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