrafettis.
(35:20):
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 (35:33):
Mmm, 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
(35:53):
call a loaded or cocked. I guess maybe one way
of interpreting this, though I don't know is like if
they're 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 2 (36:11):
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 going
to push the you see it, It would slide ice
and push the push that and would draw the bow
(36:32):
and then it would lock.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
That makes sense now, yeah, okay, because a lot of
the later, like medieval European mechanisms I'm thinking of 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
(36:56):
to a 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 2 (37:14):
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
(37:36):
to that something we mentioned in the last episode that
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 (37:48):
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. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
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
a cloven hoof. There's like sort of two hooks or
(38:27):
grooves in it.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
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 of 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
(38:49):
you the ability to essentially crank the string back.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
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 drags needs a crossbow that has
cranks on it, cranks, levers, the whole nine yards.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Lots of moving parts. Yeah, it makes it more like
a modern machine.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
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
(39:30):
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
(39:50):
looking at a couple of sources on this. One of
them is Mechanism Analysis of Ancient Chinese Crossbows by Don
Atol published in the Journal Mechanical Sciences in twenty twenty.
Was all 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
(40:13):
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 Choose State repeating crossbow,
and the evidence for this comes from archaeological finds in
(40:36):
jung Ling Hube that have been dated to this period.
According to dong Atoll, So, this area was known as
the Choose State during the Warring States period that would
have spanned four seventy five through to twenty one BCE.
So this this contraption seem to have had a vertical
magazine on top of the crossbow of twenty arrows that
(40:57):
drop down into firing position vehicle, 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 True State crossbow is that it's small.
(41:18):
It's 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 bowstring rather than the
bending of the bow. Huh.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
So it's more like a slingshot almost.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
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 stress, but rather a novelty invention
(41:55):
that it 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 (42:04):
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 2 (42:14):
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,
(42:35):
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 a technological innovation just
cannot be you know, used, that cannot be employed for
(42:59):
anything other than amusement, or at least for a certain
period of time.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
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. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Now. The second variety of Chinese repeating crossbow is the
Zugeiu or zugei Nu repeating crossbow, named for Zuge Lang,
apparently one one through two thirty four CE, military leader
and prime minister of Shuhan during the Three Kingdoms period.
He's also apparently the main hero of the fictional Romance
(43:45):
of the Three Kingdoms, a fourteenth century historical novel, in
that he's portrayed as a sage in a military Mastermind. However,
apparently he did not actually create invent this crossbow. His
name just is associated with it in some records, and
it just kind of stuck. But this version of the
(44:06):
repeating 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.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
It featured a top mounted magazine in which multiple 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 bow string, 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
(44:48):
the string for firing as the next bolt took its
place in the flight groove, ready to go now. He
cites a fire rate of ten bolts in twenty seconds,
compared to a more standard than 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
(45:12):
on some of your bold heads. Still, one can imagine
using this as kind of like a nuisance or shock
weapon alongside other defensive weaponry. Now. Needum 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
(45:34):
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'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
(45:58):
innovations would continue to the gunpowder era of Chinese weaponry.
Anita 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 was
This is much later on, but it was apparently in
(46:18):
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
(46:38):
called the punjagon. 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
was of course an Iranian empire from two twenty four
to six fifty one. We've discussed to this empire on
(47:01):
past 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 Sasanian Elite Cavalry AD two twenty four
(47:26):
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 some other
places as well, that shows a man on a horse
when in armor firing some sort of strange weapon that
has like five arrow slots or five grooves, and they
are like five arrows flying out of the thing. So
(47:52):
I assume that that is supposed to be an artist
depiction of the pandagon. But the book itself into more
detail here, so the name means five device, but there
are no known 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
(48:14):
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 as a spread fire weapon
or some sort of a technique to spread your fire.
While other, perhaps more highly skilled archers and certainly Roman
(48:34):
accounts speak of Sasanian archery skill could focus their fire,
so you know, you have like 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 alongside this. But ultimately who knows.
Maybe it was some sort of repeating crossbow, but the
(48:55):
details are lost to history. Apparently interesting, where are the
repeating crossbows and dungeons and dragons?
Speaker 3 (49:02):
Though not sure, I don't know. I've never come across one.
I assume that means they're not there.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
I mean they've got to be there. Someone has at
least home brewed or repeating crossbow.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
Any 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 (49:27):
This might be 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 your
wooden structures and tools or do you have to go
to the surface to get trees for lumber.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Well, you've answered your own question, because yes, you use
the mushrooms. There's a particular mushroom that is called Zerka
wood or zirk wood that is the primary building material
of the under Dark.
Speaker 3 (49:57):
Man. You know all the answers, I didn't know there
was an answer to that.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
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 (50:12):
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 rope?
