Explanation: Mostly just memeing! Longbows vs. crossbows are a commonly debated aspect of medieval European warfare. OBVIOUSLY, the CROSSBOW is the SUPERIOR offering!
… but most longbowmen and crossbowmen both would have been only part-time soldiers and worked civilian jobs most of their lives, crossbowmen needed more than just a week of training (though short training was part of the crossbow’s draw - there are a lot of other soldiering skills what need to be taught!), the English longbow was a fairly late development rather than Return To Monke, and longbowmen were actually noted as being quite competent in the melee.
That being said, lifelong training (at least as a part-timer) was needed to achieve proficiency with the longbow - which is why England had to pass laws mandating weekly practice, and why England was the only medieval polity to regularly use longbowmen en masse. It is expensive to maintain a force (or ability to raise a force of) longbowmen largely because of the high need for good yew wood (and there’s not really much in the way of alternatives, whereas crossbows could use a wide variety of techniques and materials for the prod), it absolutely does fuck up your body because of the immense strain, and crossbow quarrels are better suited to both precision shooting and armor penetration.
Longbows were much superior in terms of volume of fire in open field battle, but if you were defending or assaulting fortifications and the local population was participating. You want crossbows.
Explanation: Mostly just memeing! Longbows vs. crossbows are a commonly debated aspect of medieval European warfare. OBVIOUSLY, the CROSSBOW is the SUPERIOR offering!
… but most longbowmen and crossbowmen both would have been only part-time soldiers and worked civilian jobs most of their lives, crossbowmen needed more than just a week of training (though short training was part of the crossbow’s draw - there are a lot of other soldiering skills what need to be taught!), the English longbow was a fairly late development rather than Return To Monke, and longbowmen were actually noted as being quite competent in the melee.
That being said, lifelong training (at least as a part-timer) was needed to achieve proficiency with the longbow - which is why England had to pass laws mandating weekly practice, and why England was the only medieval polity to regularly use longbowmen en masse. It is expensive to maintain a force (or ability to raise a force of) longbowmen largely because of the high need for good yew wood (and there’s not really much in the way of alternatives, whereas crossbows could use a wide variety of techniques and materials for the prod), it absolutely does fuck up your body because of the immense strain, and crossbow quarrels are better suited to both precision shooting and armor penetration.
Longbows were much superior in terms of volume of fire in open field battle, but if you were defending or assaulting fortifications and the local population was participating. You want crossbows.