Speaker 2 (50:19):
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 uh, you know,
medieval flavored media concerning the crossbow. If you yourself are
a crossbow enthusiast, then I'm sure you have some insight
(50:40):
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There.
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That is our newish handle. The old one has been
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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
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Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
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
(00:37):
what different kinds of advantages they would have had in
historical 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, or I think it
at least teased it, that I wanted to come back
to in detail, and that is the moral coding of crossbows,
(00:58):
specifically in like 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 Crossbows in Medieval Film by Peter Burkholder,
(01:18):
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
(01:41):
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 scene. The good characters are all
pledging camaraderie, pledging to help each other in the service
of doing good. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
In fact, I reference this scene in the last episode.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
You did yees yeah about how Legolis says it's my bow,
not my string. Yeah, it's not actually the string that stretches.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Is the string. 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 and he wants to do the right thing,
(02:47):
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 Erragorn, the 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 thing
(03:08):
or something like that, But Eric Gorn 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,
(03:29):
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
(03:51):
berker Holder calls the crossbow quote one of the most
readily accessible personal weapons of the Middle Ages.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
You know, it's just.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
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. I think everything lines up. I think
I think Gimli should have had a crossbow.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
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 a unique
nor happenstance. The point of this paper is that throughout
modern film there is a consistent principle that in settings
(04:48):
with roughly 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
(05:11):
this 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
(05:32):
dramas or 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
(05:52):
in armor, castles, catapults, etc. 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
(06:13):
by this point. It doesn't seem like century Britain had
a lot of crossbows in it, 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 2 (06:30):
Yeah, And I don't know if you gets into this
at all, but I think one of the other things
about the crossbow in films is that there is a
gun like quality to the crossbow, where that makes the
visual language of say, armored guards or armored goons, whatever
the case may be, with crossbows like read very similarly
(06:50):
to modern tyrannical enforcement agencies.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
I think you might make that comparison. We'll see when
we look at a few of the examples.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Okay, let's see what do you got.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Let's get some films. 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
(07:21):
legend film. Sean Connery is 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. Meanwhile,
in this film, the villain, a character named Prince Malagant
(07:44):
played by Ben Cross, commands 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 2 (08:01):
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
(08:23):
a crossbow.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Right, John Wayne would have the sword and the bad
guy would have the crossbow.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, 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 (08:37):
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
(08:57):
in disgust.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I did not see this one was a This was
a strange decade for films. But I mean, Clive Owen
as author, that's got to be good.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
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 2 (09:27):
Those are elite orcs though you know so, yeah, give
it to him, he's in the elite weaponr here.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Another interesting thing he points out is how in some movies,
the use or discarding of a crossbow can signal a
change in the same character's moral or factional valence. So
maybe a character uses a crossbow when acting as a
villain or when we're supposed to wonder if they're a villain,
(09:54):
and then they stop using the crossbow when they become
good or are revealed as good. An example, sit here
is Lord Arthur in the movie Army of Darkness, where
he apparently used 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, the
(10:16):
bad the monsters of the movie.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
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 (10:27):
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
(10:48):
the clear delineation between those two. And yet even in
Game of Thrones, this crossbow pattern holds true. It is
as its most salient use is as a weapon of torture,
used by King Jeoffrey, 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
(11:10):
that character is at his lowest point. So it's still
it's a pretty like negatively coded weapon in Game of Thrones.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, absolutely, in both of these 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 (11:28):
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 gonna be excited about this. Rob is Rutger Hower
and Lady Hawk from nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Lady Hawk a movie that is never as good as
I remember it being whenever I rewatch it. Yeah, but
I still love it, like you gotta love Lady Hawk.
It's just kind of it's it's just pure romance, it's beauty.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
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. Yeah. 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
(12:14):
kind of rebel or renegade character, so so you know,
maybe it's more fitting that he uses the crossbow because
he's more outside the balands of the normal medieval night
type hero. 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
(12:35):
family's house sword, and then he uses that more in
the later parts of the film.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
So again, perhaps an example of casting aside the villainous
crossbow and picking up the noble sword.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
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
use 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
(13:06):
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 2 (13:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
I don't know, 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
(13:58):
the traditional bow, is used to convey the negative traits
of the person who wields it.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Yeah, I think this is this is absolutely true when
you look at the you know, all the examples here,
and I'm certainly not gonna 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 William Tell. This was a fourteenth century mountaineer, assassin
(14:29):
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 aboubout that little episode just because it's been
portrayed in cartoons and so forth. But other things he
gets into, like he slays a chimera, so he does
(14:50):
all sorts of stuff. But his his more realistic exploits
position him as an assassin of evildoers and tyrants with
a crossbow, a a weapon that, as we've discussed before,
democratizes ranged lethal violence, you know, and certainly factors into,
for instance, in the Chinese one of the Chinese examples
we mentioned the last episode a way that people outside
(15:14):
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 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
(15:39):
syndication later on, and I also distinctly remember seeing a
VHS sawbit. 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 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
(16:02):
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 more examples do come to
mind because I imagine people write in there's The Walking
(16:25):
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 rogue outsider energy. And then
let's not forget what up?
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yeah? Sorry, I don't mean to derail, but I've never
seen that much Walking Dead. Do some people side with zombies?
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Well, I think in later seasons that I have not seen.
There are certainly individuals who become more like the zombies
their cruelty and 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, Walking
(17:14):
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 (17:24):
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 2 (17:33):
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 Swayze's Next of Ken from nineteen eighty nine. I
think he uses a bow in it as well, but
there are also scenes where he's using a crossbow. There's
(17:55):
some sort of an action sequence in a cemetery where
he's running around with.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
That cross I've never seen this one either.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah, well it it has Bill Paxton in it, and
it also has Nissance.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Okay, yeah, it's not supposed to be very good.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
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
(18:30):
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 or
something else evil, and a crossbow could be used by
whatever we see the good characters using swords for in
(18:51):
this movie, I don't know, self defense or defense of
others or something.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
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 (19:05):
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 to me.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
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 dirk most
of these, these these implements, they are made to kill
and mutilate human beings.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
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,
(19:49):
especially in war and say medieval Europe? And the answer
is complicated, but to some extent, and in some cases, yes,
there are medieval writings 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 armies and militias,
(20:10):
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 his daughter, the Byzantine Princess
(20:31):
Anna Komnena.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Listeners of the show might remember our episode on Greek Fire.
We cite this source as well in that episode, and
I believe we had Annie Reese come on and read
it in the cold open.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
M 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 Kamnena 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
(21:06):
is Anna's 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
(21:27):
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
Komneno writes. The crossbow 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
(21:51):
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
(22:13):
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,
(22:34):
the string exerts tremendous violence in 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,
(22:55):
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
(23:17):
power of a handheld crossbow bolt, saying that it will
go through a city wall, or like through it 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
(23:39):
in the last episode, possibly with the ancient Chinese example.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
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 (23:54):
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
(24:15):
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 seem kind of aimed at that purpose.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
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 (24:45):
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 of this passage by anakom Nina, but
he also points out medieval sculpture depicting crossbows in the
(25:06):
hands of demonic figures. So, for example, at the church
of Saint Sernan 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 like death and disease and sin,
(25:29):
these sort 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 2 (25:40):
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 putushing down
with his feet and pulling up on the string with
(26:02):
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 (26:10):
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 and
(26:32):
death bringing art of crossbowmen. However, Burkholder adds a lot
of context to this that shows how 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 in
(26:53):
the same century, the church amended that band to say, okay,
you can even use the crossbow against fellow Christians as
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 2 (27:07):
Yeah, they should probably go to warning on the side
of the crossbow just in case only for use in
just war.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Also, according to some scholars, this ban 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
(27:34):
then also Burkelder sites some other scholars named Contamine and
Strickland who point out that one among multiple possible utilities
of these bands, one of them it 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 2 (27:55):
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 were 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
(28:17):
it here, doing my best attempt at a Michael Palin
accent from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yes, quote, we prohibit.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
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 (28:36):
Who being naughty in my sight? Yeah, not bad, Michael
Palin rob But still apparently this ruling was not much heated.
It was mostly ignored. But anyway, there's a brief passage
where Burkeholder cites another scholar named Van Kreveld to describe
(28:58):
some of the possible mental justicifyations 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
(29:19):
to swords. One thing that gets 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
(29:43):
literature and storytelling, and thus had more poetic drama to it.
Totally apart from the reality of that physically happening.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah, and it again, it makes sense that this kind
of view would be very would very much be a
top down viewpoint, whereas something like William Tell that would
be something that arises from 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
(30:15):
have their folk hero and then the powers that be
might be like, wow, yeah, but he was using a crossbow.
What does that tell you about this guy?
Speaker 3 (30:21):
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
(30:41):
to use a crossbow. Like it did take skill, 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
(31:03):
as well.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, yeah, 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
(31:26):
comes to rule the day.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
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 a sort of demonization of
the crossbow in compared to the long bow in films,
(31:50):
which is 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
(32:10):
did actually 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
(32:32):
like this 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 2 (32:43):
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.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
I'm not sure. 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 Cleae, 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,
(33:28):
is there 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
(33:50):
medieval films.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
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 rogues
(34:12):
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 that
(34:34):
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 Conway, 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 Viagettius
(34:56):
actually refers to these in the book Concerning Military Matter,
but the authors here point out that even 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 gastrafettis.
(35:20):
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 (35:33):
Mmm, 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
(35:53):
call a loaded or cocked. I guess maybe one way
of interpreting this, though I don't know is like if
they're 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 2 (36:11):
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 going
to push the you see it, It would slide ice
and push the push that and would draw the bow
(36:32):
and then it would lock.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
That makes sense now, yeah, okay, because a lot of
the later, like medieval European mechanisms I'm thinking of 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
(36:56):
to a 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 2 (37:14):
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
(37:36):
to that something we mentioned in the last episode that
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 (37:48):
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. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
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
a cloven hoof. There's like sort of two hooks or
(38:27):
grooves in it.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
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 of 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
(38:49):
you the ability to essentially crank the string back.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
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 drags needs a crossbow that has
cranks on it, cranks, levers, the whole nine yards.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Lots of moving parts. Yeah, it makes it more like
a modern machine.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
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
(39:30):
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
(39:50):
looking at a couple of sources on this. One of
them is Mechanism Analysis of Ancient Chinese Crossbows by Don
Atol published in the Journal Mechanical Sciences in twenty twenty.
Was all 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
(40:13):
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 Choose State repeating crossbow,
and the evidence for this comes from archaeological finds in
(40:36):
jung Ling Hube that have been dated to this period.
According to dong Atoll, So, this area was known as
the Choose State during the Warring States period that would
have spanned four seventy five through to twenty one BCE.
So this this contraption seem to have had a vertical
magazine on top of the crossbow of twenty arrows that
(40:57):
drop down into firing position vehicle, 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 True State crossbow is that it's small.
(41:18):
It's 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 bowstring rather than the
bending of the bow. Huh.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
So it's more like a slingshot almost.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
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 stress, but rather a novelty invention
(41:55):
that it 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 (42:04):
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 2 (42:14):
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,
(42:35):
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 a technological innovation just
cannot be you know, used, that cannot be employed for
(42:59):
anything other than amusement, or at least for a certain
period of time.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
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. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Now. The second variety of Chinese repeating crossbow is the
Zugeiu or zugei Nu repeating crossbow, named for Zuge Lang,
apparently one one through two thirty four CE, military leader
and prime minister of Shuhan during the Three Kingdoms period.
He's also apparently the main hero of the fictional Romance
(43:45):
of the Three Kingdoms, a fourteenth century historical novel, in
that he's portrayed as a sage in a military Mastermind. However,
apparently he did not actually create invent this crossbow. His
name just is associated with it in some records, and
it just kind of stuck. But this version of the
(44:06):
repeating 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.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
It featured a top mounted magazine in which multiple 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 bow string, 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
(44:48):
the string for firing as the next bolt took its
place in the flight groove, ready to go now. He
cites a fire rate of ten bolts in twenty seconds,
compared to a more standard than 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
(45:12):
on some of your bold heads. Still, one can imagine
using this as kind of like a nuisance or shock
weapon alongside other defensive weaponry. Now. Needum 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
(45:34):
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'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
(45:58):
innovations would continue to the gunpowder era of Chinese weaponry.
Anita 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 was
This is much later on, but it was apparently in
(46:18):
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
(46:38):
called the punjagon. 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
was of course an Iranian empire from two twenty four
to six fifty one. We've discussed to this empire on
(47:01):
past 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 Sasanian Elite Cavalry AD two twenty four
(47:26):
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 some other
places as well, that shows a man on a horse
when in armor firing some sort of strange weapon that
has like five arrow slots or five grooves, and they
are like five arrows flying out of the thing. So
(47:52):
I assume that that is supposed to be an artist
depiction of the pandagon. But the book itself into more
detail here, so the name means five device, but there
are no known 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
(48:14):
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 as a spread fire weapon
or some sort of a technique to spread your fire.
While other, perhaps more highly skilled archers and certainly Roman
(48:34):
accounts speak of Sasanian archery skill could focus their fire,
so you know, you have like 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 alongside this. But ultimately who knows.
Maybe it was some sort of repeating crossbow, but the
(48:55):
details are lost to history. Apparently interesting, where are the
repeating crossbows and dungeons and dragons?
Speaker 3 (49:02):
Though not sure, I don't know. I've never come across one.
I assume that means they're not there.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
I mean they've got to be there. Someone has at
least home brewed or repeating crossbow.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
Any 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 (49:27):
This might be 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 your
wooden structures and tools or do you have to go
to the surface to get trees for lumber.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Well, you've answered your own question, because yes, you use
the mushrooms. There's a particular mushroom that is called Zerka
wood or zirk wood that is the primary building material
of the under Dark.
Speaker 3 (49:57):
Man. You know all the answers, I didn't know there
was an answer to that.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
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 (50:12):
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 rope?
Speaker 2 (50:19):
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 uh, you know,
medieval flavored media concerning the crossbow. If you yourself are
a crossbow enthusiast, then I'm sure you have some insight
(50:40):
to 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
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(51:02):
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Speaker 3 (51:16):
There.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
That is our newish handle. The old one has been
lost to us.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
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 1 (51:43):
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